Snefru moaned. I felt a chill of fear. Ay was now staring at Ineti.
‘You can’t believe those juglike ears can you, Master Scribe? Are you taking careful note of what I have said?’ Ay leaned forward. ‘Are you going to run back to your masters in Thebes and tell them about the treason you have heard? Well, you won’t be running anywhere. Ineti, the wine you have drunk is poisoned. You can’t taste it. It contains a special potion distilled by my daughter: snake venom mingled with a few deadly powders.’
Snefru jumped to his feet, throwing his cup away.
‘Oh, not yours,’ Ay snapped, his eyes never leaving Ineti, ‘just the scribe’s.’
Ineti tried to move but he couldn’t. His sallow face had turned grey, eyes large in his face, a strange colour about his lips. White froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth.
‘The symptoms are quite swift. Death does not take long. You can’t move, can you, Ineti?’
The scribe sat as if carved out of stone; only the throbbing in a vein in his neck showed that the death struggle had begun. It was eerie, frightening, blotting out any other image: the cry of the birds, the faint shouts of the fowlers, the breeze picking up along the river, the buzz of bees, the incessant whirl of the myriad insects. I put my goblet down. Ay stretched across and touched Ineti’s face. The scribe was now fighting for breath like a man whose lungs have filled with water. The sounds from his mouth grew more hideous; he was straining and gagging as if he was going to be sick, eyes rolling back in his head. At last, he collapsed to one side, face hitting the sharp rocky ground so hard that flecks of blood appeared, then he lay still.
‘Why?’ Snefru murmured.
Ay grabbed dirt from the ground, and threw it over Ineti’s corpse, then picked up his goblet and toasted the river.
‘Get back.’ He recited a spell from The Book of the Dead. ‘Retreat! Get back, you dangerous one! Do not come against me! Do not live by my magic! Get back, you crocodile from the East! The destination of you is in my belly. May you live in fiery darkness forever. Well, Snefru,’ he rubbed his hands together and pointed further along to a clump of bushes. ‘Drag the corpse over there. No one will see it.’
Snefru, however, was already on his feet looking round.
‘Horemheb and Rameses will send spies.’
‘I doubt it,’ Ay murmured. ‘It’s the Prince they watch and my daughter. Even if they do find out, we’ll all take an oath, won’t we? Ineti must have eaten something which disagreed with him.’ He laughed merrily. ‘Go on, Snefru, drag the corpse into the bushes. Cut deep into his chest, pluck out his heart and throw it away for the birds and jackals to feast on. Cursed in life, Ineti will be cursed in death. His Ka can wander the cold arid halls of the Underworld. Let him never know peace. Go on, man!’
Ay dug into the food basket, pulled out a long knife and thrust it into Snefru’s hand.
‘Cut out his heart. As you do so, recite a curse! Go on now!’
Snefru grasped the knife and pulled Ineti’s corpse away as if it was a bucket of filthy rubbish. He dragged it across the ground, keeping low so the fowlers from the riverside could not see him. The scribe’s sandalled feet scraped the ground, arms and legs jerking like those of a broken doll.
‘Well, Snefru’s got his work cut out!’ Ay laughed at the pun.
I looked towards the river. The fowlers were now moving away. Like Ay, they were happy at a good day’s hunting.
‘He was the assassin, Mahu.’
Ay filled my cup, grinned at my uncertainty and exchanged his cup for mine. His grin widened as I changed them back.
‘Trust me, Mahu! Trust our master! Ineti was an assassin, a spy. We all know that. Like a viper hidden under a rock he was waiting for his moment. You don’t mourn him, do you?’
‘I don’t give him a second thought.’
‘Good! I used to take Ineti down to the markets in Thebes to buy provisions. He wasn’t a very good spy. He’d always wander off down the same street and enter a beer-shop where he’d give the owner a small scroll of papyrus. I persuaded the owner to give it to me. Well, the last scroll at least. I cut the rogue’s dirty throat just in case.’
‘And the papyrus?’
‘Oh, it told Ineti’s master, whoever he is, what I did, where I went, no more than a hint that if I was to die, perhaps it could be some sudden city accident or a fight at a winebooth. Now, that’s not the place for me to die, is it, Mahu? But I didn’t just kill Ineti for that.’
He picked up a piece of well-cooked goose and bit into it carefully. ‘You saw what happened at Karnak. We are at war, Mahu! In war you strike as much terror into the hearts of your opponent as you can. Oh, our enemies will realise we killed Ineti but they won’t be able to prove it. They’ll never find his corpse. Snefru will come back after dark and toss it into a crocodile pool. We are sending a message, Mahu. We are as ruthless as they are.’
‘Who are they?’
‘To be perfectly honest, boy, I don’t know.’
‘I am not your boy.’
‘No you are not, Mahu, you’re my scholar. Anyway, this is the way things are done. They attack us, we attack back.’
‘They will seek revenge for Ineti’s death.’
‘Let them and they’ll pay a price, but before they do, they’ll think carefully.’
‘Who do you think they are?’
‘Everybody, Mahu! The Crown Prince, the Divine One, Shishnak, High Priest of Amun, Rahimere the Mayor of Thebes. Either one, two or all of them. You have been involved in a battle. The enemy deploy, hidden by a screen of dust or a rise in the ground. You have to wait, spy out their true strength, let them show their standards. The same applies here.’ He paused.
Snefru’s grunts as he hacked at Ineti’s body carried clearly back to us.
‘Wash your hands!’ Ay shouted. He paused, ears straining. I caught the words of the curse Snefru was chanting as he cut out Ineti’s heart.
‘Can we trust Snefru?’
‘Oh yes. Especially now.’ Ay wiped the sweat from his forehead with the tips of his fingers. ‘I once told Snefru how Ineti worked for the courts. He was a Scribe of Wounds, supervising the mutilations carried out against convicted criminals. Snefru may be surprised by the speed of Ineti’s death, but I suspect he’s enjoying his work.’
When Snefru came out of the bushes he was dressed only in a white kilt; his stomach, chest, hands and arms were covered in blood.
‘Is it done?’
‘The birds already feast on his heart.’ Snefru’s face broke into a smile.
Ay glanced down at the river. ‘And the fowlers have gone. Snefru, go down there and wash.’
We watched him go. Snefru cleaned himself quickly, stripping naked, staying on the edge of the river, fearful of what the smell of blood might arouse. Ay repacked the baskets except for Ineti’s cup which he flung down the rocks and, with Snefru trailing behind us, we returned to the Palace of the Aten. Akhenaten and Nefertiti were in the garden sitting beneath the outstretched branches of a sycamore tree fashioning a floral collarette of flowers. They both looked up as we approached; Akhenaten’s face brooding, his dark eyes watchful, Nefertiti as serene as any well-fed cat.
‘It is done,’ Ay declared.
‘Good!’ Nefertiti murmured. ‘Now, my Beloved, never put blue and green so close.’ She glanced up and smiled. ‘Mahu, we have to pack. Queen Tiye has sent us a message. An imperial barge will be here for us in two days.’
Ay took me by the arm and we withdrew.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘To the birthplace of the Aten,’ he replied. ‘Tell Snefru to select ten of his best men. Have provisions ready to take down to the quayside.’
Two days later the Queen’s barge arrived: a splendid ship with jutting prow and stern, both carved in the shape of a snarling golden lioness. The rest of the imperial barge was a glittering blue, black and red with the wadjet eye on each side of the prow, and lunging, lifelike cobras beneath the stern. Elaborately painted kiosks stood on either end, with a doubled roofed deckhouse in the middle; this was painted a dark blue with a golden Horus head on each side. A huge blue and white mast stretched up to the sky, its great sail reefed.