Out of the Black Land (36 page)

‘I am so afraid,’ he confessed at last, and we carried him down into our arms, on the floor, on the Nubian blanket let fall by an overburdened child.

I had not known if they would exclude me, these two who had been lovers for years before I came into their life, but they did not. Both pairs of arms reached for me, both mouths touched mine. Kheperren stripped Ptah-hotep of his clothes and his jewels, and I stood up to remove all that I wore, then tugged at the soldier’s loincloth. I undid the knots and it came free, revealing a phallus coming into erection slowly, still soft to my hand, hardening under my touch.

We stripped away even the wig which all men of any standing wore, freeing Ptah-hotep’s own hair from its plait, scattering ribbons and feathers and mirrors. I found perfumed oil and sprinkled us all, so that we smelt of the divine fragrance, of frankincense which had once been the perfumed breath of Osiris and Isis and their son Horus, the Revenger.

If Ptah-hotep was Osiris, I was Isis, and Kheperren was Horus. I spoke and named us and consecrated us to the gods of the dead while I still had language, for this love-making quickly passed beyond speech. We sighed together, all on one note. I felt my body relaxing, anticipating pleasure, my emotions with my Ptah-hotep but also with Kheperren. I wanted it to last forever, in a charmed sphere such as magicians make to protect themselves from demons they have raised.

A mouth was on my breast, tonguing a nipple until it was hard. A hand was cupping my sisters, the two lips which guard the sheath of Hathor, cupping and then stroking between. I held and sucked, so slowly, a phallus such as that of Min who is fertility; while over my head I heard the slap of belly against buttocks as Horus lay inside Osiris and took pleasure of his flesh. The fragrance of the gods was all about us.

I felt fire building inside me.

I took Osiris in my arms and as he penetrated me, I screamed.

Ptah-hotep

They were like gods and I was a god with them. My body was malleable, permeable, soaked in divine essences. I lost my thought and all my fear, poured out my loss in kisses on two mouths which meshed with mine, soft and silky and demanding. Time looked away from us. Khons god of moon and measurement overlooked us. Isis took me into her body and Horus slid inside me and I did not know who lay with whom, my name or where I was. I heard Isis cry out, felt her convulse, felt the throb of seed, mine or another’s? I lay flat on my back, and someone rode me, I caressed skin warm with life and life poured into me, a vessel, a purified offering to the gods of death.

I turned on my side, supporting a head on my arm, while Horus knelt in homage between willing thighs and joined with Isis who received him eagerly, her mouth seeking mine, her hand caressing my phallus. Her legs were locked around his waist, her hips thrust upward to engulf the offered gift. She cried out and he thrust harder; she went limp and he came to me, our hands crossing the body of the goddess, and finally we climaxed together, spreading her belly with semen like a field is spread with seed.

We lay stunned until we grew chilled and stiff. Then we ran to my bed and lay down together, a warm body on each side of doomed Ptah-hotep, and I did not mean to sleep but I slept and they locked their hands over me. I slept so and I woke so, between my guardians, like a dead man between Nepthys and Neith.

I looked at them as the dawn light revealed their faces. Mutnodjme was half hidden by her hair, a tangled mass of ebony ringlets, her eyelids a fringed black line on her olive-coloured cheek, her mouth half-open against my arm. Kheperren lay heavily on my other arm. Even in sleep he seemed to be thinking, a line between his brows, his lips shut on some unwise declaration.

I was overcome with a wave of love and liking and I was suddenly and completely happy. I was about to leave them, but no man was loved as I was loved.

I woke them by trying to get up. I had to get to the wash-place. Kheperren watched me narrowly to make sure that I was not going anywhere else. He sat up, scratching his belly, and the lady woke and kissed the nearest flesh, which was Kheperren’s thigh.

‘All hail to Amen-Re,’ I declared, coming back to see my two dearest people embracing each other, and they both repeated, ‘Hail to the great god at his rising,’ and I was carried back in time.

The years of Amarna and the new god fell away from me. I was Ptah-hotep, named after the Maker Ptah, worshipper of the only gods of Egypt. I was not Great Royal Scribe any more—or would not be after I surrendered my jewels-of-office to Bakhenmut. I need not watch my every word. I might be about to die, but at least I was free.

The others felt my happiness. We rose. I did not wash, as that would remove from me the perfumes of love. I donned a cloth which was no different from any scribe’s, and packed up my palette and my styli, my ink pot and my papyrus. These things I had brought with me, and I would take them into the flames.

Perhaps I would have them, indeed, in an afterlife, if they went with my body into the fire.

Bakhenmut came as ordered and I invested him with the pectoral and arm ring of the Great Royal Scribe. He hesitated, shifting from foot to foot on my threshold, before he gave me an apologetic nod and walked quickly away. Then the soldiers came and they escorted all three of us into the court of the Phoenix.

We came into bright light and blinked. The courtyard had no worshippers. Only the King Akhnaten sat on his high throne, flanked with his advisors. I met the dreamy eyes of the king and the concentrated venom and triumph of his counsellors with no emotion at all. I walked in a dream and I stood in a dream. There was always a chance—it itched at the corner of my mind—that this was just a test, that indeed, at the end, the king would not order me to undergo this dreadful ordeal. I watched the flail of authority lying on his swollen belly.

It gave a twitch. At that signal, soldiers moved in around the pyre so that no one could escape from it. I took a step forward, then another step. The blind musicians of Attis began to sing and play sistra and, on the noise of high voices and jingling wires, a litter was carried into the court of the Phoenix on the shoulders of ten men.

I kissed Kheperren, then Mutnodjme. I caught sight of the Widow-Queen Tiye watching from the Window of Appearances.

Mutnodjme saw her too, and stared at the royal lady, who waved my followers back. Very reluctantly, they let me go, holding one another by the hand. They backed until they were standing in the archway of the king’s palace. Neither of them looked away from me. Their faces were blank with pain.

I walked on, one step after another, as the men carried the litter around the pyre and the chant of the Phoenix stung my ears.

There was still a chance that the goat might talk.

Widow-Queen Tiye was gone from the window. No friendly faces looked upon me except those of my lovers who were behind me. I hoped that they would comfort one another. All of the windows were filled with watchers. I waited in hope that the order would not be given in a rising cloud of spices strong enough to stifle me.

The drums beat, faster and faster, as the chorus of eerie voices cried on the Phoenix to return.

Come to thy perch, to thy resting

Come we have prepared a nest for you

Sweet mother of thyself

Self created, sweet bird of fire!

The men laid down the litter. The curtains opened to reveal the figure of a woman, perfectly still. I could see the profile of the Great Queen Nefertiti. She was the most beautiful woman in all of Amarna. There was no mistaking her, though she seemed to be unconscious or asleep.

The bearers, attended by the Widow-Queen Tiye, carried her into the heart of the pyre. Wood was piled all around her. I could only see her wig and the garland of cornflowers around her neck.

Come and renew thyself, Phoenix

Burn in the fire of your renewal

Give birth to thyself in a sacrifice

Thyself to thyself, a pure offering.

I looked desperately up into the exalted face of the King. The flail was raised. He was about to order me to light this abominable fire. In the nest of spices lay no immortal bird but mortal flesh, quivering and frail. I could not do it. I hoped that Kheperren and Mutnodjme would not watch my death, for it would be horrible. A soldier handed me a burning torch. The flames rose pale in the strengthening sunlight.

‘Lord Akhnaten,’ I cried. ‘I am your slave.’

‘You are,’ said the King equably. ‘We are all slaves of the Aten, Sole and Only God.’

‘Lord, do not give this order,’ I begged. ‘This is an abomination, lord, a thing which cannot be done.’

‘Yet you will do it,’ he said.

‘Do not order me to set this fire, lord,’ I asked for the last time. The soldiers were closing around me.

Beside me, the Widow-Queen Tiye raked me with her eyes and hissed, ‘In the name of the gods, Ptah-hotep, light the pyre!’

‘Never,’ I cried, ‘I will burn instead!’ but my words were vain, because holding my hand in a fierce grip, the Widow-Queen snatched the brand I was holding and forced it into the heart of the fire.

Spices burn with a thick smoke, and the Queen Nefertiti burned with them. I heard screams in the smoke and struggled to loose myself from the talons of the Widow-Queen, who had just forced me to commit murder.

‘Stay still,’ she hissed in the same tone. ‘We cannot be seen but we can be felt. Hold my hand, Ptah-hotep. I will tell you all but you must not be seen here again, do you understand? Come with me. The King is about to find out that it is not possible to sit comfortably in a courtyard in which a king’s ransom of spices are wastefully burning.’

‘But the lady, the queen!’ I protested.

‘There is no woman in that pyre, boy, will you shut your mouth?’ she snarled at me, reminding me that Sekmet the Destroyer was her patron.

I held my tongue. In any case the huge clouds of billowing burning spices made sight difficult and breathing almost impossible. A brief eddy in the smoke showed me that the throne was now empty and I heard soldiers coughing. A door in the palace slammed shut. Even the musicians of Attis had choked and fled.

I yielded to the tug of the Widow-Queen’s hand and followed her, still carrying, I noticed, the bundle which contained the tools of my trade. If that hadn’t been a real body, then what had it been? I knew Nefertiti’s face, the most famous countenance in the Black Land, and it was her face. I began to be angry. I had been cheated of my death. I had given away all my goods, consecrated my lovers, given up my office, and now I was not to die after all. How could I go back? The king must have heard my defiance. If he saw me again, I was certainly dead.

I ran knee-first into what, on closer inspection, turned out to be a litter-carriage with heavy leather curtains, such as is used by ladies on journeys. Into this Widow-Queen Tiye shoved me, shouting through the smoke, ‘The horsemen know where to go. Stay with her. Don’t return until you have word from me, write no letter, send no word. I will tell them.’

Then, of all strange happenings in that most strange day, she took off her pectoral and put it around my neck and kissed me on the mouth, hard. She tasted of smoke and spices. ‘You are a good man. Amenhotep would have been proud of you,’ she told me. Then she stepped away and I was thrown back against a soft bundle as the horses were whipped into a gallop.

I was still alive, I was not burned. I rubbed my eyes. When I had cleared the smoke out of them, I found that the carriage was already through the gates of the City of the Sun and we were racing across the open plain toward the river. I pinched myself, hard, and watched a red weal come up on my skin. Yes, I was also awake.

The carriage bounced as the charioteer yelled to his horses to go faster. I clutched the bundle I was leaning against and found that I had my hand upon a breast.

I removed it hastily. I had been leaning on the most beautiful parcel in the world. In the carriage with me, stunned or asleep, was Nefertiti, Great Royal Spouse, Lady of the Two Lands, whom I had just sacrificed to the Phoenix.

Book Three

The Hawk at Sunset

Chapter Twenty-five

Mutnodjme

I did not see his ending, for the clouds of smoke drove Kheperren and me back despite our longing to watch the unbearable, but we heard his defiance flung to the lord Akhnaten on his high seat. The fire had burned with a flame hot enough to melt bronze. There might not even be bones for us to bury fittingly.

We had nowhere to go to indulge our grief and horror. I could not take a man to the Widow-Queen’s apartments so we trailed back to the office of the Great Royal Scribe. There Kheperren and I gathered all the personal belongings of our lover, weeping as we did so. I wept as I picked up a garment he had thrown aside to make love to us the night before, and Kheperren wept as he found Ptah-hotep’s favourite stylus under a chair. We took his vials of Nubian oil, his store of copied papyri, his cloths and his sandals. We wrapped it all in the Nubian blanket on which we had made love together.

It was a burden for one man in the way such weights are measured. Not much for all those years of dedication. He had given away all his jewels—those of his office to the new Great Royal Scribe, those of his own to his slave Meryt and her household. We were not taking away anything that would be valuable to anyone but us.

Kheperren shouldered the burden. As I picked up my own, he said, ‘Come with me, lady,’ and drearily, I followed.

On the way out we passed a pop-eyed lady, very decorated, who was superintending the removal of her own furniture into the apartments. A line of servants carried beds and chairs and baskets. Bakhenmut, the new incumbent, gave us an apologetic look as we shouldered past the bearers.

The wife of the new Great Royal Scribe said nothing to us as we left, but her shrill orders to the servants: ‘Mind that corner! By the Aten, what dreary decorations! Husband, we must have this all re-painted immediately!’ followed us down the corridor.

Kheperren took me to the quarters of General Horemheb, who allowed us to come in, showed us to his bedchamber, closed the door and left us alone with our anger and fear. We lay and wept together as the day grew hotter and noon passed, and still the fire in the courtyard smouldered, a stench of spices.

‘I knew he wouldn’t do it,’ choked Kheperren.

‘I, too,’ I wiped my face on my cloth.

‘I go with my general to deliver the Widow-Queen’s message to Tushratta,’ he said to me, holding me close. ‘You are the only woman I have ever lain with, the only woman I could ever love. Come with us. There is nothing for you here.’

‘I still belong to the palace,’ I responded automatically, then thought about it. Where was I to go, what was I to do? I had stayed in Amarna because of my sister Merope, but she was now gone. My sister Nefertiti was dead, sacrificed to the Phoenix; and my lover Ptah-hotep. He too was most horribly and gloriously dead, defying the Pharaoh, refusing to play Amarna games. He had died true to the old gods, but he had still died.

Why should Mutnodjme stay in the palace of the King Akhnaten? Not for the sake of her parents, to whom she was an embarrassment. There was only one person in the palace of the king who deserved my loyalty.

‘I’ll have to talk to the Widow-Queen,’ I told Kheperren.

Then, worn out with grieving, we slept until the general woke us. He did not mean to, but he needed clean clothes for his audience with the Pharaoh, and he tripped over a chair in the half-light and swore and we woke.

Waking when one is mourning is hard. One wakes and for the first few moments one cannot recall grief; then it lands like a stone from above. I woke next to a male body, slim and young, and thought him Ptah-hotep. Then Kheperren rolled over and yawned and I recognised him and Ptah-hotep’s death crashed down on me and I groaned.

‘Waking is hard,’ agreed the general, sitting down on his big chair and rubbing his stubbed toe. ‘It is easier for soldiers, because they have an enemy and they may still die. Therefore rise, wash, you must face the world. There is a terrible task before you, and none but you can do it, Lady Mutnodjme, as men are forbidden to walk in the court of the Phoenix.’

I staggered to the wash-place and poured water over my head, wrung out my hair and mopped my tear-swollen face.

‘What is the task, lord?’ I asked. Even my voice seemed reluctant and words were slow in forming.

‘The fire in the court of the Phoenix is, at last, out. You must sift the ashes for bones,’ he said. Generals must often give orders which they know may result in the recipient’s death and he gave this one calmly.

But this task was not as hard as he seemed to think. If I could find some bones—perhaps a skull, skulls do not readily burn—I could reassemble enough of Ptah-hotep for his voyage to the afterlife, and if ever man deserved to feast in the House of Osiris it was my dear love Ptah-hotep. It was the last service that I could do for him, and I was anxious to do it.

‘I will go directly,’ I said.

General Horemheb gave me that puzzled look again. Though I did not mean to, I kept surprising him. I tied my cloth close about me, grabbed another to put the bones in, and was starting for the door when Kheperren caught up with me.

‘I will come with you,’ he said.

‘No, you are still too shocked and you are not used to handling the dead are you?’ I demanded.

He was white as linen under the sun-darkened skin. He shook his head.

I was eager to keep my task, and did not want to have to support anyone else in doing it. I was just about sure that I could support myself, but I had no strength to spare.

‘Stay, Kheperren, he would not want you to be further harrowed by his death. Besides, the general is correct. You are a man and cannot go into that cursed courtyard, whereas I—may all the gods forgive me—am an initiate of the Phoenix cult. Let me do Ptah-hotep this last service. We shall conduct the funeral together.’

The general patted me on the shoulder as he might do to a comrade, and I went out of the palace into the yard. There were no guards. No one challenged me.

The heap of ashes was not great. The spices had been tinder dry and had burned very bright, leaving little sign that a Nome’s worth of precious wood had been destroyed there. The sweet scent was still extremely strong but in it I could detect no lingering scent of burned flesh, which was odd. But then no one had ever burned so many spices together before, so it was possible that any other reek had been entirely subsumed in the perfumes.

No one was there. No one watched me as I began at one side of the mound and spread the ashes, running them through my fingers, looking for bones. It was the second decan of Ephipi, very hot and dry, and the furnace wind rose, the breath of the Southern Snake. This usually blows all morning, and it was now long toward evening, but the wind blew harder. It seemed that the gods wished to assist me in my task. The hot wind was winnowing the ashes, blowing away the light bonfire fluff and stirring the heavier charcoal at the bottom.

I stood in the midst of a whirling cloud of ash. I covered my mouth and nose with the cloth I had brought with me and strove to see through watering eyes. Bone ash is white, and I saw no streaks of the right colour as the detritus blew around me, funnelled in the hollow of the courtyard. Two people had burned to death in this pyre, and they seemed to have burned away to nothing, so hot had the fire been. I saw the ghost of a garland of cornflowers as it flew past, dissolving even as I thought I saw it; the pins of a heavy court-wig; and some jewellery—possibly the ring I had given Ptah-hotep—were melted into little metallic globs puddled on the marble pavement which was cracked and discoloured by the heat of the fire. I gathered up the gold, two handfuls of charcoal and two handfuls of ash before it all blew away into the west where the dead journey to judgment.

Then, scoured by the heat, I entered the palace again and walked slowly toward General Horemheb’s quarters. I carried, wrapped in his own cloth, all that remained of my sister and my lover, and it was a very light burden.

On the way I was stopped by two soldiers of the king’s guard. They did not touch me—I must have presented a terrible spectacle, a reproach to those who had officiated over the blood-sacrifice. I knew that my hair was loose and filled with dust and I could feel ash stiffening into a mask on my face.

The taller of the two said, ‘Lady, your mother would speak with you.’ They were clearly not going to allow me past until I had spoken to Great Royal Nurse Tey, so I allowed them to usher me along a corridor painted with dancing gazelles.

‘Mother,’ I said as I came in. ‘What do you want of me?’

‘Daughter,’ responded Tey, ‘I am ill.’

This was a surprise. I had not seen my mother at the shameful sacrifice last night. I assumed that she had been there. I assumed also that the death of the Queen Nefertiti, his daughter, had been some part of Divine Father Ay’s scheme to eventually own all Egypt. Though what he would do with it I had no idea. He could not sit and brood like a spider on a mountain of gold.

‘Lady, what form does your illness take? And you are aware that I am forbidden to practice medicine? You told me so yourself. Tell one of your tame soldiers to bring you the palace physician.’

‘I have done so,’ said Tey. She was lying on a couch, picking at the straps with her restless fingers. ‘He says that it is an illness which is not to be cured. He says that I have cancer of the womb.’

‘Then that is the end of the matter, lady,’ I said. I hated her with a remarkable depth of feeling, considering how exhausted I was.

Tey had warned me off trying to take Nefertiti away from the worship of the Firebird. Tey had watched over the sacrifice. Tey had seen the immemorial rights of every woman in the Black Land vanish into smoke and had applauded the loss. Tey had denied me my freedom and the use of my hard-earned skills. Also, I knew of no cure for such a cancer. She would die, and it could not be soon enough for me.

‘You have sifted the ashes?’ she changed the subject, seeing that I was not disposed to help her.

‘As you see,’ I sat down, placing the folded cloth in my lap.

‘You found…traces?’

‘Lady, I did.’

She glanced around as if someone might be listening and then said in a voice which was rich with pain, ‘Give me something of my daughter Nefertiti.’

‘No,’ I said. Had she gone into that pile of ash and searched for the concubine’s daughter as I had gone to seek my lover? Tey had no claim over what I carried.

‘Cruel,’ said Tey, very softly. ‘Cruel, and it is I who raised you, educated you, unfitted you for a woman’s life.’

‘How, unfitted?’ I demanded. The only reason that I was discussing this so calmly was that I was too shocked and grief-stricken to engage in petty arguments with my mother about her treatment of me. She had said this kind of thing before, mostly while gloating that I would not longer be able to use my talents.

‘The little princess is sick.’ She avoided the argument again.

‘Then you must summon the palace physician,’ I repeated.

‘The King married her last night,’ said Tey with something less than her usual ferocity. ‘Ay lay with her though she is still a child. Now she is feverish and cannot sleep.’

‘That is to be expected,’ I said as calmly as I could, revolted by the idea. ‘I’m sure that she will resign herself to the difficulties of a life in the palace, as I have had to do.’

‘You will not help me, but you will help her,’ said Tey with some of her old venom. ‘You are a priestess of Isis!’

‘I was a priestess of the lady whom I must not name, mother, but that worship has been discredited. Now I must go.’ I said.

I did not look back as I went to the door. Tey rose on one elbow. She did not shriek curses at me. She only said one word, one which I had never heard from her mouth before.

‘Please.’

So I turned back, hating myself. I took the lid off an alabaster dish which stood on the table, a beautiful thing carved in the shape of a bird breaking out of an egg. Into it I put a pinch of fine bonfire ash.

‘Tell your soldiers to take me to the Great Royal Wife,’ I said, and she clapped her hands to summon them.

But when I reached the room where the poor little princess Mekhetaten lay, they were already mourning her. I spoke to the women, but they could not tell me what killed her. She might have died of shock, of loss of blood, of horror or of suicidal or homicidal poisoning, and of course there was always disease. Any underlying condition would have flared up under such conditions, and it was Ephipi, the season of fevers. There was nothing for me to do and I no longer had an escort so I went back to the general’s quarters, a ghostly woman, masked with death. I saw the women making the sign against the evil eye as I passed.