‘May I?’ I asked. She nodded.
The chamber reminded me of a child’s fantasy of a room in which to play and dream. There were hundreds of toys, in wooden boxes, on shelves, or stored in woven baskets. Some were very old and frail, as if they had belonged to generations of children, but most were fairly new, especially commissioned no doubt: inlaid spinning tops; collections of marbles; a game box with an elegant senet board on the top, and a drawer for the ebony and ivory playing pieces, the whole object resting upon elegant ebony legs and runners. There were also many wooden and pottery animals, with moving jaws and limbs, including a cat with a string through its jaw, a collection of carved locusts with wings that worked intricately in exact imitation of the real thing, a horse on wheels, and a painted pecking bird with a wide tail, beautifully balanced on its rounded breast, the perfect colours muted with long handling. Here were chubby ivory dwarfs set on a wide base with strings that could make them dance from side to side. And by the sleeping couch, with its blue glass headrest, gilded and inscribed with a spell of protection, was a single carved monkey with a round, grinning, almost human face, and long moving limbs for swinging from imaginary tree to tree. Also paint palettes with indentations crammed with pigments. In amongst the toy animals were hunting sticks, and bows and arrows, and a silver trumpet with a golden mouthpiece. And in gilded cages along the far wall of the room, many bright, tiny birds rustled and fluttered delicately against the thin bars of their elaborate wooden palaces, complete with tiny chambers, towers and pools.
‘Where is the King’s monkey?’ I asked.
‘It is with the King. That creature gives him great comfort,’ Ankhesenamun replied. And then, as if to explain the King’s childishness, she continued: ‘It has taken me years to encourage the King in our plan, and tomorrow is its fulfilment. Somehow he must find his courage, despite this. Somehow I must help him to do so.’
We both gazed around the chamber and its bizarre contents.
‘He cares about these toys more than he cares about all the riches in the world,’ she offered quietly, and without much hope in her voice.
‘Perhaps there’s a good reason for that,’ I replied.
‘There is a reason, and I understand it. These are the treasures of his lost childhood. But it is time to put away such things. There is too much at stake.’
‘Perhaps our childhoods are buried inside all of us. Perhaps they set the pattern for our futures,’ I suggested.
‘In that case I am doomed by mine,’ she said without self-pity.
‘Perhaps not, for you are aware of it,’ I said.
She glanced at me warily.
‘You never talk like a Medjay.’
‘I talk too much. I am famous for it.’
She almost smiled.
‘And you love your wife and your children,’ she replied, oddly.
‘Yes I do. I can say that, for certain,’ I replied, in truth.
‘But that is your vulnerability.’
I was taken aback by the observation.
‘How so?’
‘It means you can be destroyed through others. I have been taught one thing: to have care for no one, for if I care for someone I know they will be condemned by my love.’
‘That is survival, not life. And also, it disallows the love of the other. Perhaps you have no right to do that. Or no right to make that decision for them,’ I said.
‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But in my world it is a necessity. The fact that I wish it were not so cannot alter the fact.’
She was now moving about the chamber, anxiously.
‘Now it is I who talk nonsense. Why do I say such things when I am with you?’ she continued.
‘I am honoured by your honesty,’ I replied, carefully.
She gave me a long, long look, as if assessing the polite equivocation of my reply, but said nothing more.
‘May I ask you a question?’ I said.
‘Of course you may. I hope I am not a suspect,’ she said, half smiling.
‘Whoever is leaving these objects can move about within the royal quarters with relative ease. How else could these things be left? So I need to know who could have access to this chamber. Obviously his chamber-men and women, and his wet nurse…’
‘Maia? Yes. She performs all the most intimate tasks for the King. She despises me, of course. She blames my mother for everything, and she thinks because I might have benefited from crimes committed before I was born, I should pay for them now.’
‘She is only a servant,’ I observed.
‘She whispers her hatred into the ear of the King. She is closer than a mother to him.’
‘But her love for the King is unquestioned…’ I said.
‘She is famous for her loyalty and her love. It is all she has,’ she replied, almost casually, as she wandered about the room.
‘So who else could come in here?’
She picked up the monkey figure, and regarded it coolly.
‘Well, me, of course…But I rarely enter this chamber. I would have no reason to come in here. I do not wish to play with toys. I have encouraged him in other directions.’
She put the monkey back down.
‘And in any case, I can hardly be a suspect, since I asked you to investigate in the first place. Or does it sometimes happen that the very person who initiated the investigation, also turns out to be the guilty party?’
‘Sometimes. I imagine in your position, others will make of your situation what they will. After all, they might say, for example, that you wanted your husband crippled with fear, in order to assume power for yourself.’
Her eyes turned suddenly lightless, like a pool when the sun departs.
‘People speculate, they love it. I can do nothing about that. But my husband and I are bound to each other by much more than mutual necessity. We have a deep bond of history. He is all I have left of that history. And I would never harm him, for, apart from anything, that would hardly enhance my own security. We are necessary to each other. To each other’s survival and future. But we also share a deep care and affection…’ She ran her carefully manicured fingernails across the fretwork of one of the birdcages, tapping gently, so that the bird within regarded her with one eye, then flitted away as far as it could.
Then she turned back to me. Her eyes glistened.
‘I feel danger in everything, in the walls, in the shadows; the fear is like millions of ants in my mind, in my hair. See how my hands tremble, all the time?’
She held them out, and gazed at them as if they were disloyal. Then she summoned back her confidence.
‘Tomorrow will be a life-changing day for all of us. I wish you to attend us at the ceremony.’
‘Only priests are allowed within the temple itself,’ I reminded her.
‘Priests are only men in the right clothing. If you shave your head and dress in white linen, you will pass for a priest. Who would know you were not?’ she said, cheering up at the thought. ‘Sometimes you have the face of a priest. You look like a man who has seen mysteries.’
I was about to reply, when Khay reappeared. He bowed ostentatiously.
‘The lords of the royal domain have left. Full of threats and indignation, I might add.’
‘That is their way, and it will pass,’ replied Ankhesenamun.
Khay bowed again.
‘Rahotep will accompany us to the inauguration tomorrow,’ she continued. ‘He will need to be dressed appropriately, so that his presence causes no disturbance to protocol.’
‘Very well,’ he said, in the dry tone of someone who is only obeying orders.
‘I wish to meet the King’s physician,’ I said, suddenly.
‘Pentu attends the King,’ replied Khay.
‘I am sure he will spare Rahotep a few moments of his time. Ask him as a favour from me,’ said Ankhesenamun.
Khay bowed once more.
‘I must go to the King now. There is so much to be accomplished, and so little time,’ she replied.