I found myself walking down towards the Silent Pavilion, keeping to the line of trees. Surprisingly its gates were open, the courtyard bathed in pools of light from glowing braziers and oil lamps. People were about to leave. I hid behind a sycamore and watched a group of courtiers protected by Nakhtu-aa, swords drawn, shields up. Yet, despite the ring of protectors, the group looked relaxed. A man of middle height walked between two women, the rest appeared to be retainers. The elder woman was Great Queen Tiye — I recognised those high cheekbones and full lips, the hard sensuous mouth. The other woman was much younger. Just outside the gate, she stepped into a pool of light; pausing to listen to something her male companion said, she threw her head back and laughed. My heart skipped! My soul, that hidden force within me, surged to meet hers. It was the first time I had experienced such passion and, indeed, the last. The sheer exhilarating beauty of that face!
In my wine-drenched frenzy I thought she was staring directly at me, hands clasped, head slightly tipped back, hair cascading down, a jewelled-braid band about her brow, beautiful sloe eyes under heavy lids, that laughing, merry mouth. Despite the darkness I saw it all. A soul on fire with her own beauty! Nefertiti! Nefer means beautiful and the name was created for her. Till that night I’d never loved and, since that night, I have never really loved again. Don’t mock, don’t ridicule. Each soul has its song, each heart its purpose. Nefertiti was my song, my purpose. You’ll say it is ridiculous. I thought it was miraculous. A vision by moonlight, a face which took in all my longing: all my hurts, all the stupidities and the waste — I could forget them all, looking at her! On that evening I stared on the face of my eternity and became lost in it. I still am. Don’t mention courtship, getting to know someone, nurturing feelings. What nonsense is that? If death can come in a heartbeat, why not the profoundest love? I just watched openmouthed. The vision laughed again, a merry sound which touched my soul and taunted it with what could have been, what might have been. Then she was gone, my beautiful queen of the night!
I stood for a while leaning against that sycamore trying to control my breathing, the pounding of my heart. I had glimpsed beauty before, the eyecatching elegance of the temple girls, but this was different. At the time I wondered who she was. Tuthmosis had sisters but she couldn’t be one of these. I reckoned she must have been in her seventeenth or eighteenth summer, perhaps a little younger. Her skin looked golden, not as dark as Queen Tiye’s, so was she from beyond Egypt’s borders? Yet the way she walked and acted showed her to be very much at home with the most imperious of Egypt’s queens. The gates of the Pavilion closed. I heard the bar falling into place. Were they visiting the Veiled One? Yet he was absent, drinking and carousing with us or pretending to. Was she the reason he looked so glum, so downcast? I turned and walked slowly back. The noise from the eating-house had grown, drowning the musicians and the singers. The door was flung open and Sobeck, followed by Maya, came staggering out. They brushed by me lost in their own tangle of words and crossed to a grassy verge where they both urinated cackling with laughter, sharing some obscene joke before lurching back.
‘Sobeck.’ I caught his arm. He turned blearily.
‘What is it, Baboon?’ He swayed on his feet.
Maya, just as drunk, tried to hold him straight.
‘Sobeck, you’ve been careful since your return?’
My glimpse of that beautiful woman had provoked anxieties about my companion, the nearest I had to a friend. ‘Sobeck, you’ve been nowhere near the imperial harem?’
Sobeck tried to speak, tapped the corner of his nose and, bawling with laughter, allowed Maya to take him back to the door.
I walked a little further. Huy came out with two hesets, disappearing into the darkness and soon the silence was broken with cries and pretty screams. The door opened again. I turned, half-expecting the Veiled One, but Hotep came out, fan in one hand, a strangely carved amethyst goblet cupped in the other. He held this up and toasted me, acknowledging my bow.
‘It has a sacred emerald in it.’ He drained the cup and pushed it towards me, twisting it so I caught the light of the emerald within. ‘A sure protection,’ he murmured, drawing closer, ‘against poison. It changes colour if any foul potion or substance is mixed with the wine.’
‘You fear assassination?’
I was still immersed in the vision of beauty I had seen, impatient at having to talk to anyone. Hotep’s patrician face creased into a smile. ‘Power and murder walk hand-to-hand.’
‘A fine celebration.’ I gestured towards the light-filled windows through which the candles and oil lamps glowed. ‘Colonel Perra would have been very impressed.’
‘His corpse was never found.’ Hotep slipped the fan into a small pocket in his robe and caressed the cup. ‘The men responsible were impaled, their sons sold into slavery. Those who survived were brought back to Thebes.’
‘How many?’
‘Only a few survived the march,’ Hotep grinned. ‘And their skulls were shattered by the Mighty One at the Temple of Montu. You must remember, you were there?’
Of course I, along with the other Maryannou, had lined up at the foot of the temple steps. At their top the Divine One, the Magnificent Person, slouched on his throne, his protuberant belly and breasts easy to see beneath his nenes, the Coat of Glory, Pharaoh in all his magnificence! He wore the blue war-crown of Egypt and sat under a gold, silver-tasselled awning. Next to him on a stool sat Queen Tiye in a cloak of shimmering feathers — the Coat of a Million Colours as it was called. On her head the vulture head-dress was stiff, white plumes either side of the sun disc. Around the imperial couple, in all their glory of gauffered robes, glossy animals’ skins, shawls and kilts, clustered the leading priests, courtiers and army officers. The Magnificent One, throned in judgement and grasping the flail and the rod, was ready to dispense judgement to those who had dared lift their heads against his sandal. From where I stood I had a clear view of the Magnificent One’s sagging cheeks, deepset eyes and pouting lips, which moved incessantly as he tried to soothe the abscesses in his gums.
The courtyard behind us was packed with notables, skins oiled and perfumed, their fragrance mingling with the scents of flower-baskets and jars of burning perfume. They had all come to see judgement dispensed and the blood flow. Trumpets blew, standards were raised and lowered as the Kushite prisoners, arms and hands bound behind them, mouths gagged, were forced up the steps. The Magnificent One rose, grasped his great war-club with its oval-shaped head. The prisoners knelt along the top step. The Magnificent One, assisted by Hotep, moved down the line. He grasped a tuft of hair specially prepared on each prisoner’s head; as he did so, more trumpets blared. The club was swung, skulls were shattered amidst muffled screams and the steps ran with blood as the crowd hailed the might of their Pharaoh. Colonel Perra’s death was being avenged.
‘It’s a pity his corpse,’ Hotep broke into my reverie, ‘and that of the others were never found.’
I recalled that Kushite in the Veiled One’s tent, arm sliced off, blood gushing, body jerking, the guttural whisper crying out those strange Egyptian words: ‘Deret nebeb Ra.’
‘What are you thinking, Mahu?’
‘Nothing,’ I lied. Before I left that tent the Veiled One had sworn me to silence. I studied the cunning face of this hollow-eyed patrician. ‘Did you come out especially to show me your goblet?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘So what do you want with me?’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Hotep replied. ‘What are we to do with Mahu, Baboon of the South? The army, the writing office? What about the House of Secrets?’ He passed the cup from hand to hand. He was about to continue when the silence was broken by more cries of pleasure.