Out of the Black Land (21 page)

Thus I played the game of tit for tat, while the teachers from the temple were driven away and the Father of the Two Lands thought only of his god.

Chapter Fifteen

Mutnodjme

The first thing my sister said, as I walked into the royal apartments past the ubiquitous guards, was ‘Oh, Mutnodjme, my heart is glad for you! Ptah-hotep will make you a fine husband!’

‘I am still thinking about it,’ I replied. Even after years in the temple of Isis I was not used to the speed at which gossip travelled. ‘How do you fare, my dearest sister?’

She had aged. She was breath-catchingly beautiful still, perhaps more so, since with age had come dignity and queenly self-possession. Her long neck was unmarked, her profile perfect, and her breasts despite six children still as firm as a maiden’s.

She lifted the last child from her knee and said to it, ‘See, little princess, here is your aunt!’ and I had to kneel and coo over the baby Septenre. I have never liked babies—which is strange, because I have seldom been bitten by any animal and I even handled snakes in one ordeal with the Lady whom I must no longer name—but human young look unformed, furless and puddingy. The baby gaped at me with a toothless grin which was almost charming, and then was obligingly sick, so that her mother gave her to her nurse and slaves mopped the Queen and replaced her cloth.

I wanted my sister to herself.

‘I am coming with you to Amarna,’ I told Nefertiti.

‘Of course, my lord has closed the temple,’ said my sister tactlessly.

‘No, I am in…’ I was about to say ‘love’ but my sense of truth revolted; and so I said, ‘two minds about the Great Royal Scribe. Also my friend Merope is going as part of the establishment of Lord Akhnaten may he live.’

‘Oh, yes, the wives of the Osiris-Amenhotep; no, I mean the dead King,’ she corrected herself. ‘Things are so much simpler now that there is only one god,’ she said, accepting a cup of light beer from a slave. ‘Except that I sometimes forget.’

‘Nefertiti, sister, has your lord told you of the changes which are taking place in the Black Land?’ I asked, knowing that every word was going to be reported to one spy or another and choosing my speech with extreme care. Nefertiti put down the cup and took both my hands.

‘Yes, it’s a miracle,’ she said solemnly. ‘It’s a revelation. My lord has seen the land all under one god, one worship, one truth. He is the high priest of the Aten, may it be forever adored.’

‘And you?’

‘I am the High Priestess of the Phoenix, the Star-bird, the Fire-wing.’

Her face shone. She was so transfigured by her devotion to this cult that I knew that I would waste my breath attempting to convert her to anything approaching sense.

‘You shall come with me,’ she whispered, conferring a great favour. ‘You shall see the temple of the firebird, the columns of marble, the carvings in stone, the paintings in fresh colours. We leave for Amarna tomorrow. You will stay with me? I shall order a room prepared.’

‘No, sister, I thank you, but I have already agreed to lodge with the Widow-Queen Merope.’

‘And that is near the apartments of the Great Royal Scribe,’ she patted my cheek with her elegant fingers. ‘Sly sister, wanting to be near your lover! Tell me, is he as skilled as the lady Hunero used to say? Does he make you faint with delight?’

‘He is all they say,’ I said warily. This was an aspect of Ptah-hotep which I had not considered. ‘What of you, sister? Your children, are they healthy?’

‘They are. My lord Akhnaten may he live has taken them for a walk to the Window of Appearances in the Temple of the Aten, or I would introduce you now. But there will be time. Travel with me tomorrow, sister, bring the lady Merope with you. I have not seen you for years. You have grown beautiful,’ she said, untruthfully.

‘And Divine Nurse Tey, my mother, she lives?’ I asked.

‘She is well and awaits us in the City of the Sun. I must go to my lord now, sister, the sun is setting and we have evening offerings. And here is Sahte, come looking for you, I’ll guarantee. The slave will take your bundle to the Widow-Queen’s quarters and I will see you tomorrow.’

Thus dismissed, I accompanied Sahte to the rooms of Queen Tiye, where I also found my sister Merope. They both smiled at me and congratulated me on my choice of lover, Tiye adding something extremely rustic on the subject of phalluses and the goddess Isis.

‘Lady, live forever, and if you wish to continue to live, you must not mention the name of any other god but the Aten,’ I said, sitting down and hauling Merope into a close embrace. I had missed her and she always felt good in my arms.

‘Ah,’ said the Queen Tiye. She wrapped a tress of greying red hair around her plump hand and asked ‘My Royal Son’s religion has a firm grip on him?’

‘And on his officials. Pannefer the Master of the Household and Huy the Chamberlain are both fervent believers in the Aten, or at least in their own power and position.’

‘Such is always the case in weak rulers,’ said Tiye, far too clearly for my newly-discovered sense of peril.

‘And the walls have eyes and ears,’ I added.

‘Doubtless,’ agreed the old queen, not moderating her tone in the slightest.

‘If it would please you, I would like to lodge with you when we reach Amarna, and the Widow-Queen Merope and I are ordered to join my sister tomorrow in the royal barge,’ I told her.

‘That is acceptable,’ said the lady Tiye. She was still mourning. Pain was on her countenance like a tight grey veil. Merope helped me to my feet and led me into the outer chamber, where more slaves were binding the last bundles of belongings.

‘Are we not taking the lamp?’ I asked. It was a fine alabaster one, carved in the shape of Sekmet, the lion-headed woman.

‘No objects with other gods on them may be taken into the City of the Sun, we have received orders,’ Merope said quietly. ‘Apparently we will have much more splendid rooms in the new palace. Come, sister, let us eat and then let us sleep, for I am very weary and confused.’

I listened as she ordered a servant to fetch us a light supper, ate most of it for I was hungry, and we lay down together. I dreamed—strangely, not of fear or danger—of Isis descending on the phallus of Osiris, and woke shivering and wet with desire.

I slaked it in the arms and breasts and sweet mouth of my sister Merope, but it was Ptah-hotep who had awakened it.

***

It is sweet to sail on the bosom of the Nile and watch the cultivation slip past, hear the voices of the boatmen and the bleating of goats on shore. Priestesses of the unnamed lady travel sparely and eat lightly, and the last time I had taken to the water I had been on the way to attend a fever in a distant village and had travelled in a fishing boat made of reeds, which had leaked and wallowed and threatened every moment to throw us to the crocodiles.

I was now seated in the boat
Aten Gleams
with my sister Merope. Little Ankhesenpaaten was lounging on my lap. With the usual perversity of children, she had divined how I felt about small humans and had decided that I was the one she would favour with her royal attention today. She was solid and heavy and would not sit still, so my thighs were being gradually flattened. I could feel every knothole in the wooden bench I was sitting on.

‘I like you,’ announced the small princess, unexpectedly. She was entirely naked except for the strings of beads and her earrings, which were evidently a source of great pride to her.

‘Thank you, Great Royal Lady,’ I replied cautiously.

‘You’re comfortable,’ she explained, digging her elbows into my side as she wreathed her arms around my neck.

‘I am honoured,’ I said, lifting her a little to free my breast from her knee.

‘My father is the Royal One of Amarna, Akhnaten may he live,’ said the little princess. ‘And if you aren’t nice to me, he’ll order his soldiers to spear you.’

‘I see,’ I replied evenly, concealing my shock at such a cool pronouncement.

‘Like he did to Teacher Khons. He was making me learn a long list. I didn’t like him and the Pharaoh may he live killed him for me.’

‘Ah,’ I choked down rage, which boiled up in my throat as bile. My dear Khons, he of the ready grin, dead on a mad King’s whim and here was this barbarous child threatening me with the same fate. There was a lot of water very near; I had already seen several crocodiles, and one swift movement would drop this royal monster into a fanged maw which would end her presumption in one bite, snap, wrench and swallow.

Ankhesenpaaten might not have been civilised, but she was perceptive enough when it came to her own safety. She climbed promptly off my lap and went to her mother, not saying a word more, and I stared out over the water while Merope my sister whispered, ‘Consider how it must have been for her, her tutor slaughtered! She had to invent something to explain it. Do not blame her, sister, she is only a child.’

This was true but not helpful. If I could not blame the little princess I could certainly blame the Royal One. And I did— vengefully and darkly—watching the fronded vegetation, the Nile blue and Nile white waves, the palm trees and the farmers, and a naked boy washing a horse in the river, all with a gaze Merope that said was ferocious enough to wither barley.

‘We must present a pleasant appearance,’ she whispered to me, burying her face in my neck. ‘They will suspect you of belonging to the goddess we cannot name; and they suspect me of being associated with the old king—as I was, and I miss him so much! And our lady the Widow-Queen is not, I fear, going to temper her opinions, and that may get us all killed as dead as poor Khons.’

‘All right, Merope; yes, you are correct,’ I said softly into her nut-brown hair. ‘We should talk to my sister. How long has she been a fanatic?’

‘Oh, years,’ said Merope. ‘I’ve got used to it, you know, it’s only now that you are back that it seems strange. Ask her to tell you about the children, it’s all she’s interested in; that and the cult of the Phoenix, of course. And you’ll be taken all around the temple.’

‘What about my father, Ay?’

‘Ah,’ Merope’s expression said it all. Clearly Ay was as mean as ever and must, I assumed, be the richest man in Egypt by now. ‘He is High Priest of the cult of Aten in Amarna,’ Merope told me.

‘Is he,’ I commented as tonelessly as I could. I had not seen Divine Father Ay for seven years, and on the whole, they had been happy. On the last occasion, he had given me a long, cold, appraising look, growled, ‘Too old for marriage now’ with a certain complacency, and had gone away to spend more time with his treasure. I could not think of anyone less-fitted for a religious office than my father. I diverted my thoughts by imagining short fat Father Ay in a priest’s leopard skin—the tail would certainly drag on the ground, and perhaps he would trip on it.

‘He has expressed his joy to the lord Akhnaten at seeing you, his daughter, again,’ said Nefertiti, who had been listening.

‘My father said that?’ I was instantly suspicious. The only reason that Father Ay could have for wanting to see me again was that he had some gold-producing scheme and he intended to use me in some way. I was never, unlike some maidens, under any false impression that my father cared for me.

‘Yes, I told him that if I could persuade you to come with me, sister, I could induct you into the worship of the Phoenix.’

‘For which privilege he is paid some fee?’ I hazarded. I was on safe ground, for Nefertiti may she live was nodding.

‘Certainly; for you are dedicated to the temple, and your father must be paid the equivalent of a dowry.’

‘I see,’ I relaxed. In the confusion of a new worship, at the head of a new cult, living in a new city, it was comforting that at least Father Ay had not changed. ‘Tell me about this dedication, lady and sister.’

‘Not here,’ said Nefertiti, shocked. ‘It is a mystery.’

In the temple of Isis, whence my thought instantly flashed, I recalled Duammerset, the Lady’s Singer, instructing a group of young women:
If anyone tells you that they cannot explain their actions because it is a mystery, then you know you are in the presence of woolly thinking.

I had a feeling that belief in the Amarna cults might require enough woolly thinking to denude whole flocks of sheep.

But I remembered Khons, and kept my tongue safely between my teeth.