I swallowed hard, rubbing my hands together to hide my own unease. The same thought had occurred to me, but there again, Rahmose was slight, with a balding head, a complete contrast to my own appearance. What did Nefertiti call me? A handsome baboon, with a heavy mouth, snub nose and shock of black hair.
‘Redeemed, my dear baboon,’ she would say as she pressed a finger against my lips, ‘by those large dark eyes.’
‘You seem unconcerned.’ Pentju broke my reverie. ‘I said Rahmose was wearing your robe.’
I waved my hand. ‘Don’t agitate me, Pentju. You are a physician.’ I smiled at him. ‘Don’t they teach in the House of Life not to be misled by the first symptoms?’
Pentju laughed drily, picked up the water skin between his feet, took a slurp, then offered it to me. I refused.
‘If you go north,’ he put the water skin back, ‘our young Prince will be left unprotected.’
‘Oh no he won’t,’ I replied. ‘Djarka will guard him, whilst you know that everyone in the Royal Circle needs Tutankhamun’s protection. He may be the son of the Heretic Pharaoh, but he is also the grandson of the Magnificent One, the last male heir of the Tuthmosid line. The greatest threat to our young Prince was Nefertiti, and she’s gone. Now, tell me, Physician, why were you so silent?’
‘That impostor who has appeared in the Delta.’ Pentju sucked on his lips. ‘It’s not Akenhaten. In the last months before his disappearance he often talked to me, Mahu, especially about his son. He entrusted him to me and instructed me that if anything happened to him, you were to be the boy’s official guardian. He said you were different from the rest, Mahu, on three points: you had little ambition, you were loyal and you were searching for your soul.’
I glanced away: that was the old Akenhaten, the Veiled One, the Grotesque. I had befriended him when we were both boys, mere strangers in this great palace.
‘I tell you,’ Pentju continued in a hurried whisper, ‘Akenhaten believed that he too had lost his soul. He said he would never find it in the City of the Aten, that he would withdraw into the Red Lands and wait for his God to come.’
‘And you think he did that?’
‘I know he did.’
‘So, do you think he is still alive?’
‘He may be.’
‘So why shouldn’t he emerge to reclaim his throne and once again wear the double crown of Egypt?’
‘Akenhaten believed he had found the One True God. People think,’ Pentju chose his words carefully, ‘that he’d slipped into madness, convinced he was the One God himself, but that’s not true. If Akenhaten saw God in anyone, it wasn’t really himself, but Nefertiti. He adored her. He loved her. He was infatuated with her. You know that, Mahu. Then the truth about Nefertiti emerged: her arrogance, her pride, the relationship between herself and her father Ay, her persecution of Khiya, Tutankhamun’s mother, secretly feeding her potions and powders so she would never conceive. That was the truth which drove him away.’ Pentju added bitterly, ‘That’s what sent Akenhaten out into the Red Lands to find what he had lost.’
‘And his treasure?’ I asked.
‘At the time of his disappearance the City of the Aten was in chaos. The plague was raging like Sekhmet the Destroyer. You saw it, Mahu, streets littered with corpses, the funeral pyres on the cliffs above the city turning the sky black with their smoke. I suspect Akenhaten and a group of his priests, donkeys laden with the treasure they might need, slipped out of the city.’
‘Would they go north?’ I asked. ‘To Canaan?’
‘That’s possible. Akenhaten’s mother, Queen Tiye, and all her kin from Akhmin were once Shemsu. They wandered from Canaan, across Sinai into Egypt. They made Egypt’s Gods their own but they never forgot their own God, the God of Canaan, all-seeing, all-powerful, not to be worshipped in idols or statues. They regarded the Sun Disc, the Aten, as His symbol.’ Pentju shrugged. ‘You know this as well as I do.’
I did, but I was trying to make sense of what we had been told.
‘I kept quiet,’ Pentju sighed, ‘because I know the truth. The creature at Avaris is an impostor, possibly one of the priests.’
‘But still a danger to us?’
Pentju clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Mahu, it was dangerous as soon as we became Children of the Kap, the Royal Nursery.’ He picked up his water skin and walked away. I dozed for a while in the shadow of the crouched lion.
‘Sir?’
I woke with a start, hand going to my knife. My captain of mercenaries stretched forward his right hand, caked with blood.
‘We found a corpse, my lord, a priest, naked and trussed like a chicken for the pot, throat slashed from ear to ear, his body concealed beneath a bramble bush between a clump of persea trees. One of my lord Meryre’s entourage has identified him. The assassin must have lured him there and killed him.’ He lifted an eyebrow.
‘And taken his robes,’ I finished. ‘One priest amongst many, eh, Captain?’
‘Like flies on a turd, my lord.’
‘And the assassin?’ I asked.
‘A gardener, a rose-tender from the inner garden. My lord, General Rahmose was wearing your cloak, the striped one.’
‘I know he was wearing my cloak, Captain, and it is one which is eye-catching, a gift from a friend. But,’ I got to my feet and clapped the man on the shoulder, ‘we’ll have to wait and see if the hunter returns for a second try.’
I wanted to confront Ay, Meryre and the rest, but hot temper is ill suited to the search for the truth, so I went to my own quarters. The young Prince was already in the House of Adoration, a small suite of chambers I had set aside for him. I checked the windows and doors, as I always did, ensuring that, despite the heat, they were shuttered and closed. Every entrance was guarded by at least three mercenaries, with the strictest instructions that they were to allow no one in except myself, Djarka or Sobeck, and that they were never to leave unless two others were on guard. I handed my own dagger to the sentries and went through into the antechamber, which smelt of cassia and frankincense. In the small bedchamber beyond, Tutankhamun was already lying beneath the sheets on his bed. The headrest, a brilliant blue and gold, glinted in the lamplight, the post at each end carved in the shape of Bes the Dwarf God, so beloved of children. Between the posts, at both top and bottom, a line of Uraei, spitting cobras, the protectors of Egypt’s rulers. I pushed aside the linen hangings, and the little boy pulled himself up, face crumpled with sleep, his wide dark eyes making him seem like a little owl awakening in its nest.
‘Uncle Mahu!’
‘I have come to check the oil lamps, Your Highness.’
‘I am afraid.’ The boy knelt on the bed, hands clasped together.
‘You are not afraid.’ I sat down beside him and felt his forehead. It was cool. ‘You are telling me stories,’ I smiled, ‘to make me stay.’ I picked up the goblet of green faience on the nearby table, sniffed and tasted the pure water. ‘Djarka will come and sleep in your chamber,’ I murmured. I pointed to the small gong hanging from one of the bedposts. ‘What do you do if you are really frightened?’
Again that beautiful smile, and his little hands stole beneath the headrest and pulled out a small hammer, which he shook vigorously.
‘I hit it, Uncle Mahu, I hit it hard!’
‘Good.’ I cupped his cheek in one hand. ‘And remember, Your Highness,’ I kissed him gently on the forehead, ‘I am not your uncle.’
‘Yes, Uncle Mahu. Have you come to tell me a story?’
‘Not tonight.’ I grinned. ‘But perhaps in the morning I’ll tell you about the brave deeds of Ahmose, your ancestor, who drove the Hyksos from Egypt with fire and sword.’
‘I know all his deeds.’
‘Do you now? And can you count? Do you remember your numbers? How many are in a shet?’
‘One hundred, Uncle Mahu.’ The boy clapped his hands.
‘And how many shets in a kha?’
‘Er …’ His face was all screwed up. ‘A kha is a thousand, so there must be ten.’