Out of the Black Land (35 page)

‘She knows what she is doing, she knows what the king is and what he has made of Egypt and of her. You know that such a death would condemn you to be nothing, to blow away. She may well be anticipating a happy afterlife, united with the Firebird. In any case, this choice which has been thrust upon you is not made for a religious reason.’

‘I agree,’ said Kheperren. ‘The king perhaps has always worried about your loyalty. You have never asked to be made a priest of the Aten. This is his way of testing whether you are still wedded to the old beliefs, which of course you are. The person who should light this pyre is Divine Father Ay, curse him with many curses.’

‘She is his daughter and he loved her once,’ put in Mutnodjme. ‘Perhaps he cannot bring himself to do it, so he has suggested this dreadful substitution to the king.’

‘No, he may well have suggested finding someone else; but he approves of your love for me, as it relieves him of any responsibility for you,’ I said, following her line of argument. ‘Either or both of Pannefer and Huy have done this to me.’

‘So they have. Now, we need to make plans for your escape,’ said Mutnodjme as if it were all settled. My heart ached for my loves, my dears. But I could not let them do this.

‘No, there will be no escape,’ I said. ‘I will appear tomorrow in the courtyard of the Phoenix, and on that I am not to be dissuaded. You see that it must be so,’ I said.

They must have seen, for they stopped arguing.

Chapter Twenty-four

Mutnodjme

I left him only to see my sister Merope bestowed on her new husband. The courtyard was buzzing with women’s voices, shrill and alarmed. Few of the women had been able to make choices such as I had made for my dearest sister, and most were afraid and all of them were talking. They had lived in palaces all their lives, I thought, looking at them with as much pity as I could summon.

What would they do, conferred on some unwashed commoner as secondary wife, dealing with the hatred and envy of his first wife and banished to the kitchen? Most of them were destined to be water-carriers or servants and few of them had the strength or the skill to even do that. The luckiest might find a kind man or a sex-starved youth who would appreciate them. But kind men were at a premium in Egypt, and I did not like their chances. They had been raised, trained and nurtured as the Ornaments of the King, and their fate was bitter.

So was mine. But if Ptah-hotep was to die on the morrow and there was still nothing that I could do, I could lie with him tonight, and I was resolved on that. If he tried to shut me out on my return I would break down his door.

Merope was scanning the crowd, greeting friends and searching for the sight of her new man. I wished her heartily well and said, ‘Sister, may you bear many children and be happy,’ as was customary.

‘Sister, I am desolated to leave you,’ she replied, which was true enough; she was in tears. But this fate was better than others which could come upon the king’s women.

Great Royal Spouse Whom the King Loves Who Exudes Fragrance Ruler of the Ruler of the Double Crown Nefertiti was carried into the middle of the expostulating women and set on the dais above the pile of precious wood.

‘Women, you are divorced of the King’s person,’ she yelled, and they fell silent. ‘Now receive the Aten!’

I saw lights and smelt smoke. For a moment, I wondered if there was some trick, and we were all to be burned to death in one great sacrifice. But it was not the case. The fire I had seen had been a long line of men bearing torches. A hundred men in the robes of Aten-priest filed into the courtyard and began to line the walls. They were solemn and silent.

I caught sight of Dhutmose in the ranks. He had seen me, too, and edged his way along, elbowing a few of his fellows, until he was directly behind Merope. His eyes widened at the sight of her, most beautiful of sisters. I turned Merope to look at him. They were almost breast to breast. She said, ‘Master Dhutmose?’

‘
Adelphemou
,’ replied the priest. This means ‘my sister’ in Kritian. Then he said
Philimou
, which means, ‘my love’ and Merope gasped, wept, and fell into his arms.

He had reason to hold her tight. The men with torches were given an order which I could not hear, and they just reached out and grabbed the nearest female. Fortunately, Dhutmose had Merope in a firm grip, and the man who mistook me for a Great Royal Divorcee retreated with a yelp as I kneed him in the groin. I slid behind Dhutmose as he and Merope edged their way out of a dreadful scene.

The Royal Women were not just being given away to the priests of Aten, politely and with order and precedence. The priests of that thrice-damned god were carrying them away, dragging them roughly from their friends without even time to say goodbye. The courtyard resounded with shrieks and slaps.

I saw my sister Nefertiti carried away on her litter, high above the chaos with a little smile on her perfect lips, and thought that it was much, much better that she should be burned rather than Ptah-hotep.

We were out of the courtyard of the Phoenix and into the broad approach to the palace before we stopped. I could not shut out the dreadful screams of ravishment and despair, and Merope kissed me quickly and said, ‘Come with me, sister, we can live together, my lord Dhutmose will have us both, do not go back!’

‘No, I have a task,’ I told her. ‘I will come and visit if I can. Farewell, dear sister.’ I embraced her closely, smelling the scent of her hair for what might be the last time. I looked Master Dhutmose in the eye and said, ‘Take care of her.’

He nodded. He was shaken by the events in the court of the Phoenix, but at no point had his hold on my sister’s narrow waist loosened. He kissed my hand and hurried Merope away. They had not searched her. She was still loaded with the Widow-Queen’s gold, and when Dhutmose lay down with her that night he would find that he had acquired a richer present than ever he had expected.

I went back into the palace through a side door. I did not want to see whatever else was happening in the court of the Phoenix.

I went to my own room to report to Widow-Queen Tiye on the disposition of her sister-queen Merope and found her gone and her servants with her. I scribbled a note on an ostracon which reported Merope safely bestowed and myself with Ptah-hotep; and went back to the quarters of the Great Royal Scribe, taking with me my own property, which was not much greater than it had been when I came to Amarna.

I and my bundle were halted at the door of the office by two soldiers wearing the bright feathers of the king’s personal guard.

‘You cannot pass!’ one announced, the sort of bone-headed statement I might expect from one of the king’s bodyguard.

‘Yes, I can,’ I explained. ‘I just open the door and go in.’

‘You cannot pass,’ he repeated.

‘Listen, you are stationed here to prevent the lord Ptah-hotep from leaving, aren’t you?’ I asked patiently, though I did not feel patient. The guards must have been sent after my departure for the Aten ceremony. They had not been there when I left.

‘On the direct orders of the lord Akhnaten may he live!’ agreed the soldier.

‘Yes, but there are no orders about who should go in,’ I told him, gambling on the fact that this would not have been covered. Who would be mad enough to join a doomed man on his last night? Mutnodjme, that’s who. And if they did not let me in soon I might easily seize a spear and start a massacre.

‘No,’ agreed the soldier, slowly.

‘And I am going in, not out,’ I said, and opened the door. The soldier watched me with the bewildered expression of a man who has given his arm-ring to a conjurer at a fair. I slipped past him while he was still thinking about it and closed and barred the door from the inside. I might not be able to leave, but until someone lowered this plank, they would not be able to get in, either.

‘I’m here, and I’m not leaving, because I can’t leave,’ I announced to Kheperren and Ptah-hotep, who were sitting at the same desk and puzzling over an inscription. ‘I can’t leave because there are two soldiers at your door to prevent it.’

Ptah-hotep looked resigned. Kheperren looked worried.

‘We heard screaming,’ he said. ‘What happened in the courtyard of the Phoenix? We were about to go out and look for you.’

‘Mass rape,’ I said shortly, putting down my bundle. ‘I went to tell the Widow-Queen about it but she was not there. I hope that nothing has happened to her!’

‘She is more likely to have happened to someone else,’ Kheperren soothed me. He was right. I doubted that there was anyone in the palace, even the dim soldiery, who would dare to threaten the lady Tiye.

‘Well, Merope my sister has gone to her new husband, a nice man, Kheperren, he had even learned some Kritian to speak to her and she just fell into his arms. The others, well, the others are at least away from the palace.

‘I saw my sister Nefertiti there, floating above the terror, serene as cream, the daughter of a dog! How is it with you?’ I asked, looking at Ptah-hotep.

‘We are consulting some old proverbs,’ said Ptah-hotep. ‘There is one which I am looking for, but the manuscripts have been so damaged by the King’s insistence on removing the name of Amen-Re that they are hard to read.’

‘Which one are you searching for? I might know where it is,’ I said.

‘Something about teaching a goat to talk,’ Ptah-hotep said, and I laughed. I knew that one.

‘Come and I will tell you about it,’ I said, and they came to sit down with me in the empty inner apartments, far from any hearers, though we could speak any treason we wished, for doom had already come upon one we loved and Kheperren and I did not greatly care what happened to us if Ptah-hotep was to die.

I knew he would die rather than set that pyre alight.

To push the thought away, I made a story of the proverb. Kheperren and Ptah-hotep sat down at my feet and listened.

Once there was an Eloquent Peasant, and his son who was a thief. His thieveries were many, and he was finally caught as part of a gang which robbed the treasuries of the Pharaoh, even the Lord of the Two Lands.

This is how he was caught; the Master of the Treasury knew that gold was vanishing, but not how. In fact there was a secret entrance, made by a king who was a miser and did not want his court to know how often he visited his treasury to croon over his gold. The thieves had discovered this entrance and the Master of the Treasury did not know where it lay. But he set a trap, such as we use for mice but very large, and when one of the thieves reached for a particularly fine golden vessel, the trap snapped shut and he was caught by the arm. The others fled but in the morning there was the peasant’s son, caught fast.

The treasurer brought the thief before the king, who sent for the boy’s father. He was allowed to speak to his son and advised him of what to say.

So just when Pharaoh was about to pronounce sentence of mutilation and exile, or even death, the boy said, ‘Royal Lord, Master of the Two Thrones, give me a year, and I will teach a goat to talk!’

‘Impossible,’ said the King, but the boy repeated his statement, and the Pharaoh was interested. After all, he could still order the boy’s execution after the year if he had not carried out his boast.

So the son of the Eloquent Peasant was released. As soon as they were out of earshot he turned on his father, angrily asking, ‘Why did you tell me to say such a ridiculous thing? I cannot teach a goat to talk. No man can teach a goat to talk!’

‘You’re still alive. You’ve got a year,’ said the Eloquent Peasant. ‘A lot may happen in a year. You might die. The goat might die. The king might die. The goat might talk!’

‘That is a heartening proverb, Ptah-hotep,’ I added.

‘It is,’ he agreed.

It was getting dark. The sun was sinking. The ornaments of the king’s house were all gone, and it must be truly cold and empty in the palace of women. I was glad I was not there.

Kheperren and I assembled a feast for the evening meal. Meryt as her last gift had left a lot of food prepared and waiting: a stack of flat bread, oiled meats, fine vegetables and fruits and a whole cheese in its web. I found myself hungry, which was surprising, and we dined well on Nubian food and Tashery wine, always the best in the Black Land. We had to find something to talk about, and Ptah-hotep was drawn like a fine wire.

‘Do you remember, my heart, lying in the reeds with me, swimming in the sacred lake when we were boys, before the flail descended on your shoulders?’ asked Kheperren.

Ptah-hotep looked at him over his wine cup and said, ‘I remember. We were going to have a hut in the reeds and a dog called Wolf on guard. That will not happen now,’ he said, and gulped more wine. Reminiscence was not going to assist us to while away the night.

‘Do you remember lying with me on the night of Isis and Osiris?’ I asked.

Ptah-hotep nodded and said, ‘We were possessed by the gods, and that proves that they still exist. Isis was in you, lady, and Osiris in me. And tomorrow I will be burned to death, and there will be no meeting for us, never again.’

This sounded like settled despair and Kheperren knelt beside Ptah-hotep and took him by the shoulders.

‘Who is to say that your belief is correct?’ he said desperately in earnest. ‘Who is to say that we do not all blow out like candle flame or all go into union with the Aten? It’s just stories, ’Hotep, just tales that men make to ward off the dark.’

‘No one has come back,’ I added, joining Kheperren on the floor, ‘to prove or disprove. No ghost has come to tell us that unless the body is preserved the soul is lost. How could Amen-Re allow such a good soul to be destroyed in such an act? You will live, you will live, you will live.’