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Authors: Paul Doherty

An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) (46 page)

BOOK: An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries)
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Djarka and I became magistrates rather than police, adjudicating on a wide range of civil matters, domestic disputes and property rights. I grew to enjoy entering other people’s lives, savouring the very ordinariness and yet intrigued by their complex relationships, their virtues and vices. Sometimes, to get away, we’d take Karnak out into the Red Lands. We’d choose the bed of a valley or wadi where moisture encouraged the growth of sparse grass and whose deep sides would prevent flight to right or left then, we’d set up two nets halfway down the valley with food and water placed between. The animals would slip through the first net, in which gaps had been deliberately left and, whistling up Karnak, we’d spring the trap. I enjoyed the hunt, a welcome break from the etiquette and protocol of Akhenaten’s court.
At the end of the ninth year of Akhenaten’s reign, just after what Rameses sarcastically termed ‘the beating of the buttocks’, Djarka fell in love with a beautiful girl called Nekmet, the only daughter of a very wealthy cook who had opened his own luxurious eating-house in the southern suburbs of the city.
I’ll tell the story of how it happened. Nekmet must have been about twenty summers old. Her father Makhre had worked in both Memphis and Thebes, gaining a reputation as a chef who, in the words of Djarka ‘could make the plainest bread taste sweet’. Naturally I became a guest in Makhre’s house, Djarka sitting alongside me, all hungry for the lustrous-eyed Nekmet rather than the dishes her father’s servants would bring. Makhre nursed a great ambition to work in the palace kitchens, so I arranged that. Akhenaten was delighted: Makhre was summoned into the royal presence and rewarded with pots of perfume, a gold necklace and bangle. Djarka spent more and more time with his daughter. I was sad yet happy. If Djarka married, I realised how much I would miss him. The man had become part of me, he’d tried to fill the empty spaces in my soul. I often wondered if I should follow suit, marry some pleasant girl and settle down. True, I had my fair share of lady friends except that, when I lay in the dark and the oil lamps glowed, I’d only see Nefertiti’s face, view her body, smell her scent. No, I had been conceived in pain, born in mistrust and lived loveless as a child. My sins are always before me. I have killed, I have lied, I have betrayed – but one sin I shall not, cannot, commit: I will not look at another person and say ‘I love you’ and know full well it is a lie. So, instead, I went back to my watching and listening, playing the judge, attending the court, mumbling the prayers and singing the hymns and, whenever possible, going out into the Red Lands.
By the spring of year ten of Akhenaten’s reign, the other children of the Kap joined me on such occasions and, the more we went out, the less we hunted. Instead we’d gather at some distant oasis, cook food, and drink wine; Horemheb and Rameses, Huy, Pentju, myself and even Maya, even though he complained how the dust stained his robes whilst the heat made his face-paint run. The only absentee was Meryre. Our High Priest was now caught up in his own holiness, lost in the vision of the Aten, Akhenaten’s dog, constantly at his feet, ever ready to serve and please. We didn’t want him there because we recognised the true reason we met. We were conspirators without a conspiracy, traitors not yet guilty of treason, grumblers who could do nothing about our grievances.
One auspicious day in that same spring, we were all gathered at the oasis, exhausted after a short hunt. Maya had mysteriously disappeared from the City of Aten two days previously. Speculation was rife on his whereabouts, though Maya was often absent, travelling to Thebes to check the granaries and treasure-houses of the temple. We’d lit a fire. Horemheb had gutted the quails and Rameses was roasting them over the fire. We sat around sipping the wine and chatting about our early days in the Kap. On that particular occasion Djarka was with us, serving as our guard; it was he who raised the alarm. We went to the edge of the oasis and glanced out through the heat haze. A cloud of dust appeared.
‘Chariots,’ Horemheb declared.
Djarka ran to collect his bow whilst we looked for our weapons. ‘No, it’s only one,’ he called out. We relaxed as the chariot became more visible and I glimpsed Maya standing, his resplendent robes fluttering in the breeze. I made out the leather helmet, baldric and kilt of his driver. The chariot came thundering on, hooves drumming the ground, the horses’ plumed heads rising and falling, the dust swirling out towards us. Sobeck, who had overcome his earlier difficulties, skilfully turned the horses round, executing those sensational zig-zag turnings which the professional charioteer loves so much before turning them back and reining them in only a few yards from our party. Maya climbed down, Sobeck followed. He grasped Maya’s hand and walked towards us, taking off his helmet. He grinned at the gasps. Horemheb was the first to recognise him. ‘I thought you were dead in the Red Lands,’ Rameses barked, glancing out of the corner of his eye at me, ‘though we had our suspicions.’
Sobeck took the gazelle skin of water I offered. He passed it first to Maya then wetted his own face and chest, before lifting it to his lips, gulping fiercely. He hadn’t changed much; his face was a little leaner, there were a few more scars on his chest and arms. Maya stood beside him, a dazzling smile on his face.
‘Well?’ Sobeck squinted up at the sun. ‘Am I friend or foe? Will you keep me in the sun like Akhenaten does his envoys or invite me into the shade for that delicious-smelling quail and a cup of wine?’
‘I could take your head!’ Rameses taunted. ‘There is still a reward on it.’
‘No, Rameses.’ Sobeck pushed the stopper back into the waterskin. ‘You could
try
to take my head, and you’d be dead within a heartbeat of doing so.’
‘I was only joking,’ Rameses sneered.
‘I was not.’ Sobeck threw the waterskin at him. ‘Well?’ He spread his hands. ‘Friend or foe?’
‘Always a friend.’ Horemheb walked forward to clasp Sobeck’s hand, the rest followed. When it was my turn, Sobeck pulled me close and kissed me on either cheek.
‘You do keep strange company, Mahu,’ he whispered. ‘I miss you in Thebes.’
His perfumed sweat tickled my nostrils. Then he turned to crack a joke with Djarka and examine his bow. We all settled down, squatting round the fire, sharing out the meat and wine.
‘I thought it best,’ Maya declared, picking like some young lady at his meat. ‘I thought it best if Sobeck – well, if we met him again. I have told him about Meryre.’
‘Once a holy man always a holy man,’ Sobeck commented.
For a while, we all reminisced about the House of Residence, the different scribes, the night Horemheb lost his dwarf. Sobeck mentioned Weni and offered a silent toast in which we all joined.
‘You know he was murdered, don’t you?’ Sobeck glanced at me. ‘You and I, Mahu, we know that Weni was murdered.’
‘I thought it was strange,’ Huy commented, ‘that an old soldier couldn’t take his drink and was drowned in a pool.’
‘Akhenaten killed him,’ Sobeck continued evenly, ‘probably with the blessing of his mother.’
‘Just as God’s Father Hotep tried to kill us all,’ I added.
‘What?’
I had not told the group about my earlier suspicions or Hotep’s final confession, but now I did so: Horemheb and Rameses corroborated certain parts of my story.
‘Well, well, well.’ Sobeck drained his wine cup and, grabbing the wineskin, refilled it.
‘Why have you come here, Sobeck?’ Rameses, of course, was the first to look for another reason. ‘You haven’t come to see our pretty faces and wish us well.’
‘And what are you doing?’ Horemheb asked.
Sobeck evaded the questions, loosely describing himself as a merchant with a finger in every dish: how he had come out at Maya’s insistence and wasn’t it good for the children of the Kap to be reunited? For a while he parried our questions and teased us back. When the meal was over he squatted more comfortably, sucking noisily on a slice of the melon.
‘Are you sure you can all be trusted?’ he asked.
‘If one of us was a traitor,’ Horemheb replied, ‘we’d know by now.’
‘There’s deep unease in Thebes,’ Sobeck continued.
‘We know that,’ Huy replied, ‘in Thebes, Memphis, Abydos, the Delta, not to mention war breaking out amongst our allies in Canaan. Hittites are massing troops along the border. They have realised Egypt is not as ardent as she formerly was in protecting her interests across Sinai.’
‘Well, there’s definitely unrest in Thebes,’ Sobeck declared, ‘and something else, too. Mahu, have you ever heard of the Sekhmets?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I replied, racking my memory. ‘They’ve committed a number of murders in Thebes and elsewhere. Professional assassins, their usual weapon is a knife or poison though they have been known to kill from afar with bow and arrow or arrange some suspicious accident. They always leave their mark.’ I lifted my hand. ‘A small amulet with the Lion-headed Sekhmet, the Devouress, the Destroyer.’
‘Well,’ Sobeck commented, picking up another slice of melon, ‘I have acquaintances in Thebes – how can I put it, men and women who would prefer not to meet Mahu and his police.’ He paused at the laughter. ‘They listen to the whispers and the gossip. Now, according to them, someone was looking for the Sekhmets. Apparently,’ he smiled at me, ‘and I tell the truth, somehow in Thebes a message can be left for this group of assassins.’
‘And someone has hired them?’ I asked. ‘But not for work in Thebes?’
‘Mahu, your genius always astounds me. According to the little I know, the Sekhmets, if they have been hired, are to do their bloody work in the City of the Aten.’ He sighed. ‘Which means two or possibly three things. Either they have marked down one of you, all of you – or someone else in the Royal Circle.’
‘Or they could just strike direct at the heart of the court,’ I declared. ‘Pharaoh himself and his Queen.’ I ignored Pentju’s muttered remarks.
‘But who has hired them?’ Rameses demanded. ‘Thebes, every city of Egypt, is full of assassins but they have to be hired.’
‘The priests of Amun,’ Sobeck replied, ‘don’t take too kindly to having their gods cast down, their treasuries plundered, their temples deserted.’
‘But why the Sekhmets?’ Rameses insisted.
‘They are successful,’ I grinned at Sobeck. ‘They are the sort of people you should take care of.’
‘They’re respectable.’ Sobeck sipped from his wine-cup. ‘People who, apparently, can move easily up and down the Nile, priests or merchants, envoys from some of the other kingdoms; they could be anybody.’
‘And you care for us so much,’ Rameses taunted, ‘that you have travelled all the way from Thebes just to tell us this?’
‘No, Rameses. I arrived at a military outpost last night.’
‘Where you have further acquaintances?’
‘That’s right, Horemheb. A number of army officers are guests at my table. How do you think I was able to ride that chariot?’
‘I thought your good friend Maya … ?’ Rameses’ words faltered at Sobeck’s cold, hard look.
‘I’ll tell you why I came here.’ Sobeck made himself more comfortable. ‘Maya has told me about your little trips out here to the desert. You should be more careful.’ He stared around. ‘Is this all the great warriors of the Children of the Kap can bring down, a few quail? Ay must be suspicious. An entire day out in the Red Lands to eat roasted meat – or to plot treason?’
‘Continue.’ I raised my hand to fend off Rameses’ retort.
‘You come out here to talk like all of Egypt’s talking. Some are already ahead of you, plotting what to do next. They call Akhenaten the Great Heretic, insane.’ He gestured at Horemheb. ‘You know they do! The staff officers, the military command. Hasn’t there been unrest amongst the garrison at Memphis?’
Horemheb bit back his reply.
‘I know what you talk about,’ Sobeck continued. ‘Each of you must lie in your beds at night and wonder what will happen next. Have you ever wondered what will
really
happen next? Have you ever speculated about what will happen if Akhenaten dies? He has no male heir, no Crown Prince. Do you think the generals of Egypt, the high priests, are going to allow this nonsense of the Aten to continue for ever and a day? Can’t you see the storm coming, Rameses? One day Akhenaten will go beyond his beloved far horizon. Many of Egypt wish he was there already and ask the gods to speed him on his way. Now tell me.’ Sobeck flicked the rim of his cup with his fingernail. ‘No one dares to raise a hand against the sacred flesh of Pharaoh. Well, at least not publicly, openly. However, Akhenaten may see himself as a god but one day he is going to die! How, we don’t know! The question you must ask yourselves is how long will those who supported him, who sat at table with him, survive?’
I watched Rameses’ face. He glanced quickly at Horemheb, a sharp furtive glance but it spoke eloquently. Both these ambitious soldiers had already discussed this. I could tell from the faces of the rest that it was also a matter close to their hearts.
‘Mahu?’ Horemheb prompted.
‘There are two problems,’ I replied slowly. ‘The first … well, the first is the immediate future: the protection of Akhenaten against the Sekhmets or anyone else.’
‘And the second?’ Rameses asked.
‘You know full well,’ I murmured, getting to my feet. I picked up my cloak and shook out the sand and dirt. ‘We must all start thinking about the future.’
BOOK: An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries)
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