‘Give me your report.’
‘May I also report to our Lord?’
‘He is resting.’
Mahu looked unhappy ‘But-’
‘He is well,’ she insisted.
There was steeliness in her conduct. Mahu was caught out. There was a moment of silent tension between them during which she yielded nothing; and then he nodded. But he had not yet given in.
‘That man must leave. I will take charge now.’ He pointed at me, his eyes full of loathing. The encounter with Ay still smarted. Good.
‘Why? He has protected and saved me, he has brought the royal family to sanctuary, he has performed well. What have you accomplished? What have you to say to us that he should not hear?’
It was hard not to smile. I did not try too hard.
Mahu’s head moved about nervously on his bulky shoulders. He was like a baboon trapped in a cage, seeking an escape. He was still dangerous to me. He would savage me in a moment. But Nefertiti remained implacable and absolute.
‘Speak,’ she commanded.
‘The city is in chaos,’ he said. ‘The Great River is jammed with traffic. All who can are leaving. The tent accommodations were blown away. Scaffolding has collapsed, killing citizens and blocking ways. Many food stores have been ruined by the sand. Wells that were uncovered have been spoiled. The supply of sweet water is unreliable. There have been many deaths in the panic.’ He hesitated. The harder part of the report was obviously yet to come.
‘And what else?’
‘There is disorder.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Authority has collapsed. My troops are few, and unable to control the situation. The temple stores have been ransacked, all the supplies of grain, wine, fruit-all dispersed among the mob. They have even butchered sacrificial animals in the temple precincts for food. The people have become barbarians overnight. There has been fighting on the streets between different nationalities for possession of food and shelter. The ambassador of Mittani and his family and followers were assassinated in the confusion. We suspect Hittite forces. We could not protect them. We accommodated as many of the important families and leaders as we could within the Great Palace, and we have set up temporary shelters in the Small Aten Temple.’
‘Why have you failed to maintain control over the city in our name?’
His face darkened. ‘Horemheb elected to take command, over my own authority and that of the Medjay. He has deployed his soldiers around the city and commanded the support of reserves. They arrive in the next day or two. He has won military control of the area, until such time as…’ He paused again, having reached the moment of the unspeakable.
‘Speak.’
‘Until you return to meet with him.’
Her face remained impassive, but this was bad news.
‘Has he sent you here? As his errand boy?’
Mahu glared at her, pride triumphing over respect. ‘I am not now, nor have I ever been, other than a loyal servant. I am no errand boy. I came to warn you of his intention.’
She allowed a slight relaxation of her features. ‘Your loyalty is greater than gold to us.’
It was strange to see the power of a few words of praise upon such a man. Mahu’s fierceness melted away.
She spoke quickly now, alive to the imperatives of the new situation. ‘I shall return. But to command, not to negotiate with Horemheb’s army.’
This statement did not quite have the expected or desired effect on Mahu. There was something he was not revealing. An argument? Bad news? An assassin’s knife, even? The Queen glanced quickly at me, having observed this too. I decided to move closer.
Mahu growled at me. ‘Stay away from me.’
Nefertiti nodded imperceptibly, and I stepped back again.
‘You must speak truthfully,’ she said. ‘Hide nothing. Otherwise I return to the city flawed in my knowledge and understanding.’
I glanced up to where I’d last seen Khety, but I could not spot him up there in the darkness. Surely he was listening though.
Mahu made up his mind and spoke with a hesitation I had not thought he was capable of. ‘There is…another thing.’ He paused, dramatically.
‘Do not expect me to interpret silence. Speak.’
Then out of the silence and the darkness came a hissing sound, and a dull thud. Nefertiti and I stared out into the unknown. Mahu made no move. His expression changed to puzzlement, as if he could not quite remember the beginning of his thought. Then a dribble of blood appeared at the side of his mouth. He reached up and touched it slowly, surprised at the redness on his fingertip. Then he shook his head, and slowly fell forward like a beast with too great a burden, onto his face.
We crouched down and ran over to his body. An arrow had split his spine. It was lodged deep between his shoulder blades. I looked at it carefully; it bore a familiar hieroglyph: the cobra. My mind raced back to the memory of the charred arrow on the burning boat. The warning sign sent to me before I’d even arrived. And here it was again. Identical.
I turned him on his side as carefully as possible. He was still breathing, in shallow gasps, as if he were now in the wrong element, as if air were water. Some recognition of the irony that mine should be the last face he would look upon in this life dawned on him.
‘Damn you.’ He forced out each word through his bloody teeth from a gurgling throat. ‘You were right.’
The Queen looked at me. I shook my head. Mahu coughed and spat, and a sudden shower of red drops speckled my clothes. This made him laugh, and more blood welled out of him, thicker, darker now. He noticed.
‘Dying,’ he said, almost with a shrug, as if mortality were nothing. The dog licked his face. I pushed it away.
‘Right about what?’ I said.
I sensed someone standing above us. It was Akhenaten, looking like an old man awakened from a deep sleep. He was holding a lamp, and in his white robes he stood out like an easy target for another arrow. I dragged him down out of the range of danger. He shouted with outrage. I held my hand over his mouth. The three of us huddled together around Mahu, whose eyes took in the sorry sight of his puzzled and shambolic Lord. Did I see disappointment pass across his eyes before death’s hands slowed then stilled them and turned their topaz glitter to something more like misted bronze?
I grabbed Akhenaten by the arm and we all scurried, crouching like dogs, back to the mouth of the tomb chamber. He stumbled, trying to look back at Mahu’s corpse, the dog sitting faithful and confused by its side, and I had to drag the King of the Two Lands behind me in the dust. Khety appeared as if from nowhere to help me.
We hid inside the chamber, our breath making brief clouds in the now chilly desert air. The lamps had burned down low, lending a flickering, feeble light to the painted figures and the forest of white columns. The girls had woken up and were huddling around their mother, who warned them in a whisper that they must be completely silent. We waited, listening intently. I knew these might be the last moments of our lives. We had trapped ourselves; there was no way out. Anyone could enter the chamber and slaughter us all like beasts in this dying light. As if to presage this, I heard Mahu’s dog whine sharply, then fall silent.
‘Please do not hide on my account.’
The words, spoken very quietly, seemed to come from nowhere. Then a long shadow slanted across the moon-silvered stones of the entrance, and moved along the wall into the chamber. The shadow was followed by a man’s figure, slim and elegant. He had with him a lamp, which illuminated a bony face made gaunter by the flickering shadows.
Ay was accompanied by guards who stood back at the entrance. Their bows glinted in the moonlight. I noticed that their arrows were tipped with what looked like silver. I looked across at Nefertiti. She looked as if she had finally come face to face with her worst fear.
Ay nodded to the bowmen, who checked us for weapons, taking my dagger. I knew two of them. One had been on the hunting party; the other was the young architect from the boat, the one who was designing the temple latrines. So I had been watched from the start. He looked me in the eye, as if to say: we meet again. Then Ay ordered them to go outside, and he slowly approached us. The Queen and I split up, moving in different directions among the forest of white columns.