The Horus Road (5 page)

Ahmose-onkh was emerging from the house, his youth lock decorously braided, a white loincloth around his small hips, and Raa followed him, several scrolls in her grasp. She is going to read him stories, Aahmes-nefertari mused, but he is almost old enough to begin to learn to read and write for himself. Soon we must find him a good tutor. He must know the history of this country if he is to succeed Ahmose on the throne. The connection of her ideas depressed her for a moment and she shook off her reverie. Hent-ta-Hent was waking, moving restlessly in her father’s grip, and Aahmes-nefertari rose. “Let the nursery servant have her before she makes you wet,” she said to Ahmose. “I will order the litters and wait for you by the river path.” He nodded, passed the grumbling baby up to the patient attendant without pausing in his speech, and Aahmes-nefertari left the men to their deliberations.

For several precious hours she and Ahmose had themselves carried around the environs of the estate, talking lightly across the space between their litters of how thickly green and healthy the crops were and leaning out to peer at their blurred reflections in the canals that criss-crossed the fields. One of the Tao’s farmers had invented a method to raise water from the Nile, lift it over the dams that prevented the annual flood from spilling out of the canals as the river shrank, and pour it back into the channels. Aahotep had made him Overseer of Granaries and his invention was now in common use. Ahmose often had the litters halted so that he could watch the shadufs in motion, fascinated at their efficiency, but Aahmes-nefertari simply enjoyed the glitter of sunlight as the water cascaded from the buckets.

Later they left the litters and walked along the palmshaded river road hand in hand, commenting idly on the skiffs tacking by, the fragile long legs of the white ibis standing lazily in the shallows, the heat shimmer of the barren cliffs they could glimpse on the west bank. Often they met citizens of Weset bound on various errands, who bowed respectfully and stood aside as they passed. “I do not think that we will do this much more,” Ahmose said as they neared their watersteps. “It is not good for the King to be so visible and available to the people. He must, of course, be ready to hear their problems through his judges, but in these times it is better that they do not envision him with muddy feet and sweat-stained kilt. While I am gone, have the wall enclosing the estate built higher, Aahmes-nefertari, and a solid gate put in above the watersteps so that those passing cannot look into the edge of the garden.”

“You are planning many changes, aren’t you, Ahmose?” she said, and he nodded solemnly.

“Yes, but first I must address the enemy in the Delta. That is my priority.” He pulled her arm through his and together they turned away from the river towards the house that lay familiar and welcoming in the afternoon heat.

2

ON THE TWENTY-NINTH DAY
of Pharmuthi the family and all the servants gathered at the watersteps on the west bank to escort Kamose to his tomb. He had given no thought to the crafting of his sarcophagus and there were none suitable in the storerooms of the House of the Dead, so the sem-priests laid his cocooned body in a plain wooden coffin carved in the shape of a man with features crudely resembling Kamose’s own and the facsimile of a kingly beard attached to the chin. His name, where it appeared, hastily painted, was not enclosed in the cartouche of royalty. Aahmes-nefertari, standing watching the coffin being lifted from the raft that had borne it across the river and loaded onto the sled that would carry it, was shocked at its anonymous poverty. He deserves better than that, she thought angrily. “Did you choose it?” she whispered to her husband over the wails of the blue-clad women around her.

“No!” he hissed back. “I was told that he had not made provision for his coffin and there was no time to have one properly constructed and adorned. Poor Tetisheri. She will see this as just another insult to Kamose on my part.”

“Well, it is insulting, even though it is not your fault,” she breathed. “Oh, Kamose! Forgive us all!” Ahmose did not reply. Up ahead the High Priest had begun to walk, chanting the haunting and beautiful litany for the dead, a host of acolytes with censers raised surrounding him.When his voice quavered once, Aahmes-nefertari was reminded of how he had loved Kamose, but he quickly recovered and under the power of his song the rest of the procession followed. The sled went first, drawn by the two red oxen of sacred tradition, and Aahotep, Tetisheri, Ahmose and Aahmes-nefertari followed.

The children had been left with Raa in the house and Aahmes-nefertari missed them with a sudden pang. They would have been a promise of new life in the midst of this terrible death. She also felt the lack of Ramose’s presence. He had gone north to Khemmenu to see to the preparations for his mother’s burial there and had sent word that he could not return until tomorrow. Behind the family the servants clustered and at the rear were the professional mourners, keening and scooping up sand to place on their dishevelled heads. They were hired by custom, for the importance of the person to be buried was measured by the number of women weeping for him or her. Aahotep had engaged two hundred, every one that Weset could provide, and their sobbing and strange, wild wailing rolled across the river to be echoed by the thousands of citizens who crowded the east bank to bid their King and protector farewell.

At least Weset loved and honoured him, Aahmesnefertari’s thoughts ran on. All at once she began to cry and, bending as she went, she took a handful of Egypt’s desert, pressing the hot grains against her palm before trickling them above her forehead and grinding them into her face.

The barren land sloped up between the river and the high, sharp tumble of the western cliffs in a long rise. Kamose’s small pyramid lay to the south on the edge of the place of the dead, its forecourt open to the east to greet the sun. Behind it loomed the much larger mortuary temple and tomb of his ancestor Osiris Mentuhotep-neb-hapet-Ra at the very foot of the serried Cliff of Gurn, and the remainder of the arid plain to the north was dotted with similar structures, their little pyramids capping the quiet mysteries within. Aahmes-nefertari, in the pause that came while the coffin was removed from the sled and canted upright against the wall of the tomb, let her gaze wander over them. You are in mighty company, dear Kamose, she said to him. Here lie the gods of happier times. You deserve to rest among them, for like them you loved Egypt and revered Ma’at, and for both you sacrificed your life.

The members of the cortege fell silent as the lid of the coffin was removed and for several moments the wind could be heard fluttering the blue mourning linens of the assembly and stirring the dust into spirals that formed from nothing and as quickly vanished. Taking a deep, uneven breath, Aahmes-nefertari raised her eyes to the thing standing within the shadow of the wooden box, her imagination questing beyond the layer upon layer of tightly complex bandaging and the amulets of protection to the beloved man beneath. He was there in her mind’s eye as she had seen him in sleep, lying on his back, his hands crossed on the light rise and fall of his chest, his face immobile but suffused with a steady, quiet animation. She knew that she was fostering an illusion, that the reality of what Kamose had become was something brown and desiccated and stiff, but she could not confront it yet and she clung to Kamose asleep while Amunmose stepped up with the adze in his hand to begin the incantation for the Opening of the Mouth so that her brother’s senses might be freed once more. “He was only twenty-five years old,” she said more loudly than she had intended. She felt Ahmose take her hand, his own fingers moist, and she realized that he was weeping too.

When the High Priest had finished, the women began to wail afresh and one by one the members of the family knelt to kiss the linen-wound feet that smelled of myrrh and the unguents of preservation. The coffin was lifted and at last Kamose was carried down the long, bare passage to the tiny room whose walls glowed with colours that no one living would ever see again. There was a stone plinth in its centre to receive him and around it was placed his furniture and the personal belongings he would need. They were pitifully few.

Aahmes-nefertari had an armful of spring flowers to lay on his breast, blue cornflowers and red poppies, and his mother also showered him with blooms she had culled from the garden, but Tetisheri stood rigidly with tears pouring down her wrinkled cheeks and her hands behind her back. “I gave him everything in life,” she had said earlier when they had gathered at the watersteps to cross the river. “I will offer no token of his death. I do not accept this day.” Ahmose went to her, pity in the tenderness with which he encircled her frail shoulders, and to Aahmes-nefertari’s dull surprise she did not pull away but allowed him to support her as the lid was replaced and nailed down and they finally turned away. Aahmes-nefertari, inhaling the dank, stale air of the passage, looked back. Kamose was already shrouded in darkness, the coffin with its lifeless burden no more than a bulky shape that would remain immobile in a stygian blackness forever.

Tents had been pitched a short distance away from the tomb’s forecourt and here for three days his family and household feasted, eating and drinking to his memory, praying for his ka’s safe journey, and shedding many tears. On the second night Aahmes-nefertari could not sleep. After tossing restlessly on her cot opposite a slumbering Ahmose, feverish and increasingly uncomfortable, she rose, wrapped herself in a cloak, and left their shelter. The night was cool and still. Across the river a few faint orange lights marked the environs of Weset and the Nile itself flowed peacefully, a narrow, fluid darkness from where she stood.

It was no more than a few steps to the low wall of the court and she crossed the uneven, shadow-hollowed ground quickly with a word of reassurance to the Follower who had materialized by her side. He moved back and she went on alone to the black, gaping hole in the side of the pyramid that would be filled and sealed the next day.

Here she sank down, and drawing up her knees she began to speak in a whisper, telling her brother how much she loved him, reminding him of their childhood together, putting into words how it felt to hear his voice issuing from another room as she walked along a passage, to go out into the garden and look up to see him perched motionless on the roof of the old palace, to be warmed by one of his rare smiles. “You were our rock, our touchstone, obdurate and unyielding, and I did not realize how closely we clung to you,” she said softly. “Somehow we took it for granted that your very obstinacy would always protect us. Ahmose is King now and his way is not your way. It never was. You know this, dear Kamose. Yet I think that if Ahmose had gone first he would have failed. That will not happen now because his time has come, but you did the right thing, the only thing, and you will be justified before the gods.

“Do you remember sailing down to Khemmenu one year when we were still very young, to celebrate the Feast of Thoth on the nineteenth of his month with Mother’s relatives? And on our first night out Si-Amun accidentally pushed me off the boat and I had not learned to swim? The Inundation had barely begun. The servants were rushing about screaming and Si-Amun started to cry and Father came out of the cabin not knowing what the uproar was about. You just calmly ran down the ramp, waded into the shallows, and dragged me to the bank. I was coughing and spitting. ‘Silly Aahmes-nefertari,’ you said. ‘Swimming is easy. I will teach you how and by the time we come home you will be faster than the fish.’ Even then you took charge of our safety. I will not let you be forgotten. I will not let your memory be distorted. The history of Egypt will not be allowed …”

The words died in her throat from pure terror, for something moved in the darkness of the tomb entrance. A shape detached itself from the void and came panting towards her and with a low cry of relief she recognized Behek. Whining, he settled onto his haunches beside her and laid his grey head in her lap. She flung her arms around him. “How did you get across the river?” she scolded him. “Did you push your way onto one of the servants’ skiffs? You should not have been down there. You might have found yourself immured behind a wall of rubble tomorrow, unable to escape, and no one would ever have known what had become of you. But I understand. Oh, I do understand.” And, burying her face in his warm neck, she began to sob.

In the morning the last rites were chanted, the tents struck, and the remains of the feast buried. Masons stood waiting to fill in the doorway that seemed to exhale a cold loneliness into the sparkling air. “Amunmose will see that the seals are attached when the men have finished,” Ahmose said to a quiet Aahmes-nefertari. “It is over and we must go on. The boats are waiting to take us back to the house and there is much to do. How did Behek get here?” He gave a sharp order to a guard standing nearby and, with a last glance at the stubby pyramid rearing solidly against the clear blue of the sky, Aahmes-nefertari got onto her litter and pulled the curtains closed.

Ahmose disappeared in the direction of the temple once they had gained the eastern bank, and the women also separated to their several quarters. To Aahmes-nefertari the house seemed cleansed, empty of all the currents of emotion that had swirled invisibly along its corridors, and she was immediately exhausted. Going to her couch, she closed her eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

In the evening she was summoned to her mother’s rooms, where Ahmose already sat drinking water while he talked with Aahotep. He rose to greet her with a kiss. “You look better,” he said, eyeing her critically. “Kamose has gone now. His heart has been weighed and he has left the Judgement Hall to take his place in the Holy Barque with our ancestors. Can’t you feel it?”

“Yes,” she answered, coming forward with a short bow to her mother. “That is why the house feels so … so scoured.” She wrinkled her nose at the force, the appropriateness of the word. “I am sorry for Ramose. He still must accompany Nefer-Sakharu to Khemmenu and endure her funeral. Did he return, Ahmose?” He waved her to the stool before Aahotep’s cosmetics table.

“Yes. Nefer-Sakharu’s beautification is complete, but I cannot release Ramose for a couple of days. Tomorrow is the last day of Pharmuthi. On the first day of Pakhons, which is also of course the first of Shemu, I have planned a great ceremony in the temple and Ramose must be here for it. I cannot be crowned King,” he went on heavily. “The atef-crown and the Double Crown are in Het-Uart. But I intend to declare myself King of Upper and Lower Egypt with every solemn rite of purification and acclamation and to date the Anniversary of my Appearing from the first day of summer. It is entirely appropriate.” He grinned suddenly. “Every Weset notable, every new military officer, every official, will be called upon to swear allegiance to me, including Ramose. Then he can go. As I travel north with the army, I will require the same act of loyalty from the governors of the nomes and the sons of those who betrayed Kamose, and from the navy. You, my dearest, will sit beside me in the temple as my Queen and will also receive the homage of those who owe it.” He reached over to stroke her cheek. “Make sure that Raa dresses Ahmose-onkh as sumptuously as possible. He can stand between us, a visible Hawk-in-the-Nest. This must be a ritual with all the pomp and magnificence we can muster. We need a show of power.”

He sobered and turned to his mother. “Aahotep, I want you to wear as much jewellery and glitter as you like but your garment must be the sheath you were wearing when you slew Meketra. I know that you have kept it.”

“Ahmose!” she cried out in shock. “No! Never! Quite apart from the fact that it is stiff and encrusted with old blood and probably smells, I could not bear its touch against my body!” He leaned towards her, elbows on his knees.

“I want them all to see the triumph of the Taos. I want them to ponder our victory in the midst of all the incense and dancing and ritual, a victory won not with fine words and harmless gestures but with knives and blood. I want our strength to be before their eyes during all the hours in the temple. Disloyalty brings death. That is what I want them to finally understand.”