I stepped out of the boat. The cat dropped casually down, stretched elegantly, walked over to me and wound herself around my legs.
‘She still likes you.’ Her voice carried a light trill of tension.
‘She has faith. She believes in me.’
‘It is in her nature.’
I said nothing. Khety, who had disappeared for a moment, brought another chair, then retired, perhaps to stand guard. I sat down opposite her, the cat purring in my lap.
‘So, where do we start?’ I said.
‘With the truth?’
‘You think I am here to lie to you?’
‘Why not tell me your story? Then I will see whether or not I believe it.’
‘More stories.’
She said nothing.
‘I went looking for plots and conspiracies. I found men with reasons to want you to disappear for ever, and some of the same men with reasons to want you back. I found out about the golden feathers of the Society of Ashes. Does that mean anything to you?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s the kind of name men give to something they take too seriously.’
‘Your brother-in-law told me the golden feather opens invisible doors. He seemed excited by it.’
‘You see? Men love their riddles and codes and strange seals. It makes them feel clever and important.’
‘That’s more or less what your mother-in-law said. So did Ay.’
I watched her carefully. Something in her eyes flinched at the name-not for the first time. She changed the subject.
‘Mahu got hold of you.’
It wasn’t a question. I held up my finger in its splint. It looked silly.
‘I didn’t talk,’ I said. ‘Well, not much. I told him about the Otherworld and so on, but strangely he didn’t seem to believe me.’
‘He has no imagination.’
‘He does seem to be quite a literal man.’
‘But I am puzzled. How did you escape?’ she asked, returning again to the same point, anxious as a cat trapped in the wrong room.
‘Your friend Ay came and talked to him. Mahu seemed to be persuaded after all that he should brush me down and let me go. Then Ay invited me to lunch, and of course I had to accept. It was quite interesting.’
I wanted that to hang in the air. I wanted her to ask about it.
‘I imagine Mahu tried to hurt you in your heart and soul. I imagine he threatened your family as well as your little finger.’ Her face did not bother to make an expression of sympathy.
‘He’s threatened me with my family before. You know that. And anyway, while I was in the prison I had a bad dream. It was almost worse than anything he could do to me.’
‘Dreams,’ she said quietly. ‘Tell me your dream.’
I looked away, across the river. Why should I tell her anything? But of course, I wanted to tell her everything.
‘I dreamed I was home at last. It had been a long time. I was glad. But everyone was gone. I was too late.’
In the silence that followed I stroked the cat over and over, as if my distress could pass into her but cause no harm. She looked up at me with her calm green eyes. I found I could hardly bear to look up and meet the equally direct gaze of her mistress.
‘It was a dream of fear,’ she said.
‘Yes. Just a dream.’
‘Fear is a strong delusion.’
‘It makes some of us human.’
I was suddenly angry. Who was this woman to tell me about fear? But she was angry too.
‘And do you think I do not suffer fear? Do you think I am not human?’
‘I see fear in your eyes when I mention Ay.’
‘What did he say to you?’ Again, she would not leave this alone, worrying at the question like a cat with a dead bird.
‘He was very reasonable. He asked me to give you a message.’
That stopped her. Now she was on to something. I could sense her hunger, her need to know.
‘Give me the message.’ She said this too quietly.
‘He said he knows you are alive. He knows you will return. His question is, what then? His message is: meet him. He will work with you to restore order.’
She shook her head in disbelief and, somehow, disappointment. The noise in her throat was something between a sob and a tiny lost laugh at something that was never very funny.
‘And you thought it right to bring me this message?’
‘I am no messenger boy. I’m telling you what he said. It sounded reasonable.’
‘You are so naive.’
I killed the anger that leaped into my mouth. I tried another line of enquiry.
‘What power has Ay got over you?’
‘No-one has any power over me,’ she said.
‘I don’t think that’s true. Everyone has someone who frightens them. Their boss or their mother, their sworn enemy or the monster under the bed. I think you’re afraid of him. But the strange thing is, I think he’s afraid of you too.’
‘You think too much,’ she said, quickly.
‘People don’t think enough. That’s the whole problem.’
She stayed silent. I knew I had hit upon some nerve, some thread of truth. Some secret bound them together, I was sure. But she changed the subject again, trying to turn the tide of my questions.
‘So you have found out nothing for sure about the plots against me, and instead you have brought me a foolish message and led them, like a decoy, back to me. It’s as well I anticipated the problems.’
I refused to change course. ‘It’s clear what is happening. Tomorrow is the Festival. Akhenaten is besieged by troubles at home and abroad. These troubles are focused now in the very event with which he hoped to resolve them. Why? Because your absence destroys the illusion he needs to perpetuate. Your return will precipitate enormous changes. This is anticipated by several men, including Ay and Horemheb, both of whom are waiting to see what happens when you do reappear. I imagine they wish to take full advantage of any change of authority. You, having sent me back into the lions’ den, then assume me guilty of betrayal when I return to you with the little information I have been able to glean, at some personal cost to myself. And the interesting thing is, Ay is right. I think you have no idea what happens next.’
I found myself, at the end of this outburst, pacing the terrace. At the door, Khety looked alarmed. The waters of the Great River seemed to be listening carefully for Nefertiti’s reply. Eventually it came, very calmly, concealing everything.
‘You are right,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what happens next. I will make my prayers for an outcome that restores peace and stability to all of us.’ She looked out over the dark waters then, and added, ‘I have one request.’ Her eyes searched for mine. I confess my breath was tight in my chest. ‘Will you accompany me tomorrow, when I make my return? Will you do that for me, despite everything?’
I did not even have to think about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. I wanted to be there.
I realized, as I said this simplest of words, that I wanted to face the uncertain future, with its fears and its dreams, with her, no matter where it would take us. I felt suddenly as if the wide, dark water was flowing under my feet; as if this terrace and all of this strange city, this little world of frail lights and hearts like flickering lanterns, were floating on the blackness, borne along on the currents, the fluent and the turbulent, of the river’s long, deep dream.
39
Despite the deprivations of the last few days, for all the gold in the deserts of Nubia I could not sleep. The pain in my finger throbbed in time to my heartbeat, as if it intended to keep me awake-perhaps punishing the rest of my body for its apparent well-being. Perhaps also it was a reminder of my deepest fear. The fate of Tanefert and the girls tormented me, and I turned and turned again from side to side. The weather, too, was heavy, discontented. Irritable gusts of wind cast handfuls of sand and dust in frustration against the outer walls. I could hear a loose door banging in the wind, like a warning. Someone must then have gone out to close it, but somehow the silence after that was worse. Once this coming day was over, and its changes-whatever they were, however good or bad-were brought into being, I would take the first ship south, back home. I would row myself all the way back against the current in a little papyrus reed boat if I had to. The distance and the uncertainty had made me miserable, and I vowed never to leave my family like this again.