‘The officers may have been purged,’ I replied. ‘Intelligent men, they would soon realise they’d been tricked. Some of them must have seen the true Akenhaten and gazed upon the beauty of Nefertiti.’
Sobeck gazed around to make sure no one was listening, but this was not a royal palace where other people’s business was often your own. In a camp of mercenaries, in order to avoid fights and squabbles, people were only too willing to concede space to another.
‘Well, Mahu, I have asked you once and I’ll ask again. Why are we here? What shall we do?’
‘Gather as much information as we can; cause as much chaos as we are able.’
‘Chaos?’
‘If I am given the chance,’ I replied, ‘I would burn that fortress and kill the usurper.’
‘I do not want to end my days with a pointed stick up my arse!’ Sobeck complained. ‘How do we know Meryre won’t — hasn’t — sent messengers here?’
‘Because he’s too sly and cunning,’ I replied. ‘I doubt if there is anything in writing which ties him in with this.’
‘Did he believe you?’ Sobeck asked. ‘When you visited him before we left?’
‘He’s too closely guarded to send messages, whilst I am sure I didn’t convince him. However, I made him think. I apologised for my outburst before Colonel Nebamun. I pointed out that I too had been attacked by the Shabtis of Akenhaten, that my allegiance was solely to the Prince and not to the Lord Ay or anyone else.’
‘Did he believe you?’
‘He accepted my apology and listened. I didn’t tell him I was coming here, just that I was leaving Memphis to make other arrangements.’
‘Why should he trust you?’
‘Sobeck, why shouldn’t he? What do I owe Ay, Horemheb, Rameses or Huy? They only tolerate me because, in the end, I was Nefertiti’s enemy as much as theirs. They only accord me a privileged position because of my custody of the Prince. As I pointed out to Meryre, hadn’t I been Akenhaten’s close companion, his bodyguard, his friend? And do you know what he replied?’
Sobeck shook his head.
‘He said he always wondered where my true loyalties lay. I also claimed,’ I smiled, ‘all hurt and quivering, how never once had he approached me or shown me any gesture of friendship. He objected. I replied that I only accepted his offer to accompany him north because I thought it would heal any breach between us. But that after that attack, I was as suspicious of Sile as I was of Thebes.’
Sobeck whistled under his breath. ‘Mahu, Baboon of the South, very cunning.’ He toasted me with his cup. ‘Meryre may be convinced,’ he continued. ‘You did agree to accompany him. You were attacked by the Shabtis of Akenhaten, and you now blame-’
‘I now blame Ay for the attack at Memphis, or so I told Meryre. I left our pompous little High Priest confused, with plenty of food for thought. Perhaps he thinks we are travelling along the same road. If that attack at Memphis had been successful, I may have been spared. I may have been given a choice to either join the usurper or die. After all, I do have some influence with the Prince, as well as Ankhesenamun.’
‘Now she,’ Sobeck wagged a finger, ‘will have to be watched.’ He drained his cup. ‘That’s if we survive here.’ He called across to the potboy serving behind the stall. ‘We wish to join the army.’
The boy pointed to the tent, on the right of the avenue leading up to the main gates, guarded by mercenaries in striped robes holding rounded shields and spears. We went across and repeated our request. The men looked blankly at us. Sobeck lapsed into the lingua franca of the mercenary corps. A fat-cheeked, sweaty-faced scribe pulled up the tent flap and peered out.
‘We have enough riff-raff!’ he bawled. ‘Be on your way!’
‘We are soldiers,’ Sobeck retorted. ‘We have fought in the eastern and western Red Lands as well as in Kush. We have stood in the battle line and done more fighting in a day than you have done in your long, lazy life!’
‘Let us see them!’ a voice shouted from deep in the tent.
The scribe glowered at us, jabbered at the sentry to guard the donkey and beckoned us in. The tent was dark and musty and reeked of wine, sweat and fear. Soldiers lounged on either side, obscured by the poor light. Three men squatting on thick rugs faced the entrance; to the right of these was a line of scribes with writing palettes. The three men, officers by their collars and glittering armlets, were dressed in linen or leather vests; each had a club, sword and dagger by his side. Behind them stood six Nubian archers, bows in hand, arrow quivers hanging by their sides, feathered shafts ready to be plucked out.
‘Come here!’
The officer in the middle gestured at us to kneel before him. He was Usurek, a soldier from Avaris, a former standard-bearer from the Ptah regiment and, as we discovered later, one of the few to survive the usurper’s ruthless purge of the regiment’s officers. In many ways he reminded me of Sobeck: narrow-faced, with high cheekbones, sharp eyes and a cruel mouth. Usurek was a born soldier, a killer to the bone. What was that ancient phrase? Seka er Sekit, ‘a slaughterer from the slaughterhouse’. The other two officers I forget. They remain nameless and faceless. Like Usurek, their bones are now the playthings of jackals whilst vipers nest in their skulls. At that time they had the power of life and death. The tent we had entered, despite its shabby tawdriness, was the Utcha Netu, the Place of Judgement. Our three judges sat sharing a wineskin.
‘You look fit,’ Usurek began, ‘for visitors from Abydos.’
‘Who said we were from Abydos?’ Sobeck retorted. ‘We come from Thebes. My cousin is Mahu. We are of the Medjay, former soldiers in the regiment of Amun Ra.’
‘And?’
‘We were discharged.’
‘And?’
‘For thieving.’
‘Then what?’
Sobeck shrugged. ‘We served here and there: bodyguards for merchants, princes.’
The questions began, Usurek watching us all the time. They asked about where we had served, what weapons we had used. At the end Usurek shook his head and addressed Sobeck.
‘I don’t know about you, your speech is soft.’
‘My cousin and I were trained in the House of Life.’
‘Ah yes, the Silent One.’ Usurek turned on me. ‘You say you are from Thebes? Served in the regiment of Amun Ra? Then tell me, in the Temple of Karnak, what lies to the right of the Precinct of Montu?’
‘The Temple of Tuthmosis.’ I kept my voice steady and hoped he wouldn’t notice the bead of sweat coursing down my cheek.
‘And in the Precincts of Amun Ra, what temple stands by itself near the northern gate?’
‘The Temple of Ptah.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘Because I have stood on guard there.’
‘Karnak has its own police.’
‘Units of our regiment still stand on guard,’ I persisted. ‘You know that as well as I do.’
‘Do you have service records?’
‘We destroyed them. They were more trouble than they were worth.’
‘And what Gods do you serve?’
‘My right arm and my penis.’
Usurek laughed. ‘You say you were in the regiment of Amun Ra.’ He leaned forward. ‘The regiment had a famous song, a love poem. How does it go?’ He squinted up at the roof of the tent. Sobeck’s hand slipped down and grazed my thigh, warning me to be careful.
‘Ah yes, I remember. “The little sycamore that she has planted with her own hands opens its mouth to sing.”’ Usurek peered at me. ‘I had a friend in the Amun Ra regiment. It was their marching song. Well, have you heard it?’
‘Yes, I have, but you have it wrong. The line should read, “opens its mouth to speak, singing of its gardens”.’
Usurek smiled. ‘You may recite your poem, but we still don’t need you. We have enough archers and foot men.’