He nodded. ‘And they’re leaving no clues.’
‘That’s not exactly right. The manner of the deaths is telling a story. We have to work out what it is. And the next step is to trace the dead girl. I have an idea. We should ask in the artisans’ village.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because if she was a person of importance, her disappearance would have been noticed, maybe reported, by now. Someone in the city might have connected her to the murder victim. And we need to stop off on the way. I need to see the maid, Senet.’
The house was quiet when we arrived. The guards admitted us and we waited for Senet to appear. She bowed low to me.
‘Can we go somewhere private?’
She showed us into an antechamber. As before, she was immaculately dressed, her hair covered, her hands in the little yellow gloves.
‘I want to show you something. Please don’t say anything. Just nod if you recognize it. Yes?’
She nodded. I opened my hand and showed her the scarab. Horror, rather than sorrow, descended on her face. Her hands trembled with shock.
‘It is not quite what you think.’ Her big eyes lifted, suddenly hopeful.
‘Why did you not tell me the truth?’
‘About what?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘That this scarab was missing from the Queen’s jewellery?’
She tried to think quickly. ‘Forgive me, but I did not know who you were. I mean, who you truly were.’
‘You mean you did not know whether I could be trusted? As a Medjay?’
She nodded, grateful that I had said what she could not.
‘I need to know if you have anything to say about this scarab.’
She looked at it. ‘Please tell me, how did you come by it?’
‘Someone else was wearing it. Another woman.’
She looked astonished. ‘How could that possibly be?’ she said, turning it over in her hands.
‘I don’t know. But I will tell you this. The woman who was wearing this once looked very like the Queen.’
She struggled to take in what I was saying. ‘Once?’
‘She is dead. I cannot identify her. Do you have anything you wish to tell me now?’
She suddenly looked away. ‘This place is full of darkness.’ She spoke the words with a new passion.
‘Meaning?’
‘People are animals, don’t you think? The Queen says most people have good hearts. But I see their faces when they smile, when they say clever things, when they laugh at others’ misfortune. I think the tongue is the monster in us all.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because words have more power to wound and kill than knives.’
I left the thought to rest between us.
‘Tell me more about this scarab.’
She held the thing in her delicate palm, tilting it this way and that. ‘I see the possibility of new life. Proclaimed in eternal gold. The scarab beetle, least of all life forms, constantly renewing itself. Resurrection from the basest things of this world. I see the sun, from whom comes all creation, pushed back into new life in the claws of the beetle. I see the mystery of Ra’s power contained in the dot at its centre. Like a child in the womb. I see a woman, the complete equal of the sun god in all things. I see this worn as a sign of hope. I feel it lying on warm skin, over a good heart.’
Suddenly she buckled, as if from a bolt of dreadful grief, and sobbed, her body racked with overwhelming emotion. Khety and I looked at each other, surprised. Then her agony passed, and she calmed herself. The little lapping sounds of the river meeting the terrace stones filled in the gap of silence between us. She waited for me to respond, her head bowed.
‘You have spoken well,’ I said. ‘Nothing will be forgotten.’
I turned to leave but her hand reached out before I passed through the doorway.
‘What about the children? I am sure they are miserable without their mother.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They’ve been taken to their grandmother.’
Her look of anxiety told me all I needed to know about what she thought of that arrangement.
‘I will need to talk to them all. Do you want me to carry a message when I see them?’
‘Please tell them I am here waiting at home for them.’
16
The artisans’ village lay to the east of the central city. We drove as far as we could along the track. Ra, in all his glory-far too much glory for me-beat down mercilessly from his zenith. There was no relief anywhere. All shadows had retreated into their objects. Khety raised the parasol to protect our heads, and we drove on sharing the minimal relief of the shaky little circle of shade.
Various other tracks crossed our paths, radiating out into the eastern desert, some leading to the desert altars, others to the rock tombs and the security stations. Fatigued young men stood like shadow sticks at crossing points, and I could see, from time to time, tiny figures standing sentry at the border points of the city’s shimmering territory-as much, it seemed, to keep the people in as to prevent incursions from the superstitious spirits and barbarians of the Red Land.
I pointed them out to Khety.
‘The worst job of all,’ he said. ‘They’re out there through the day with nothing more than a thin reed hut for shade. They’re also guarding the tombs being cut into the higher levels of the hills.’ He pointed up at the distant cliffs, white and red and grey, and I shaded my eyes in an attempt to see. They seemed uninhabited to me. ‘They’re working some way into the rock now. It’s actually hotter the deeper you go.’
‘How many tombs are being built?’
‘I don’t know. Many, I think. People who can afford it are putting a lot of their wealth into the projects.’
‘So they must think it’s worth the investment? They must think they’re going to stay here and be buried here?’
‘Yes, but also they need to be seen to think that.’
Such are the worries of wealth. This obsession with the dream of the afterlife sometimes strikes me as ridiculous. We will all vanish in the great light of the sun like flood water from a field, leaving nothing of ourselves but our children. And they in turn will vanish from life. I know how cynical I seem to others when I am like this. Tjenry’s death had put me in this dark frame of mind. I remembered a verse of an old poem:
What of their places now?
The walls have crumbled
Their places are no more
As if they had never been.
It was not yet the hour of rest, and we had a little time to kill before the workers returned for their midday meal. The tension of Tjenry’s death was still deep in my bones, and I knew action was the only remedy, so I decided to look at the boundary stones along the city’s eastern edge.
Khety was reluctant. ‘Don’t you think it’s too hot to go clambering up there?’
I ignored him, took the reins, and we drove on, Khety holding the parasol over my head. After maybe fifteen minutes following the now rough track, we abandoned the chariot and walked on across the dreary land until finally we clambered up some rocks and found ourselves at the foot of a huge new boundary stone carved from the living rock, and flanked by figures of Akhenaten and Nefertiti gazing out over their new land. I was sweating heavily; the linen was drenched on my back. We each took a draught of cool water from the flask Khety had thoughtfully brought with him. Then I began to examine the inscription, and slowly read it out:
Akhetaten in its entirety belongs to my father the Aten
given life perpetually and eternally-
of the hills, uplands, marshes, new lands, basins, fresh lands, fields, waters, towns, banks, people, herds, groves
and everything that the Aten my father causes to pass into existence perpetually and eternally