‘I see you are interested in alchemy,’ I said.
He closed the chest and turned around. ‘It is a way of knowledge,’ he replied. ‘Transmutation. The purification from base substance of eternal truth.’
‘By what means?’
‘By fire.’ He looked at me with his desolate eyes. ‘Turn to face the wall, please.’ He handed me a dish.
‘What is this for?’ I asked.
He did not reply. I turned away. I felt him laying out my fingers on a board, the broken one tender and crooked to one side.
‘I have heard of a substance, known only to the alchemists; a water that wets not and yet burns everything.’
Suddenly an intense pain exploded in my little finger, shooting up my arm. I vomited into the dish he had given me. When I came back to my senses he was already binding the finger in the splints. Now the pain was gone, replaced by a thrumming ache.
‘Your finger is reset. It will take time to heal.’
He busied himself with returning his room to its state of meticulous order.
‘As Chief of Physicians you must have access to the Books of Thoth?’ I asked.
After a short silence he said: ‘You could know nothing of such matters.’
‘The Books are spoken of as compendiums of secrets and hidden powers.’
‘Power is hidden in everything,’ he replied. ‘There is great power in this knowledge. And also great danger to those who are not correctly initiated into its secrets and responsibilities.’
We stared at each other. He waited to see whether I would try again. Then he nodded discreetly and departed, shutting the door silently behind him.
I was taken to the state room, with its gold chairs, long benches and Hittite wall hangings, and left alone to wait. Two trays on stands had been set-crisp linen, precious metal dishes, alabaster goblets almost pellucid in the polished light entering through the cabin windows. I was starving, and the prospect of a fine feast, however tense the occasion, set my stomach grumbling.
I was just pondering the glorious objects around me when I felt a drift of air, and there was Ay. We sat beside the trays, the two of us attended by a silent servant who was able to serve us perfectly and to maintain an air of not really being there. He brought us many dishes, including a fish cooked in a package of papyrus with the addition of white wine, herbs and nuts-a thing I would never have imagined.
‘The fish is considered a poor man’s meal,’ Ay said, ‘but correctly prepared it is delicate and makes meat seem crude. After all, it comes from the heart of the Great River, which gives us all life.’
‘And carries away our rubbish and our dead dogs.’
‘Do you see it that way?’ He thought about it, then shook his head, dismissing my comment. ‘The fish is an impressive creature. It lives in a different element. It remains silent and pure. It has its secrets but cannot speak of them.’
He delicately peeled the tail, spine and head away from his fish, and placed them on another dish. I followed suit, more messily. The two greasy heads lay on their sides as if listening intently to our conversation. Ay ate a few mouthfuls of the delicate flesh.
‘I brought you here because I know you have found the Queen,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I would have left you to the tender care of Mahu, who hates you.’
I said nothing. Anyway, my mouth was full.
‘In fact, I will express that thought another way. She is a clever woman, and would not have led you to her unless she wished to be found. True?’
Again, I did not reply. I needed to see where we were going. I remembered the look of animal fear upon that beautiful face when Ay’s name was mentioned.
‘Therefore she has a plan, which to some extent depends on your participation. And of course this plan must be to reveal herself again during the Festival. Why else would she sequester herself?’
It was not a question requiring an answer.
‘I have not found her,’ I said. ‘I do not know where she is.’
He stopped eating. Those snow-filled eyes stared at me. ‘I know you have found her. I know she is not dead. I know she will return. So the only question is, what happens next? She cannot know, so this is the area of interest to me.’
At a nod from Ay, the servant cleared the dishes and set new ones.
‘And what have I got to do with all this?’
‘You are her go-between. That being the case, I wish you to take her a message from me.’
‘I’m not a messenger boy.’
‘Sit down.’
‘I’ll stand.’
‘The message is this: ask her to come to me, and I will restore order. There is no need for this melodrama. There are sensible solutions, correct choices to be made, for all of us. She does not have to fight us all to return stability to the Two Lands.’
I waited for more, but he said nothing.
‘Is that it?’
‘That is what I wish her to know.’
‘It’s not much of an offer.’
Suddenly he was angry. ‘Do not presume to comment on what does not concern you. You are lucky to be alive.’
I watched him, the flash of intensity, the brief revelation of his power.
‘Tell me one thing. What is the Society of Ashes?’
Ay gave me the long stare.
‘And do golden feathers mean anything to you? And a water that wets not, and yet burns?’
His face gave even less away, but this time he got up and walked away without bidding me farewell.
So I sat down and finished my lunch. After everything I had gone through, a good meal was the least I deserved.
38
I was returned to shore, my belly full, wine in my head, my finger still throbbing. I turned back to look at the great ship. Ay seemed like a mirage: vividly there, but gone when looked at from the wrong angle. Was he a figure of infinite power, or some magician’s trick of smoke and mirrors?
It was mid-afternoon now, and the sun, remorseless above the simmering cooking pot of the city’s landscape, did nothing to clarify my state of mind. Nor did the crowds, overheated and overwhelmed, that now packed the harbour and the city’s ways. Something was blurring the atmosphere of the place. After the hours on the ship, on the flowing water, and the lost time in jail, I felt heavy and weary, as if dry land was pulling me down. I felt like I wanted to wash and then sleep in the dark.
But I had to see Nefertiti. Not because I wanted to carry Ay’s message-although I wanted to see its effect upon her-but because I needed to see if Khety had managed to reach the Queen’s fort; and also because I had things to say. Things to tell her. Shards of story. I knew she could put them together better than I, if she chose.
I made my way to the necropolis. No sign of the cat. I approached the chapel for the second time, checking to make sure I was not observed, and entered its little precinct of stone and shadow. In the flat afternoon glare it seemed less mysterious, less convincing. In the sanctuary, the offering bowls had been kicked away. The hieroglyphs had been defaced. My name was scored out. So now someone knew about this place.
I examined the narrow gap through which on that night I had entered the Otherworld. But it was now sealed up. There was no way in. How, then, could I reach her? And why had this place been vandalized? It was obviously deliberate. Was she preventing me from reaching her again? I was furious. What did she want of me?
I went first to the pig sty, and rooted about like a fool for the trap door while the pigs sniffed at me. But the door refused to open. Suddenly I had the sense of being watched. I glanced up and down the alleyway-empty. It was oddly quiet, though. Someone could have trailed me, and stepped back into the shadow of a doorway. No other choice, then: I almost ran to the Great River, taking a zigzag route through the streets and ways, moving through crowds then slipping into a side passage, then doubling back. I kept glancing over my shoulder; I felt in my bones I was right, yet no-one seemed intent upon pursuing me. I scanned the crowds, but they all seemed occupied with other plans. Perhaps the unreality of the city was finally influencing my mind. Still, I could think of several people who would benefit from trailing me now and I could afford to take no risks, not with so much at stake.