least have enough sense to lock the door. From the way his parts were twitching, I assumed that he would.
‘On the wall, lord. He liked to stand on that part of the wall and watch the ships.’
I walked a little further to the quarters of Divine Father Ay. A maiden in correct mourning opened the door, scurried away to find her mistress, and returned with Great Royal Nurse Tey.
She had not aged well. The ashes and dishevelment of mourning does not improve the appearance, of course, but she was thin and acidulated and her voice was meagre, as though she would not even release a word from its cage until it had been drained of juice.
‘Ptah-hotep,’ she acknowledged awarding me no titles at all. ‘What do you want? The Divine Father is in mourning, as are we all.’
‘I just wondered if he could clear up a little point which is worrying me,’ I said.
She raked my face with a hard stare. Well?’
‘I have no note of his conversation with Tutankhamen-Osiris on the morning of his death. I believe that Divine Father Ay had an appointment with him?’
‘No,’ she snapped.
‘No? But I am quite sure that he had an appointment with the king. To discuss the dismissal of corrupt officials?’
‘No,’ she snarled, and closed the door in my face.
I walked away quite convinced, though I still had no proof, that the Pharaoh Tutankhamen-Osiris had been murdered by Divine Father Ay.
Chapter Thirty-one
Mutnodjme
I agreed with my lord Ptah-hotep that no action should be taken about Ay until Horemheb came home, so I went to visit Ankhesenamen to try and calm her. The Great Royal Wife had been screaming for two days and two nights with pauses of a couple of minutes, presumably to take a breath. No one was getting any sleep and I wondered that her throat had held out as long as it had. I was forbidden the door by her little maidens, but I smiled at them and refused to move until the Mistress of the Queen’s Household came out to see what the trouble was.
‘Let me in,’ I said. ‘I need to speak to the Royal Lady Ankhesenamen.’
‘You are the daughter of Ay,’ she said suspiciously.
‘I am also the wife of General Horemheb and the friend of Ptah-hotep the Just Judge,’ I rejoined.
She seemed to feel that I had jumped her pieces and signalled to the small girls to let me in.
When the door was safely shut and barred, she conducted me into the inner chamber, where three young women were sitting in a group with the Queen. A fourth maiden was wailing at the top of her voice. When she saw me, she broke off and another immediately took up the cry.
‘What are you doing, Ankhesenamen?’ I asked, for in neither case was the voice that of the Great Royal Spouse.
‘Providing music for your father’s ears,’ she snapped.
‘He is your grandfather,’ I pointed out, joining the maidens on the floor.
‘I know, and I am not going to marry him.’
‘Well, there are ways and ways,’ I said. Her intelligent face lit up and she descended from her chair to join me.
‘You have a plan? I can’t think of anything but to try and find a husband out of Egypt. I am not going to marry Ay,’ she said with unshakeable determination.
‘You can’t marry out of Egypt; in you resides the right to the throne,’ I objected.
She looked instantly guilty, but I could not see how she could have contacted anyone who might be able to bring her a foreign prince so I forgot about it and returned to the matter at hand.
‘Do you remember deciding not to throw your spindle at the wall in the apartments of the Widow-Queen Tiye-Osiris, lady?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘Yes, and just after I got the knack of spinning. I recall it, Aunt. What’s your point? I mean, here I am, I’ve been a plaything for the royal house since I was born. I had to marry Smenkhare who was utterly corrupt, then I had to marry Tutankhamen-Osiris. I really did like him but now he’s dead, and I’m sick of it. I won’t marry again, I won’t be Great Royal Wife again, and I will die rather than marry my grandfather. He’s a cold cruel miser. He hurt me when I was a child and he’d hurt me again, too.’ She shuddered with loathing. ‘He doesn’t even want me. Not me, myself. He just wants the throne.’
‘Well, you could give it to him,’