‘Are you afraid of a woman, pretty boy?’ Inanna asked the Prince. He didn’t know whether to nod or disagree. But when she produced a small knife with three blades-exactly like those I had seen the opium farmers using as they cut the seed-heads of the poppy plants-he began to howl, a high-pitched cry of pure fear that provoked delight in her men, who laughed, pointing and yelling obscenities. Inanna held the blade right next to Zannanza’s face, and encouraged her men to start to chant. He was terrified. Her face was lit red and gold by the flickering light of the fires. Suddenly she brought the blade quickly upwards, expertly slashing the Prince across his perfect cheek. The men roared. Three lines of bright red instantly appeared, and blood began to drip down his chin, and on to the ground. He wailed in distress. Inanna leaned forward and licked the blood off the Prince’s jaw. He recoiled in disgust, and spat in her face. She stared at him, her eyes as cold as a snake’s, wiped the spittle from her cheek, and then punched him hard in the face. He collapsed to the floor, and several of the men began kicking him as he coiled into himself.
Finally, the knot binding my hands loosened. I worked my wrists against each other, enough to open up a length of rope. I ran forward, tearing it off. Prince Zannanza’s attackers weren’t expecting me. I grabbed the sword of one of them, kicked the others away, and found myself standing over the beaten body of the Prince, screaming at them like a Theban street fighter. The courtyard was silenced. Several of Inanna’s men surrounded me, drawing out their swords, moving around me, closing in, ready to go for the kill. It was better to attack than defend. I clashed swords with the two in front, while trying to defend my back from the others. Prince Zannanza cowered next to me, trying to keep clear of the slicing blades. I managed to score a cut on the arm of one of the attackers, and with a renewed roar of rage he went for me, while the others backed off to watch and enjoy the spectacle. We fought across the courtyard, and the crowd made way for us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Prince Zannanza being bound and tied again. I was for a moment off-guard; my opponent’s sword suddenly sliced towards me sideways. I jumped back, and then, as his sword carried on through its arc, I saw my chance and plunged mine into his undefended chest. The roar of the crowd faded. The man retched up blood. My sword came reluctantly out of his chest. The man still was not dead. He stared up at me with contempt, choking and muttering, struggling to breathe.
Inanna was suddenly standing beside me.
‘You must finish what you began,’ she said.
I had no choice. I raised my sword once more, and thrust it down into the man’s chest again. He scrabbled on the ground, muttering, as if trying to claw back the last moments of his life, until finally he let go, and died.
Inanna appraised me with new interest. Several of her men ran forward to apprehend me, but she shook her head. I thought I saw a touch of amusement in her wild eyes. She raised her three-bladed knife and held it close to my face, as if daring me to attack her. Her expression was enigmatic. The men started to chant again. But suddenly she began to dance and chant, whirling in circles, clapping her hands, and crying out, invoking a Goddess or a spirit of darkness. The men shouted encouragement. And then just as suddenly she stopped, right in front of me, and shouted something in a language I could not understand. And then she kissed me full on the lips.
29
Sunlight broke in splinters through the slats of the battered wooden door. We slept or dozed on piles of filthy straw, and were thrown only gnawed bones and dirty cooking pots from which to eat the burned scraps; there was a jar of stale water in the corner, and a cracked chamber-pot. We had not washed for several days now, and already the chamber-pot in the corner was overflowing.
Nevertheless, my stomach rumbled incongruously. Hunger is no respecter of disaster. Prince Zannanza still lay turned to the wall, hiding his disfigured face. The ruin of his beauty seemed to cause him more distress than the fear of losing his own life. Nakht had been unable to console him. Simut stirred, and groaned quietly, and raised himself slowly to sit next to me. I passed him a dish of the stale water and he drank slowly.
‘We’re in trouble,’ he said, quietly, wiping his mouth.
I nodded in agreement.
‘No one knows where we are,’ I replied.
‘Even if they did, what could they do?’ he said. ‘We could be held here for months, and meanwhile, Ay must be dead by now, Horemheb will march on Thebes, take power from the Queen, and there’s not a thing we can do about it… We’ve failed.’
We were interrupted by voices outside the door. The door slammed open, and a couple of Inanna’s henchmen entered the cell. Prince Zannanza huddled deeper into his corner. They made some extravagant joke about the stink. They were munching on legs of roasted meat, luxuriating in the good food and our hunger. We watched them with hatred. When they’d chewed off as much as they wanted, they threw us the bones-as if we were dogs. Prince Zannanza grabbed one quickly, and began gnawing the tiny scraps that remained. I picked up another bone, and threw it back with all my strength in their faces.
‘Bring us food fit for human beings,’ I shouted. They just laughed. So I grabbed one of the discarded cooking pots they’d thrown into the cell, and advanced on them, whirling it around my head. They retreated, laughing, and slammed the door shut. I threw the pot, but it just clattered uselessly against the door.
‘Why has that murdering bitch taken a shine to you?’ asked Simut, darkly.
‘It’s not my idea of a good time,’ I muttered. ‘Next time they come back, we could attack them together, make a break for it, steal four good horses from under their noses, and be out through that gateway in a moment.’
‘And then come back with an Egyptian division and raze this place to the ground, and her in it…’ added Simut, for good measure.
‘We’re locked in a cell, we have no weapons, we have no knowledge of this valley, and even if we did escape, we would be hunted down very quickly,’ said Nakht.
‘So what do you suggest?’ asked Simut angrily.
Nakht stared at him.
‘I suggest you remember who you’re talking to,’ he said. ‘I am still in command of this mission.’
Simut said nothing.
‘They’re going to kill us all,’ said Prince Zannanza, quietly, from his corner. Simut rolled his eyes, but Nakht, once more the diplomat, turned to console the Prince.
‘You are far too important for that. You will be ransomed, I assure you. The Queen of Egypt will soon know we are missing. I was to have sent fast messengers at every stage of our journey, to keep her informed of our progress. She will interpret our silence, and she will have some knowledge of where we disappeared.’
Simut and I exchanged a brief look. There was absolutely nothing Ankhesenamun could do to save us. Our mission was secret. She had no troops to send out to rescue us. Only Horemheb had his divisions in the north. And help from him would spell death. We were on our own.
‘Your father will also know we are missing,’ continued Nakht to the Prince. ‘He will have had spies prepared along our route, to watch your progress. He will be very angry. He will come to rescue you.’
Zannanza stared at Nakht disconsolately.
‘My father despises me. I appal my brothers. None of them will rescue me. They will simply cultivate the advantage of my death for their own ends. The Crown Prince was always opposed to this alliance. Now he will be able to claim my father was wrong to trust Egypt. The King will be shamed before his people, and he will easily be goaded into adopting my brother’s plan to renew Hittite attacks upon Egypt. But what does that matter to me? For I will soon be dead.’
And he turned again to face the wall. He was right. If any harm came to the Prince, then the Hittite kingdom would make good on its threat and take revenge against Egypt. The war of the last thirty years would seem like the prelude to a far greater calamity. Egypt would be held responsible. We would all be held responsible.