‘Olive bread?’ asked Intef.
Hepu ignored Intef’s attempt at levity. ‘To reach the first chamber, the false chamber, you must break through the main chamber’s security seal and go up this corridor.’ Hepu pointed to the space between his palms to indicate the corridor that joined them. ‘Just before you reach the false chamber, you will notice two entryways on either side of the corridor. Those are the unfinished chambers.’
‘Where Pharaoh Tausret’s greatest treasures lie?’ asked Intef.
‘For the sake of the rebellion, let us hope,’ said the priest. He raised his right hand. ‘You will have to break through another brick seal to reach the false chamber. It is slightly smaller than the main chamber but is similarly flanked by four storage rooms. It is also where you will carve your tunnel,’ said Hepu. ‘Ah, here we are.’
They had arrived at Intef’s unlikely ferry—a large ebony chest. Hepu opened the lid to reveal a cache of the late Pharaoh’s undergarments. ‘Get in,’ he said.
‘You must be jesting,’ said Intef.
But Hepu was a man who did not jest and Intef held his breath as Hepu covered him with layers of lavender-smelling loincloths.
‘You could not have chosen a chest full of salted beef?’ mumbled Intef.
If their mission succeeded, Hepu would be raised to the priesthood of one of the larger temples of Thebes. If it failed, he would likely lose his head.
Hepu arranged the last layer of garments atop Intef and sighed. ‘Forgive us, oh, mighty gods,’ he said. ‘We labour for the good of Egypt.’ Then he closed the chest and locked it shut.
* * *
Intef thought back to Hepu’s strange advice: ‘When you realise what you have done, you must not panic.’
Who was panicking? If there was any cause for panic, it was because he would be smelling like a woman for the next nine days.
It was an ignominious mission to be sure. Instead of marching alongside General Setnakht on his way to seize the empty throne of Egypt, Intef had agreed to be buried inside a tomb surrounded by a woman’s delicates.
And that had not even been the worst of his debasement. The processional journey from Pharaoh Tausret’s House of Millions of Years to her House of Eternity the following morning had been something akin to being baked slowly in an oven. At one point he had caught himself moaning.
Thankfully, none of the chest-bearers seemed to notice. Nor did the onlookers, whose oohs and ahhs only added to the cacophony. Who could detect a small moan above the jangling sistrums of the priestesses and the shrieks of the professional mourning women?
Then there was the distraction of Pharaoh herself, who had been transfigured into the god of resurrection via a solid gold coffin made in the shape of Osiris. A troupe of milk-bearers purified the ground before her as she floated towards her tomb on a sled borne by six white bulls.
The onlookers obviously revered her: she was the last direct descendant of Rameses the Great Ancestor, the last person in Egypt to carry that divine blood.
Though to be fair, she no longer carried any blood at all. Just seventy days ago, it had been drained by the embalmers and her cranial matter had been removed through her nose. Four of her organs had been preserved in sacred canopic jars, leaving her heart in its place, and her entire royal body had been smothered in Natron Valley salt.
After thirty-five days in salt, her royal corpse was then cleaned and wrapped in linen strips cut from her own robes. Precious amulets were placed beneath those linens, which were then sealed in place by unguent-scented resins.
Every preparation had been made to preserve Pharaoh Tausret in a journey that—it occurred to Intef—had begun only moments ago, just after sunset.
It was the first of the twelve hours of night and Tausret’s soul was journeying through the Underworld while Intef waited inside the chest that contained her undergarments.
Intef might have laughed. It was a humorous situation to be sure. He would retell it to his fellow soldiers one day to riotous applause.
‘And it was dark inside the tomb, you see,’ he would say, ‘and hot as the mines of Hammamat. There was not a single breeze. The air stood as still as death. But I took comfort among Pharaoh’s loincloths, for they smelled of lavender and felt like soft clouds...’
He could hear their laughter already. ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ they roared. ‘Ho-ho-ho!’
Not really, though. He was fooling himself. It was not his friends’ imagined laughter he heard, it was the pounding of his own heart inside his ears.
Chapter Three
Aya had run out of prayers. The heir was in danger and there was nothing she could do to protect him. She tugged hopelessly at her bonds. Already she was losing her strength. She was failing Tausret in death as she had failed her Pharaoh in life, and the people of Egypt would suffer for it.
No—this could not be. How had she not anticipated the High Priest’s treachery? He was the wealthiest, most powerful man in Egypt, with an ambition to match his lands. Now that the throne was empty, he would stop at nothing to seize it.
There were only two things in his way: General Setnakht, the rebel leader in the South, and the true heir to the double crown, whom most did not believe even existed.
But Aya knew otherwise and, apparently, so did the High Priest.
He had meant to scare the heir’s location from Aya by tying her here, but it was of little consequence that he had failed. He had informants in every village and spies in every nome. He would set his minions upon the North, focusing his attentions on the Delta, where Tausret had made her capital.
Aya could picture the High Priest’s spies combing the Delta’s waterways and sifting through its cities. We seek a young man of unusually good education, they would say, flashing the image of a triangle inside a circle. He wears this tattoo somewhere upon his skin.
A bounty would be offered and peasants from Memphis to Avaris would jump at the chance to collect. Eventually, the young man would be found—Tausret’s son, the last living god in Egypt—and slaughtered like a bull.
The corrupt High Priest would then only have to defeat the rebel General Setnakht, an easy enough endeavour when he combined Pharaoh’s standing army with his own loyalists. And thus a new dynasty would be founded, a new history chiselled into stone. The priest would rob the treasury to build his monuments and neglect the peasants, just as he had done in his tenure at the Temple of Amun. Egypt would be ruined.
And Aya could do nothing about it. She could only stare into the inky blackness and wait for her end to come.
She passed the moments reciting stories inside her head.
This is a tale of two brothers, one from the North and one from the South...
Words had power; they carried magic.
This is the story of the eloquent peasant. He never knew his words were recorded for the pleasure of the King...
When woven into a tale, words could cradle the heart.
This is the story of Sinuhe who wandered far from his home. ‘Take me back, long road. Take me home to Egypt...’
Still, there did not seem to be enough words in the world to allay her misery.
Her back ached, her stomach throbbed and her throat scratched with thirst. How long would she survive, bound as she was, without the ability to move? She did not wish to know. Time was passing so slowly, as if it had become a frozen thing, giving her the opportunity to consider all the things she had never done.
She had never ridden a horse or tended a garden. She had never visited her father’s homeland, or learned how to properly shoot an arrow. She had failed in her efforts to learn Akkadian and had never once gone swimming in the Great Green Sea.
She had never before fallen in love.
A tear surfaced. Of all the things to make her weep! She had always suspected romantic love to be a kind of madness—a chaotic whirlwind of souls that always seemed
to end in woe.
Why did she care that she had never fallen in love? She had certainly enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh. Like all young women, she had attended the Festival of Drunkenness and indulged in its holy rites. She had painted her body with henna and anointed it with frankincense oil and stepped inside the goddess’s temple, where she had selected from among the many eager young men.
‘Will you make me your Hathor?’ she had asked, several different times over the years. Always her chosen partner had accepted and they would share a cup of beer and lie together, helping to ensure that season’s flood.
Though now, at her advanced age of four and twenty, even that sacred indulgence had lost much of its intrigue.
Once, Aya had made bold to ask Pharaoh if she had ever fallen in love.
‘Long ago,’ Tausret had admitted with a mysterious grin. She had pressed her fingers to her lips in the sign of a secret. ‘With a Libyan man—a warrior. He had blue eyes just like yours.’
‘How did you know it was love? How did it feel?’
‘As though my soul opened up and gifts began to flow out of it,’ Tausret had said, her dark eyes sparkling.
Aya had frowned.
‘As though I could embrace the hippos and kiss the crocodiles,’ Tausret had added, laughing.
‘You jest, Mistress?’ Tausret never jested. She rarely even smiled.
‘I merely attempt to describe the indescribable,’ Tausret had waxed. ‘How I wish that you could experience it for yourself, Aya! One day you will.’
‘But how will I know it is love?’ Aya had asked.
‘You will feel as if you are a heavy stone who has suddenly exploded into a cloud of dust.’
It was true, then—love was madness. Clearly it was, if it could inspire the Living God to spout such strange poetry.
Pah! Life was mad enough as it was. Besides, romantic love usually required the participation of a man and men could not be trusted.
Did you trust your Libyan? That was what she should have asked Tausret that day. Certainly the answer would have been no. For a woman in power, men were as treacherous as a wadi in a storm.
Or a priest inside a tomb.
Her stomach continued to ache and she was clinging to each breath as if it were a memory.
‘The will of Osiris,’ she said. ‘Let it be done.’
* * *
There it was again—the whisper. It diffused into the air like a puff of smoke. It was louder this time and he could distinguish the words: ‘The will of Osiris. Let it be done.’
He was hearing things now. He had been stuffed inside this wooden oven for so long that his mind had been cooked.
Unless Pharaoh herself had issued the whisper. But that was impossible.
It would be many hours before Pharaoh’s akh, her transfigured spirit, would return from its journey. Until then, the only soul inside the chamber was Intef, along with a dried, withered mummy inside a coffin of gold.
And the soft echo of a sigh.
Intef blinked. First whispers and now a sigh? But it could not be so. Surely it was Intef himself who had sighed.
He moved his sweaty brow against the soft linen surrounding him. It had grown warmer inside the chamber since the entryway had been sealed. He would need to break through those mud bricks soon.
Intef recalled how the mad old woman had protested the setting of the bricks to seal the chamber. Did she not understand the necessity of sealing the chamber? Tomb robbery was a veritable plague across Egypt and especially here, in the Pharaohs’ royal burial grounds.
Though it was possible the woman had not been protesting the sealing of the chamber itself, but merely its contents. ‘You will not find him,’ she had added in a whisper, referring to the fabled heir to the throne.
Perhaps the woman had truly lost her wits. Everyone knew that Tausret had been unable to produce an heir for her late husband, Pharaoh Seti the Second. Tausret’s fallow field was so widely known that it had lately become the topic of songs and laments. In a sense it was the very reason Intef was here.
Intef paused, hearing another noise. He was certain that he had not produced it. It seemed to have come from the middle of the chamber.
‘Oouu...’
Not a sigh, but a strange, plaintive sound that might have been emanating from the sarcophagus itself. He focused his attention, hardly believing his ears. It sounded very much like a woman crying.
Had one of the slaves been left behind? It could not be. To bury a person inside a house of eternity was against the law—slave or not. It was also contrary to every religious text that had ever been written. There could be only one woman inside this House of Eternity, and she was no longer of this world.
‘Oouu...’
There it was again. Intef’s whole body stiffened. This is not real, he told himself, and then thought back to Hepu’s grave advice. No matter what Intef did, he must not panic. ‘The will of Osiris,’ he said. ‘Let it be done.’ He gripped his bronze chisel and wedged it between the wood.
* * *
There was the sound of splitting wood, and Aya nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘Pharaoh?’ No, it could not be. The akh of her beloved mistress was well on its way to the Underworld by now.
Was it not?
Aya’s heart pounded. ‘Pharaoh Tausret?’ she said again. She wiped her eyes against her bound hands and peered into the darkness.
‘Stand down, wretched demon!’ shouted a deep, masculine voice.
Aya shrieked. She strained against her bonds, craning her neck.
‘Who speaks, by the gods?’ commanded Aya. ‘Name yourself!’
There was a loud crash, as if a piece of holy furniture had just been destroyed. ‘Mother of—’
‘Cease your cursing!’ shouted Aya. ‘Identify yourself!’
‘Identify myself?’ gasped the spirit. ‘Identify yourself!’
‘I am Aya, Pharaoh’s Most Beloved Advisor.’ Her voice was trembling. ‘Speak your name!’
‘I am Intef, son of Sharek, soldier of Egypt,’ the voice said. ‘I—I seem to have lost the feeling in my legs.’
Aya paused. The spirit had a title? And legs?
‘Then you claim that you are...living?’ Aya asked. Madness was taking her, surely. It was the only explanation for what she thought she heard.
‘I know that I am living!’ the man—Intef—shouted. ‘I should ask you the same.’
‘I am very much living,’ said Aya. This was the strangest conversation she had ever had.
‘Well, now that we have determined that we are living, I can tell you that in this moment, I quite wish to die.’
This was truly odd. ‘Why do you wish to die?’ she asked.
‘Because it feels as though a thousand tiny scorpions are travelling down my legs, stinging as they go.’
Aya nearly laughed. Scorpions! Travelling down the legs of a real man in real pain!
He moaned. ‘My legs are on fire.’ He seemed to be sucking the air through his very teeth.
‘They are merely returning to life,’ Aya explained, feeling as if she were describing her own spirit. ‘Have patience... Intef.’
Intef, she thought—after that line of old warrior kings. She was not alone. On the contrary, she was accompanied by a warrior. Slowly, her sobs returned, but this time they were joyous.
At length his seething breaths subsided. ‘Why do you weep?’ he asked.
‘I am...grateful to hear your voice.’
‘You scold me for cursing and now you are grateful to hear my voice?’
‘Are you not grateful to hear mine?’
Another pause. ‘I had not expected to find a...woman in this House of Eternity,’ he said. ‘A living one, anyway.’ He laughed then—a deep, gravelly growl that might have belonged to the King of the demons himself.
Aya felt her skin tickle with fear. ‘You refer to Pharaoh, the Powerful One, Chosen of Mut, Daughter of Re, Lady of Upper and Lower Egypt?’
‘I assume she is the only other woman in this chamber,’ said Intef. ‘Unless the Powerful One has also brought along her flock of wigmakers?’
Aya stifled a gasp. Did this man have no respect for the sanctity of the deceased? Aya prepared herself to issue another scolding, then paused.
‘What, I beg, are you doing in this House of Eternity, Intef, son of Sharek?’
‘What do you think I am doing?’
She made her voice meek. ‘Have you come to save me from murderous priests?’
Intef spouted a laugh. ‘Not quite.’
Aya felt her stomach twist into a knot. He had not come to rescue her, or aid her in any way. Of course not. He had come to aid himself. This man was a tomb robber.
‘I fear that you are here for a nefarious purpose,’ she ventured.
Intef said nothing in response and Aya’s heart filled with horror. Tomb robbers were the lowest and rudest of men. They were desecrators and defilers. They snubbed their noses at the gods and placed the souls of the deceased in peril. And yet it seemed that Aya’s own life now depended on one.
‘How did you get here?’ she asked.
‘I should ask you the same,’ he said. When she did not respond he said, ‘I was smuggled inside a locked chest.’
‘And how did you release the lock?’ she asked.
‘How do you think?’
‘Force?’
‘I happen to be rather strong. And I carry a large chisel.’
Aya shuddered.
She perceived movement in the darkness. Intef seemed to be straining to stand. She heard another piece of wood slide across the floor and wondered which of the sacred chests he had destroyed.
Saved by Her Enemy Warrior Page 2