‘So you do not recall what you talked about? Or how she seemed at the last sitting?’
‘She was very quiet.’
‘Unusually so?’
He looked directly at me. ‘Yes, I would say so.’
‘And what were you working on?’
‘A superb bust. My finest work, I think.’
‘May I see it?’
He put down his sketching and considered my request carefully. ‘Do you have the proper permissions?’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘I can show them to you if you wish.’
‘No-one has seen this work in progress except the Queen herself. She would not wish it to be made public. It is a private piece. It is so newly finished that she had not yet had time to send for it, before…’
‘Yes?’
‘What do you think has happened to her? I fear the worst. Everyone is saying she has been murdered.’
‘I do not know. But everything you tell me might help. Anything.’
I watched him carefully. There was a sudden, intense look of pain on his face.
‘I sensed she felt she was in some kind of danger.’
‘What do you mean?’
He paused, and looked at his restless hands as if they were two highly trained animals. ‘A woman of her intelligence, her power, her beauty, her position…her popularity.’
‘Is popularity a problem?’
‘It is when you become more popular than your husband.’
Dangerous words. He looked at me, acknowledging the trust he was placing in me.
‘It was Akhenaten himself who sent for me to investigate the Queen’s vanishing.’
He gave me a quick look but said nothing more.
‘It would help me greatly if I could see this latest work.’
‘Would it? I see it might. Yes, if it helps. I’ll do anything I can.’
We moved deeper into the heart of the house. Here it was cooler. Permanent shadows lay upon the walls and floors. At the undistinguished door of what seemed a simple storeroom he stopped, broke the seal and untied the cord from the bolts. He pulled open the door, which was heavily built within a stone frame. He lit a lamp and we entered.
Inside, the room was lined with wooden or stone shelves, its walls constructed of stone blocks. The air was dry, dusty. Beyond the little penumbra of the lamp the room disappeared into pitch black. He lit sconces, and gradually, one by one, in the flickering light, dim shapes-cowled under sheets, some on shelves, others as big as human beings, children or adults-crowded the room. I felt I was in the Otherworld itself. Thutmosis set the lamp on a shelf and brought down one of the shapes. Reverently he set it upon a small circular table. Then deftly he slid the sheet off the form and revealed to us-a wonder. He revolved the table, showing us the figure from all angles, enjoying our astonishment.
I knew her at once. The hair was worn bold, under a dark blue crown. It gave her an exceptional authority. The poise was intelligent, powerful, self-possessed, with a remarkable equilibrium and purity. The skin had a bloom of life as if capable of changing expression, with the pale clarity of someone who lives always within the affluent protection of shade. High cheekbones, and a face of grace and sensibility. The lips red, strong, intense. And one eye: wide, complex, searching, proud, touched with a sense of humour so subtle as to appear and disappear as one looked into it, while the other remained as yet unpainted. And something else, too: hints of pain flecked through the power of the gaze. A secret of sadness, perhaps even suffering, it seemed to me, held in their depths. Did I imagine it? Could plaster and paint and stone reveal so much?
‘Does that help?’ Thutmosis asked.
‘Yes. I’d know her anywhere.’
I could see he was pleased by the intensity of my reaction.
‘And did she see it complete?’
‘No, the eyes were missing. She was due to sit for the eyes. I always leave the eyes until last.’
The eye. It stared at me, into me, through me. That haunting smile. As if she was already living in eternity. I hoped not. I would not be able to bring her back from there.
The sculptor spoke again: ‘There are other works here. Perhaps you would like to see them?’
I nodded, and he went about the room slowly drawing off the sheets to reveal image after image of the Queen. A life story figured in stone: a younger woman, her face less complete, less composed, but alive with the beautiful hesitant power of youth; the young mother sitting with her first child in her arms; Nefertiti on her inauguration day, coming into her power, into this new version of herself; a companion piece to a statue of her husband, her natural beauty a strange contrast to the weird, elongated proportions of his face and limbs. I moved among the images, seeing her from every angle, the lamp in my hand revealing the changing aspects of her many faces in the shadowy world in which they were kept. Khety remained by the door, as if afraid to walk among the living dead.
‘What materials do you use to create these marvels?’ I asked.
‘Limestone, mostly. Plaster. Alabaster and obsidian for the eyes.’
‘And the colours? How do you achieve them? They’re so vivid, so alive.’
He stood behind the image, pointing with his finger, almost but not quite touching the surfaces. ‘Her skin is a fine limestone powder mixed with even finer red ochre, an oxide of some metal. The yellows are sulphide of arsenic, beautiful but poisonous. The green is a glass powder with copper and iron added. The black is charcoal or soot.’
‘And from these powders and metals you create the illusion of reality.’
‘You could put it like that. But then it sounds like make-up. This is its own reality. She will outlast us all.’ He looked at his work with reverence.
‘And have you produced similar images of Akhenaten?’
He shrugged. ‘Only recently. In the early years he worked with another sculptor.’
‘I’ve seen those statues. People found them very strange.’
‘He knows we live in the Age of Images. He demanded to be seen differently to all the kings who came before. So the artists changed the ancient proportions. They made him taller than a man, tall as a god, and they recreated him as both man and woman, and more than either. Images are very powerful. Akhenaten understands this better than anyone. He knows images are a part of politics. He is the incarnation of the Aten, and the images have made him so, no matter how his mortal body appears. Art is not only about beauty. It is not only about truth. It is also about power.’
Then he slipped the dustsheet over the new piece, covering her eyes and those silent lips, and blew out the lamp.
He resealed the room and we walked back up the corridor in silence. Then I happened to notice something gleaming through an open doorway. Thutmosis saw my interest.
‘Ah, my prize possession, the golden fruit of earthly success.’
It was a most magnificent private chariot. Built for ostentatious pleasure, it was exceptionally lightweight-one could easily pick it up with both hands-and of the most perfect design. Its shape-the wide, semi-circular, open-backed bent-wood frame, gilded with gold-leaf-was conventional, but the quality of workmanship and the materials of the fittings were superb. I walked around the vehicle, delighting in its perfections. I touched it gently, and the delicate construction responded immediately to my touch with a light, humming bounce.
‘Can I offer you a lift back?’
There was only room for two. Khety in any case had to drive our own ramshackle contraption back, so he followed us, trying to keep up. The chariot was drawn by two magnificent little black horses-a rare pair-and Thutmosis drove at high speed. The leather mesh floor gave a marvellously smooth sensation to the ride, despite the ruts and stones of the way. The poised and elegant wheels whispered beneath us. For once I could hear the birds singing as we travelled through the light of the late afternoon.
He said, ‘You feel you could almost reach the sky, eh?’
I nodded.
‘I wish you luck in your great task.’