Anton Gill: City of the Dead

‘Good,’ the king responded, brightening.

‘Who else will you take with you?’ asked Nehesy.

‘You will come, and the three best trackers, and with you, two more chariots. Put my men in them.’

‘Is that enough protection?’

‘It should be. I am not going after dangerous beasts.’

‘No,’ Nehesy hesitated. ‘I meant…’ He trailed off, not knowing how to finish.

Tutankhamun looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’

He spread his hands. ‘With a child on the way, your safety is important.’

The pharaoh considered. ‘Three chariots then. And my strongest men in them. We will not be away long.’

He left them, but he could not shake off irritation. The security arrangements cast a shadow over his enjoyment. Hunting was the one time he tried to forget he was a king, entrapped in the net of intrigue and duty which seemed to press closer on him with every day that passed. Irrational as he knew it was, he longed for once to go out into the desert alone, to shake off other people, and to pit himself against the forces of the wild.

He took the midday food with the queen alone, eating frugally and simply: some ful with salted curds and plain bread. Then they went to the bedchamber to sleep. She stroked him as they lay naked in the brown twilight behind the closed shutters of the room, and he responded to her, slipping an arm around her and pulling her to him, squeezing her narrow buttocks with his hand. Then he lay back and allowed her to mount him, as she liked to, and she rode him with sleepy gentleness for half an hour before he surged into her and she bent and clung to his neck, moaning. In the peace which followed, he forgot his other anxieties and yearnings – or at least, the fulfilment of lovemaking forced them to retreat to the far corners of his heart.

The body servants came for him at the tenth hour of day, as the sun was inclining steeply towards the cliffs of the valley on the opposite bank of the river, and they changed colour from ochre to red to black. Ankhsi rose with him and bathed him herself. He could feel her unhappiness like a wall between them, and it diminished his own anticipation of the hunt. After all, a part of his heart whispered to him, they were only going after ibex. But having made his decision he would not change his mind; and he was proud of his reputation as a keen and accomplished hunter. Still he could not shake off the power of her reproach, and he disliked the way she clung to him when they parted.

‘Have the gods spoken to you?’ He asked her softly, one eye on the body servants who stood near.

‘No.’

‘No warning?’

‘If there had been, I would tell you. You would not go.’

‘To whom have you prayed?’

‘To Hathor and Onuris.’To the Suckler of the King and the Huntsman. The same gods as the king had chosen. It was a good omen. Tutankhamun smiled, kissed his wife again, on the nose, eyes, ears and lips, and touched the lower gates of her body lightly with his hand.

‘May they keep you,’ he said.

‘May they keep you indeed,’ she returned, looking at him sadly.

As soon as he was away from her he felt relieved, the burden of her reproach lifted by her absence. The warm wind on his face as he rode into the desert rushed through his being and cleansed his heart. Under Sherybin’s control, the excited horses skimmed across the firm sand, and the king was free to scan the twilight landscape as it swept by like the sea.

They pitched camp at dusk, gathering round the fire to eat as the first watch was set. The tents were frail and vulnerable in the vastness of the desert, their linen sides flapping in a rough wind that eddied round, changing direction abruptly, whipping sand into their faces, and making shadows leap. In the silence that followed it, Tutankhamun listened hopefully for lions, but nothing came out of the darkness except the lonely bark of a distant jackal. Nehesy and Sherybin were men of his age, Sherybin younger, and he rejoiced in their company. If only the quarry were more exciting! He insisted that they retire before he did, and remained by the fire as it died, as alone as he ever would be, he thought, with only a guard and a body servant for company. He opened his heart to the great emptiness around him and let it take possession of him.

The following day the trackers, who had left before dawn to lope silently into the gloom to the east, returned to report a small herd of ibex – fifteen to twenty – in a cluster of low hills – no more than large rocks – half an hour’s ride ahead. The four chariots of the hunting group were harnessed to their teams and set off – the king and Sherybin in the lead, with Nehesy and his charioteer off to the right, and the two others riding to the left and rear. They were well spread out, to confuse the focus of their prey. Tutankhamun weighed a medium spear in his hand and suppressed the thought of lions.

Soon enough the rocks came into view, looming grey against the yellow of the desert. Years ago a small gold mine had been worked here, but now all that remained of it was a cave-like opening among the rocks, and the broken remains of water jars. They were not far off the main route from the Southern Capital to the port on the Eastern Sea from where the swift coasters departed for Punt, but the desolation of the desert covered them like a pall. The chariots fanned out and, the horses slowed to a trot, rode round the rocks at a distance. From the jagged grey shapes, softer ones began to detach themselves as the large, brown-grey animals raised their heads with the great swept-back horns to regard this intrusion with curiosity and caution.

The king exchanged his spear for a bow and arrow. Nodding to Sherybin, he steadied himself in the footstrap on the floor of the chariot and drew on his archer’s glove.

The hunt lasted all morning, but it was not a success. Three animals lay drawn up on the sand, but they were elderly, only having fallen prey to the archers because they had lost their nimbleness. There was no honour in their deaths, and the king had called off the pursuit in disgust. This was not the way to celebrate the arrival of his child. He returned moodily to camp. His humour was not improved by news from Sherybin that his chariot had a damaged axle, and that a new one would have to be brought from the capital; but he gave his charioteer permission to absent himself from the hunt for the second day in order to fetch the spare part. On that day he hunted with Nehesy, but the only living thing they saw were golden desert rats which popped up from their holes to gawp at them.

On the last day the king was awakened early by an excited Sherybin.

‘The trackers have brought news,’ said the charioteer, scarcely able to contain his enthusiasm.

‘Of what?’ The king squinted past him at the sky outside the tent. Could the trackers be back already?

‘Wild cattle,’ Sherybin told him in a triumphant whisper.

Tutankhamun’s heart leapt. If the news were true, then the omen had been good after all. Wild cattle! That would be a prize worthy of the great Tuthmosis himself. Only the pharaohs were allowed to hunt them, and if he could bring down a bull…!

His ambitions raced ahead of him.

‘Waken the others. We must set off immediately.’

Sherybin quietened him. For a moment they were two excited men, equals, eagerly discussing the merits of an important hunt. ‘No. Not the others. You know how nervous wild cattle are. If we go in a big group we might panic them and then they’d be gone before we could get one decent shot at them.’

‘But if we go alone we’ll have fewer chances of getting anything.’

‘More than a group would ever have. I know your shooting. You are the best in the Black Land.’

Tutankhamun had trained himself to bite the metal of flattery to see if it was good. But coming from so experienced a hunter and charioteer as Sherybin, this was to be taken as a compliment without question.