City of the Dead

But the city was already full of rumours, and there was an indefinable tension in the air, which Huy had even picked up in the harbour quarter, where people’s concern for the pharaoh was slight.
    Now, he tried to absorb the shock of the king’s death. He looked at Ay, standing by the window. In age, Ay had grown a Paunch, but his bird-like, intellectual head had barely changed. There were wrinkles, and the hairline had receded; but the hair was dyed dark, and Huy would have had no difficulty in recognising the man he had known, distantly, at the City of the Horizon.
    “When will the news be broken?’ Huy asked.
    It must be soon. You are aware how people are beginning to fear something. Neither the king or queen have been seen in public, and that will strike everyone as strange, especially after the announcement of the queen’s pregnancy.’ Ay spoke with formal stiffness, which Huy supposed had become a habit after years in politics.
    ‘Why has it been delayed?’
    Ay shook his head. ‘Horemheb has decreed it. Of course, he tells me it is for reasons of security. But if the king’s death was simply a question of a tragic accident, what reason could there be for secrecy?’
    Huy reflected that the wheel had come full circle, and tried to deduce what Ay was deliberately omitting from his account. In the old days, at the City of the Horizon, Huy had been a scribe in the legal section of Akhenaten’s court, and now and then had to do with colleagues attached to Ay’s office. After the fall of Akhenaten, and the ruin of his city, Huy imagined that Ay must either have died, or escaped into one of the friendly neighbouring countries — Mitanni or Babylon, perhaps - to live out his life in self-imposed exile. But even before the court had returned to the Southern Capital, Huy had seen Ay with Horemheb escorting the young Tutankhamun to the ritual of Opening the Mouth of his predecessor, Smenkhkare. Ay was clearly a survivor.
    Huy had returned to the Southern Capital himself soon after, and, forbidden to continue to practise as a scribe because of his association with the disgraced Akhenaten, he had turned, partly by chance, to solving the kind of problems people had which they did not wish the Medjays involved with. His association with the great men of the city a few years earlier seemed to have borne fruit at last. Now he had been summoned to Ay’s presence in secret, on the recommendation of his former employer Ipuky, another man who had managed to escape unscathed after the fall of Akhenaten.
    And now Ay was asking him to solve a problem. At least it looked as if the conversation was going that way. Quickly Huy ran through what Ay had told him.
    Two days earlier, Nehesy and the hunting party which had accompanied the king into the desert had returned with his chariot and horses, and the bodies of the king and his charioteer. Knowing what the public outcry would be if he rode openly into the city, and scared about his own fate as the professional in charge of the expedition, Nehesy had made sure to return at nightfall. He had then gone straight to Horemheb with the news of what had happened.
    ‘What happened then?’ Huy asked the old man. They were both seated by a low table on which wine and dates had been placed, more as a gesture than genuine hospitality. What they had to talk about was too serious to be discussed over food and drink.
    Ay shrugged briefly. ‘All the information I can give you is what I was told by Horemheb, so bear that in mind. Of course he had to share the news with me immediately. I had just retired to read when his messenger came to fetch me.’
    ‘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