An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) (42 page)

Read An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) Online

Authors: Paul Doherty

‘Rahimere,’ Shishnak stuttered.
‘He’s already dead from fright.’
‘Or poison,’ Nefertiti said coquettishly.
‘And God’s Father Hotep?’ I asked.
Shishnak nodded. ‘Always Hotep,’ he sighed. ‘From the very beginning it was always Hotep.’
Nefertiti herself brought the cup. She squatted on cushions and, head to one side, watched Shishnak intently as he drank the poisoned wine. Akhenaten lounged in his thronelike chair, one finger to his mouth, the other beating a tattoo on his arm as if measuring the music of his orchestra. Ay composed a poem, ‘The Death of Amun’. I walked away. Eventually, Shishnak ceased his death groans. Akhenaten stood over the corpse.
‘Nakhtimin!’ he shouted.
The new Chief of the Army of the Palace hurried in.
‘Burn this.’ Akhenaten kicked the corpse.
‘I thought …’
‘You thought wrong, Mahu. I think right.’
The following afternoon I visited Hotep. I found him in his luxurious, well-laid out garden, sitting on a high-backed cushioned chair, positioned to catch both the sun as well as the welcome shade of an overhanging sycamore tree. Dressed in an elegant robe, head and face shaved and oiled, he was staring out across the flowerbed, a goblet of wine on the table before him. A cowed servant had ushered me in, explaining in a frightened whisper how everyone else had fled.
‘The mercenaries protecting me are courteous.’ Hotep didn’t even glance up as I approached. ‘I recognised the Captain. We once served together in Kush. He has been very kind, Mahu, but very firm. He was to protect me. I was not to leave.’ Hotep gestured at the cushions piled on the other side of the table. ‘But I didn’t want to leave, Baboon of the South. Well’ – his smile widened – ‘what do you bring me, life or death?’
‘Death.’
‘I thought so.’
‘But a merciful one.’
‘Pharaoh can remove the breath from a man’s nostrils and mouth,’ Hotep declared, ‘but he cannot direct a man’s soul.’ He lifted a hand. ‘Listen, Mahu. There is nothing more soothing than the love call of a dove. I am going to miss all this.’
‘You were expecting me?’
‘I heard about Shishnak. My servants were allowed down into the marketplace. Poor Shishnak,’ he sighed, ‘such a fool. What a dreadful mistake he made. I knew we were finished.’
‘Mistake?’ I asked.
‘The Libyans.’ Hotep sipped at the wine. ‘It was his idea. Oh, don’t worry, I went along with it though I considered it a mistake then, and I still do.’
‘So why did you continue?’
‘Sit down, Mahu, and I’ll tell you.’
He waited until I was comfortable and offered me some wine. I refused.
‘The Grotesque should have been strangled at birth.’ Hotep leaned forward, cradling the cup. He spoke, head to one side, as if talking to himself. ‘No, more than that! The Magnificent One should never have married that Sheshnu bitch, Tiye, her head full of visions, her mouth babbling dreams about an invisible, all-seeing god.’ Hotep sighed. ‘But the Magnificent One always had his heart between his legs. In her youth, Mahu, Tiye was more resplendent than the sun! She was truly beautiful, most skilled in the art of lovemaking.’ He grinned at me. ‘The Magnificent One himself told me that.’ He paused and leaned back in the chair. ‘I was the Magnificent One’s friend. True scribe, Chief Architect. I built temples, magnificent palaces the length of the Nile but Tiye was always whispering in his ear. The Magnificent One did not understand her idea of a universal god, so she fastened on the Aten, the Sun Disc as its manifestation. She also talked about the Messiah, a Prince who would come and change all things. The Magnificent One laughed. Then Crown Prince Tuthmosis was born: comely, a fitting Prince for Egypt, followed by the Grotesque. The priests, with their soothsayers, horoscopes, predictions and prophecies, wanted him dead.’
‘But you didn’t believe those?’
‘No, I didn’t. What concerned me was that Tiye saw the Grotesque as the Chosen One. The Magnificent One wanted him dead. Tiye pleaded for his life. I knew what the wily bitch would do. She kept the Grotesque out of sight, raised in Heliopolis where his cunning little heart was filled with teachings about the Invisible One, the Aten, and how he was the Aten’s Holy One. Years later, Tiye tripped into the Divine One’s bedchamber with a new scheme. The Grotesque was growing up. Why couldn’t he join certain, selected children of the Kap? I put an end to that nonsense. I had him shut up in the pavilion, guarded by men as grotesque as himself.’
‘You tried to kill him?’
‘Of course I did – poisoned wines, poisoned foods, that fanatic down by the quayside. All my work. Then he joined the army on the Kushite campaign. Tiye was insistent that he join the children of the Kap, that he see military service.’
‘You sacrificed Colonel Perra, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did. I bribed the Kushite chieftains with silver. They were to butcher Perra and attack his camp. In one blow I’d rid the world of the Grotesque’ – he raised his cup – ‘as well as the other children of the Kap.’ He shifted the cup to one hand and pointed at me. ‘I was already growing concerned about you, Mahu. More importantly, I half believed the ranting of the priests. The Grotesque’s life seemed to be charmed.’
‘Sobeck?’
‘Ah yes, Sobeck. Imri had been suborned. He was a killer. He murdered Weni for mocking a royal prince.’ Hotep chuckled. ‘I can laugh at the Grotesque, but a fat creature like Weni? Imri was also the one that arranged the poisoned wine and the vipers in the basket. His apparent carelessness allowed that assassin on the quayside to approach. Your Aunt Isithia learned about Sobeck’s dalliance and Imri supplied the evidence. I hoped to implicate all the children of the Kap, but I couldn’t. Tell me, has Sobeck truly survived? I have spies in the city but they are not very good …’
I simply stared back.
‘Ah well.’ Hotep sipped the wine. ‘That’s when the priests of Karnak decided to intervene. Shishnak never forgave the Grotesque for singing that hymn to the Aten. He saw it as an act of defiance. Well, the rest you know. I made a number of mistakes. I didn’t plan for the Magnificent One to become so absorbed in his own daughter or having his wine laced with poppy juice. I have always underestimated Queen Tiye and the children of the Kap, particularly you, Mahu.’
‘Why do you hate my master?’
‘I don’t hate him at all,’ Hotep replied, ‘only what he stands for. Egypt is unified, mistress of a great empire – and do you know why, Mahu? Because everybody can have their own god. They are allowed to walk their own path. People like myself, a mere commoner, can rise to the height of greatness. The gods of Egypt protect me. Tell me, Mahu, what is going to happen when all of Egypt is told there is only one god and no other? That the god of the Egyptians is also the god of the Mitanni, the Hittites, the Libyans, the vile Asiastics, the Kushites? More importantly, what happens when people
don’t
accept that?’
‘I don’t,’ I retorted.
‘No, Mahu, you don’t, but you’re just as dangerous. In your eyes Akhenaten is a god and must be served.’
‘You know his secret name?’
‘It’s no more secret,’ Hotep laughed, ‘than the price of corn in the marketplace. Think, Mahu, today Amun-Ra, tomorrow Osiris, the next day Isis. Judgement meted out to all the gods of Egypt, dismissed as idols! Pieces of clay and stone to be smashed! What will comfort the people then? What hope do they have of an afterlife in an Egypt with one god, bereft of all her statues and idols? No more temples, no Necropolis. Do you think people will accept that?’ he added softly. ‘Thousands of years of history being wiped out like a stain on the floor? There will be civil war within ten years. What then, about the power of Pharaoh and the might of Egypt? And in the end, Mahu, for what? An invisible god.’ He shook his head. ‘Yet in the end, we’ll arrive back to the beginning. Egypt will have a visible god, the only god, not some mysterious presence or unseen being, but Pharaoh Akhenaten.’
‘God’s Father, you should have been a prophet.’
‘Spare me your sarcasm, Mahu. Certain things are written for all to see. It’s just a matter of reading and studying them closely.’ He sipped at the wine. ‘You’ve been down to the House of Secrets.’
‘You removed certain records.’
‘No, Mahu, I
burned
certain records. Let me leave you with a thought. Your Aunt Isithia – well, she was a remarkable woman.’ He peered closely at me. ‘You arranged her death, the fire which destroyed her house. Oh don’t answer, I know you did. She was a singular woman who served her purpose, the handmaid of the God Amun-Ra’ – he grinned – ‘and a close friend of both myself and the Magnificent One.’ He lowered his head, clearly enjoying himself. ‘Your mother was also remarkable, Mahu. Have you ever wondered why your father was so distant from you? I’ll tell you bluntly. He often deserted her. Aunt Isithia used to bring her to court. She became very close to both myself and the Magnificent One.’
I sat against the cushions, face flushing, the blood pulsing through my head. ‘What are you saying?’ My mouth was dry, my tongue felt swollen.
‘What am I saying, Mahu? I am quoting the old adage, “it’s a wise man who knows his own father”.’ He smiled at me.
I grasped my dagger, but let my hands fall away.
‘You will not be a martyr, God’s Father Hotep, struck down in your garden by Akhenaten’s assassin – that’s how you would like it to read.’ I controlled my fury. ‘What does it matter where we come from, who is our father or our mother or where we are going?’
‘That’s what I like to hear, Mahu, the voice of the soothsayer. Tell me.’ He sipped from the wine cup and refilled it from a jug shaped in the form of a goose’s head. He mingled a little powder from a pouch next to the jug. ‘Tell me, Mahu, what will you do if Akhenaten turns against you?’
‘Why should he?’
‘It could happen.’ Hotep stirred the wine with his finger. ‘He’ll have his head now, Mahu. There will be no one to stop him, not for the present but,’ Hotep’s eyes creased into a smile, ‘I have done what I can for the future.’ He picked up the wine cup, toasted me and drank deeply. ‘Please go outside for a while, then return. You’ll find I am gone. The Great House can publish how I died peacefully in my sleep. Go on, Mahu, get out!’
I rose.
‘Mahu! I am sorry – I mean about your mother, yet I have told you the truth. I made two mistakes about you. I should never have left you in the hands of that hideous woman Isithia. I wouldn’t have put her in charge of a dog.’ He grinned. ‘But, there again, you know all about that.’
‘And the second mistake?’
‘I truly underestimated you, Mahu, and so has Akhenaten!’ He raised his cup in one final toast. ‘I’ll be waiting for you in the Halls of the Underworld!’
Chapter 16
All glory to the power of the Aten.
All glory to he who existed before time and sustains all time!
A thousand upon thousand jubilees to his glorious reign.
All power to the Aten, the One, the Indivisible.
Such songs rang through Thebes: all along its avenues, narrow twisting streets and across the broad, seething river into the Necropolis. The paean echoed around the tombs of the dead and up beyond the great brooding peak where the Goddess Meretseger had her home. The song of the Aten was everywhere. On shopfronts, on stalls, carved on the pylons and temples, displayed on their banners and pennants. Akhenaten had come into his own. He had broken with convention and, dressed in all the glorious war regalia of Pharaoh, processed solemnly through the city. Nefertiti, in the chariot beside him, received the plaudits of the crowd. There was none of the usual pomp, the clashing of cymbals, the rattling of sistra, the clouds of incense or the songs of the Divine choirs. No priest went before him. Only Akhenaten in all his magnificent glory, Master of Thebes, Ruler of Egypt, against whom no one dared raise a hand. The news of Hotep’s death and the disappearance of Shishnak were warning enough. Akhenaten, together with Ay, ensured that every vacancy, every position of power in both the Great House and the temples were held by their friends and allies.

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