Anton Gill: City of the Dead

She had been married to a son of the Hittite king Selpel, but the marriage was annulled after the Hittites withdrew their friendship from the Black Land. Since then, she had lived in the palace at the City of the Horizon, and her affair with the sensitive picture painter, Auta, was an open secret mildly disapproved of by the king. With the collapse of the city, Tutankhamun had brought her back with him to the Southern Capital as part of his retinue – and, as he now remembered with another little stab of irritation, at Horemheb’s suggestion.

How deeply laid were the general’s plans? And how patient was he? The king could see immediately that a marriage to Nezemmut would strengthen a future claim to the throne by Horemheb. The girl would be preferable to any of Akhenaten’s surviving daughters – the younger ones were now at marrying age – because the stigma of being related by blood to the Great Criminal did not attach to her. As body servants brought water in a golden bowl and washed his face and arms, the king’s thoughts turned uneasily to his own connivance at the blacking of Akhenaten’s name. It had been necessary to underpin his own legitimacy as pharaoh; and of course the campaign had been planned, engineered and executed by Horemheb, riding roughshod over Ay’s weak objections at the vilification of his former son-in-law. At the time, Tutankhamun had believed that Horemheb was simply helping him; giving the line of succession the sort of boost it needed after so much chaos and uncertainty. Now, looking back, it seemed to the king that Horemheb had been helping himself. He appeared to be nothing but another one of the general’s tools. As long as he accepted that role he would be safe for as long as the general chose; but if he resisted…

Tutankhamun drew himself up. If he resisted, he had better be perfectly sure of success.

He watched the girl mixing make-up from a cake with water and a linen pad. She approached, avoiding eye contact, which was forbidden to all but the highest servants. He would have to lay plans even deeper than the general’s, and he would have to strike hard and accurately, and only when he was absolutely sure that the blow would be fatal. In the meantime, he would redouble his efforts to get a child. He would have Ankhsi secretly examined, and he would pray with her to Renenutet and Tawaret, Hathor and Bes. If there could be a boy child, he would show him to the army. He would assume command – his royal right – before Horemheb could object.

As the girl dabbed on the make-up, he sensed her breath on his cheek. He felt better. A glow began inside him, and he raised his head. He would permit this marriage to Nezemmut. It could always be broken off later, and if Horemheb had children they would die with their father as soon as the king was strong enough. His heart dwelt on that day and his thoughts were glad.

Everyone had something to gain, thought Ay as he watched his younger daughter take the hand of Horemheb and exchange vows with him. The usually simple ceremony had been blown up into a state occasion by the general, who had secured the king’s permission to hold it in the temple of Amun.

Ay was not sure about the young pharaoh’s recent acquiescence to Horemheb’s requests. He had been sure that Tutankhamun was on the point of rebelling against them, and had told Horemheb so during one of their infrequent meetings, following the hearing of the reports of the vizirs of the north and south. Horemheb had laughed at the idea, but Ay was left with the impression of being excluded, and since then had seen a scorpion under every stone.

He wrung his hands as he held them in front of him, and his heavy rings scraped against one another. The assembly stood in a long, pillared hall, the priests at one end by the naos, in white robes and multicoloured headdresses; the nobles were ranged along the sides and squeezed between the pillars. His gaze travelled upwards to the painted lotus flowers of their capitals. Ay read the inscriptions carved into them, and noticed where the names of the disgraced had been cut out. In some places he could see where his own name had been inserted, squeezed in to give credence to his lineage. He wondered how long his cartouches would stand. Everywhere he took care that he was represented as a young and vigorous man, and he promoted an image of himself as one whose personality and years combined strength with wisdom and experience. But he was fighting a losing battle against the patient, raw energy of Horemheb’s ambition, and he knew it.

He glanced across to the dais where the king and queen sat with their retinue, a splash of pale blues, golds and greens among the white robes and kilts most of the others wore. It was too far away for Ay to be able to see the king’s expression, but the proud, cold bearing of the body was scarcely expressive of joy.

As for the couple, whose voices rose to the high roof and rebounded back down to the throng from the massive stone cross-blocks and heavy cedar roof-planks, their faces betrayed little. Nezemmut might have been wearing a mask, and Horemheb’s huge, battered head bore such a network of deep wrinkles that no one expression could be deduced from their juxtaposition. The brown eyes shone within that tanned sea of crevices but knew how to keep their secrets, showing no more than alert and undiminished intelligence. Horemheb, it was said, could deal with five problems simultaneously in his heart.

The sun, descending on his journey west, suddenly slipped his light through the tall, narrow entrance of the temple and spread his wings within, darting rays here and there, dancing on the cream and red, blue and gold of the columns and walls. As if Ra himself had sent the signal, the musicians struck up the sistra and the clappers, cymbals and bells. The king turned his head towards the light and now Ay could clearly discern the hard line of his mouth. If Horemheb had noticed it too he gave no sign. Outside, the people were calling his name as well as the pharaoh’s. No one would deny what Horemheb had done for the Black Land, thought Ay; but perhaps there was also such a thing as too much gratitude.

Led by the king and his retinue, immediately succeeded by the newlyweds, the people in the temple filed out into the sunshine. It was still early in the season of shemu, and even at midday the heat was tolerable. Many of the noblewomen wore shawls of light wool over their pleated robes. The procession passed along the avenue which connected the temple to the main north-to-south axis road of the Southern Capital, where canopied litters awaited the greater among them. The music continued to play, and as the lesser guests arranged themselves in a loose order behind the litters for the walk to the palace compound and- the three-day feast which would begin in an hour’s time in the great shaded courtyard of Horemheb’s house, a murmur of conversation was added to the sound of the instruments. The crowd lining the route waved palm fronds and cheered, throwing boughs under the feet of the robust copper-coloured men in kilts of dazzling white linen trimmed with gold who carried the litters of the king and queen, Horemheb, Nezemmut, and Ay. Behind the litter of the general’s new wife danced her constant companions, the girl-dwarfs Para and Reneneh.

Amongst the protagonists of the celebration there was the least joy. Only a few perfunctory words had been exchanged between them as they entered their litters.

They would have to put on a better act than that at the feast, thought the former scribe, Huy, watching from a position near the front of the crowd. He saw the closed expressions of Horemheb and Nezemmut. Tutankhamun wore the impenetrable, ambivalent, mask-like look which he had developed during the last years of his adolescence. He might have been smiling inwardly, but there was no way you could be sure. His wife and Ay were the only ones whose faces could be read. Ankhsenpaamun looked worried. Ay seemed troubled, envious; but there was determination in the set of his thin-lipped, old man’s mouth. For a moment the eyes of the former scribe and the former Master of Horse, both veterans of the disgraced Akhenaten’s court, met. Was there a spark of recognition there, or was it just imagined? It was many years since they had last seen each other, and yet in the time that Huy had been back in the Southern Capital, forbidden to practise his former profession, he had built up a reputation as a problem solver. Aware of Horemheb’s dislike of less powerful fellow-adherents of the former regime, Huy had kept his head down, but could do nothing about the reputation he had won, due to which he was able to scrape a precarious living.