Out of the Black Land (25 page)

Nefertiti was waiting. Something more was obviously needed, and Merope, my clever Kritian sister, supplied it.

‘We are overcome by the honour you have shown us,’ she said, and knelt for the Queen’s blessing, closely followed by me. After all,
knees are made to bend
, as Lady Duammerset had said. I resolved then to survive if I could, but to do as much as I could to ensure that no more excesses were ordered in the name of the Firebird, even if it meant becoming head of the cult myself. I was beginning to lose my taste for the beauty and airy lightness of the palace.

The rescue of the Mittani prince had been easy because I had Queen-Widow Tiye’s trust. How long could the Lady live, so grief-stricken for the old man Amenhotep-Osiris? And when she was gone, would there be any check on the King Akhnaten and his Lady Nefertiti at all?

The eldest remaining son of the Queen was with her when Merope and I returned in mid morning, having bathed again and been oiled and massaged to soften skin which had been dried out by the lye. Another sorrow was on Tiye may she live, and I didn’t know how much more she could stand. Her youngest daughter, Bekhetaten, her last gift from Amenhotep-Osiris, had died in the arms of her nurse on the way to Amarna. Many children were dying. There was a plague of summer fever amongst the babies. It began with a high temperature, an unwillingness to feed, then the child developed diarrhoea which could not be stemmed, and so died of weakness. Setepenre the youngest Amarna baby was also ill, and I did not think she would survive.

‘My husband the King is dead, and his children are dying with him,’ mourned Tiye, dry-eyed. ‘Perhaps it is better so. Soon I will join him.’

‘Mother, live,’ begged Smenkhare. He was a beautiful boy. His mother had given him fineness of bone and her coppery hair, and he was straight and slim.

His tutor reported him intelligent and studious, though that meant nothing. After the murder of Teacher Khons, no tutor was likely to overtax a royal child.

Smenkhare had also inherited, it seemed, his father’s shrewdness, because he was using on his despairing mother one of the few arguments that might persuade her to stay on an earth which had become void for her.

‘Who will advise my Royal Father when he is confused, if you leave us?’ he demanded, moving away from her embrace. ‘What will become of the Black Land without you? Do not the foreign kings write to you, Lady, as Mistress of Egypt? What will Egypt do without its Mistress?’

Tiye said nothing, but I saw her drag in a deep breath.

Prince Smenkhare may he live forever saw that he was having an effect and added, ‘My father was a wise man and a faithful man, he will build a house for you in the afterlife with the Aten, lady. He will not forget you, how could he? He waits for you. But there are those here who love you almost as much. There is my little brother Tutankhaten, he is only two years old, he needs you, Mother, and I need you. You cannot leave us yet!’

He allowed the Queen to lay her head on his smooth shoulder and stroked her cheek, adding with just a trace of mischief, ‘And you have to come to my coronation,’ and Tiye laughed. It wasn’t a very good laugh, being bitter and brief, but it was a laugh.

‘Very well, sweet son,’ she agreed. ‘I will stay awhile yet,’ and Smenkhare kissed her.

Ptah-hotep

I woke, hearing voices at the door, very late on the night which was once the feast of Isis and Osiris, and a sleepy Meryt admitted a lamp-bearing woman into my chamber and shut the door after her with a slam. Meryt hates to be woken from her first sleep. My sandclock showed the time to be almost midnight. I heard the guard changing outside.

‘All well?’ asked the relieving guard.

‘All well,’ answered the soldier, and I heard him march away.

No wind was blowing. It was so still that I heard Meryt grunt as she lay down beside Teti in the outer chamber where she insisted on sleeping so that I could not be surprised. Meryt had appetites and her brother Teti supplied them. I wondered that the Nubians had similar customs to our own Royal House until I found that Teti was not the son of Meryt’s father or Meryt’s mother, but what in Egypt we would call a cousin. I had lain alone more nights than I could count, hearing them making love, which emphasised my loneliness.

Now I was not alone. I knew of only one woman whom Meryt would have allowed into my bedchamber without introduction.

‘Lady Mutnodjme,’ I said, struggling up onto one elbow and tipping over my neck-rest. ‘This is an unexpected honour.’

‘I mean you no harm,’ she said, crossing the room with her peasant’s stride. She set down the lamp. It was a small saucer-shaped oil lamp in the shape of an opium-poppy. It gave very little light, just a small bead of pale flame. In the half-darkness I saw that the lady Mutnodjme was quite naked.

She was rounded and full, with heavy breasts, wide hips and strong thighs. Her ringletted ebony hair fell almost to her waist and she shook it back impatiently. At the junction of thighs and belly was a perfect triangle of pale flesh and a cleft which was the entrance to the female mystery.

‘What do you want of me, lady?’ I asked. She came closer and sat down familiarly on the edge of my bed.

‘I want you to listen to the mysteries of the Firebird,’ she said, and I listened to her voice as she whispered to me of blinded musicians and a sister possessed of a strange worship. I wondered why she had come to tell me such things in the middle of the night and caught myself in a yawn. I knew now what no man knew, but it was not a useful secret. Misuses of the law had become commonplace. I said so.

‘Lady, the King orders whole provinces flogged if they do not pay his bounty,’ I said, my mouth almost touching her ear.

‘He ordered the Nomarch of the Nome of the Black Bull to have his ears cropped for not providing labour, even though it is the wrong season.

‘He sent the Nomarch of Set to the quarries and he sends men who are not slaves to work in the mines. And they die, but he does not care, for they provide him with eye-stones for his statues and gold for his bounties.’

‘That is true,’ she sighed, and for some reason we lay down together, her thigh touching my thigh, her hand clasping mine on her rounded belly.

‘There is no justice in the Black Land, and no peace, and no safety for any man, for at any moment the Pharaoh Akhnaten may order his home, his sons and his cattle seized to pay a tax which he has just imposed for the construction of Amarna and the glory of the Aten,’ I said, a litany of misery which I had never voiced before.

‘It is true,’ she responded, very sadly.

‘The Nile does not rise and the farmers will hunger this year,’ I said into the dark, rush-scented hair. Her mouth was very close to my mouth as she breathed, ‘This is true.’

‘And the old gods are angry, for their altars are empty and their worship abandoned; their priests wander the roads and their fires are cold,’ I added.

And then the lady Mutnodjme said, almost inaudibly, ‘But tonight is the marriage of Isis and Osiris.’

Then I knew why she had come to me.

The marriage of Isis and Osiris is—was—celebrated with a feast, after which a priest and priestess re-enact the mystic marriage in the light of the star Sothis, which is Isis and Orionis which is Osiris. This is done when the lights of both stars are in the sky, as they were tonight, before midnight when the stars move in the great wheel which takes them, during daylight, below the earth to the Tuat.

After the marriage of the gods is consummated, all people lie down with their lovers and dedicate their love to the festival, and that which is done this night is pleasing to the god and the goddess.

I allowed my mouth to meet her mouth. Meryt had taught me about women. I breathed in the scent of her skin and her hair, sour, not sweet, a biting sourness like persimmon or the golden apples of Nubia. Her mouth tasted of wine and honey and herbs, and she held out her arms to me.

I felt her hands slide surely across my chest and down to find the phallus, but she did not immediately clasp it, but with her nails and a touch as weightless as a butterfly alighting on a petal she stroked and teased my loins, until I was shivering. I reflected her caress, finding the cleft and touching it as gently as I could, a repeated tapping until I felt her thighs loosen and open, parting easily to allow me to find the pearl which is the centre of all female mysteries.

I felt my skin flush with heat. Beside me, my lover burned. I slid down beside her, finding first the nipple as hard as a metal bead in my mouth, then as her thighs wrapped my shoulders I found myself lapping at the waters of the womb which gave all men life.

Something took me then. Something flowed into my receptive body, some great force which had roamed the night, seeking an outlet. My hands were magnetised like the wise iron and everywhere I touched gave pleasure. Three times I felt the womb convulse under my tongue, heard a moan of delight, not from my lady Mutnodjme but from woman herself, all women, and I was making love to her as all men.

She reclaimed my mouth, sweet with her waters, drawing me into her embrace, her breasts soft under my weight and on that kiss I entered her with a shock like being struck by lightning. We were fused together. Thus must metal feel in the welding. I cried out; so did she. We moved slowly to begin with in a sacramental dance of female and male, of Isis reclaiming her dead husband, of life making love to life.

I abandoned thought; I was no longer Ptah-hotep. She was no longer the dark woman Mutnodjme who came to me in the night whom I had known as a little maiden. We had no history but the god’s, no story but the legend. The phallus that moved in and out of the sheath in slow strokes that made the woman cry out like a bird was not mine; the sheath was not hers.

We were one entity; one perfect union of god and goddess, earth and sky, fire and water. We were elemental, strong, unimaginably pure. I saw her face in starlight and she was transfigured, the goddess Isis under my hand, enfolding me, embracing me, so beautiful that my eyes dazzled.

There seemed to be no time. I was in her body, feeling the phallus inside me, the soft flesh close tightly about it, and every movement brought me such delight that my bones were filled with honey. She was me, feeling the penetration of the woman, the skin of my belly on her belly, the union of opposites which were the same.

We reached a climax. Lights exploded in front of my eyes. The rush of fire along my bones was close to pain, beyond pain. Still part of her, I felt her convulse as the womb grasped and sucked at the fluid of generation as though the womb was mine. We bled inside each other, shared veins and heart beating wildly, breath panting. We were one in the triumph of the consummation of the mystic marriage of Isis and Osiris.

I lay beside her, my phallus still inside her, her arms locked around my neck, my mouth on her mouth. We were soaking wet, shuddering with release, dazed.

‘Don’t let go of me,’ I whispered, for I felt unreal.

‘Hold me close, for I am afraid,’ she replied. We did not move for some time until our bones began to complain. Then we separated, reluctantly, and lay side by side, still touching.

‘My lady,’ I said uncertainly, for I did not know how to address the avatar of Isis.

‘My lord,’ she whispered. There was a quaver in her voice.

‘I was inside you, I
was
you, did you feel…’ I began.

And she answered me, ‘I felt you. I was a man and a woman, I was the lady and the lord; such a thing has never happened to me before, I am very frightened and I love you.’

‘I am also afraid,’ I said very softly. ‘I am awed before the power of the gods and I love you.’

We slept the rest of the night without dreams. When I awoke she was lying with her head on my breast. She opened her eyes when she felt me looking at her. We were sensitive to each other. I had only heard of this happening in the case of twins. The night had twinned us.

‘You pleased me,’ she said, sounding bewildered, tracing patterns on my chest with the very tips of her fingers.

‘You pleased me,’ I told her, caressing her rounded shoulders and strong thighs.

‘It is a strange matter. My lord I do not know what to say to you…’ she began. I didn’t know either. I solved the problem by kissing her and putting back the black hair.

‘You are my lady, and I am your lord,’ I said, and that seemed to satisfy her, for she called to Meryt for bread and wine.