The chamber was dreary, lit by the oil lamp she carried, and niches in the wall where cheap candles burned with an oily, smoky light, casting a dismal light on everything. Mutnodjmet, sister of Nefertiti, wife of Horemheb, was very thin; her sunless skin clung to her elegant bones, which were painfully obvious through the folds of her plain robe. Her skull was shaved. She wore no wig. Her shoulders were rounded. Her face, which carried the same high cheekbones as her sister’s but had none of its poise, was somehow inert, and her eyes would have been sorrowful were they not also apathetic. She was a hollow thing. She gave off a desperate, sad, unanswerable neediness. But I also knew I could not trust her in any way, for despite her lassitude, need was coiled inside her, like a cobra, poised.
A dwarf stood on either side of her. They wore good-quality, matching clothes and jewellery, and matching daggers, indicating they were of prestigious rank. This was not unusual, for many men of such stature and appearance had made their way into responsible positions within the royal courts of the past. Unusually, however, they were identical. They did not look happy to be disturbed.
Mutnodjmet continued to stare at me uncomprehendingly, her head lowered, her mouth slack. She seemed unable to make sense of who I might be, or what we might be doing there.
‘Why have you brought me nothing?’ she mewed, in a tone that was much deeper than disappointment.
‘What should I bring you?’ I asked.
She considered me with her dull eyes, suddenly yelled a remarkable set of abuses at me, then shuffled off into another chamber. The dwarfs continued to gaze at us, with unfriendly expressions on their faces. I assumed they knew how to use their daggers. Perhaps their small stature would give them an advantage; after all, I thought ruefully, plenty of damage can be inflicted below the waistline.
‘What are your names?’
They exchanged a brief look, as if to say: ‘Who is this idiot?’
Khay intervened.
‘We are here only briefly to visit the Princess.’
‘She receives no visitors,’ said one of the dwarfs in an unexpectedly resonant voice.
‘None?’ I asked.
‘Why do you want to see her?’ said the other one, in an identical voice.
It was like talking to two faces with one mind. There was something comical about it all.
I smiled.
They were not amused, and their little hands went to their daggers’ handles. Khay began to prevaricate, but he was interrupted.
‘Oh just let them in,’ she shrieked, from the other chamber. ‘I want company. Anything, to make a change from you two.’
We moved down the hallway, off which I noticed several more or less empty rooms for storage, and a cooking area equipped with shelves and storage pots and jars, and came to a larger salon. We sat on stools, while she reclined on a bed. The room was basic, and somehow underfurnished, as if she had inherited a few second-rate leftovers from the family mansion. She watched us with her jaded eyes, circled with excessive and inaccurately applied lines of kohl. She looked Khay over like a fish that had gone off.
‘I bring you Rahotep, Seeker of Mysteries. He insisted on meeting you.’
She looked down her nose at him, and giggled.
‘What a cold dish he is. I wouldn’t feed him to a cat…but you.’
She looked me directly in the eye.
I ignored her blatant cue. She cackled suddenly, her head thrown back like a melodramatic actor.
I continued to hold her gaze.
‘Oh. I see; the strong and silent type. Perfect.’
She tried to gaze back like a courtesan, but she faltered, giggled, and suddenly collapsed into hysterics.
Someone had supplied her recently enough. She was still in the happy phase. Soon that would fade, and she would be in the clutches of her grim need again. I felt excitement rising in my chest, like a wonderful panic, for here was the missing connection. But would she be capable of doing the things I thought she had done? Could she have placed the stone carving, the box containing the mask of animal remains, and the doll? She resided within the royal quarters, but her freedom of movement seemed no greater than that of an animal within a cage. Her rooms were sealed from the outside. Someone was controlling her; but who? Not her husband, at least not directly, because he was far away. It had to be someone who had regular access to the palace, and in particular to these chambers. Also, it had to be someone who could supply her. The answer was so tantalizing. Was whoever had killed the young people, also managing the Princess? One question at a time, and I might be able to prove the connection, slowly, carefully, precisely.
‘Who supplies you?’ I said.
‘With what?’ she said, her eyes glittering.
‘With the opium poppy.’
Khay was on his feet instantly.
‘This is an appalling breach of protocol, and a disgusting accusation.’
‘Sit down and shut up!’
He was deeply affronted.
‘You have your own addictions,’ I added, purely for my own vindictive pleasure. ‘Addiction to wine is no different to what she’s doing. You can’t live without it, and neither can she. What’s the difference?’
He huffed but found he had no reply to that.
‘That’s true,’ she said, quietly. ‘It’s all there is. I tried to refuse it. But in the end, life without it is disappointing. It’s just so boring. So-nothing.’
‘And yet here you are, living for it. And you look like you’re dead already.’
She nodded, sadly.
‘But when you have it inside you, everything feels like bliss.’
She seemed as far from a state of bliss as a woman in the jaws of a crocodile.
‘Who brings it to you?’ I asked.
She smiled enigmatically and approached me.
‘You’d like to know that, wouldn’t you? I can see right through you. You’re as desperate as I am. You need your answers, just like I need my drug. You know how it feels…’
She slid her cold hand down inside my robe. It did nothing for me, so I withdrew it, and returned it to its owner.
She rubbed her wrist, tenderly.
‘I’m not going to tell you anything now,’ she said, like a petulant child.
‘I’ll go, then,’ I said, and stood up.
‘No, don’t,’ she called out. ‘Don’t be cruel. Don’t abandon a poor girl.’
She mewed like a cat again.
I turned back.
‘I’ll stay with you for a little while. But only if you talk to me.’
She twisted her hips from side to side, like a seductive child. It was pathetic in a middle-aged woman. Then she patted the bench, and so I sat again.
‘Ask me anything.’
‘Just tell me who supplies the drug.’
‘No one.’
She cackled again, suddenly.
‘This is tiresome,’ I said.
‘It’s a little, private joke between him and I. He tells me he is no one. But he does not know I laugh because I see he has an empty face.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. Somehow his soul is missing. He is a hollow man.’
‘And how old is he? And how tall?’
‘He is middle-aged. He is your height.’
I looked at her. I sensed a new thread of connection running in my brain.
‘What is his name?’
‘He has no name. I call him “the Physician.”’
The Physician.
‘Tell me about his voice.’
‘It is not loud, but it is not too quiet. Not young, but not old. Not gentle, but not violent, either. It is a calm voice. There is a strange kindness in it, sometimes. A kind of gentleness.’
‘What about his hair?’
‘Grey. All grey,’ she sang.
‘And his eyes?’
‘Oh, his eyes. They are grey, too, or sometimes blue, or sometimes both. They are the only beautiful thing about him,’ she said.
‘What is beautiful about them?’
‘They see things others cannot see.’
I pondered that.
‘Tell me about the messages.’
‘No, I can’t,’ she said. ‘He would be angry with me. He will not visit me again if I betray the messages.’
I glanced at Khay, who was listening with amazement.
‘And when does he come?’
‘I never know. I have to wait. It is terrible, when I haven’t seen him for days and days.’
‘You fall ill?’
She nodded, pathetically, her chin drooping.
‘And then he arrives, and leaves me his gifts, and all is well again.’
‘When he leaves you these messages, they instruct you to do things for him. Am I right?’ I asked.
She nodded, reluctantly.
‘To take things, and leave them in certain places?’
She paused, nodded again, and leaned towards me, whispering noisily.
‘He allows me to walk the corridors and on occasion the gardens when no one is present. Usually it is night. I am locked up here for days and days. I go crazy with boredom. I get desperate to see the light, to see life. But he is very strict, and I have to return quickly, or he will not give me what I need; and he always reminds me I have to be very careful never to be seen, because then everyone would be so furious and there would be no more gifts…’
She looked at me, her eyes wide and innocent now.
‘Who would be angry?’
‘They would.’
‘Your family? Your husband?’
She nodded, miserably.
‘They treat me like an animal,’ she hissed.
‘Does no one else ever release you, and allow you some liberty?’
She hesitated for a moment, and glanced at me before she shook her head. So someone was taking pity on her. I thought I knew who that might be.
I watched her as she shifted nervously, her fingers endlessly unpicking an invisible tangle of thread.
‘So what is happening out in the wide world?’ she asked, as if she had suddenly remembered it was still there.
‘Nothing has changed,’ said Khay. ‘Everything remains the same.’
She looked at me.
‘I know he lies,’ she said, quietly.
‘I can’t tell you anything,’ I said.
‘I have a world in here.’ She tapped the side of her head lightly, as if it were a toy. ‘I have lived in it for a very long time now. My world is beautiful, and the children are happy, and people dance in the streets. Life is a party. No one grows old, and tears are unknown. There are flowers everywhere, and colours, and wonderful things. And love grows like fruit upon the vine.’
‘I suppose your husband is not in it, then.’
She looked up instantly, her eyes suddenly focused.
‘You have news of my husband? When did you see him?’
‘A few weeks ago, in Memphis.’
‘Memphis? What is he doing there? He has not seen me for so long. He has been away at the wars for years. That is what the Physician told me…’
She looked betrayed.
‘How does the Physician know about your husband?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. He gives me news. He told me my husband was a great man, and I should be proud of him. He said he would soon return, and everything would be different.’
I glanced at Khay at these ominous words.
‘But I fear my husband has never loved me as I loved him, and he never will. You see: he has no heart. And perhaps he even wishes me dead, now that I have served one purpose, and failed in the other. Human beings do not matter to him.’
‘What purpose have you failed?’ I asked.
She looked at me very directly.
‘I am barren. I have given him no heir. It is the curse of our line. And to punish me, look what he has done.’
She raised her hands to her pitiful skull. ‘He has made me mad. He has locked the demons in my head. One day I will dash my brains out on the walls, and it will all be over.’
I held Mutnodjmet’s hands in my own. The sleeve of her gown lifted a little, and revealed healed scars on her wrists. She wanted me to see them.
‘I am going to leave you now. If the Physician returns, perhaps you should not mention my visit. I would not want him to withdraw his gifts.’
She nodded, sincerely, and utterly unreliably.
‘Please, please, please come and visit me again,’ she said. ‘I might remember more things to tell you, if you came again.’
‘I promise I will try.’
She seemed satisfied with that.
She insisted on accompanying me to the door. The dwarfs reappeared, attending her like malevolent pets. She kept repeating ‘goodbye, goodbye’ over and over as I closed the door. I knew she was waiting on the other side, listening to the cords being tied on her living coffin.
We walked away in silence. Khay seemed quite sobered now.
‘I feel I owe you an apology,’ he said, at length.
‘Accepted,’ I replied.
We bowed to each other.
‘You must know the name of this Physician,’ I said.
His face fell with disappointment.
‘I wish I did. I knew, of course, that she was here, and why. I was given the responsibility of the practical aspects of her care. But the order came from Ay, perhaps in collaboration with Horemheb. This “Physician” would simply have been granted a pass to the royal quarters, and it would all have been done in secret. It all happened so long ago, and she was such an embarrassment, I suppose we all just forgot about her, and carried on with matters that seemed much more important. She was the dirty family secret, and we were all glad to get rid of her.’
‘But are you sure Ay is in charge of her circumstances?’
‘Yes, or at least he was at the start.’
I thought about that.
‘Is she right about Horemheb?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘Horemheb married her for power. He seduced her very effectively, but all he wanted was an entree into the royal family. He knew no one would want her for herself, and so she was a kind of bargain.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She was damaged goods, so to speak. She was always a bit strange. Even from her childhood she was troubled, hysterical. So she came cheap. The family were keen to see her put to some use, and the alliance to a rising military star seemed valuable at the time. He was obviously going somewhere. Why not keep the army within the family? And obviously he got a remarkable preferment out of it. The other side of the bargain was that as a member of the family, by the grace of the deal, he would agree to behave; to give her at least the public semblance of a married life, and to harness the army to the strategic business and international interests of the family. After all, under the terms of the deal, that would be in Horemheb’s own interests, too.’
‘And is that why Mutnodjmet still remains incarcerated within Malkata Palace? Why don’t they send her to her husband?’
‘They must have come to some mutually beneficial arrangement. She lost her mind. She became a liability to both parties. To Horemheb she became a horrible embarrassment; she is the price he paid for his ambition. She loves him, but she revolts him. He wants to be rid of her. To Ay she was also a problem, for she is part of the dynasty, but she could not sustain a public role. Therefore it was in the interests of both parties that she disappeared from life, to become a kind of non-person without actually dying. But she is kept alive, for now. And as you see, she is quite mad, poor thing.’
‘And Horemheb?’
‘The ruthless young crocodile quickly outgrew his pond. He grew bigger and bigger. And soon all the fine meat and the rich jewels they fed him were not enough. He will rid himself of her as soon as it suits him to do so. He has been watching Ay, and Tutankhamun, and Ankhesenamun, and all of us. And now, with the catastrophic death of the King, I’m afraid his moment has come.’
He seemed thoroughly sobered by his words. He looked about himself, at the smooth, cold luxury of the palace, and seemed for a moment to see it for what it truly was: a tomb.
‘But one thing is now clear,’ I said.
‘And what is that?’
‘Both Ay and Horemheb are complicit with the Physician. Ay made the arrangements for her care. Horemheb knows how his wife is being incarcerated. But the question then is: who recruited the Physician to do what he did? Did Horemheb command the Physician to make his wife an opium addict? Or was it his own idea? And did the Physician act on his own agenda in terrorizing the King, or on the orders of someone else? Horemheb, perhaps?’
‘Or Ay,’ said Khay.
‘Possibly. For he would not wish the King to take control of his own power, as he did. And yet his own reaction to what happened indicates he had no knowledge of how the objects came to be in the chamber. In any case, it does not feel like the kind of thing he would do.’
Khay sighed.
‘Neither possibility is optimistic. In any event, now that the King is dead, you may be sure Horemheb will arrive here soon. He has important business to conduct. His future is all before him. All he needs to do is conquer Ay and the Queen, and the Two Lands will belong to him. And I for one fear that day with all my heart.’
The hour was late. We had arrived back at the double doors of the Queen’s apartment. Guards had been stationed there for the night. I asked Khay to leave me there, to speak to the Queen alone. He nodded, then hesitated, and turned as if to ask me something confidential.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’
He looked relieved. But he also looked as if he was about to tell me something else.
‘What?’
He hesitated.
‘This is not a safe place for you any more.’
‘You’re the second person to say that to me tonight,’ I replied.
‘Then you know to be very careful. This is a pool of crocodiles. Take care where you step.’
He patted me on the arm, and then walked slowly away down the long, silent passageway, back to his small, diminishing amphora of good wine. I knew my time too was running out. But I had my clue. And, with luck, Nakht would have saved the boy, and he would now be healed enough to talk. If so, perhaps I could connect everything together. Identify the Physician. Stop him from committing any further acts of mutilation and murder. And then I could ask him the question that was burning in my head. Why?