He soothed her back to sleep, thinking how young she was. Little Ankhsi, with her slim arms and her little breasts that barely showed. Would she ever grow into the strong, voluptuous woman her aunt had become? She seemed to the king like a flower on the point of opening.
Tutankhamun did not return to sleep so easily himself, though the regular breathing of his wife, its faint breeze on his chest, soothed him in turn. He had awakened from a dream of hunting. The sand had been hard under the wheels of his lightest chariot, drawn by his two favourite horses from the north. They responded to the slightest touch, and the chariot was manoeuvrable enough to pursue the swiftest prey. Even the long spotted cat, the fastest animal, could not escape him.
In his dream he had been hunting the great birds, which had thundered ahead of him on their powerful legs, running in desperation and darting their idiotic heads on long naked necks hither and thither in panic. He wanted to make two kills, to collect enough black body feathers and white tail feathers for the golden flywhisks he had commissioned for the commemoration day of his queen’s coming-forth. It was a point of honour to collect the feathers himself, and he was an experienced hunter. After the enforced inactivity of the court, hunting was his chief joy.
Now, he flew across the Western Desert near Kharga, it seemed; far, far out among the dunes and nowhere near his usual hunting grounds. The big black-and-white birds galloped directly ahead of the chariot, making half-hearted feints to right and left, but unable to manoeuvre their bulk out of harm’s way. All he had to do was select his target and bring it down with his first harpoon. Then, a second target with the second weapon, and it would be over. They would return to the kills and his charioteer would take what they needed from the bodies, leaving the rest for the children of Nekhbet.
In his dream he wanted to pass the reins of the chariot over, to grasp the harpoon. It was only then that he realised he was alone. And now his horses were slowing, tiring, and the birds were making distance between them, running on into the desert in their flailing, grotesque way, until they became shimmering untidy specks in the heat, melting into the air, finally disappearing altogether, leaving him alone. The chariot came to a halt, and his beautiful dun horses, Hyksos-trained, so he had been told, sank under the sand. The chariot tilted forward on to its shaft and he had to grasp the side to steady himself.
The jolt had awakened him. At first he was relieved that it had been a dream, for it had seemed real enough, and his last dreaming thoughts had been despairing ones of leaving the empire without an heir to the mercy of Horemheb. Then he recognised where he was, heard his wife’s gentle breathing, and knew, with a stab of irritation of which he felt ashamed, that before another minute had elapsed she would sense him awake and come back from sleep herself.
He looked at his Great Wife briefly, the slender profile of her body outlined by the moon in the darkness, and sent out one more prayer to Min to flood her birth-cave with the fertile silt in which people grow. Then he lay back, adjusting his headrest as quietly as he could, and listened to the sound of Horemheb’s celebration. It seemed like months, not hours, since they had left the party, gracing only its beginning with the royal presence.
He continued to lie awake until the sounds of carousal had died away, to be replaced soon after by the muted shuffling and suppressed coughing of the palace servants as they rose, lit fires for cooking, fetched water, milk, beans and flour for the first meal, and brought the palace to life. Soon, the body servants would come to awaken them and bathe them, and the chief steward would arrive with the private secretary, both to receive and give the domestic and public orders for the day. To be so shackled to duty without the reward of power was beginning to kill the king’s Ka. Behind all the other noises came the call of egrets by the river. Tutankhamun’s strained eyes continued to stare into the gathering day. Lightheaded, hungover from lack of sleep, his mouth dry, he sat inside himself and tried to listen to what his heart would tell him.
‘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.