by Gill, Anton
‘Be a prisoner no longer. The only way out is to kill the jailer.’
He had heard the words before, many times. He wondered how long it would be before he stopped listening and started to act. Well, he had made a start, of sorts, and he knew that he could not spend the rest of his life waking into agony. Despite himself, he found himself thinking of the old king, Akhenaten.
How valuable his advice would be be now! Tutankhamun tried to remember that remote, fatherly, fragile creature, but the edges of his memory were blurred and he could conjure up a body but no face. An impression of gentleness and comfort remained.
The king swung his feet off the bed and stood in one lithe movement, making his head spin. He heard body servants approaching and saw them hovering in the curtained doorway, not daring to enter as they noticed the queen still sleeping. He picked up a linen wrap from the back of a black wood-and-gilt folding chair and tied it round him, approaching the door.
‘Mesesia,’ he said to one of them, beckoning. The man came forward a few paces, his shaven head bowed.
‘Go and find Ahmose,’ said the king. ‘Bring him to the Red Room and tell him to wait for me there.’
Some time later, after the conclusion of the interview, Ahmose made his way out of the palace by a side entrance. He had not talked of much with the king. It had seemed to him that all Tutankhamun wanted to do was bolster his confidence by once more going over and refining his plan to assassinate Horemheb. Ahmose, a courtier for seventeen years, and a man whose solid, avuncular presence had served him well in the matter of eliciting secrets, congratulated himself that the king still seemed to regard him as a member of his inner circle. It was a nuisance that the young man was too clever to allow the members of it to know each other. For a time Ahmose had wondered if the king mistrusted him; then he had wondered if the whole conspiracy against the general was not a simple fantasy. Now he was sure that some loose form of revolution was being prepared. Patience would bring him the details, and perhaps even the names of the conspirators.
Leaving the outer courtyard of the palace, he turned round once to look up at the columned gallery which ran along the first storey. He could see no one there. He turned again and set off at a brisker pace.
From behind the column against which he was leaning, the king watched the fat courtier turn, and scurry through the gate, hesitating for only a fraction of a second before taking the street which led in the direction of Horemheb’s overblown house. Tutankhamun clenched his fist. This battle would not be soon won. But he was learning, all the time.
THREE
The king accepted in his heart that unless they were helped, the gods would remain impartial. As the present custodian of the perpetual incarnation of Ra-on-Earth, he did not hesitate. And to his joy, but hardly to his surprise, one action by him triggered others by those gods whose alliance he had solicited for so long.
He meant Ahmose’s death as a warning, however oblique, to the general. He had the man abducted and drowned downriver, reluctant to accord him anything other than a merciful, noble death. Then he had the body brought back to the city and laid on the shore near Horemheb’s jetty. It was a custom which he followed, rather than initiated, and he was sure that the general would read the shorthand correctly. His worry stemmed from not knowing how many other Ahmoses there were in his camp.
Anxiety turned to triumph later, though he still had several months to wait, during which neither side - Tutankhamun had begun to think of the series of moves and counter-moves as a cold war — did more than wait, watchfully maintaining their positions on the board. Then the gods suddenly struck two blows in his favour.
The year had turned round and the Black Land had entered the season of sbemu again. After the enervating activity of the harvest, which in this good year had filled the granaries and taken even the workers from the valley, where the great tombs of the departed lay on the west bank of the River across from the Southern Capital, to help gather the generous crop of emmer, barley and flax, the country lay in grateful exhaustion. The king’s heart could not rest, though, because it dwelt with an unwelcome tirelessness on the fact of his wife’s empty birth-cave, and on the imminent gift from Nut and Geb of a child to Horemheb and Nezemmut. It took two seasons and one passage of the moon for a child to grow in the birth-cave, and the time was almost up.
But Nezemmut’s child was born early and dead. To the king’s secret satisfaction, it had been a boy. That would be vinegar on the general’s lips. The little corpse, with its huge head, curled like a baby crocodile in the egg, was swiftly dried and embalmed, and set aside in a cedar box for the time to come when it would join its unlucky parents in their tomb. They would know the same pain the king had.
The next month Ankhsi’s bleeding stopped. She showed Tutankhamun the linen towel. It was as clean as when her maid had bound it to her loins. The king hardly dared breathe.
The news quickly spread from a household which had been divided between hope and despair for years now. Happy body servants told their wives, husbands and lovers — there was no interdict of secrecy from the king. Sorrow at the queen’s dead womb gave way to speculation about the royal child’s sex. The betting odds down in the harbour quarter settled cautiously in favour of a son, and the former scribe Huy put a golden piece down in the hope of a male child. The sunlight at long last seemed to move across the palace compound and settle on the king’s house instead of Horemheb’s. The general and his household made their congratulations, and the king formally commiserated with their misfortune. Both publicly accepted the will of the gods, and secretly made contingency plans.
At first Tutankhamun was fearful that he had tempted the gods’ anger by premature celebration, but a second month passed and the linen wad was as free of dark blood as ever. The queen’s guard was doubled, and Horemheb’s special Medjays were banished from the precincts of the palace. The general wore a fixed expression, and was seen less in public. Ay, on the other hand, became a more frequent visitor to the king.
By the third month, the pharaoh decided he had been away from the hunt long enough.
‘You must be careful.’ Ankhsenpaamun had never liked hunting. It was dangerous and bloody. The king was half a stranger for a hour after his return. Sometimes he was away for weeks.
‘Don’t worry.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘Three days at the most.’
‘And where will you go?’
‘Where the quarry lies.’
‘What will you hunt?’
‘It depends what we see. I want to fetch something special for you.’
‘Do not hunt lions,’ said the queen. She was fearful of the new, light chariot. It was faster, she knew, than many of the animals the king loved to chase, but she also knew that it overturned easily. If the king fell near a furious wounded animal like a lion, or, worse, a wild bull, he would die. Alone, she knew she would not be able to stand up to their enemies. Like her sisters, she would be condemned to a luxurious prison and an empty life. Or, worse, there was the threat of marriage to Ay.
‘Do not go unattended,’ she added. ‘Take many bowmen with you.’
‘Of course,’ the king reassured her. Privately, he had it in mind to hunt lion. His ancestor Nebmare Amenophis had bagged one hundred as a young man. It was his ambition to pass that record.
He went to inspect his animals. His lean hunting dogs bounded to the gates of their pen to see him, jostling each other to put their great sand-running paws against the wooden crossbar, thrusting eager heads forward, red tongues flickering in open mouths, brown eyes keen, long tails wagging. He stroked their soft ears and cradled their pointed snouts.
The cats, trained to retrieve fish and small game-birds, were more sedate, but they left off washing, and their ears became alert as they paced the limits of their pens, occasionally scrapping with one another. Nearby, his two cheetahs, captured young and trained for the chase by Nubian huntsmen, stretched and eyed him half watchfully, half exp
ectantly. He paused to reprimand their beast-slave for not yet refreshing their water that day, then made his way to the far end of the vast cedar enclosure, to where his riding and chariot horses were corralled.
These costly animals, the third generation to be bred in the south, were the king’s pride and joy. He adored their strength and their loyalty, and they were guarded with almost as great care as himself. He gave them slivers of honey cake, and real apples expensively imported from the lands to the north.
‘What game is there?’ he asked his chief huntsman.
‘Nearby, ibex, gazelle.Plenty of ibex, not half a day’s ride.’
‘I am interested in lions, Nehesy.’
The man considered. ‘Not near. It is too dry now. Perhaps south of the First Cataract, or out by the Dakhla Oasis.’
The king shook his head, disappointed. Both places were too far away. He thought of the half-promise he had given Ankhsi not to be absent longer. He wanted to bring her back trophies worthy of a king, knowing that the spirits of the animals would enter him, their vanquisher, and build his strength; but he was anxious too that she should not be alone too long. Since the Ahmose episode the king had not known whom to trust, and he had given orders to his personal guard that only blood relatives should be allowed to see her; but he knew he could not deny access to Horemheb or Ay.
‘Are you sure there are none nearer?’
‘If you took the horses by river you could be at the First Cataract in two days.’
‘It is still too long.’
‘How long does the king intend to hunt?’
‘I cannot spare more than three days.’
‘It is a pity we have no lions corralled.’
‘That is not hunting,’ said the king contemptuously. Very seldom now did any of the nobles hunt in the old way, spearing animals already trapped in a corral from the top of the palisade. The horse and the light electrum chariot had brought speed and mobility and danger to the sport.
‘Will you hunt on the River?’ suggested Nehesy, seeing the tightness on the king’s face, which however quickly recovered its customary, dangerously bland expression. ‘I could call the wildfowlers. Or perhaps we could go after river-horse or crocodile?’
‘No. I want to use the chariot. We will go after ibex. Where are the good herds?’
‘They are in the Eastern Desert.’
‘Good. We will save time by not having to cross the River.’
‘When shall we go?’
‘As soon as the heat of the day is past. I will take my usual team and the new chariot.’
‘And what dogs?’
‘Give me Pepi, Ypu and Ruttet. Sherybin will be my charioteer.’
The king spent the rest of the morning pleasurably choosing hunting spears, and discussing with Nehesy and Sherybin the best bows to take. The new chariot was drawn out into the yard and propped up on its shaft, gleaming red-gold in the sun while they tested the leather footstraps and handholds for firmness. They discussed the pros and cons of the machine’s heavier floor, which created greater stability at the expense of speed.
‘But we will not need so much speed for ibex,’ said Sherybin.
‘I know,’ replied the king, sullenly.
‘There is a bull in the herd with the finest horns I have ever seen,’ Nehesy put in quickly. ‘I can see them now on the prow of your falcon-ship.’
‘Good,’ the king responded, brightening.
‘Who else will you take with you?’ asked Nehesy.
‘You will come, and the three best trackers, and with you, two more chariots. Put my men in them.’
‘Is that enough protection?’
‘It should be. I am not going after dangerous beasts.’
‘No,’ Nehesy hesitated. ‘I meant...’ He trailed off, not knowing how to finish.
Tutankhamun looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
He spread his hands. ‘With a child on the way, your safety is important.’
The pharaoh considered. ‘Three chariots then. And my strongest men in them. We will not be away long.’
He left them, but he could not shake off irritation. The security arrangements cast a shadow over his enjoyment. Hunting was the one time he tried to forget he was a king, entrapped in the net of intrigue and duty which seemed to press closer on him with every day that passed. Irrational as he knew it was, he longed for once to go out into the desert alone, to shake off other people, and to pit himself against the forces of the wild.
He took the midday food with the queen alone, eating frugally and simply: some ful with salted curds and plain bread. Then they went to the bedchamber to sleep. She stroked him as they lay naked in the brown twilight behind the closed shutters of the room, and he responded to her, slipping an arm around her and pulling her to him, squeezing her narrow buttocks with his hand. Then he lay back and allowed her to mount him, as she liked to, and she rode him with sleepy gentleness for half an hour before he surged into her and she bent and clung to his neck, moaning. In the peace which followed, he forgot his other anxieties and yearnings - or at least, the fulfilment of lovemaking forced them to retreat to the far corners of his heart.
The body servants came for him at the tenth hour of day, as the sun was inclining steeply towards the cliffs of the valley on the opposite bank of the river, and they changed colour from ochre to red to black. Ankhsi rose with him and bathed him herself. He could feel her unhappiness like a wall between them, and it diminished his own anticipation of the hunt. After all, a part of his heart whispered to him, they were only going after ibex. But having made his decision he would not change his mind; and he was proud of his reputation as a keen and accomplished hunter. Still he could not shake off the power of her reproach, and he disliked the way she clung to him when they parted.
‘Have the gods spoken to you?’ He asked her softly, one eye on the body servants who stood near.
‘No.’
‘No warning?’
‘If there had been, I would tell you. You would not go.’
‘To whom have you prayed?’
‘To Hathor and Onuris.’To the Suckler of the King and the Huntsman. The same gods as the king had chosen. It was a good omen. Tutankhamun smiled, kissed his wife again, on the nose, eyes, ears and lips, and touched the lower gates of her body lightly with his hand.
‘May they keep you,’ he said.
‘May they keep you indeed,’ she returned, looking at him sadly.
As soon as he was away from her he felt relieved, the burden of her reproach lifted by her absence. The warm wind on his face as he rode into the desert rushed through his being and cleansed his heart. Under Sherybin’s control, the excited horses skimmed across the firm sand, and the king was free to scan the twilight landscape as it swept by like the sea.
They pitched camp at dusk, gathering round the fire to eat as the first watch was set. The tents were frail and vulnerable in the vastness of the desert, their linen sides flapping in a rough wind that eddied round, changing direction abruptly, whipping sand into their faces, and making shadows leap. In the silence that followed it, Tutankhamun listened hopefully for lions, but nothing came out of the darkness except the lonely bark of a distant jackal. Nehesy and Sherybin were men of his age, Sherybin younger, and he rejoiced in their company. If only the quarry were more exciting! He insisted that they retire before he did, and remained by the fire as it died, as alone as he ever would be, he thought, with only a guard and a body servant for company. He opened his heart to the great emptiness around him and let it take possession of him.
The following day the trackers, who had left before dawn to lope silently into the gloom to the east, returned to report a small herd of ibex — fifteen to twenty — in a cluster of low hills - no more than large rocks — half an hour’s ride ahead. The four chariots of the hunting group were harnessed to their teams and set off - the king and Sherybin in the lead, with Nehesy and his charioteer off to the right, and the two others riding to the left and rear. They w
ere well spread out, to confuse the focus of their prey. Tutankhamun weighed a medium spear in his hand and suppressed the thought of lions.
Soon enough the rocks came into view, looming grey against the yellow of the desert. Years ago a small gold mine had been worked here, but now all that remained of it was a cave-like opening among the rocks, and the broken remains of water jars. They were not far off the main route from the Southern Capital to the port on the Eastern Sea from where the swift coasters departed for Punt, but the desolation of the desert covered them like a pall. The chariots fanned out and, the horses slowed to a trot, rode round the rocks at a distance. From the jagged grey shapes, softer ones began to detach themselves as the large, brown-grey animals raised their heads with the great swept-back horns to regard this intrusion with curiosity and caution.
The king exchanged his spear for a bow and arrow. Nodding to Sherybin, he steadied himself in the footstrap on the floor of the chariot and drew on his archer’s glove.
The hunt lasted all morning, but it was not a success. Three animals lay drawn up on the sand, but they were elderly, only having fallen prey to the archers because they had lost their nimbleness. There was no honour in their deaths, and the king had called off the pursuit in disgust. This was not the way to celebrate the arrival of his child. He returned moodily to camp. His humour was not improved by news from Sherybin that his chariot had a damaged axle, and that a new one would have to be brought from the capital; but he gave his charioteer permission to absent himself from the hunt for the second day in order to fetch the spare part. On that day he hunted with Nehesy, but the only living thing they saw were golden desert rats which popped up from their holes to gawp at them.