In the moonlit gulch ahead there was the low throaty mutter of an alerted lion. Somehow Sennahet had walked into the field of the hunt. He was between the lion and its way of escape from the beaters.
He swore in a shaky voice. Casting around him, he sought some weapon, a stick, or even a large rock. The drums were getting louder. In the distance, beyond the lion, a horse whinnied. When he faced the gulch again, the lion was walking into view down the narrow throat of the gorge.
Sennahet let out a scream of terror. He spun around and ran the other way down the gorge.
His breath sawed back and forth through his lungs. He flung a hasty look over his shoulder. The lion was trotting after him. Its mane shook with each step. Its broad face was intent on him. He screamed again and his legs churned and he sprinted over the stony ground.
The lion’s roar deafened him. The beast was right behind him. On the slope ahead of him was the doorway of an empty tomb. He lunged toward it. On hands and knees he scrambled up the loose hillside of rubble toward this refuge. The ground gave way beneath him and began to slide, and he clawed up through the moving slope to the mouth of the tomb and flung himself down across the threshold.
The lion roared below him. Panting, his arms and knees bleeding, Sennahet staggered to his feet. At the base of the slope the lion was pacing back and forth, its head reared back and its yellow eyes glowing on its prey.
Higher in the gorge, the sound of galloping horses racketed off the walls and chariot wheels ground over the earth. The lion’s tail twitched. Sennahet was trembling. He pawed at his face. The doorway where he stood was the only foothold on the whole sheer slope behind him. He was trapped here; he had caged himself up for the lion. A trumpet blew, just around the bend, and the drums thundered. The lion crouched. So might Sekhmet crouch, goddess of revenge, stalking her victims. Sennahet shrank back, wondering which god he had offended, and the lion sprang.
He screamed again. The great beast bounded up the slope in three great leaps. Sennahet fell to his knees. Prayers poured forth from his lips.
Down the gorge two horses charged, a chariot flying at their heels. The lion had reached the doorway; it wheeled, so close that its lashing tail brushed across Sennahet’s shoulder, and its roar rolled forth across the gorge. Sennahet covered his head with his arms. He prayed for a quick death. The lion stank of blood and musk. Below, a voice cried out in command. The lion crashed into Sennahet and knocked him down.
Sennahet whimpered. He lay still on the cold earth, waiting for the pain to begin. The beast was sprawled over him; his mouth and nose were stuffed with its rough hair. Then Sennahet heard voices, and hands touched him.
“Are you hurt? Ah, fellow, look at me!”
His ribs ached. He gasped; he had never felt so alive, so real. The lion lay dead beside him, an arrow in its ribs. The hands on his shoulders tightened. The musical, unmasculine voice above him spoke again: “Are you hurt? Tell me that I may tend you.”
He raised his head. A young woman stood before him, her brows drawn together. Her bow was still in her hand. It was she who had slain the lion. On her head was a crown. Sennahet fell forward again and, bending, made his bow to Ankhesenamun.
The Queen Ankhesenamun, who has rescued Sennahet from the lion, took him back with her to the great palace of Pharaoh, on the west bank of the Nile across from the city of Thebes. There she ordered that Sennahet’s name be entered into the lists of her servants.
Of these there were hundreds, and Sennahet, being unskilled, was given menial tasks to do. Yet the Queen noticed him often. Now and then she gave him a coin, or a sweet; whenever she saw him, she smiled.
In the isolated village of Kalala, Hapure woke before dawn. He was ill with the plague that had taken his wife. His teeth chattered, and he wrapped the bedclothes around himself and turned his face to the wall.
He was afraid and alone. His wife was buried and his daughter had deserted him when he fell ill. He lay shivering in the dark. His stomach heaved and his bowels burned.
He would not foul his own bed. He dragged himself out to the privy. The sun was rising, a pitiless fire that scorched the sky itself, hazy with the dry dust of Egypt. Hapure knelt down in the yard behind his house and gave thanks that Ra had survived the fearful night.
He anointed himself with a palmful of oil and dressed. From a niche in the wall of his house he took coins. He set forth to walk down to Thebes.
Kalala was set deep in a dry gorge, in the desert above the fertile plain of Thebes. There was no water there, no place to grow food; the families who lived there served Pharaoh in the Valley of the Dead, and Pharaoh had always fed them. But now Pharaoh had forgotten them. Hapure walked along the narrow street, rock-hard under his feet, past house after house that stood open and deserted. Nearly everyone had fled.
Hapure reached the edge of the village and walked down the thread of the path that would take him to the plain. As he walked he saw before him the whole of Thebes. He saw the naked fields turning to dust in the wind and the deserted villages crumbling on the high ground. He saw the palace of Pharaoh, covering enough land to support a whole city, and surrounded now with soldiers to keep the desperate poor from stealing what was the King’s. He saw the gleaming needles of Amun standing above the Imperial Temple to the south, just beyond the dead river.
The ferry was tied up to its landing stage. Under its keel was dry mud. The river had retreated down into the lowest part of its bed and left the ferry on dry land. Hapure needed no boat to cross the Nile into Thebes. The river at its deepest ran only knee-high. He waded across it and went up the slope on the far side.
People slept there, on the dry mud along the river. The flies buzzed busily around them. Only the flies were lively; only the flies moved. As if they were already dead, the people there sat and stared into nothing. Hapure wound his way through them. He did not look at them. Especially he did not look at the children. There were few children left, few old people, now that even the strongest suffered.
He trudged into the dusty street of Thebes. His coin tight in his fist, he started his search. He coughed to clear his throat of the dust. His legs were weak and his knees hurt. He went first to the shop where three days before he had found bread for sale. Then they had sold each loaf for its weight in gold. Now the shop was empty, and the bake ovens behind it were cold. Hapure went on to the next shop.
The temple granaries had given up the last of Amun’s grain many long weeks before. Whatever bread was baked now was made of grain from private hoarding, and those caches were also emptying. Hapure went from shop to shop and found none selling bread.
Exhausted, he sank down on the threshold of an empty house and stared into the street. The sun turned the dust- filled sky a brazen red. Down at the end of the street, where the houses stood wall to wall and flush with the street, a woman put her head out through the door and saw him and hastily withdrew again. Hapure looked away. He had learned to avoid other people, who begged and stole and made him unhappy.
The fever was working in Hapure’s blood. He put his face down on his hands. The dust and the heat made his head pound. He started up onto his feet again, to go on, and his knees gave way and dumped him down in the street.
His eyes itched. He hacked out a cough, trying to scrape the dust from his throat.
He did not try to stand again, but only dragged himself on his arms back to the shelter of the wall. He tipped his head back against the wall. He felt emptied and finished. The shuttered houses around him were like blank faces, turned away from him. In an hour, he might be a corpse in the street, eaten by flies.
He considered that dispassionately at first. But as he thought of his death, his passion returned, and he staggered to his feet and went on through Thebes in his search for food.
Red dust had drifted into the corner of the balcony outside the Queen Regent’s window. Meryat put her hand on the railing. Her skin was
prickly with sweat. She felt dirty. She stood looking across the courtyard, her weary mind a blank.
Four date palms shaded this side of the building. Their great fronds stirred and rustled in the wind. From the brick courtyard below came the scratch-scratch of a broom. It was the lout Sennahet, whom Ankhesenamun had taken in, sweeping the walk. Meryat sighed.
From the room behind her came the fretful voice of Nefertiti, calling to her. Meryat went back through the curtains.
Three girls sat by the head of Nefertiti’s couch, stirring the sullen air with ostrich-feather fans. The Queen Regent lay on her back. An ivory rest supported her head. Fever burned like hateful blossoms in her cheeks. Her lips were the color of ash.
“Meryat, bring me wine—I am so parched.”
Meryat went to the chest by the door. On it was painted a scene of the Queen’s married life. The servant took her eyes from that. She wished that Nefertiti would let her remove such things from the royal rooms. She poured wine into a cup figured with sacred words and signs.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that no one was watching her, and she sipped a mouthful of the Queen’s wine. Since Nefertiti had fallen ill, Meryat had tasted all her food.
“Meryat, where is my daughter? You said that she was coming. Where is she?”
At that moment the Queen Ankhesenamun entered the room. The servants knelt and put their foreheads to the floor, Meryat among them.
“Mother, I am here.”
At the sound of her daughter’s voice, Nefertiti started up from her couch. On her knees, Meryat crossed the room and gave her the cup and pressed her, unresisting, back onto the bed. Ankhesenamun sat on the foot of the couch. It was shaped like a great lotus blossom; the curled tips of the petals framed the young Queen’s shoulders.
“Where have you been?” Nefertiti said to her. “And dressed like a—I know not what. My child, there are things required of Egypt’s Queen—”
“Not now, Mother,” said Ankhesenamun.
Nefertiti’s mouth curved into a weak smile. Meryat dipped a linen napkin into water scented with jasmine and bathed the face of the Queen Regent. The fan girls had returned quietly to their work.
“You could be beautiful, you know,” Nefertiti said.
“I have no wish to be,” Ankhesenamun said. She stroked her hands down her knees. The tendons in her wrists were like bowstrings. Her long legs were sheathed in charioteer’s boots. She took Nefertiti’s hand in hers.
“Ah, you are so warm!”
“I am too dry even to breathe,” Nefertiti said. “Meryat, another cup of wine. Yet I cannot help but think how many of my people suffer this same sickness, without a Meryat to tend them and wine to dull the pain.”
Meryat took the cup back to the chest where the ewers of wine were kept. Furtively, again she tasted the wine.
“Where is His Majesty?” the Queen Regent asked. “Have you not sent for him?”
Meryat turned, the cup in her hand, and for an instant her gaze met Ankhesenamun’s. She lowered her eyes. On her knees she returned to the Queen Regent.
“Rise, Meryat,” Ankhesenamun said. “You go about naturally in my mother’s presence, you may always do so in mine.”
Meryat stood. She gave the cup into Nefertiti’s hand. The Queen Regent lifted it, and it wobbled in her grip; Meryat took the cup and the hand of the Queen and helped her to hold the wine and drink.
“I feel so weak,” Nefertiti said. She lay back again on the ivory headstand. “I know I shall die soon. Ankhesenamun! When I am dead, you must care for Meryat. Take her among your own women—let her be to you as she has been to me.”
Meryat put her hand over her face. These words filled her with pain and sorrow and gratitude for the Queen.
“Mother, Mother, you shall not die,” Ankhesenamun said. “Not if you truly wish to live.”
“I will die, and soon,” Nefertiti said. “I am failing, so weak, so tired, and yet I cannot sleep, and the most fearful thoughts come into my mind—where is Tutankhamun? Did I ask that he be sent for?”
“He has been called, Mother,” Ankhesenamun said. “But do not talk of dying. You will put yourself into such a cast of mind that the grave will seem more home to you than your own bed.”
Nefertiti shook her head from side to side. “That is your father in you—ever he believed that the mind ruled the body—dragged the flesh around itself like a garment, to wear as it willed.”
Ankhesenamun’s smile was false and taut. She said, “Perhaps, then, he did not really die, but only put off his garment for another.”
“I loved him,” Nefertiti said. “Even when he became what I did not understand.” In a lower voice, she said, “I love him yet.”
“May I ask your advice, Mother?”
The Queen smiled, and her eyes opened a little. “Of course.”
“Someone—a soothsayer—it has been said that if we make sacrifice to Isis, the goddess will heal Egypt.” Ankhesenamun held her mother’s hand. “Should we give heed to such talk?”
“It is an offense to the Aten.”
“But if we are wrong…” Ankhesenamun held her mother’s hand to her cheek. “Every day I see more—how they suffer—the people cannot follow the Aten. What if we are wrong?”
“The Aten is God. No other is God. He alone is the truth. If Egypt must die to serve the Aten, then let Egypt die.”
“How they suffer,” Ankhesenamun said. She was biting on her lip.
“Think of the Aten,” Nefertiti said. “It is the Aten who matters, and not the people—they are only shadows of his will.” Her voice began to carry a fretful, whining edge. “But where is Tutankhamun?”
Ankhesenamun leaned forward, intense. “All this suffering began when the Aten and my father drove away the old gods.”
“How dare you say so?” Nefertiti cried. “He is God! He can do with us as he wishes.”
Ankhesenamun said nothing. She looked deep into her mother’s face. Meryat dampened a cloth to bathe the sick Queen’s face. Ankhesenamun took it from her and touched the cool linen to her mother’s brow.
“We failed him,” Nefertiti said. “When Akhenaten died, we let that foul rat of Amun back into his nest.”
“Otherwise we could not keep power. Was that not the bargain?”
“It was then that the evil came upon us.”
Ankhesenamun held her mother’s hand. “I will not argue with you now.”
Nefertiti’s head rolled from side to side. “Where is Tutankhamun? Why is he not with me now?”
Ankhesenamun made herself busy with the damp cloth. Meryat turned away to fill the basin of water.
“Answer me! Why has he not come to me?”
“Mother—”
“Answer me!”
The Queen Regent started up from her couch. Ankhesenamun pushed her gently down. “Meryat! Bring her wine. Mother, please, be calm.”
“Where is he? Is he ill? Is the King ill? O Aten, my hope, let it not be.”
Meryat was at the chest pouring the wine. She glanced over her shoulder at the two Queens, surrounded by the fan girls like people in a frieze.
Ankhesenamun said, “Mother, lie still. Tutankhamun is well. He is healthy as the crocodiles. He has gone. He went to Istufti, to escape the plague.” Istufti was the King’s great palace near Saïs, in the Delta.
Nefertiti lay still. Her face was white. At last she said, “He has fled? He has left me?” Her tongue slid over her lips. “I am so dry. Meryat, the wine.”
Meryat brought the chased cup. The Queen Regent drank deep of the wine. She lay back; Ankhesenamun put her hand behind her mother’s neck to cushion her.
“He ran away,” Nefertiti said. “Where is the king in him? Hiding, like a rat, in the little finger of his soul.”
“Mother.”
“I shall not speak of him
again.”
She did not. Thereafter they spoke of minor things, their clothes, their friends, and the wine. The night gathered outside the windows. Meryat had a meal brought for Ankhesenamun: duck’s eggs and bread and honey. Untouched, it drew the flies into the corner by the balcony.
Nefertiti was failing. Meryat imagined the sickness as a bird that struggled to be free, that carried Nefertiti’s soul in its golden beak. The Queen Regent’s mind was unquiet, and she spoke as if this were her wedding day. Her face blotched with fever, her wide eyes glazed, she spoke with delight of the robe of embroidered linen that she considered herself to be wearing, and said that she heard music. Apprehensively she asked her women of her bridegroom, whom she had never seen.
“Is he ugly? I cannot bear ugliness—”
“Mother,” Ankhesenamun said and, putting her hands on Nefertiti’s shoulders, tried to push her down again on the couch. “Calm yourself, you will exhaust yourself—”
“Sister.” Nefertiti resisted the pushing; one hand gripped Ankhesenamun’s wrist. Her nails were broken. Her eyes were as wide open as they would go, so that a ring of white encircled her pupils. “Sister,” she said, “call for my father. I will stop the wedding.”
“Mother, please listen to me. Oh, she hears no word I say.”
“I have heard that he is ugly,” Nefertiti said. Meryat started forward with the wine; Ankhesenamun waved her back. The Queen Regent raised herself wobbling on her elbows.
“Is this what it means to be beautiful—to marry an ugly man? Bear ugly children?”
“Mother!”
Nefertiti sank back. She had worn herself out. Meryat crept nearer and helped Ankhesenamun care for her. Before dawn, Nefertiti died in her daughter’s arms.
Meryat pressed her hands over her face. She longed with all her heart to return to an earlier day, before the troubles, when she had been a child and Nefertiti laughed and played whimsical games with her.
In the morning the red dust had drifted in under the Queen Regent’s bed. Meryat swept it out again with a broom of rushes.
Valley of the Kings Page 15