Strong light blinded us. We had emerged onto the desert plain to the east of the central city, next to an altar. Luckily, no-one was near. I shaded my eyes. I looked back at the city and could see how the storm, vanished now as if it had never been, had blown off roofs and piled up slopes of debris against the walls of the main buildings. The real devastation would be in the streets, and I could imagine the chaos there. And here was its magus, Akhenaten, squinting and shuffling from foot to foot in the wilderness, his great dream, it seemed, blown away.
We could not remain standing here in the heat and light. We needed sanctuary, water, food and a plan. The city lay one way, but it promised great danger. All the opposition would be hurrying to take advantage of the disaster of the storm, with its implicit judgement of the god, the catastrophic failure of the Festival, and the blow to Akhenaten’s prestige and power. I remembered the look of intent upon Horemheb’s face. I could imagine he would be capitalizing on the situation immediately. The desert lay the other way, and it offered nothing but bad spirits and death. Our only choice was to seek refuge in one of the tombs in the cliffs, preferably one closer to the river, and then use the river as a means of escape. But to where? I stopped the thought. There was no time for such considerations at the moment. They could come later.
‘The tomb artisans might keep basic supplies of water and food,’ I said. ‘We could rest, at least.’
Nefertiti nodded.
We began walking towards the northern cliffs taking as distant a route as possible from the limits of the city. Khety, Senet and I each carried one of the younger girls on our shoulders, while the older daughters walked. Nefertiti sang to them like a mother now, but their father continued to shuffle and mumble to himself behind us. Meretaten walked sulkily at his side. Such was the royal family on the evening of this strange day.
By the time we reached the tombs, the sun was once again descending over the far western cliffs. Our lengthening shadows trudged and stumbled beside us. The girls were desperate with thirst; they had all fallen silent, and the younger ones had nodded off to sleep. We stood at the base of the ramps of sand that led up to the tomb entrances, which were set perhaps fifty cubits up in the rock faces of the cliffs, some with their columns and doorways almost completed, others no more than low wooden gates guarding the laborious work in progress. Khety and I slipped the sleeping girls off our shoulders and quickly and silently ran up the ramp to check whether they were truly deserted. We moved from chamber to chamber, but there was no-one there. Just piles of tools and, luckily, pots of relatively fresh water.
‘Pick a tomb,’ I said to the Queen.
She did not smile, just pointed to one furthest to the west. Its entrance was knee-high with sand and grit. We stepped down into this little interior desert, under the as yet uninscribed lintel, and entered a grand, square chamber, perhaps twenty cubits high. So this was how the rich spent their wealth. It was very large and beautifully proportioned; cut from the rock, it must have required the labour of many skilled artisans over several years. The ceiling was supported by a forest of powerful columns, all white except where their middle sections bore painted carvings. The walls were painted with unfinished scenes and dominating every wall were carved images of the royal family worshipping the Aten, and of the family in turn being worshipped by two kneeling figures, a man and a woman.
I looked closely at the face of the rich man whose eternal resting place this would be. It was very familiar. And then I suddenly understood whose tomb we were hiding inside-Ay’s. I looked at Nefertiti. Her face was turned away from the walls, towards the last of the golden evening light entering directly through the main door. She had chosen this place. She had wanted to come here.
41
The last of the light faded to black. The Queen sat outside watching, her arms around her dozing girls, her gold costume dulled and streaked with dust and sand. Senet sat near, frozen despite the heat of the evening. Meretaten was awake, sitting a little apart, staring not at the sunset but at the ground. Her mother glanced across at her, but seemed to decide to leave her alone for now. Akhenaten remained in the tomb chamber, huddled on a pallet in a dark corner.
Khety and I found lamps, and a small supply of twisted wicks.
‘They add salt to the oil,’ he said, whispering for no reason. Perhaps because we were in the presence of Akhenaten; perhaps because we did not want to hear our own voices in the dead acoustic of the chamber.
‘Why’s that?’
‘To stop the wick smoking and spoiling the ceiling work. Look.’
He stepped up a ladder that was leaning against an uncarved column and revealed, in the light of his lamp, a great patterned pathway of gold stars-the celestial kingdom of the goddess Nut-against the serene indigo of the night. He looked for a moment like a dusty young god among his constellations, swinging a sun gently in his hand, his face touched with a smile of wonder at all he had made. I saw that Akhenaten, too, had turned and was staring up at the old vision of creation on the ceiling.
After a moment of silence, I said to Khety, ‘Come down now.’
The glow descended to our mortal level and Khety became himself again.
‘We’ve only got enough wicks to last a few hours,’ I said. ‘There’s water and some bread, but I can’t find anything else.’
Khety inclined his head towards Akhenaten’s dark figure, which had turned again from the light to face the dark wall. ‘What are we going to do about…?’
I shrugged. I had no idea. It was too big a problem for me to solve.
‘Bring me some water,’ called Akhenaten from the shadows.
I took him a cup, and had to help him to sit up to drink from it, like an invalid. Something had snapped inside him. He was light and frail. He drank with little tentative sips.
‘We must return to the city immediately,’ he said suddenly, as if the thought had just occurred to him. His eyes, in the dark, looked haunted, as if he already knew this would not be possible, and that this knowledge of his powerlessness made it more urgent still. He struggled up, propping himself on his beautiful ceremonial staff. ‘I insist we return immediately.’
Suddenly Nefertiti was beside him, talking quietly, persuading him to lie back down, making him comfortable. I moved away. There was something both intimate and dreadful about the way she calmed him, and the look of something like loathing hovered faintly in his eyes.
The girls were all lying on pallets now. Meretaten was staring at the scene of her mother and father carved on the wall beside her. She had a strange look on her face. ‘That’s me,’ she said, pointing at the largest of the smaller figures gathered at the feet of the King and his Queen in the Window of Appearances to receive the blessing of the Ankh of Life. Then she looked across at the very different scene of her mother trying to calm and restrain her father. Suddenly she looked older and wiser, as if she understood too much too soon of the casual, lazy brutality of this battered world. I hoped my girls would never look like that.
‘We’re not going home, are we?’ she said quietly.