We parted then, leaving the pieces of the game set out on the board as if we might return to them in the morning. At her door she wished me a good night-what was left of it. I knew she was afraid. She left her door ajar, but I could not cross this threshold. I drew up a stool and sat down to sit out the night like a playing piece on the last square of the great game of senet, on a board the size of this strange city, with its lucky and unlucky squares, its chances and its plots, waiting for the throw of fate.
40
I was woken by Khety, who found me slumped like a village idiot against the wall outside the Queen’s chambers. He had that amused look on his face.
‘You can wipe that grin off,’ I said.
I felt weary and nervous at the same time, as if I had not slept at all. I stood up and knocked on the double door. For a moment there was no sound, and then it opened to reveal Nefertiti’s maid Senet, her quietness, her honesty. She smiled, but she was not pleased to see me. She looked as immaculate as ever, but today she was not wearing gloves.
‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘The Queen is ready.’
‘I have a quick question for you.’
She glanced back into the chambers. ‘We have no time. The Queen is ready.’
‘It is a very simple question.’
She stepped out of the chamber and pulled the door gently closed behind her. Her face assumed an expectant look.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘You went to the Harem Palace to deliver instructions for one of the women, a specific woman, from the Queen.’
It was hard to gauge her reaction.
‘Yes.’
‘As you know, that woman died under violent circumstances the same night.’
‘You told me.’
‘Please tell me which woman was to follow the Queen’s instructions.’
She looked uncertain. ‘I did not read the instructions. They were sealed, in any case.’
‘I see.’
We both waited for something.
‘I may as well tell you the name of the woman who died,’ I said.
‘I do not need to know it.’
‘It was a girl called Seshat.’
She stared at me, her mouth open. It was as if she were glass and I had shattered her. She made to go back into the chamber, but I held her arm.
‘Did you know her?’
‘I’m afraid I never knew this unfortunate woman,’ she said evenly. But her eyes, brimming with tears, gave her away. Then she wrenched her arm free and swiftly slipped inside.
A short while later the doors opened and there stood a figure of gold. Nefertiti looked like a statue, like a ka-figure in a tomb. She was framed by the wide doorway; the light coming from the windows inside her chamber lent her outline a lambent glow. No-one spoke. Her sandals were pointed with precious stones; her linen gown was gold; the sash around her trim waist was the red of Kings; around her neck a gold ankh necklace; on her shoulders a strange and wonderful cape which wove together countless small Aten discs to form a shimmering constellation; under that, a shawl that looked like the gold feathers of Horus; and on her head the double crown with its high back and rearing cobra. Even her nails and lip paint were gold. Only the kohl, the colour of fertile earth and promise of rebirth, and the elongated black lines around her eyes contrasted with the golden glamour.
I thought of Tanefert, and how she would ask my opinion of her appearance before we set off in the evenings. Sometimes she would adjust a new outfit with a slightly discomfited air, as if she were unsure of her own beauty; the girls have exactly the same habit before a mirror. I always liked her best when she used least art in her appearance; she seemed most herself then. Some sign of casual disarray pleased me more than all the sophisticated artifices of our time. I’d rather see a loose-hanging curl that begged to be coiled back behind the ear than the untouchable strain and tension of perfection.
But the woman I had talked to last night in the small hours, and who had now transformed herself into something more than human, had become who she needed to be: a goddess; the Perfect One. There was a new distance between us all. I felt I should bow my head, or prostrate myself, but almost immediately dismissed them as foolish urges. There was still the lovely glitter of amusement in her eyes. But it was complicated now, by other things. Necessity. Power. And for all the uncertainty about the outcome, I could see excitement in her eyes.
The Festival would be commencing about now with worship and offerings at the Great Aten Temple. Akhenaten and his daughters would be riding at speed in their chariots, their red sashes trailing in the breeze, down the Royal Road, past the packed crowds seeking a glimpse of this moment of history; past the prostrate kings, viziers, lords, commanders, diplomats, tribal chiefs, governors of provinces, nomes and city states…but the Queen would be absent, as they would all immediately see. I could imagine Akhenaten now, determined, resolute, furious not to have had restored to him what he most needed. And I could imagine, too, the quick understanding and intensive commentary among the gathering of the most powerful people in the world: she was missing, and Akhenaten was flawed. She is dead. Who killed her? Why?
‘It is time,’ she said, and from that moment I knew she would not speak again until all had been accomplished, or all had failed.
Ra, in his dazzling ship of day, had sailed higher in the blue sky. We, too, on our own shining ship of gold, a craft built for ancient ceremony with twenty attending women also dressed in gold and the tall, solitary Nubian who had played Anubis standing guard, sailed slowly upon the equally blue and glittering waters of the Great River. Nefertiti sat high and still on the deck of a small ceremonial divine barque of the Two Lands that was carried on a bier. She was holding the crook and flail crossed in her hands, and wearing now the false gold beard of kingship. The fierce illumination of the midday sun was amplified by the gold of the ship and her costume. It was almost impossible to look at her.
As we rowed slowly on, people gathered on the banks; at first just a few, but soon there was a multitude, shading their eyes, pointing, standing along the shoreline and in the trees. Most of them quickly prostrated themselves before the entirely unexpected Perfect One. From my position at the east side of the ship I could hear the constant slapping of the crested waves against the gold-leafed hull of the ship, and the high breeze, still from the south, shaking and rattling in the red and green sails, as we made our way against the current.
We must have made an astounding sight. Yet I could see the truth of the ship: how the ropes were a little frayed with age; how the blindfolded rowers sweated and exerted themselves to the beats of the two drummers, and the calls and instructions of the captain; how the immaculate gold-leaf of the outer shell gave way to unvarnished wood on the inside.
As we approached the harbour, the crowd massed and swelled, and the noise grew to a continuous turbulent roar-of awe or anger or approval it was impossible to say. The ship docked, and instantly a team of men dressed in gold emerged from the hold and lifted the ceremonial barque, with the Queen, high onto their broad shoulders. She briefly gripped the rails of her little ship-a moment of human nerves-as it sought to rediscover its balance.
We were no longer on the calm isolation of the river, but among the hot chaos of the land. A pathway opened up in the monstrous crowd and we processed carefully and in state up to the Royal Road, inexorably, step by step, towards the Great Aten Temple. More people shouting prayers and jubilations flooded into the swelling crowd, which was now jostling and rising like the waters of the inundation against the walls of the buildings, and overflowing from the tributary passageways. The twenty attending women processed ahead of us, throwing yellow and white flowers in the path of the Queen; still she appeared to see and hear nothing, remaining high and as still as a shrine statue above the chaos. I could see the temple ahead in the near distance, the freshly white-washed walls already dusty, the banners thrashing occasionally in response to the gusts of wind that carried with them the grit and sand of the Red Land. I was worried now as much by the strangeness of the weather as by the danger we all faced at this moment of exposure to the unknown forces ranged against us.