‘Your son, Your Majesty?’
I ignored Ankhespaaten’s hiss of disapproval as she stared like an angry cat, painted nails beating a tattoo on the back of her father’s throne. ‘He is safe!’ Akhenaten shook his head. ‘Baboon …’
‘Bring back your Great Wife.’
‘I will think of that, Mahu, but now you have got to go. My seed,’ he pointed down to his groin, ‘my seed wants out.’
I rose.
‘I didn’t tell you to go now.’
I slumped back on the cushions.
‘I’ll summon the Royal Circle,’ Akhenaten slurred. ‘I’ll summon it, but let Ay preside until I decide what to do with his head. No, no, no.’ Akhenaten was talking to himself. ‘His head is safe. I need him. Meryre will watch him.’ He put his face in his hands and sobbed. ‘I’ll tell them all to come back.’ His words were muffled. He raised a tear-stained face. ‘I wish I could go back, Baboon of the South. I wish I could return to that grove with the rising sun washing my face.’ He shook his head. ‘It was not fair. I had no choice. Don’t you realise that, Mahu? I had no choice.’
‘When, Your Majesty?’
‘In the Temple of Amun.’
‘Your Majesty?’
‘I had no choice. I knew the wine was poisoned. I baited my brother Tuthmosis and he left. I asked him to wait in my chamber, so I could tell him a great secret about our mother. You see, Mahu, I knew the wine was poisoned. I … I …’ He stumbled on his words.
I glanced at Meritaten. She still stood head down but Ankhespaaten knew what her father was saying.
‘I’d been back to my chamber, Mahu. I had seen the poisoned wine in the jug, the cup next to it.’
‘Your Majesty.’ I breathed hard, trying to hide a quiver of fear. My heart was in my throat. I found it difficult to speak. Akhenaten was leaning forward like a penitent confessing his sins to a priest.
‘Ay and Nefertiti told me the wine would be poisoned. I was not to drink or eat anything. I felt so faint but they told me how it would happen and they were right.’
The memories flooded back. Ay reflecting on what to do. Shishnak protesting his innocence until the pain made him confess. Hotep grinning at me in that garden, brazenly misleading me just before he died. Now I realised the traps he had hidden away. Hotep hadn’t wanted to alert me. He wished to keep me close to Ay and Nefertiti, a willing tool for their ambitions. And who else had Hotep used? Pentju! He had not only been motivated by revenge, he must have been in Hotep’s pay from the start. As had Khiya. She had visited the Magnificent One in his House of Love not just to receive the juice of the poppy but to report all she had learned. Hotep had been the one who had brought her there. Hotep had quietly plotted his revenge even before he fell from power.
Hotep and Ay, two cobras circling each other, plotting for the future. Had Hotep also encouraged the Magnificent One to enjoy little Khiya, a subtle revenge on his grotesque son? Had Hotep told Khiya to accept her lonely status, the patronising jibes of Nefertiti and await her chance? Only then, years later, did I see the fruits of Hotep’s wily brain. He must have realised that one day, Akhenaten would turn on Nefertiti. Khiya and Pentju were his weapons. Ay, the supreme plotter, could do little to check Hotep except to push ahead his own plans, speeding like a runner to the finish: the murder of Tuthmosis and the advancement of Akhenaten. I could understand Khiya being suborned by Hotep — but Pentju? Then I recalled his infatuation with the Lady Tenbra, a noblewoman, who, in truth, would hardly look at a mere physician. Hotep, of course, would have smoothed Pentju’s path. And that poison which had killed Tuthmosis? It was not the work of Shishnak and the priests of Amun but the Akhmin gang. Of course, Ay and Nefertiti would have their spies amongst the priests of Amun. It would be so easy to arrange for a jug of poisoned wine to be left in a chamber and Akhenaten instructed not to eat or drink anything. I glanced at my master’s bleary face. Had he been fully aware of the plot against his own brother? Other thoughts came tumbling back. The invitation to the Temple of Amun: had that been Shishnak’s work or a sly suggestion by Ay through his placement in the priestly hierarchy at Karnak? An ambitious gamble, so subtle, the priests of Karnak took the blame.
‘My Lord Mahu?’
I broke from my reverie. Ankhespaaten was leaning forward.
‘What you have heard is sacred and secret. My father trusts his Baboon of the South.’
‘And you, my lady?’
‘What my father wants is my desire.’
I glanced at Meritaten. She was smiling shyly at me, her beautiful face so vacuous I wondered about her wits.
‘Mahu?’ Akhenaten was holding a sealed scroll in his hands, which he must have concealed in the cushions of the throne. He thrust this at me.
‘If anything happens to me …’
‘Your Majesty, nothing will.’
‘When I go back to my Father,’ Akhenaten’s voice was now firm, ‘open that scroll. As you can see, it is sealed three times. Promise me, Mahu’ — tears filled his eyes — ‘for what we have, for the friendship we had, you will keep it safe? Swear now!’
I raised my hand and spoke the oath. He handed it over.
‘Go, Mahu, my friend.’
I left and as I did so, Akhenaten and his two daughters, their voices sounding hollow, began to recite a spell from The Book of the Dead.
By the second month of the season of Peret, in the fifteenth year of Akhenaten’s reign, the pestilence had completely disappeared. The City of the Aten returned to some form of normality, but its heart, once strong, now beat faintly. Akhenaten showed himself escorted by his two daughters, who rejoiced in the title of Queen. They had given birth to daughters — each had been given their own name with the suffix ‘Tasheit’ — but neither child had survived the first month of their life. People whispered that it was a judgement from the gods. Nefertiti still remained a recluse, all access to her denied.
The city was now administered by a small council of Devouts which included Ay and, on occasion, General Horemheb. Ay had passed unscathed through the pestilence. We exchanged pleasantries but I kept my own counsel. Ay was an ally but no longer a friend. I concealed the scroll Akhenaten had given me. For days after my audience with him I reflected on what I had learned. There was no dream or vision of the Aten. Perhaps Queen Tiye had been pure in her thoughts but I was in a nest of writhing cobras. The struggle was about power and glory and, for what it was worth, I was part of it.
At the end of that summer the Royal Circle was solemnly convened. Everyone was present, even Pentju, aloof and quiet, as if he knew his part but did not really care. The rest had continued to prosper, advancing their careers, creating spheres of influence, building up factions and forging alliances. Horemheb was a leading General in the army command, Rameses his Lieutenant. Huy was master of all affairs beyond Egypt’s borders. Maya knew every measure of gold and silver, or the lack of it, from the treasuries of Egypt. Meryre, lost in his fool’s paradise, still dreamed of being High Priest of a religion which would stretch from the Euphrates to beyond the Third Cataract. Ay was more himself, relaxed and smiling. We all sat as if nothing had happened, yet each quietly plotted for the future. The City of Aten, the reign of the Sun Disc, the idea of the One were all dust. They were impatient to sweep it away and assume the normal business of power: the only obstacle was how?
Ay, however, in a brilliant display of hypocrisy and cant, supported by the children of the Kap, his close allies, deliberately misled Tutu, Meryre and the rest. He painted a picture which even I found convincing. How Akhenaten had returned to his usual vigour. How the city would prosper. How General Horemheb would reorganise the armies and advance Egypt’s standards from one end of the Empire to the other, all under the glowing patronage of the Aten. Tutu, Meryre and the rest drank this in like greedy children.