Out of the Black Land (20 page)

‘And he rejoices that she is loved by the Great Royal Scribe Ptah-hotep; the Pharaoh has been concerned for his scribe’s grief since his wife died, and delights in the delight of his faithful servant.’

At the term ‘faithful servant,’ the Pharaoh cast a sharp look at the thin man standing behind him. He wore an overdecorated bag-wig and far too much perfume. He seemed consumed with chagrin, biting his pale lips and twisting his ringed hands together.

‘So, Pannefer, you were wrong,’ said the Pharaoh. ‘This is innocent and charming. Neither party is married and I expect that they will reach some arrangement. Nefertiti will rejoice that her sister has come to her, and that love has brought the adherent of a false cult to reason. Ptah-hotep, do you love the lady Mutnodjme?’

‘Lord, thou knowst the secrets of all hearts,’ replied the Great Royal Scribe. He also was naked, and he was very well-made. Living mostly with women I had not tired of the sight of male flesh, and he was finely and sparely handsome.

‘Lady, do you love the lord Ptah-hotep?’

‘As you see, Lord,’ I said, matching my lord Ptah-hotep for obscurity.

‘Then I give you each other,’ said Akhnaten, joined our hands, and left, taking Master of the House Pannefer and the soldiers with him.

As soon as the entourage had gone, Ptah-hotep hugged me to his breast and said, ‘Oh, most quick-witted of women!’ and I began to laugh and couldn’t stop until the slave Meryt, ruler of the household, bought me a cup of undiluted wine.

‘Master, he just walked straight in, and I didn’t even have time to warn you,’ she said in an undertone to Ptah-hotep.

‘It’s all right, Meryt, not your fault. Pannefer is clearly watching me even closer than I thought. Now, some more wine for the lady and you can leave us.’

Then they all went away again, and I said to Ptah-hotep, ‘Perhaps we should lie down, in case we are still being watched, and then you can explain.’

He led me by the hand to his bed in the inner apartment. A woman had arranged the room, it was clear. There were lamps in the form of lotus flowers and a statue of an ibis. The walls were painted with scenes of fishing and fowling and were old fashioned but charming.

We lay down together on the big bed and I pillowed my head on his bare smooth chest. I have never felt comfortable lying with a man—except this one. I fitted into his embrace; there was none of the preliminary shoving as one worked out what to do with arm and elbow and knee. He seemed to feel the same sense of rightness, for he stroked my cheek gently with his free hand.

‘Lady, I have importuned you, put you into a false position, and by nightfall it will be all over the palace. Everyone will know that you are my lover. I apologise as profoundly as I can,’ he began hesitantly.

‘Lord, I have no particular objection to being known as your lover, I need an excuse to see you and be private with you, and you need not apologise,’ I replied.

He smelt lovely, of cinnamon oil, his own skin and the scribes’ scents of papyrus, sand and ink. ‘In fact the apology is due to you, because I have clearly endangered you by bringing a letter from Ammemmes into this exceptionally spy-ridden palace. I thought the Temple of Isis was gossipy,’ I said heatedly. ‘How long has the palace been like this?’

‘Ah, lady, a long time,’ he sighed. He sounded so weary that I moved, taking his head onto my breast, and he snuggled down into my embrace as though he had been lying with me for years.

‘It was kept in check while Osiris-Amenhotep was alive, that wise old man. He spoke to his son, saying that he was surrounding himself with sycophants and that he needed at least one counsellor who would tell him the truth, but my lord just looked at his father with those vague eyes. You see, he is convinced that there is no god but Aten, and when that was his own religion and no pain to any other, it was no trouble. But now he is so petted and encouraged by Pannefer and Huy and the others that he is intending to impose this Aten on all of Egypt. There is no god but the One, he says. There shall be no god but the One.’

‘So he has closed the temples of Amen-Re,’ I said. ‘And the others, as well? Are all the gods to be abandoned? What, then, will happen to the people?’

‘I do not know,’ he sighed. I stroked his shoulder and cheek and he nestled closer to me, twining his legs with mine.

We did not speak for a while, and I wondered if he had fallen asleep. His skin was in contact with my skin the length of my body, and his free hand cupped my breast. I was so aroused that I would have opened to him if he had made any advance at all, but he did not and I reflected that it was not fitting that I should turn a political ruse to my own pleasure.

‘It was the fate of Khons which settled my mind,’ he said unexpectedly, so that I jumped. I had not seen Teacher Khons since I had gone to the temple of Isis and he had been appointed tutor to the royal children. The last I had heard of him he was attached to my sister’s household as teacher to her daughters.

‘What happened to Teacher Khons?’ I asked in a whisper.

‘You remember Khons, the questioner? The Lord Akhnaten came in one morning when he was instructing the little princesses in the names of the states of Egypt—each Nome had its god, and he was saying something like, ‘Nome of Hermopolis, symbol the frog, god Khnum the potter,’—you probably learned the lists the same way, lady.’

‘Yes, I did.’ I could hear Khons’ deep voice saying them and Merope and I repeating the list. I had a sudden flash of lying on the cool floor on a reed mat with my sister beside me, Basht the striped-one sitting with her front paws on Merope’s pre-pubescent breast, and the prospect of honey-cake if we recited the Nomes without fault.

‘The King said, “There is no god but the Aten” and Khons argued with him. No, he didn’t even argue, poor Khons; he just said “In the old days, Lord, each Nome had its god and it is still easier to remember them thus.” And the King flew into a rage, screamed that Khons was perverting the minds of the divine princesses. Instead of pacifying him, Khons continued. He told the King that Egypt’s history was made under the old gods, and they were worthy to be studied regardless of the advent of the Aten. So the King gave an order and the guard—you notice that he always has a guard?—speared Khons as he sat on the floor with the children; and he died.

‘I was summoned by the King to see what fate came to a scribe who questioned the primacy of the Aten. Khons was dead by then, lying on the tiles with a spear through his neck and blood spilled around him; and in the middle one terrified little girl and a scatter of building blocks and toys. You know how the mind fixes on one small thing which exemplifies the scene forever after. To me, the picture of Khons’ death is a pull-along painted clay horse in a pool of bright red blood.’

‘By all the gods, ’Hotep, is he mad?’ I asked, horrified by the picture I too could see now of Khons lying dead on the tiled floor, blood pooling around the little princess and her toys.

‘Oh yes,’ he whispered into my shoulder. ‘He is quite mad.’

Ptah-hotep

Lady Mutnodjme was a surprise. I had not seen her for years. When she had left for the temple of Isis, she had been a small dark child with bright eyes, her breasts not yet budded, weeping a little at the loss of her sister Merope—though the Great Royal Wife visited the temple at least every week, or so Pannefer told the King. But as well as her sorrow at leaving her home I sensed in her measureless appetite for learning, matching even my old friend Snefru.

And when I saw her again at the palace gates, contemplating the guard—and I am sure that I got to her just in time to prevent an incident, for she never lacked courage—she was still small, no taller than Kheperren, but a woman in truth, tending to plumpness (which is very unfashionable but very attractive) and clever-handed, deft, and still with that quickness of thought which had made her remarkable as a child. She had brought me Kheperren’s last message, sent through Ammemmes, and she had melted into my embrace when I kissed her, sighting the Pharaoh’s soldier’s boots under the door and knowing that we had to conceal the reason for our meeting.

She had handled the interview with the lord Akhnaten with promptitude and confidence, and I was very impressed with her.

My wife Hathor, called Hunero, had been a pleasant maiden, only interested in the doings of the other women in the office, Khety’s wife and Hanufer’s concubine. She had occupied her days in a companionable feud with Bakhenmut’s wife Henutmire. They each required more and more jewels of their respective husbands, and I reached an agreement with Bakhenmut that I should provide new trinkets for both, so that he was not driven to peculation or theft to supply Henutmire’s greed. Hunero had been fourteen when I married her out of her father’s house, and she had seemed happy with me. All my love was still given to my dearest Kheperren, who managed a visit to the capital at least once a year. But Hunero seemed content with what I could give her and the skills which Meryt had taught me had pleased her body. She had conceived twice, both children being miscarried before they were well-formed, and then the fever which had ravaged the City of the Sun had taken her away.

Now the rooms where she had lived seemed empty and cold, and I had closed off that part of my apartments.

But the woman who lay down with me and listened without exclamation to the death of Khons, she was a different matter from the meek little mouse who had been sold to me by a connection of Divine Father Ay’s whether she would or no. Once Priestess of the dissolved cult of the so-called goddess Isis, the Lady Mutnodjme was strong willed and strong minded and meat for no man’s bargain. Her arms were strong and her breast very soft and I rested my aching head in her embrace without fear. It was only when I woke from a light doze, which I had not meant to take, and found that she was still there, holding me gently without any sign of impatience, that I realised how badly I had missed a friend and how beautiful she was.

I had been afraid—not terrified, but afraid, watching every expression on every face, tasting every drop and nibbling every crumb and especially examining every word for heresy before I allowed it to leave my lips, for so long now that I only realised the extent of the strain when it relaxed.

The Lady left me with an ostentatious kiss in front of the whole staff, promising to come again, and I gave orders that she should always be admitted whenever she wanted.

Khety, very happy in his wife and four sons, smiled at me. Hanufer, as stolidly pleased with his three children as he had been with his faithful and unimaginative wife, nodded. Bakhenmut, cursed with Henutmire’s greed and shrill nagging, raised an eyebrow as if asking me was I sure that I wanted to do this again, having escaped unscathed last time? Meryt and the Nubians grinned. Meryt had liked Mutnodjme since childhood, and Hani still talked about being ridden, for this had given the three men an acquaintance with General Horemheb, now famous for his courage and strategic skill. They always went out to meet the General when he returned to report to the palace, and joined in the athletic contests—and the feasts—which the soldiers conducted. Mentu, who was visiting us because he had broken an arm in a chariot accident, clapped me on the back.

‘Well-chosen,’ Mentu said. ‘A close relative of the Divine Royal Spouse and therefore unassailable; another guard for your back, my dear Ptah-hotep.’

‘Also, she is very beautiful,’ I reminded him. He grinned.

‘There is that, also. Though you should come and see my new dancers. Blonde, I swear, not bleached, and they dance with bells on their feet.’

‘Perhaps later. Khety, we are supposed to get copies of all the orders issued from the Master of the Household’s office. Do we have the order which closed the school of scribes?’

‘No, Lord,’ Khety searched through a huge pile of documents. ‘The tax returns have come in from all of the Nomes, there is a difficulty with some walls and bridges which need to be repaired, a woman gave birth to a goat in one village…no, nothing from the Master of the Household’s office at all.’

‘Mentu, take my compliments to my lord Pannefer and inform him that you are there with Hani and Tani. They are to carry back all the copies of the orders which he has issued and forgotten to send to me—doubtless through pressure of business. Can you do it without getting anyone executed?’

‘Certainly,’ Mentu assured me. Sending Mentu was, of course, an insult to the commoner which Pannefer had been. Mentu, however dissolute, had been schooled from babyhood in the subtle nuances of rank, which Pannefer did not understand at all. I was just as common as he—my father had been a village scribe and so had his—but I had applied myself to learn how my new society worked. By his false accusation of me, Pannefer had massively lost face with the Lord Akhnaten may he live and would have to comply with my request. Mentu would make sure, without words, that Pannefer knew that I knew this.