The Horus Road

by Pauline Gedge

  Hent-ta-Hent is gone, Ahmose thought. Pezedkhu is gone. The Feather of Ma’at quivers and once again the colours and configurations within this living picture that is my life and Egypt’s destiny shift into alien shapes to which I must conform. And there sits Het-Uart, enveloped in the sullen silence of a vanquished beast that is mortally wounded but refuses to die. He remained lost in contemplation until the light from the tent behind him became stronger than the fading strength of Ra.

  8

  AAHMES-NEFERTARI WOKE EARLY, coming to full consciousness with a thrill of anticipation. The scroll still lay on the table beside her couch where she had placed it after reading it for the hundredth time the night before. Today he is coming home, she thought, swinging her feet onto the cold tiled floor. It will not be this morning, but at some hour I will be dictating to Khunes perhaps, or giving the audience to Tetaky that I arranged, or walking beside the water with Ahmose-onkh, and a herald will approach to say that his ship is rounding the bend in the Nile. I will call out the household. We will gather above the watersteps, all of us full of excitement, and there he will be, standing in the prow with the Followers behind. Our eyes will meet. He will be smiling. Oh gods, how wonderful. Ahmose is coming home. I will not be able to settle to anything until I hold him in my arms again.

  Calling softly to Senehat, she took up a cloak, went to the window, and rolled up the reed hanging. Cool air flowed over her at once and the drowsy music of the dawn chorus came muted to her ears from the still-shadowed trees of the garden. It was too early even for the gardeners and the dewy expanse of lawn running away below her was empty. Shivering a little, she turned back into the room as her body servant entered and bowed sleepily, her black hair tangled and her shift crumpled. “It is a beautiful morning, Senehat,” Aahmes-nefertari smiled. “Go and see if the water is heating in the bath house. Tell Neb-Amun that I want to be shaved as well as massaged after my bath and he is to put lotus essence in the oil. Bring me food while I wait, and send Uni to me as soon as he has dressed.”

  The girl bowed and departed and Aahmes-nefertari began to pace, trying to keep her mind centred on the tasks of the coming day but unable to see past the familiar delineations of her husband’s face. In the months since he had left for the north, after laying such responsibilities on her shoulders that sometimes she despaired of her ability to carry them all, she had often solaced herself with memories. At first her imagination had supplied her with consistently clear pictures, but as the weeks fled by she had found to her distress that her husband’s presence became more nebulous, his body, his laugh, his gestures more difficult to conjure. His letters had revived him temporarily, but more and more she had found herself remembering the remembering, two steps removed from experience itself.

  Hent-ta-Hent’s death had sealed that severing. He had not been there, had not seen the child tossing in a torrent of sweat, had not heard her cries rising above Amunmose’s chanting in a room full of the smoke of incense and the intimation of disaster. He had not held those tiny fingers as the warmth of life slowly receded from them, and when Aahmes-nefertari had turned in anguish and loss from the drenched and rumpled cot with its pathetic burden, there had been no strong arms to enfold her pain. No matter what his own feelings might have been when he read her account of his daughter’s dying, they could not match her own. She had seen the tiny chest rise and collapse for the last time. He had not. He would be present at the funeral. Hent-ta-Hent’s mourning period would not end for another week. But that was not the same.

  They had been separated many times before. The years of Kamose’s war had been a series of agonizing farewells interspersed with brief periods of reunion tinged with the fear of an uncertain future. But through those years they had each changed little, growing slowly. Kamose’s murder and the subsequent purges had shocked them both towards an accelerated maturity that had ripened while they were apart. Ahmose had placed in her left hand a mountain of obligations and in her right the power to discharge them. Together they had created an explosion of fatigue, anxiety, grim willfulness and a burgeoning authority, from which a capable Queen had been born. Aahmes-nefertari was fully aware of what she had become. She doubted if her husband was.

  Yet on this morning, this momentous morning, his face was there in all its clarity before her mind’s eye as it had not been for many months and with it came a welling-up of love that quickened her heartbeat and reddened her cheeks. She had been lonely and bereaved, one-half of a marvellous whole that would once more be united, and she breathed prayers of gratitude to Amun and Hathor as she measured out the confines of her bedchamber.

  It was not Senehat, however, who knocked on her door, but Ahmose-onkh. He came trotting in completely naked, a slab of fresh bread in one hand and a candied date in the other, and made straight for the window, standing on tiptoe to peer over the sill. “Ra has begun to climb in the sky and the gardeners are out there now but they are standing about talking,” he said. “They should be setting up the canopies. What if Father comes before we are ready?” Aahmesnefertari dismissed both the contemplation of her husband and the doubts that lay behind it.

  “There is plenty of time,” she chided her son. “A herald will arrive first and there will be ceremonies at the watersteps before we feast together. Calm down, Ahmose-onkh, or you will be in tears or trouble before noon. Eat that date, and do not touch anything with your sticky fingers until you have been washed.” The child crammed the date into his mouth, chewing furiously, and as he did so both Raa and Uni appeared in the doorway. “Raa, I have told you many times not to allow him to run about naked,” Aahmes-nefertari said in exasperation as the nurse took Ahmose-onkh by the wrist after many apologetic bows. “He is too old for that. Dress him formally today and try to keep him clean.”

  “I am sorry, Majesty,” Raa said. “He has an uncanny ability to disappear the moment I turn my back.”

  “I know.” Aahmes-nefertari bent and kissed the top of his shaven head, sliding her fingers through the long rope of hair straggling loose over his right shoulder. “Give him into the care of his guard. He can shoot his little arrows at the trees in the garden. Or see if one of the under-stewards will toss a ball for him. I don’t think he will want to sleep this afternoon.”

  “He is almost ready for a tutor,” Raa grumbled. “He needs to put his energy into learning instead of racing about impeding the house servants and bothering the brickmakers.”

  “I do learn, Raa!” Ahmose-onkh protested as he was led into the passage. “The brickmakers have been showing me how to mix the mud and the straw and scoop it into the moulds.”

  “You are a Prince. You should not be mixing so readily with commoners.” Raa’s voice was growing fainter. “I will have a word with your guard who it seems to me enjoys gossiping with the labourers too much …” Aahmes-nefertari sighed and gave her attention to Uni who had been waiting with an impassive patience.

  “She is correct, Majesty,” he said. “The Prince loves to pat the wet mud and watch the straw being chopped but it is not a suitable pastime for a Hawk-in-the-Nest.” Aahmesnefertari grimaced.

  “I know, Uni, but I have been too busy to do more than kiss him good night,” she admitted. “I must give the matter some thought. He is an intelligent child. Is it too soon for a tutor?”

  “I can ask Yuf to assess his readiness,” Uni replied. “Queen Aahotep will not mind. Yuf is to go to Djeb soon to inspect the tomb of her ancestor Queen Sebekemsaf and until then his duties will be light.”

  “Well, I cannot concern myself with Ahmose-onkh today,” Aahmes-nefertari told him. “Speak to Yuf, if you like. It is a good idea. Raa loves her charge but he is continually wriggling out of her grasp and she is becoming exhausted. Come in, Senehat.” The girl slipped past the bulk of the steward and began to set the morning meal upon the table. The aroma of freshly baked bread sprinkled with sesame seeds filled the room and all at once Aahmesnefertari was ravenous. “Send to Emkhu out at the barracks,” she went on addressing Un
i. “I will speak with him later this morning regarding a parade in the King’s honour. Tell Prince Sebek-nakht that no work is to be done on the old palace today and he must hold himself in readiness to greet Ahmose. Summon the Overseer of Grain. I want to talk to him after I have given audience to Tetaky. Send to Amunmose. He is invited to the feast tonight. Neferperet also. I hope that Ahmose approves my appointment of him as Chief Treasurer.”

  “Majesty, you have worked wonders in the months the King has been away,” Uni said, and Aahmes-nefertari knew that the man had sensed the hesitation behind her words. “If His Majesty does not like what you have done, he will change it, but I do not think he will be displeased. Weset is flourishing under your care.”

  “Under my whip, you mean!” Aahmes-nefertari laughed. “Keep a close watch on the preparations for the festivities, Uni. I want nothing to go wrong. We are celebrating more than the King’s return. We acclaim his triumph over the Setiu also.” She paused and met his steady gaze. “It has all been like a dream, has it not?” she said quietly. “I look back to the day that insulting letter came to my father, the one in which Apepa complained that the hippopotamuses in our marshes were disturbing his sleep with their coughing. Father was just a southern Prince then, a nothing in the eyes of Egypt’s conquerors in spite of his royal lineage. That was not so long ago. Sometimes I expect to wake up and find myself in my old quarters with Tani still asleep in the cot beside me and Father’s voice wafting through the window-hanging from the garden outside.” She shrugged. “I am overwhelmed by the unreality of what this family has achieved and I cannot believe that I am now the Queen of Egypt.”

  “There is still Het-Uart,” the steward said smoothly. Aahmes-nefertari snorted, and waving him away she moved to the table.

  “Trust you to grasp my ankles and pull me back towards the ground!” she responded without malice. “Get about your business, Uni. Senehat, you may serve me now.”

  After she had eaten, she went to the bath house to be scrubbed and then shaved, plucked and kneaded with perfumed oil. Lying on the wooden bench while the man’s sure hands dug into her muscles and the heady scent of the lotus filled her nostrils, she thought of Uni, his perceptiveness, his trustworthiness in spite of his Setiu ancestry, and how she had come to rely on his judgement and quiet support. Akhtoy would be returning with Ahmose and would want to resume his place as Chief Steward. She did not relish the idea. Uni ran the household as she liked it to be run, efficiently and tactfully. He was firm but fair with the servants. He shielded her from unnecessary details. He was an observer. Standing behind her chair while she interviewed those she was considering for various posts, he would make his own assessments of their suitability and they seldom disagreed with her own. She did not always ask his opinion, but when she did, he gave it without dissembling.

  I do not want Akhtoy to change all that, she thought, as wrapped in a sheet she made her way back to her quarters and sat down before her cosmetics table. I do not want the two of them glaring at each other over my head as I try to make decisions that will affect the whole of Egypt. But you will no longer be doing that, the other voice, the one she was desperately attempting to restrain, reminded her bleakly. Ahmose will. He delegated his power to you while he was away, but the moment he steps from his ship it reverts to him. You will have to learn co-operation, Queen Aahmes-nefertari! You will have to bite your tongue if his judgement seems less sound than yours.

  But why should it? she asked herself as her cosmetician lifted the surface of the table to reveal the compartments full of face paints beneath. We have always been partners, Ahmose and I, keeping no secrets from one another, sharing the making of difficult decisions. What do I really fear? Not the loss of my authority, for Ahmose has always respected my reasoning and listened to my arguments. Perhaps it is merely the suspicion that in the exercise of his own power, male power, not blunted by my presence, he has become arrogant. His letters have been brisk. Almost cold. Because he has been preoccupied and hard-pressed or because he is beginning to resent me?

  Or because … She held her breath against the sharp pain that knifed through her chest. Because I have not given him a healthy male child as I did for Si-Amun? Why should I believe that he is any different from other Kings in needing to guarantee a peaceful succession? As a Prince he did not care about such things and we were utterly united. But as a King, with nothing but a stepson and no daughter now to carry the royal blood, does he see danger and put the blame on me? But I am young yet, and so is he. There will be time for more children, male and female. Oh gods, Aahmes-nefertari, stop thinking. Stop thinking!

  “What colour are you wearing today, Majesty?” the cosmetician enquired. He had finished brushing her face with the yellow ochre and was fingering the kohl pots.

  “Scarlet,” she said impulsively. Yes, scarlet, she told herself, brilliant in the sun, and gold and lapis so that he is dazzled and sees nothing but me.

  “Then I will oil your lids and sprinkle them with gold dust and use the black kohl,” he decided. “Close your eyes.”

  When he had finished his work, he handed her the copper mirror and she stared at her burnished reflection carefully. Am I still beautiful? she asked the face that looked back at her so pensively. The full, red-hennaed lips parted in misgiving and the kohl-rimmed dark eyes under the shimmering lids were solemn. Will he still want me? Laying the mirror back in its case, she thanked the man with a nod and dismissed him.

  Senehat dressed her in a scarlet sheath that fell in soft, gold-shot folds from her shoulders to her brown ankles. A wide collar of bands of gold, lapis and jasper encircled her neck. Cobras of gold with lapis eyes twisted through her earlobes. The wig she chose was unbraided, a thick fall of black hair resting in three segments, one down her back and one in front of each collarbone, and she surmounted it with a coronet of gold from which a tiny likeness of the vulture goddess Mut, patroness of Queens, hung on her forehead. Senehat pushed bracelets of gold over her wrists and red leather sandals set with lapis beads between the toes of her hennaed feet. Lastly the palms of her hands were painted with red henna before she put on her rings, and as she was doing so Uni came in. “The mayor of Weset has arrived together with your Overseer of Grain,” he said. “They are waiting in the reception hall. Khunes has already gone there.”

  “Good.” Aahmes-nefertari lifted her shoulders under the weight of the jewelled collar. “Have my litter ready to take me to the barracks after I have dealt with them,” she said. “Where are Mother and Grandmother this morning?”

  “Queen Aahotep has gone to the temple with Yuf and Queen Tetisheri is having her canopy erected near the watersteps.” A small smile quirked his mouth. “She does not want to miss the King’s arrival.”

  “Very well. Then let us start the day.”

  She liked Tetaky, the mayor of Weset, and enjoyed his regular reports on the state of the city both he and she loved. They talked easily together while Khunes sat cross-legged at her feet, his palette resting on his bare knees, and noted the salient points of the conversation. When it was over, Aahmes-nefertari spent a few minutes discussing the progress of the spring sowing with the Overseer; then she walked with her scribe into the bright mid-morning sunshine and, getting onto her litter, they were carried to the barracks.

  Emkhu, the man she had made Captain of the Household Troops, greeted her reverently, following her into the shade of his room and offering her beer, which she declined. She and her mother often came here to watch the soldiers practise their skill with bow and sword or to sit and pass the time with the officers. Both women felt oddly comfortable in such a masculine preserve, perhaps because they had earned the unqualified admiration of the troops during the desperate days following Kamose’s assassination, but also, Aahmes-nefertari privately and amusingly surmised, due to the distinct lack of any bracing male presence in the house. Ahmose-onkh did not count, of course. Neither did the servants, and the soldiers on duty in the passages and outside the doors were not expected to
pass the time of day.

  For an hour she and her Captain discussed the ranking and performance of the guard that would line the path from the watersteps to the house, escort the King through the garden, and line the walls of the reception hall should he arrive too late to feast outside. Aahmes-nefertari was proud of the net of able soldiers she had created and flung around both the estate and the clamorous city, and she wanted Ahmose to approve. So did Emkhu. Reminding him to have his men in position shortly after the noon meal, she and Khunes were conveyed back through the gate in the rear of the wall surrounding the estate, where she dismissed the litter bearers, told Khunes she would send for him later, and walked slowly through the garden towards the watersteps.

  In order to reach the old palace it was no longer necessary to slip through a gap in the crumbling wall that used to divide it from the house. The first task Sebek-nakht had undertaken was its safe demolition under his direction, so that now Aahmes-nefertari could glance to her left as she went and see the ancient building gradually revealed with its towering angles, the heaving stones of its vast courtyard and the maze of scaffolding that clung to it. The front of its façade faced west and was still in deep shadow, the rows of columns flanking the great public entrance managing to project a message of silent warning into the gloom.

  Halfway between the columns and the perimeter wall Sebek-nakht had set up his table under a permanent canopy, and it was here that he would confer with his junior architects and Aahmes-nefertari herself, the table littered with plans, while the scaffolding swarmed with sweating workmen and load after load of new bricks was trundled past from the pits near the river where Ahmose-onkh liked to play. The whole arena of industry was empty today on the Queen’s orders; nevertheless Aahmes-nefertari’s eyes were drawn to it as she passed and she thought of her brothers in an age that had gone, climbing through the forbidden rent in a wall that no longer existed to play their secret games, leaving her alone and envious on the other side.