by Anton Gill
He had sent a courier to the Second Household with instructions to return only when there was news. Ankhsi’s physician, Senseneb, was with the queen, and she had pronounced that this day would see the deciding moment – death or cure. Of course healers could be wrong – but Senseneb was one of the best in her profession. Ay knew she had done all she could.
Restlessly, he paced the room – an old habit of his. He thought of summoning his Chief Secretary, Kenna, and trying to lose himself in work – but he knew that he could settle to nothing until Ankhsi’s fate was known. It irritated and shamed him to acknowledge it, but part of his heart was already considering what new plans to lay. The house-servant who had prepared the room had left a tray with wine and cakes, but Ay was too impatient either to eat or drink. He watched the sun make its slow progress across the belly of Nut. Today it seemed to hang motionless in the unyielding blue of the firmament, but he knew by the shadows that it must be moving. The hours of the Matet boat passed into those of the Seqtet boat, and still no news came. Once there was the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside, but it was only a house servant, come to see if he needed anything. He waved the man away, though as soon as he was gone, regretted it. He had a thirst for red beer, something he never drank, and he wanted to hear music. He thought of summoning the attendant back, but then the desires left him, driven out of his heart by his impatience. What if she died? Why should he feel that this was the end? He was old, but not ill. He would find someone else. His seed was good. It did not take long to make a child.
The eastward-sloping shadows were long when he saw the party cross the courtyard below. Senseneb was among them, and Chaemhet, the Steward of the Second Household, with Ay’s courier preceding them. It was too far and the light was already too dim for him to see the expressions on their faces. The handful of palace officials in the courtyard stopped to watch them pass. Ankhsi’s illness hung over the whole palace: if Ay had not been so engrossed, he would have noticed the dense atmosphere of the place that day. Ay looked at the officials: two of them started to walk hastily away, but still he could not guess the nature of the news. He knew, however, that soon the whispering would start.
His body-servant, Pentu, arrived before them to announce them. Ay, never easy when he did not have a table between him and his interlocutor, cast about the room for an appropriate place from which to receive them. He chose an inlaid and painted blackwood chair on a low daïs. It had a straight back against which he could lean, and arms to grasp. He would feel secure, sitting in it. Once ready, he nodded to Pentu, drawing his cloak about him and fingering the golden collar that he wore. It was a warm day and his wig irritated him, but there was no time to have it adjusted now. When they had gone, he would bathe and change: the activity would give him the opportunity to think.
Senseneb came in first, followed by Chaemhet. They bowed and stood almost awkwardly in front of him. Ay was pleased to have the slight advantage of height the daïs gave him. He settled his back against the back of the chair. He could tell from their faces that the news was not good, but he would still have to listen to them.
‘Is she dead?’ he asked, surprised at the dryness of his voice. He should perhaps have drunk something. He had not taken anything all day.
The direct question surprised Senseneb. He could imagine that she had prepared a speech.
‘No, lord,’ she answered.
‘Your faces do not give me grounds for hope.’
‘Indeed, there is little.’
Ay looked at Chaemhet, who had lowered his eyes. What was the steward thinking? About his career, probably. Where would he go now? Did he hope that Ay would take a new Second Wife? The Queens of the First and Third Households had their stewards. Chaemhet would be thinking of his own wife, too: Mia would not like it if she ceased, through her husband’s position, to be part of palace society. As for Senseneb, she was already a senior physician at the House of Healing. She would not be so directly affected by her charge’s death.
He put the problems of Chaemhet and Senseneb out of his mind. He said:
‘How long?’
‘It is hard to say, lord. The disease has taken good hold.’
‘Can she still speak?’
‘No. The power may return, but she has not spoken.’
‘Can she still see?’
‘Yes.’
‘And recognise?’
Senseneb was silent.
‘I will go to her,’ announced Ay, standing up.
Senseneb hesitated, exchanging a glance with Chaemhet. ‘You must prepare yourself if you do. She is much changed.’
I have seen much, thought Ay. I have seen lions tear a man, and when I was young I myself killed, in war, if you could call those skirmishes war, and saw the faces of those I killed, met their eyes. Is this woman telling me there might be something I cannot withstand? But Ay was shrewd enough to take advice.
‘It is my duty to see her. My heart is secure against horror.’
‘Then we must go now.’
‘ “Must?” ’
‘There may be little time.’
They walked swiftly back to the Second Household, crossing courtyards where a little wind lurked and eddied, refreshing the king despite the staleness of the end of the day. The walk did him good, and he felt better than he had since waking. It was knowing that brought about this improvement in him. He no longer even felt thirsty. There was in his heart a strange elation: he was still equal to the obstacles the gods threw into his path. He had never been one to bemoan them: as soon as he saw them, he would be planning how to surmount them, and would not rest until he had.
But why had he no heir?
The sickroom was dark, like the bottom of a pool. The windows were draped with linen to keep out the heat, and house-servants with swathed faces and lowered eyes kept great papyrus fans constantly in motion, but despite these precautions the atmosphere was close, even fetid. They were burning frankincense in a small bronze bowl in one corner, but it did not shut out the smell of death, which Ay instantly recognised. Anubis might have been standing by the bed already, waiting to lead Ankhsi away to the Dark Halls as soon as her ba flew out of her mouth to begin its journey, and the Eight Elements took their leave of each other. May Seth spear the Serpent of Darkness for her, thought Ay, as he approached the bed.
Only her head and arms were visible. Her body was swaddled in white linen, as if she had been a baby again, or already dressed for the tomb, and her head rested on a pad of white linen. It was damp. A dank smell came from her body. This was death with all the means wealth and position could provide to mitigate it, to make it comfortable and dignified – and yet it still stank and sweated. Ay thought of the disease and how it must strike the people, how they must die, without these solaces, but he did not think of them for long. He bent over his wife. Her eyes were open but they did not look at him. The mouth moved but it was not as if she were controlling it. The head moved slightly from side to side on the pillow. The wig they had placed on her head did not move with her head, and Ay could see strands of her wet hair, browner than the hair of the wig, beneath it.
‘Do not touch her, lord,’ said Senseneb, softly, behind him. Ankhsi’s hands moved fretfully on the covers, plucking at them. She picked up nothing and presented it to Ay, turning her head towards him, though the eyes still looked past him.
‘Mother. A flower. For my father’s hair,’ she said.
This is where we end, thought Ay. After all the struggle, this is where it all comes to rest. Everything forgotten. Ankhsi had already sent heralds from her heart to announce her arrival in the Fields of Aarru. He was sure she would pass through the Hall of the Two Truths. Ammit would not devour her heart. Grant her a path whereon she may pass in peace, for she is just and true; she has not spoken lies wittingly, nor has she been deceitful.
‘Call the priests,’ he said. It was hard, not even to be able to stroke her forehead. Should he risk it? No.
He moved away. Sensing this, Ankhsi
half raised herself, but sank back before the attendants could respond. Her body was like a child’s again, all the vigour of her flesh was gone. Not ten days earlier they had coupled. Ay remembered the muscles of her body as it pressed against him then, and could not believe that there had ever been such a time.
‘Do not die,’ he said, awkwardly, aware that everyone in the room was watching him, listening to him.
‘Come,’ said Senseneb. ‘You have said goodbye.’
Ay was relieved when he had left the room. Outside, his own attendants were waiting for him, with Pentu. He looked around for Chaemhet, but could not see him. Soon he would have to discuss the entombment with him.
He made his way back, not to the private audience chamber, but to his rooms, where he was bathed and changed. Then he went to the garden terrace of the palace and took refreshment. Ay had always eaten plainly, and now a peasant’s dish of lentils and fish was all he needed, with water to drink. For a moment in the room he had felt affection and regret, but he knew in truth that his rarely-stirred emotions had been as much for his granddaughter-wife as for the ashes of his hopes. Now he was truly ready to plan. The dark mood which had seized him in the sickroom was banished - if we do not fight, we are not alive. The gods may control our destinies, but it is through our personalities that they do so, not from outside us.
He summoned his Chief Secretary. Together they went to his work room. Soon the table before them was strewn with papers, but Ay did not become as completely absorbed in the work as he would usually have done, and he acknowledged to himself that he was still waiting for the final news. He dismissed Kenna, and retired to his own chamber. He had toyed with the idea of sending for a woman or two from the harem, but the act of coupling had never been one by which he had set much store as a mere distraction or amusement, and he decided against it.
He did not think that he would be able to sleep, but as he lay down he was surprised to find his eyelids growing heavy immediately. It seemed only moments later that Pentu was leaning over him, having woken him by squeezing a toe.
‘What time?’
‘The second before dawn.’
Ay looked at Pentu’s face, creased from lack of sleep, the eyes anxious.
‘It has happened.’
‘Yes. Queen Ankhesenamun is dead.’
*
When he heard the news, the scribe Huy thought about Ankhsi for a long time, sitting at his work table in the State Cultural Archive, his papers neglected in front of him. He had known the queen for many years, and there had been a friendship between them. She was young to die; that was what grieved him most. He had seen forty Floods himself, and could now go to the West knowing that he had lived his full time here. But Ankhsi was little more than half his age.
He had known what would happen from his wife, Senseneb, who had nursed the queen through the short illness. The right herbs had been burnt, the right oils applied – but once the disease had taken hold, there was nothing to do; and Nergal was an implacable god when he struck. Even so, when she returned to their house in the northern quarter of the city that morning, exhausted, and told him, he had still felt a cold hand close on his heart.
Sighing, he looked at the stuff on his desk. The seasons had revolved three times since Ay had placed him here, and in that time nothing had changed. He felt like a cornered crocodile in the hunt. What changes there were, were for the bad. Ankhsi’s death. The dirt and the violence in the city. Plague. And his longing to do something else was thwarted, partly by a lack of opportunity, partly by his own laziness. Time swept past, hurrying all of them towards death, and he watched it go, powerless either to stop it or to do anything creative with it.
But Ankhsi’s death brought him out of his selfish torpor, and though he was sad that he would see her no more in the city, he knew that he should also be rejoicing, for soon she would be with her first husband, happy forever in the Fields of Aarru.
He rose from his chair, pushing the papyrus scrolls away, and tidied and cleaned his scribe’s palette – something he still preferred to do himself. His secretary looked up as he walked through his anteroom.
‘I am going home,’ he said.
The man nodded sympathetically. ‘Nakht has left already.’
Huy smiled: one advantage of having a lazy Chief Scribe was that you could leave early yourself occasionally. Once, Huy had worked as a problem-solver, on his own. That he looked back to as his good time. But even now he could not fence his energy in – it was channelled into his scribal work here, to such an extent that Nakht left much of the running of the Archive to him. Nevertheless, Huy still viewed the State Cultural Archive as a prison from which one day he might escape – if only for a season.
He walked home, as he often did. Life in the city continued as usual – the death of the queen would not affect the lives of the ordinary people, and the official announcement – which would be followed by a day of mourning – had yet to be made. Huy could imagine the arrangements already under way for the embalming and the entombment. That night, Ankhsi’s body would be taken to the ibu tent, where she would be placed in the hands of the Controller of Mysteries. Tomorrow, news of the death would go out from the Palace Compound to the city. The people would heap dust on their heads, the boats would not leave their jetties and only the ferries would be seen on the River.
He entered his house by the garden gate, and the dogs rushed to greet him, followed by Psaro, his recently-promoted body-servant.
‘My lady is returned from the House of Healing.’
‘Good. Where is she?’
‘She is sleeping. She will not return there today.’
‘It is well.’ Huy knew how hard Senseneb worked. They saw little of each other. He closed his heart to the thought that it mattered less and less that this was so.
There was an air of excitement about Psaro, though he tried to suppress it in view of the solemnity imposed on the house by the royal death.
Huy walked to the terrace by the fish pool and sat on a low acacia-wood stool. He allowed Psaro to pour a cup of good Dakhla wine, and he drank half of it before turning to him and saying,
‘There is something.’
Psaro’s eyes were bright. ‘There is news.’
‘From where?’
‘From the north. One of the falcon-ships brought letters today.’
‘Which ship?’
‘The Wild Bull.’
‘Does she stay long?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Where are the letters?’
Psaro was dampened. ‘There is only one. I have placed it in the Third Room, on your table.’
‘Has it been opened? Who is it from?’
‘It has not been touched. One of the rivermen brought it, not two hours ago.’
‘Bring it to me. No, I will bathe and change first.’
‘Shall I waken Senseneb?’
‘No.’ Huy finished his wine.
It was a slim letter, and the writing looked like that of a professional scribe. Huy set it down by him, and wondered, as he looked at it, who could possibly be writing to him on business from the north. He knew nobody there, and any official communication would have gone to the Cultural Archive. Psaro hovered, hopefully, but Huy liked to tease his own curiosity a little, and in any case had no intention of opening the letter in his servant’s presence. Clean, and changed into a soft kilt and old, comfortable palm-leaf sandals, he felt fresh, rested, and idle. He contemplated another cup of wine before dining, but decided against it. The thought of Ankhsi came into his head again, like a sharp pain. Where would Ay have her laid to rest? In his own tomb, to await him? Or in her mother’s? Into his heart came the picture of the former queen, Nefertiti, lying in lonely state.
Such thoughts filled him with regret. he knew, of course, that there was nothing to fear from death; that, in truth, one should rejoice for the departed spirit; but he missed those that had gone, and they were many, now.
It was quiet in the house. Psaro h
ad withdrawn to oversee the cooking of the evening meal. The wind stirred the palms by the pool, and rustled among the flowers beneath them. Huy listened for a moment. Senseneb must be sleeping still.
He turned back to the letter, the exercise of controlling his curiosity over. Taking the small bronze knife from the wallet at his belt, he broke the unmarked seal and unrolled the paper. He read the first two lines and then he stopped, looked sharply around, and then sat upright, alert. As he read on he leant forward, resting his arms in his knees; but his ears were still intent for the sound of anyone coming. He was surprised that his heart was beating harder.
The letter was from Aahmes. He had not heard from his former wife for many months, and then it had only been the regular letter – which had become irregular with the passage of time – giving him annual news of the welfare of her new family and – of considerably more interest to him – of his son by her, Heby. He had last seen the boy when he was a tiny child. Now he was a young man – he had seen seventeen floods. To Huy the years had gone like seed-husks blown away by the wind. He was almost frightened to call into his heart a picture of what Heby might look like now – and he had forgotten, if he was honest with himself, what his son looked like then.
Aahmes was writing from the City of the Sea, where the River’s principal mouth flowed into the Great Green. She had moved there with her husband, Menuhotep, Huy remembered, three or four cycles of the seasons ago, when Menuhotep became involved in the cedar-wood trade there.
Heby has fulfilled his ambition and joined the army as a junior officer. We are proud of him.
Huy frowned. He knew that his son had long wanted to take part in the wars Horemheb was waging in the Northern Empire, but he had never been happy about it. He had wanted Heby to follow him, to be a scribe. Most sons followed their fathers’ trades and professions. It was the custom. But not when the father had left home, lived far away, had become a stranger. Menuhotep as a young man had been a charioteer: it was his influence, if any, that had affected Heby. But how could Huy know? He didn’t know his son. He didn’t even know what he looked like. There was just a memory of little arms pulled tight around his neck, and a little head tucked firmly in against his shoulder.