Pillar of Fire

by Judith Tarr

  Ministers of the dead waited there where the Red Land rose stark beyond the river’s edge. The bier took its place again at the processional’s head, the bearers of grave-goods behind, and the queen and the rest. She walked now as she must, as she had no choice but to do, onward, in silence amid the keening of the women.

  They went from the city into the valley of the dead, from the Black Land with its dark earth and its green riches to the bleak barrenness of the Red Land. It was meant to strike them with the force of the contrast: from green land into wasteland, from life into death. The heat of the sun made it stronger, and the length of the journey. It was a suffering, a sacrifice that they made in honor of the king who was dead.

  oOo

  His tomb was a pitiful thing beside the tombs of older kings. Some lord or nobleman had been building it but had failed maybe of his wealth, or died too soon to finish it.

  The queen’s servants had done what they could in too little time and with too much of ritual and courtesy to weigh upon them. The grave-goods that they brought to it were hurled together as best might be from his own belongings, castoffs of his father and his brothers, bits and pieces of what, for all Nofret knew, were other burials. They were reckoned necessary and even indispensable, since a king must keep such state in death as he had kept in life, or he gained no respect among his kind in the dark lands.

  Such haste could do him no good, Nofret reflected as she struggled along behind her lady. Ankhesenamon was close and yet unspeakably far away, aware of nothing, it seemed, but the dead. Did she care that the magic could not be done properly, that too much was being done too quickly, that the house of eternity was a frail and rickety thing with crooked walls and a mismatched roof?

  Maybe it did not matter. Maybe appearance was enough, and grief paid and paid again.

  oOo

  At the edge of the Red Land, where the road grew too steep and stony for the slow feet of cattle, men took over the burden of drawing it upward, and left the cattle to rest as they might. A priest led the way with ewer and censer, driving off spirits of ill. But one spirit came forth to his call, a solid and living one, wearing the heifer-mask of Hathor. It spoke the welcome to the houses of the dead in the voice of a mortal man, but one with good strong lungs. It was more a bull’s bellow than a heifer’s lowing.

  This apparition withdrew to let them pass. They struggled onward and upward, directing themselves toward the tomb that was open, that waited for one to be laid in it.

  Time now was short, here on the threshold of eternity. Strong servants raised the king’s coffin from the catafalque and set it upright against the tomb’s stone. Ankhesenamon knelt, as graceful as a dancer in a dance, and laid her arms about it, embracing it. It must have been cold after the warmth of the living body, hard and unyielding as death must always be.

  The shrieking and wailing rose to a crescendo. It rang in the cliffs, soared up to the sky.

  When the echoes had begun to die, the priests of the dead stirred where they stood before the tomb. Here was the great working, the magic above magics, the rite that would grant the dead the memory of life, and free him to live in the land beyond the west. They would give him back his body, his strength, his heart and soul and voice. Their power would let him see again and hear, and taste and touch and smell—all his senses restored to him in the house of everlasting.

  Chief of the priests was the Lord Ay in a mantle of leopardskin. He wore the Blue Crown that was given only to the king. He stood erect and stiffly strong, and yet, thought Nofret, he had grown old. They called him that in the palace, spoke of him as an old man, but to her he had always been a man just past his prime.

  No longer. He was shrunken in his skin, his face deep-lined, the blade of his nose more prominent than ever. He looked like an old eagle, crooked-clawed, half-blind, clinging to its rock with grim persistence.

  So he clung now to the office that fate and the gods had thrust on him. He spoke the words that opened each of the dead man’s senses. He performed the rite with precision that only made clearer the mumbled haste of the other priests. They committed errors, Nofret suspected, from the way people stirred and muttered; but Ay did not. The king’s senses were opened with full and proper ceremony by one who had loved him in life and cherished him still in death.

  It might not be such a blessing, if his house was so feebly made, that he should have full use of his faculties therein. But it was not Nofret’s place to say so. She watched in silence as the king was taken at last into the small mean tomb that had been found for him, laid in it with the hasty heaps of his belongings, and sealed in his sarcophagus for all of eternity.

  The last memory she had of the tomb was of the lamplight burning low in it and the glitter of gold crowded all about it, and atop the massive bulk of stone that housed his body, the one frail and living thing that would remain in that place: the garland of flowers that Ankhesenamon had borne with her. She laid it there as she left him, brushing it with fingers that trembled, smoothing the petals that already were wilted in the heat of the Egyptian sun.

  Then she was gone, out into the light, and he was left behind in the endless dark. She ate what she could of the funeral feast among the mourners and the princes. He would feast there below, or so the Egyptians believed, on the great store of provender that they had brought to supply him for his journey among the dead. But there would be none living to keep him company. Even the priests of his tomb would serve his memory under the sun, beyond the seals and the spells and the great wards and guardings that were laid on the houses of the dead.

  He was gone, except in memory. There was no calling him back. Not even the priests of Egypt, who claimed mighty magic, could restore the dead to life.

  Forty-Two

  The queen left Thebes for Memphis without actually marrying Lord Ay, and therefore without granting him the right to wear the Two Crowns. It was said that she was distracted, and that she was prostrated with grief. But since the kingdom went on being ruled as before, with Lord Ay in Thebes serving as chief counsellor and regent, and the queen in Memphis being queen as she had been for the half of her life, no one could properly object.

  Nor did anyone appear to suspect what the queen had done, what letter she had sent under cover of night and with the knowledge of two scribes who had been well paid to say nothing. She herself said no word of it.

  Nofret did not make the mistake of thinking that Ankhesenamon had forgotten. The demon that had possessed her to do it was not a demon of oblivion. It had persuaded her that she did the right thing, the logical thing. There was no purpose in fretting over it, since it was done, and done as well as it might be.

  Nofret herself had nothing to say. Her lady had turned to Nofret’s own birth-country for help. Egypt would look on it with horror. Nofret, the Hittite slave, could find it in herself to wonder what a son of the Great King of Hatti would do if he were set on the throne of Egypt. Egypt would hate him for his very foreignness, but if he was anything like his father, he would find a way to win hearts even in this most foreigner-hating of kingdoms.

  oOo

  For Ankhesenamon it was a waiting time. The flood of the river receded as it did every year, leaving its riches behind, the black mud that was the life and strength of Egypt. In the first of the sowing time, which in Hatti would have been the beginning of winter, came the ambassador of the Hittite king with his company of guards and attendants.

  It was the same man who had come before, Hattusa-ziti the king’s chamberlain, with much the same men at his back. But there was no Lupakki. He had married, Nofret discovered, and his wife was highly placed. She had won him a position in the king’s own household.

  Nofret could hardly be disappointed. It was well for her brother that he had risen so high, and so quickly, too. But she would have liked to see him again.

  If she was fortunate, and there was a Hittite king in Egypt, she might do better: she might win leave to go to Hatti and visit him there. And her other brothers, too, if it su
ited her. They could not look on her in scorn if she came as a woman of consequence, chief servant of the queen’s household.

  That was not to happen quite yet. Before the eyes of court and kingdom, Hattusa-ziti came bearing condolences on the death of the king. It could be suspected also that he had come to take the measure of Egypt, to discover who would be king. It was reasonable and wise, and well might be expected of so canny a monarch as Suppiluliumas.

  The queen received him in court as she did every embassy, with the same words and the same gestures, the same ancient ritual that said everything and nothing in the turn of its formal phrases. She betrayed no anxiety. He offered no suggestion that he was present at anyone’s wish but that of his king.

  It was beautifully played, a regal dance, she in her golden finery, he in the most splendid of Hittite court robes and a high conical hat that made him tower even taller than he was. His attendants made a martial display: great broad shaggy-breasted men who could each have made two of the queen’s slender countrymen, ringing in bronze armor and crowned with tall helmets. The queen matched them with a company of Nubians, coal-black giants with nuggets of gold and amber woven into the black fleece of their hair.

  But when the words were all said, the gifts given and received, the ambassador dismissed and the queen retired to her chambers to rest, as she said, from the day’s exertions, the queen met with the ambassador in a small and secluded chamber. It was not in the queen’s palace but near it, in a wing that was then little used. She had had it prepared, cleaned and refurbished, so that it would be fit for a queen and for a king’s ambassador. There was wine waiting, and delicacies from the palace kitchens, even a dainty or two that was said to be much favored in Hatti.

  While Ankhesenamon waited for Hattusa-ziti to appear, she eyed the bowl of stewed mutton in barley with some distaste. “They eat this? Without spices or any savor?”

  “It’s subtle,” Nofret said, “but it does please the tongue, if one has grown up eating it.”

  Ankhesenamon shuddered delicately. “I think your people lack sophistication of taste.”

  “It’s only youth,” said Nofret, “compared to Egypt.”

  There was no one there but the two of them. The queen did not trust her maids to keep quiet to their friends or lovers. She was not afraid that the Hittite would betray her or do her harm.

  Nofret hoped that it was trust in Hittite honor. More likely it was arrogance, and the conviction that only an Egyptian had the wit or the daring to kill an Egyptian queen.

  The Hittite envoy came likewise attended only by a single man, a large and quiet one who effaced himself by the door. There was no interpreter, except for Nofret. Queen and ambassador were alone and quite private as royalty would think of it.

  Nofret, endeavoring to be invisible at the queen’s back, was aware of the Hittite’s eyes on her. They weighed, they judged; they drew conclusions. They could hardly escape it, since she was the voice of her lady, and she wore a face that would be all too familiar in line and contour.

  The first words that either queen or envoy spoke after the words of greeting were Hattusa-ziti’s, asking Ankhesenamon, “She who is with you—that is one of ours, surely?”

  Nofret thought briefly of failing to render the words in Egyptian, or else of inventing further greetings and fabricating a reply. But her wits were too slow for that. She asked the question as Hattusa-ziti had phrased it, as if it had nothing to do with her at all.

  Ankhesenamon shot Nofret the briefest of glances, but answered as if Nofret were no more than a voice. “Yes, my maid is a Hittite. She was a captive, I’m told, taken and sold into Mitanni. Have her people been hunting for her?”

  She knew perfectly well that they had not, but Nofret’s place was to be silent except when she was being the voice of one or the other of them. Hattusa-ziti frowned and tugged at his chin. “Indeed, majesty, the truth escapes me. Shall I undertake to discover it?”

  “Perhaps,” said Ankhesenamon, “at another time.”

  She went silent then as queens could do, and queens in Egypt best of all. It was a silence that sucked at the will, that opened mouths that had been locked shut and made people babble simply to be spared the weight of royal patience.

  Hattusa-ziti was schooled in the art, that was clear: the king in Hatti must be a master of it himself. Nonetheless he was the king’s ambassador and not the king himself, and he had a message to convey. He did so simply, with directness that befit a man of a warrior people. “Lady, our king, the Sun, has received a letter that purports to be from the queen, the Sun’s wife of Egypt.”

  Ankhesenamon waited, silent still, but the silence had changed. There were edges in it now.

  “The letter says,” said Hattusa-ziti, “that the god’s wife of Egypt, whom we call Dahamunzu, is in much grief and is afraid, because her husband is dead and she had no sons.”

  “My husband is dead,” said Ankhesenamon, low and quiet, like an echo, “and I have no sons. You know that, king’s man of Hatti. You were here when we were happy. You know that there are no sons.”

  “Sons may be born while a man is traveling from realm to realm, lady,” said Hattusa-ziti. “Or sons may be concealed from kin who wish them ill. That was so with your father the king, the Sun, was it not? He was brought from his mother’s house when his elder brother died untimely, and set before the people, and made their king.”

  “Everyone knew that he had been born,” said Ankhesenamon, “and many had seen him in his mother’s house.”

  “Even so,” said Hattusa-ziti. “Our king finds your request most strange. Is there no prince in Egypt to whom you would give the right of throne and scepter?”

  “No,” said Ankhesenamon. “And if there were, he would die as untimely as did my beloved.”

  Hattusa-ziti’s brows rose slightly. “You have reason to fear?”

  “I have reason to fear,” said Ankhesenamon.

  She did not look afraid. She looked royally remote. That was her defense, the mask that she wore.

  Hattusa-ziti seemed to understand that. He had been standing till now, since the queen had not invited him to sit. He looked about, found a chair that was lower and less ornate than the queen’s, inclined his head toward it. “Lady?”

  She nodded with a touch of impatience.

  His attendant brought the chair and set it opposite the queen. He sat in it, made himself comfortable, moving without haste but not excessively slowly. He was making himself, not her equal, never that, but something more than the menial of a foreign king.

  Ankhesenamon’s eyes glittered, but she offered no objection. In inviting Hatti to present her with a consort, she had made the Hittite king a kinsman. His envoy therefore stood higher than a mere tributary or petitioner.

  At length, when he was well settled, Hattusa-ziti spoke. “Lady, may I be outspoken?”

  To his patent astonishment, Ankhesenamon laughed. “Oh, do!” she said. “Please do.”

  Nofret, in translating, could not help it; she had to explain, or try to. “Lord,” she said, “my lady expects it of us Hittites.”

  Hattusa-ziti frowned as if in puzzlement, but then he grinned, as startling as Ankhesenamon’s laughter. He looked like a boy, and a wild one, too. “Ah, she does, does she? Good!” He set fists on knees and leaned forward. “Well then, lady, let me tell you that when our king read your letter, he was hard put to believe a word of it. He thought it might be a trap. ‘What if there are sons?’ he asked us in council. ‘What if she means to mock us all, and lure us into some deadly foolishness?’”

  “I suppose,” said Ankhesenamon, “that that’s to be expected. We’ve been enemies, after all. Nobody in Asia is stronger than Hatti, or bolder in confronting Egypt.”

  “So why did you do it? Why a Hittite? Why no one in Egypt, or even in Mitanni, or Nubia? Why an enemy and not an ally?”

  “Because our allies are weak,” said Ankhesenamon. “They’re cowed. I need a man who can face the strongest men in the Two
Lands, and be stronger than they.”

  “Is that what your maid has told you of us Hittites?”

  “She hasn’t needed to. I can see it for myself.”

  Hattusa-ziti looked her over. “Lady, if it’s as bad as that here, and you’ve got people murdering kings, what’s to keep them from murdering a king’s son out of an enemy country?”

  “Nothing,” she said, “but his own strength and his bravery. Hittites are brave, they say. They’re warriors born. Your king has a whole army of sons, but only one of them can be king after he dies. Doesn’t one of the others fancy a throne for himself? Even if he dares death to get it?”

  “That’s for my king to say,” said Hattusa-ziti, “and my king’s sons. First he needs to know that you wrote in good faith: that you weren’t plotting treachery, or thinking to get revenge for the war in Asia.”

  “I wrote in good faith,” said Ankhesenamon. “I am afraid here. Any man I take for my king will die soon or late, but always before his time.”

  “Who will kill him?”

  “One who has strong allies. Who wants the throne for himself, but knows that he can never get it if he must get it through me.”

  “He could kill you,” said Hattusa-ziti. “That would remove the obstacle, wouldn’t it?”

  Ankhesenamon nodded. She was not afraid. Not of that. “Oh, he could, and if he were completely wise he would. But he’s a stubborn man. He wants the throne in right and proper wise, through me.”

  “And maybe he wants you for yourself,” said Hattusa-ziti with a tilt of the brows. “You’re a beautiful woman. More beautiful I’ve seldom seen, and I’ve seen half the beauties of the world. A man would be glad to take a kingdom that came with such a queen.”

  “Or,” she said, “he would be glad to take me, because in taking me he subdues all that has ever tried to master him. He’s killed two kings. He’ll kill a third, unless that king is stronger than any man in Egypt.”