The Horus Road by Pauline Gedge Read Free Book Online

long rise. Kamose’s small pyramid lay to the south on the edge of the place of the dead, its forecourt open to the east to greet the sun. Behind it loomed the much larger mortuary temple and tomb of his ancestor Osiris Mentuhotep-neb-hapet-Ra at the very foot of the serried Cliff of Gurn, and the remainder of the arid plain to the north was dotted with similar structures, their little pyramids capping the quiet mysteries within. Aahmes-nefertari, in the pause that came while the coffin was removed from the sled and canted upright against the wall of the tomb, let her gaze wander over them. You are in mighty company, dear Kamose, she said to him. Here lie the gods of happier times. You deserve to rest among them, for like them you loved Egypt and revered Ma’at, and for both you sacrificed your life.
    The members of the cortege fell silent as the lid of the coffin was removed and for several moments the wind could be heard fluttering the blue mourning linens of the assembly and stirring the dust into spirals that formed from nothing and as quickly vanished. Taking a deep, uneven breath, Aahmes-nefertari raised her eyes to the thing standing within the shadow of the wooden box, her imagination questing beyond the layer upon layer of tightly complex bandaging and the amulets of protection to the beloved man beneath. He was there in her mind’s eye as she had seen him in sleep, lying on his back, his hands crossed on the light rise and fall of his chest, his face immobile but suffused with a steady, quiet animation. She knew that she was fostering an illusion, that the reality of what Kamose had become was something brown and desiccated and stiff, but she could not confront it yet and she clung to Kamose asleep while Amunmose stepped up with the adze in his hand to begin the incantation for the Opening of the Mouth so that her brother’s senses might be freed once more. “He was only twenty-five years old,” she said more loudly than she had intended. She felt Ahmose take her hand, his own fingers moist, and she realized that he was weeping too.
    When the High Priest had finished, the women began to wail afresh and one by one the members of the family knelt to kiss the linen-wound feet that smelled of myrrh and the unguents of preservation. The coffin was lifted and at last Kamose was carried down the long, bare passage to the tiny room whose walls glowed with colours that no one living would ever see again. There was a stone plinth in its centre to receive him and around it was placed his furniture and the personal belongings he would need. They were pitifully few.
    Aahmes-nefertari had an armful of spring flowers to lay on his breast, blue cornflowers and red poppies, and his mother also showered him with blooms she had culled from the garden, but Tetisheri stood rigidly with tears pouring down her wrinkled cheeks and her hands behind her back. “I gave him everything in life,” she had said earlier when they had gathered at the watersteps to cross the river. “I will offer no token of his death. I do not accept this day.” Ahmose went to her, pity in the tenderness with which he encircled her frail shoulders, and to Aahmes-nefertari’s dull surprise she did not pull away but allowed him to support her as the lid was replaced and nailed down and they finally turned away. Aahmes-nefertari, inhaling the dank, stale air of the passage, looked back. Kamose was already shrouded in darkness, the coffin with its lifeless burden no more than a bulky shape that would remain immobile in a stygian blackness forever.
    Tents had been pitched a short distance away from the tomb’s forecourt and here for three days his family and household feasted, eating and drinking to his memory, praying for his ka’s safe journey, and shedding many tears. On the second night Aahmes-nefertari could not sleep. After tossing restlessly on her cot opposite a slumbering Ahmose, feverish and increasingly uncomfortable, she rose, wrapped herself in