Anton Gill - City of the Dead

‘Where were the bodies?’

‘We had them both taken back to the palace. The charioteer was laid out in his quarters and the king was placed in the audience chamber. The first thing to do was summon doctors, and then tell the queen.’

Huy shifted in his chair. ‘Of course.’ It occurred to him that the queen’s isolation was not only to the advantage of Horemheb, but Ay’s as well. Ay had no son; but Huy had a shrewd idea that the limit of his ambition would not be reached by seeing his daughter Nezemmut as queen; and if Horemheb had recently lost a son, Ay had lost a grandson. Nezemmut could have more children. Ay could take a younger wife if he chose and try to father sons himself. Neither he nor Horemheb would want to run the risk of seeing Ankhsenpaamun give successful birth at last to a male child.

‘How is the queen?’ he asked.

‘Distraught,’ replied Ay.

‘What will happen to her?’

Ay looked surprised. ‘What should happen to her? She will remain in the palace. She carries the future pharaoh, perhaps.

The gods may even decree that if a girl-child is born she will reign as king. It has happened before.’

‘And in the meantime?’

Ay avoided looking at him. ‘That has yet to be discussed. We must ask the gods for guidance. I imagine… a new regency… as a temporary measure, for the stability of the country. Unlike Smenkhkare, the king died leaving no close relative to whom the crown may be given, except for the still-to-be-born in the queen’s birth-cave.’

‘How did the accident happen?’ asked Huy.

‘That I do not know. But I have seen the wounds. They are ghastly. The charioteer was almost cut in two by one of the wheels.’

‘And the king?’

‘He must have been thrown clear when the chariot capsized, and struck his head on a rock.’ Ay paused.

‘Those are the doctors’ conclusions?’

‘Yes. They are self-evident. And there is no reason, really, to suspect anything other than an accident – though what the pharaoh was doing out hunting alone with his charioteer is still a mystery. Still, there are no grounds for believing it was the fault of the rest of the hunting party, and so they have been spared death.’ Ay poured wine and drank it in hurried sips. Huy saw that his lower lip was moist and slack.

The former scribe paused in thought before speaking again. ‘What a tragedy this is,’ he said formally. ‘For the king’s family, and for the country.’

‘Indeed,’ replied Ay. ‘And the queen is left alone.’

Huy waited in the silence, wondering what was coming next; but the old man appeared to expect him to speak.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

Ay leant forward. ‘Despite all the evidence, I do not believe this was an accident. Too much is at stake. It reeks of coincidence. I want you to find out what really happened. I can fund you, and I can give you names; but I cannot help you more than that. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you do it?’

‘It will be difficult.’

Ay smiled. ‘I have not heard that difficulty deters you.’

‘Let me make plans, and then I will report to you.’

Ay waved a querulous hand. ‘I do not wish to know your plans, and your contact with me must remain secret. I will send my messenger to you when I consider it safe to do so. Everything you do you must do as discreetly as possible. I chose you because I trust Ipuky, and because despite your obvious worth you are little known in this city.’

‘What is your objective?’

Ay looked at him. ‘If you accept this job, I become your employer. My objective should not concern you. But you are an intelligent man and you will draw your own conclusions. Be sure that I will reward loyalty, Huy; just as certainly as I will punish betrayal.’

‘I will need access to the palace compound.’

‘I can arrange that. But you may not wear my livery. Nothing must connect you with me. I will have you attached to the palace as a house priest’s assistant. They will be preparing the king’s Book of the Dead for him to take to the tomb.’

‘What must I do? I cannot work as a scribe.’

‘I know that, Huy. You will probably have to do nothing. There are many servants in the palace in that position. The important thing is that the badge of office will get you past the guards.’

‘I will have to talk to the huntsman. I will have to see the chariot, and visit the place where the accident happened.’

All that is clear to me. How you do it, however, is your problem.’

Public events hurried the next days past, making it impossible for Huy to do more than lay outline plans and digest what he had been told. It was clear that he was about to wade in deeper water than he had ever entered before; and he trusted his paymaster no more than anyone else who might have been involved in the king’s death. If it had not been an accident… There was nothing yet to suggest that it had been anything else, and possibly only Ay’s devious mind would see intrigue where there was none.

When the death was announced, messengers on horseback – faster than river boats – were dispatched to the north and south to carry the news as far as the Delta and Meroe. The city prepared itself for the initial period of mourning which would last for the seventy days the embalmers took to prepare the body for the grave. In the meantime, many additional teams of workmen were exempted from mourning inactivity and sent to the valley to speed up the work on the king’s tomb, which would be by no means ready to receive him properly, as work on it had only been in progress since his accession nine years earlier, but which would have to fulfil its function as best it could. There were some who thought the haste with which this work was set in motion indecent, but as the orders were issued from the palace itself no one could criticise them openly.

Huy found the hurry interesting: Tutankhamun was, it appeared, going to get little of the dignity which was normally associated with the burial of a monarch. He watched as hastily from one quarter and another of the country the funeral offerings and furniture were gathered together under the quartermaster of the royal tombs. They were displayed on public view for a month before being consigned to the burial chamber. Huy went to look at them, and it grieved him to see what poor stuff it was. Some of the trappings had been lifted brazenly from Smenkhkare’s burial, and though the workmanship and the carving and the volume of precious metal and stone befitted a king, Huy, who, as a child, remembered watching the great entombment of Nebmare Amenophis, was sorry to see how dismissively the young pharaoh was being treated. He was certain that if it had been within her power, Tutankhamun’s widow would have taken steps to prevent such cut-price treatment.

Shabbily dressed, Huy crossed the River by one of the black ferry boats and visited the tomb builders. Most, caked with sweat and dust, were too busy to talk, but he recognised one overseer whose acquaintance he had made years earlier, and who remembered him.

‘Good day,’ said the man, looking at him. ‘It’s been years. You don’t look as if they have been kind.’

‘I manage.’

‘That’s just about what I’d call it, to look at you. Have a drink.’

They retired to the shelter of an awning made of an old tarpaulin stretched over driftwood stakes, and the overseer broke the clay seals off two jars of black beer he had resting in a water jug to keep them cool. They drank in silence, looking down over the scorching valley to the sluggish river below. The season was progressing. Perhaps some of the haste was due to the need to get the king buried before the flood came. Already, barely distinguishable, there were traces of the telltale red sand in the water.