The Sleeper in the Sands (42 page)

It was the very next day that King Akh-en-Aten was visited by his mother, who reported how her three lions had all fallen ill. These beasts had been found in the trees of her garden, draped upon the boughs and perfectly tame, upon the day of the arrival of Queen Nefer-titi. Where they had come from was a mystery; but Queen Tyi, enraptured, had adopted them straightaway. King Akh-en-Aten too, in memory of his childhood, had come to love them deeply, and so the news of their sickness filled him with distress. He ordered his physicians to tend to the lions, but in vain, for the next day they seemed even more ill, and dangerously weak as though emptied of their blood. Then the next day they could barely raise their heads up from the ground, and Tyi came to her son and spoke to him in private. She claimed to have seen, at the darkest hour of night, while gazing from the window of her chamber, the figure of a woman gliding through the shadows, unearthly and strange like a breath of gold upon the breeze. Tyi had found herself utterly frozen, even as she watched the woman lie beside the lions, petting them, and then draining them, each in turn, of their blood. ‘And when she had finished her meal,’ Tyi continued, ‘she raised up her head, and I glimpsed her face, and I saw, O my son -- I saw it was the Queen!’

King Akh-en-Aten gazed at her in astonishment, and then in anger, as he realised that his mother was speaking in earnest. ‘Why are you telling me this lie?’ he cried out bitterly.

‘I tell you,’ she answered, ‘it is not a lie, but the truth.’

‘How can it be?’ King Akh-en-Aten exclaimed. ‘You know full well, it was only upon the Queen’s arrival in this city that the lions appeared at all. How can she be guilty of their sickness, when everywhere, like the sun, she grants the blessings of life? Look upon yourself, O mother!’ He seized a mirror, and raised it to her face. ‘You no longer bathe in blood, yet your face has stayed the same. You no longer drink your potions, yet you seem unwithered by your years. How can that have been achieved, save by the powers of the Queen?’

Tyi stared at the reflection of herself within the glass. ‘I do not know,’ she answered, finally lowering her gaze. ‘And yet . . .’ -- she shrugged despairingly -- ‘I can be certain of what I saw.’

But the King, in a rage, refused to listen to his mother any more, and the next day, when she brought him the news of the lions’ deaths, he could barely bring himself to show regret. His mother gazed at him with bitter reproach. ‘When you were young,’ she said, ‘you would have suffered a terrible grief over this.’

But King Akh-en-Aten shook his head. ‘All is changed,’ he replied. ‘Not even the keenest grief can pierce my heart now. Whatever I lose, still I have my Queen, who is more precious to me than all this wide world.’ And so saying he turned and left his mother behind, and searched out his Queen, and held her fast in his arms. She smiled at him, and this time she did meet his kiss; and all was calm for the following year.

But then it happened that Ay came to him, to say that his wife -- Kiya’s mother, the Lady Tiya - had fallen sick. King Akh-en-Aten ordered his finest physician to her side; but again, as with the lions, every effort seemed in vain, for as each day passed so the Lady Tiya grew weaker and more pale, as though she were being drained of all her blood. Then Ay came to his nephew and spoke to him in private, and said how he had seen a shadow bending low across his wife, drinking from wounds to the Lady Tiya’s chest; and that when this shadow had raised its head, he had seemed to recognise the face of the Queen. King Akh-en-Aten was immediately thrown into a rage, and accused his uncle of having drunken dreams; but Ay answered him, in a towering fury of his own, by saying that the wounds could still be seen across the Lady Tiya’s breasts.

But the King refused to listen any more, and the next day, when Ay brought him the news of the Lady Tiya’s death, his sorrow seemed strangely distanced and dulled. Ay frowned, his honest face furrowed in puzzlement. ‘When you were young,’ he said, ‘you would have suffered a terrible grief over this.’

But King Akh-en-Aten shook his head. ‘All is changed,’ he replied. ‘Not even the keenest grief can pierce my heart now. Whatever I lose, still I have my Queen, who is more precious to me than all this wide world.’ And so saying, he turned and left his uncle behind, and searched out his Queen and held her fast in his arms. She smiled at him, and met his kiss; and all was calm for the following year.

But then it happened that Kiya, whom King Akh-en-Aten - with the encouragement of the Queen -- had banished to the Royal Harim, came to him with the news that his youngest daughter was sick. The King gazed at Kiya with doubt and suspicion, for since the coming of Nefer-titi, he had not been able to endure the sight of his former Queen; but then he agreed to accompany her to his daughter’s bed. The little girl was shivering, very pale and weak; and when Kiya lifted the coverlet from her chest, King Akh-en-Aten saw there were delicate scars in a pattern across her chest. ‘My father,’ Kiya whispered, ‘when my mother, the Lady Tiya, fell sick, discovered the same strange marks upon her. I know that he told you of them, and what he suspected the cause of them to be. So when I heard of your daughter’s sickness, I resolved that I would come to you myself.’

Still King Akh-en-Aten gazed down at his softly moaning child and did not choose to meet with Kiya’s eye. ‘See that she wants for nothing,’ he said at last. He stooped and kissed his daughter on her brow, feeling how her skin seemed to prickle and burn, and then he turned and left her to seek out the Queen. But when he found her he discovered that all his questions were silenced, and he could do nothing but melt into the softness of her kisses. He said nothing to her of their daughter’s sickness; and the next day it was reported how their child had died in the night.

Once again, it was Kiya who brought King Akh-en-Aten the news. She reached out nervously to touch him on the arm; but he flinched, and stepped violently away from her, and still he refused to look into her eyes but ordered her to go. She remained though, frozen and numbed, where she stood. ‘Your daughter is dead,’ she told him once again. She waited for his reply, but still there came no answer. ‘When you were young,’ she continued at last, ‘you would have suffered a terrible grief over this.’

But King Akh-en-Aten shook his head. ‘All is changed,’ he replied. ‘Not even the keenest grief can pierce my heart now. Whatever I lose, still I have my Queen, who is more precious to me than all this wide world.’ But when Kiya had left him, he raised his eyes up to the sun and felt a great wave of sorrow, intermingled with doubt. ‘So this is death,’ he thought to himself, ‘for which I have prayed so hard and so long. Yet now that I have it - yes, and all my children too -it fills me with horror, and its shadow seems to shade even the rays of the sun.’ Then he ordered a tomb to be prepared for his daughter, and he buried her there, he and his Queen together; and as he did so it struck him how he too would one day now pass away, and so he ordered a tomb to be prepared for himself, high in a ravine which lay beyond the plain. Upon its walls he commanded images of the Aten to be painted, its rays bestowing blessings of comfort and light; but upon one of the walls he ordered that the funeral of his daughter be represented -- her body laid out in state, with himself and all his family prostrated by their mourning, bowing before her as though it were to Death.

And then it happened that Kiya came to King Akh-en-Aten once again, with the news that another of his daughters had fallen sick, and that she too had strange scars running up and down her chest. Now at last the King did raise his eyes to meet Kiya’s; and he felt soaring up within him, what he had long sought to repress, doubts and imaginings too terrible to utter. Yet Kiya, not needing to hear them spoken, took him by his arm and led him to his daughter, so that he could see for himself the evidence of the wounds. Then she led him into a neighbouring room, for the shadows of evening were starting to lengthen, and the two of them sat there concealed behind a curtain. Dusk grew into night, the long hours passed, and still the sick girl lay undisturbed. But then at last, upon the distant howling of a jackal, King Akh-en-Aten felt a sudden gale blowing through the room, so that the curtain before him was ripped down from its hangings and he saw, bending low across his daughter’s bed, a shadow which was formed, so it seemed, from streaks of flowing gold. This shadow was drinking from his daughter’s chest; and yet the King found that he could neither move nor speak. Then at last, when his daughter lay bled utterly white, the shadow shimmered to its feet and turned to meet his eye. Still, for a second more King Akh-en-Aten sat frozen in silence; and then he cried out in wordless fury and disbelief.

The Queen smiled at him. Her cheeks seemed flushed, her lips very red. She glided across to him, and reached out to touch his cheek. ‘O my beloved,’ she whispered, ‘do you not love me more than all the world?’

For a moment, such seemed the weight of pain upon his chest that King Akh-en-Aten discovered that again he could neither move nor speak. ‘Love you?’ he whispered at last. He gazed down at the corpse of his second daughter. ‘Love you?’ he repeated. Suddenly, he laughed.

But the smile upon the Queen’s lips had at once begun to fade. ‘So you have chosen,’ she whispered; and King Akh-en-Aten glimpsed in her eyes that terrifying loneliness which he had seen once before -- as deep and eternal, so it seemed, as the skies. She raised her hand before him and, with a single graceful movement, she drew the ring from her finger, then turned and flung it from the room into the night. Upon the same gesture, she too seemed to rise and fade away, melting upon the darkness, so that only her voice still lingered in the air. ‘Farewell, O my Husband. Forever, farewell.’ Then that too seemed to fade into the darkness of the night, and all in the room was silence once again.

King Akh-en-Aten turned to Kiya. ‘How I have wronged you,’ he whispered. He met her lips. ‘And how I have missed you, O my love. For it was as though a mist had been cast across my eyes.’ He kissed her again. So urgently did he seize her, so tightly did he grip her, that she stumbled and half-sobbed, and sought to break away. ‘Your daughter . . .’ she cried out; but the King silenced her, crushing her lips beneath his own. He could feel the whipping of the flames through his limbs once again, the scorching fire such as he had not experienced since the coming of Queen Nefer-titi; and his desire seemed so violent that it felt like a pain. Kiya stumbled again as he began to thrust against her, and he fell with her this time - down upon the bed, down upon the body of his daughter; but still he felt the fire. He closed his eyes. . . the flames were reaching upwards and with a shriek, he imagined them beating against the sky; then he opened his eyes and saw his dead daughter’s face.

When he gazed down at Kiya, her eyes seemed like glass and her face, like his daughter’s, appeared bled utterly white. ‘What have I done?’ he whispered. ‘I felt ... I felt . . .’ His voice trailed away. He struggled to think of some words of regret. But then, even as he opened his mouth to speak them, he heard from far-off a second shriek -- so piercing, so shrill with disgust and despair that both he and Kiya were utterly frozen by it; and then the scream rose again.

King Akh-en-Aten ran from the room to discover what the source of the horror might be. ‘No! No, no, no!’ The cries, he realised now, were coming from the quarters of his mother, Queen Tyi, and even as he ran towards them he heard her voice start to choke and become submerged beneath sobbing. There was a sudden crash, like that of a pot being smashed, and then a second, and when the King entered his mother’s room he saw her, with her back to him, her shoulders heaving, hurling her jewels and pots of paint upon the floor. ‘Mother!’ he cried out. At once she froze. ‘What is it?’ he demanded. Still she did not move. He crossed to her, reached out to touch her shoulder; and as he did so he saw how withered it appeared, knotted and twisted like the wood of desert scrub. Slowly she turned to face him; and the King, as he gazed at her, could not repress a shudder.

All her youth had vanished, for she seemed as dry and shrivelled as an ancient monkey, and yet that was not the worst, for the taint of her blood had now claimed her utterly, and she appeared more like the statue which King Akh-en-Aten had destroyed, the loathsome image of Isis in the temple, than the mortal woman whom she had seemed the day before. Then suddenly the King felt an even deeper sense of horror, for he understood that the magic of his Queen’s protecting hand - which he had imagined had redeemed him for ever from his blood -- was now removed, and that everything was plunged back to its former state. And then he thought of Kiya, and of how he had done what he had always sworn he would never do -- he had fertilised her womb with the poison of his seed. He realised that he was praying that the child would be stillborn.

But this did not come to pass. A son was born, and he was named Tut-ankh-Aten, which meant in the ancient language, ‘the Living Image of the Sun’. And so King Akh-en-Aten trusted he would be, for as yet there was no sign that his blood might be cursed, nor any mark of change upon Smenkh-ka-Re. ‘It may be, then,’ the King thought to himself, ‘that I am still the last of my tainted line’; but in his heart he dreaded that all his prayers would be in vain, and that the power of Amen would triumph in the end. Already, in the city where before he had dwelt in such joy, the sands were skimming in from the plain, choking the flowers, clogging the pools, giving to the winds a lash of fiery dust. Then the Nile failed to rise and the crops began to die, so that all the former plenty was soon reduced to bone; while from far-off frontiers there came rumours of war.

Still King Akh-en-Aten prayed; but even as he did so, it seemed to him that the rays of the sun had grown pitiless and cruel, shrivelling the corn, scorching the fleshless bodies of the cattle, poisoning his city with heat, and stench, and dust.

Plague began to spread through the dying streets; and when it reached the Palace, it bore Kiya from King Akh-en-Aten’s arms, swept her away into that darkness where he feared he would never now follow. And so he mourned her for herself, for her beauty and her kindness, and her great love for him which had survived all his cruelty; but even more he mourned for himself. For with Kiya gone, so his past also seemed to have fled, and his memory of it to be like a pool turned into mud.