‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes you do. Everything’s going to change now.’ She spoke with all the fierce candour of an angry child. Then she turned haughtily away from me.
She is right, I thought as I looked at her, a child with the weight of the world upon her hunched shoulders.
I stood up. In the light of the lamps placed around the chamber the scene looked like a picture from a story. But this was no picture-book story. Where could we really go from here? The best we could do was try to hold out. But I no longer rated our chances. I went outside to try to think, and to keep watch. Khety was perched in a dark niche of the cliff, on guard. Nefertiti joined me, and we looked down over the plain spreading west and south to the city. In the clear night air we could see hundreds of tiny night-lights-sentries and soldiers congregating at the roadblocks. We also saw chains of lights approaching, gathering and spilling around them, heading for the passes out of the city’s territory and into the surrounding desert.
‘I don’t know whether it would be better to move on from here by night or by day,’ I said.
She did not reply. Had she heard me? I glanced at her. Silence extended like a great distance between us, although we were no more than a few cubits apart. I looked up at the great imperishable stars.
Then she spoke:
‘The land is in darkness as if in death.
They sleep in their chambers, heads covered.
One eye cannot see the other.
Were they robbed of all their earthly goods
— even those that lie beneath their heads-
They could not awake.
All the serpents bite.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That’s very encouraging.’
She smiled and looked away.
‘Which poem is that?’
‘It is the Poem of the Aten,’ she replied. ‘It is written on the walls of the chamber. Did you not notice it?’
How could she think about poems now?
‘It sounds like a warning,’ I said.
‘It is a wise one.’
We looked up at the stars again.
‘Do you think perhaps there are many other worlds besides ours under the sky?’ she asked suddenly.
‘I can imagine a few better ones, especially tonight,’ I said.
‘I imagine one where the Red Land is turned into a great garden. The trees are golden, and there are many rivers, and beautiful cities built on hills.’
‘You always see heavens. I see the opposite.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps because I live in a land where malignity rules, where fear and shame dwell. I see botched and corrupted lives, failed hopes, broken dreams, murders and mutilations. Injustices committed with authority. I see people with no souls doing the worst possible things to people with no power. For what? For nothing more than riches and power. There is no honour and no dignity in such things. But we’re a rich, big, strong, tough, proud land now, so it doesn’t matter at all.’
I looked away to the southern horizon, surprised by the ardour of my reply.
‘I had a dream before I came here,’ I continued. I realized I suddenly needed to tell her about it.
‘You are quite a dreamer for such a sceptical man,’ she said softly.
‘I was in a cold place. Everything was white. There were dark strange woods. The trees looked black, as if they had burned. Everything was very still. I was lost. I was looking for someone. Then something impossibly light began to fall from a white sky. Snow. That’s all I remember, but the desolation has stayed with me. Like a loss that can’t ever be put right.’
She nodded, understanding. ‘I have heard of snow.’
‘I heard a story about a man who carried a box of it back to the King as a treasure. When it was opened, the snow had vanished.’
She looked interested in this. ‘If I were given such a box I would not open it.’
‘Surely you’d want to know what was inside?’
‘You should never open a box of dreams.’
I thought about this for a moment. ‘But then you never know if the box is empty or full.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You never know. But it is still your choice.’
Eventually my thoughts came back to the present.
‘We could get to the river and find a boat,’ I suggested.
She shook her head. ‘And then go where? We must return to the city. All the night creatures are collaborating on their plots and betrayals. I imagine the serpents are sharpening their teeth and filling their mouths with poison. The world makes its claim upon us, and we must not say no.’
She was right, of course. More than anything else, the storm had damaged the family’s prestige and opened it up to attack. If they were going to survive they needed to show themselves and reassert their authority. But at what risk?
‘But let me ask you this: how are you going to do that? They’ll say the storm was a divine judgement against you both.’
She laughed. ‘The one thing you never think of is the thing that brings all the great dreams, plans and visions crashing down on your head.’
Her eyes glittered with something other than curiosity and amusement. Everything she had done seemed, now, to have been futile. Everything she had achieved had been destroyed by the storm, as if it had been clearing the playing board, making many new and unforeseen developments possible.
‘Perhaps you could commission a poet to rewrite the story of today to make the storm seem like part of your grand plan after all. The Poem of the Triumph over the Storm. The Queen returns in glory from the Otherworld, the god of chaos tries to vanquish her, but all his might could not blow down the city of the Aten, nor frighten its Queen.’
‘I’m frightened now.’
She looked at me for a moment. I wanted more than anything to hold her as she sat with her arms wrapped tight around her legs, trying to keep warm-or trying to stop herself shaking. My heart was suddenly inappropriately tripping and fluttering like a schoolboy’s. She was so close. I could sense the warmth of her skin across the cool night air; I could see the potency of her eyes in the dark. She was distant and sad. I reached out and gently let my hand touch hers. I feared the mountains would rumble and the stars fall from the sky. But none of that happened. She did not move. I believe, now, her breath stilled for a moment. We sat like that for a long moment. Then, with something I hope was reluctance, she slipped her hand out from under mine.
It was then that I heard a very faint trickle of grit and tiny stones nearby on the slope below us. It could have been a desert rabbit, but it was not. I looked up to see Khety gesturing at something. I stood up slowly and backed towards the tomb entrance, trying to make no sound, trying to shield the Queen from whatever was coming up out of the darkness. Another faint trickle, then a clearly audible step being taken closer up the slope, a foot seeking purchase. But the stranger remained in the realm of the shadows. At least we had now reached the entrance to the chamber, which offered us some temporary sanctuary; we lacked the means, other than our daggers, to defend ourselves. I pushed the Queen back into the shadows of the chamber and waited.
A shadow rose up from the slope. It was somewhat out of breath. I recognized immediately the outline of the bulky, powerful body, the brutal shape of the head. I recognized too the dark panting bulk that followed him, faithful and dumb.
‘This is a strange place to spend the night.’ Mahu’s voice was tense. He was trying to disguise his breathlessness.
‘We were just looking at the stars,’ I replied.
‘You could use their help. Where are they? Are they safe?’
‘Why are you asking me?’
Then Nefertiti slipped past me, holding a lamp. Mahu looked relieved, and immediately got down uncomfortably on his knees, like a monster before a child.
‘I offer prayers of thanks to the Aten for the safe return of the Queen,’ he said.