Out of the Black Land (4 page)

It was dark and cold. Someone had lit several lamps, but the rooms felt unoccupied. My own footsteps echoed. I took a woven blanket off the huge bed and something small and dark clacked to the floor, skittering into a corner.

I laid down my lamp, chased, cornered and crushed it.

It was the wrong time of the year for scorpions to invade the houses of men. It was not even spring. Someone must have gone to considerable trouble to find the poisonous insect in winter. I stood contemplating the still writhing carcass for some time.

Then I shook out the blanket, wrapped myself in it, and sat down in the alcove beside the door to think.

My first thought, that I could bring my dear love to the palace, must be dismissed. Kheperren would be an instrument for the palace to use against me, a hostage to my fortune. I did not greatly mind dying. I would join my grandfather in the Field of Reeds. I still missed my grandfather. But Kheperren was young, he had every right to live, and he could not live if he was with me.

I almost wept again at the thought. The idea that as Great Royal Scribe I could be reunited with him had been a warm glow at my heart for the whole strange day and night I had spent in Pharaoh’s palace. Indeed, I could not even see him again, or I might bring retribution down on him wherever he was. I must get a message to him before I took up my duties, for after that I would always be noticed and probably followed. Oh my brother, I mourned in the darkness of my elaborate rooms. Oh my heart, I have lost you, I have lost you.

I might have sat there in lonely misery all night if I had not heard footsteps approaching. They were confident and heavy, yet not mailed; not a soldier. I threw open the door, more angry than afraid, about to demand of the visitor whether they had any more scorpions.

‘Master,’ said Meryt, dropping to one knee. I laid one hand on her curly hair in token of possession. She gave me the invoice for ten copper ingots which made her mine.

I was so glad to see her that I could have embraced her. She was dressed in a patterned cloth, which must have been the parting present of her previous master. On her strong shoulder she bore a large basket, and in her hand she carried a bundle of papyrus rolls. She lowered her burden to the floor and smiled at me.

‘I thought that they would not have attended to you, Master,’ she said deferentially. ‘So I brought some food from the King’s kitchen. No hands but the cook’s and mine have touched it,’ she added, drawing forth some cooked duck, several loaves of bread, some grapes and a cinnamon cake. ‘There is also wine,’ she added.

‘You are kind,’ I said gratefully. ‘But you are in danger the whole time you are with me, and possibly I should not have done this to you after all, you showed me nothing but good will. Come, Meryt, look here.’

I showed her the remains of the scorpion, and she looked grave.

‘It is as I said, Master,’ she commented. ‘Tomorrow you must find some companions—such as can be trusted. But tonight we can search the bedding and remove any more. I am a slave,’ she said to me, her dark face hard to read in the dim light. ‘But I will serve you gladly, Master, for they seek your death, and that is not just. This appointment was none of your seeking, Lord Ptah-hotep. They gave me these, Lord, telling of your estates.’

‘My estates?’

I unrolled the papyri on the table. I read them. I rubbed my eyes. I read them again. I was indeed rich. I owned the yearly tribute of five villages, eleven vineyards, two hide-dressers and a stone quarry in Syene. My goods were all stored in the palace warehouses. I could have bought the School of Scribes and had goods left over for the Sacred Barge at Karnak. I felt dizzy. Meryt saw this and pushed me gently down onto an ebony chair.

‘Sit there, Master, have some wine and some of this good bread, and I’ll search the bedroom and make sure it is safe. Tomorrow my lord will be pleased to consider who may deserve the honour of a place in my Lord’s household. Tonight my lord needs rest.’

I drank wine red as blood and ate some meat and bread. I heard Meryt shaking out bedclothes, humming to herself and then singing softly. Light bloomed golden as she lit the big alabaster lamp in the shape of an ibis, symbol of Thoth God of Learning, patron of scribes.

‘Come, Master, it’s all well,’ she called, and I took my wine into my bedroom.

‘Meryt, eat,’ I said belatedly, and she hauled the basket into the room and closed the studded door. It latched with a click and I suddenly felt a good deal more secure. The bed was comfortable and I leaned against the painted wall and began to relax for the first time since I had entered my apartments.

Meryt sat down cross legged on the floor and ate. I liked watching her strong white teeth as she bit and swallowed, saying, ‘I never fed this well, Master, since I came to Pharaoh’s palace!’

‘How did you come here?’ I asked. I needed to know all about her, this woman whom I had so casually bought and paid for.

‘My father was a chief,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘He ambushed and killed a trading mission. Then the soldiers came, killed our young men, captured us and burned our village. I was a child. I have always been hungry since then. Not starving, Master, no slave starves in the palace. But there has always been a corner that could be filled. When I grew tall I showed a talent for healing, and the Chamberlain made me his healer, to attend to the slaves.’

So, taking me to Meryt had been an insult. It had, however, not been recognised at the time, which meant that its aim had been bad. And it had given me Meryt, who liked me. And if my estates sufficed to continue to feed her to satiety, she would probably be faithful. I was pleased with the outcome of my first insult in Pharaoh’s service, and sure that it would not be the last.

‘And then you bought me from that old man and here I am,’ she concluded, breaking the last cinnamon cake and giving half to me. ‘And I am yours, Master.’

I bit into the cinnamon cake and returned the grin.

I lay with her in the Great Royal Scribes’ bed, and refused her offer of her body. She was a little puzzled, but not offended, and we huddled close and warm until morning.

I woke with an arm over my chest. For a moment I was flooded with affection, believing that I lay with Kheperren, then I heard a woman cough, and realised that it was Meryt my slave and that I had to get up and assemble a household.

I was drinking warmed wine and nibbling a honeycake when I heard someone come in and kneel down. I looked up from the last census, which seemed to have been carried out with commendable efficiency, and saw the one I loved more than any other in the world. He was prostrate, his hand touching my foot, as any scribe should be before the Great Royal Scribe.

‘Meryt!’ I called. ‘Shut the outer door and stand guard!’ and as she ran to draw the big portal closed, I seized my dearest companion, dragging him into my arms. He fitted perfectly into my embrace, as he always had.

‘Oh my heart,’ I said into his hair. He hugged me for a moment, his fingers digging into my shoulder, and then whispered ‘ ‘Hotep, why did you not send for me?’

‘Because that would have meant your death, and still may if any marked you coming here.’

‘I don’t think so,’ his brow corrugated, as it always did when he was thinking. ‘I did not need to ask the way. I have been here before, when I took a message for the Master of Scribes to the old Royal Scribe. No one would have noticed me, particularly. What do you mean, I’m in danger? That means that you are in danger!’ He held me closer, his mouth against my jaw. ‘Let me stay with you,’ he begged.

‘No, I can’t, don’t ask me, brother of my heart. I love you too much to put you in such peril.’

His scent was on my skin, the dear scent of my own brother, and I allowed myself a moment to hold him tight, as though I could imprint his body on my body. Then I drew away from him. I felt strangely weak, as though I was bleeding from some invisible wound. If Kheperren argued with me, if he pleaded, I did not know whether I would be able to resist him. And I must resist.

But he did not speak, at first. He looked closely at me, as though he was memorising my features. He grew more beautiful every moment. His eyes were gentle and his mouth was soft. He kissed me, lips parting, tongues touching. I drank the sweet silkiness of his inner lip. Then he laid one hand very softly on my thigh, and my body reacted at once. He nodded, as though some private theory had been confirmed. Then he sat back on his heels and said diffidently, ‘What do you want me to do, brother?’

‘Forget me,’ I said. He shook his head so that his golden earrings tinkled.

‘I cannot do that,’ he said. ‘What else?’

‘Leave the palace without being observed. Never come here again. I am rich now, brother, I can give you an estate in the country, if you wish.’

‘I will never go there without you,’ he replied. He was not arguing, but he was definite. ‘If you are afraid for me, brother, you cannot give me anything without the envious ones knowing. That will attract their attention. Is this not true?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, rather taken aback by his calm acceptance of the situation. Yet I was sure that he loved me.

This was confirmed when he took a seal cutting knife from my table and sawed off a lock of his hair. He gave it to me without speaking. I cut off a similar tress and he wound it around his fingers and stowed it in his cloth, against his skin. Such gifts are love gifts, yielding great power to the recipient. Any competent sorcerer could cast a curse on the giver if he had some of his hair.

Kheperren said abruptly, ‘They are taking scribes today for the army. I will go with Horemheb, the captain who is required to travel the border. I will write to you. And one day we will lie in our hut in the reeds, with a dog called Wolf on guard. The oracle said so,’ he told me.

He leaned forward and kissed me again. Our tears mingled.

‘But never ask me to forget you,’ he said.

Then he bowed to me. Meryt opened the door, and he was gone.

I stared for a time at the closed door. It had brazen studs in the shape of lotus blossoms. Then I sent Meryt to bring to my presence the Master of the House of Scribes.

I needed advice and a household before I called on the Chief Priest of Amen-Re at Karnak, the most powerful man in the kingdom, apart from the Son of Re.

Chapter Four

Mutnodjme

Tey my mother and Nefertiti the Queen and I went to see the Great Royal Wife Tiye, our relative, and nearest way to the Pharaoh Amenhotep’s private ear. We found her bathing. Her hair was loose, uncovered by her usual Nubian wig, and it was indeed red and long enough to reach to her waist. She lay back in a pool of water in which leaves had been strewed, and I smelt a sharp herbal scent; mint, perhaps, and wormwood. Her body was swelled with pregnancy. She was pale, as pale as marble, as pale as milk. I had never seen such skin before. The colour of her hair—Set the murderer’s colour—would have caused her early death in some parts of the Kingdom. Even in the enlightened and civilised city, she usually kept her head covered in public. But the hair was not red, I realised, it was like copper wire; a fine, fiery tint, a fox colour. She looked tired and the herbs she was bathing in were selected to refresh an exhausted woman.

But her eyes, when she opened them, were slate-coloured and bright. She saw us come in, motioned us to sit down, and dismissed her attendants, three young women and one old woman who drew away beyond the door-curtain, block printed with indigo lotuses. The maidens seemed reluctant to leave Tiye, eying us suspiciously. The Lady of the Two Lands, the Queen of all Egypt, sat up unaffectedly, flicked her hair over her milk white shoulder, and smiled.

‘You have come to tell me about my son,’ she said, reaching out both hands so that we could help her out of the pool. I rushed to help. She was not like my beautiful sister, slim and delicate; but was wide hipped and her breasts were big and slightly sagging as she left the buoyancy of the warm water. She wrapped herself in a wide length of linen and motioned us to chairs.

Tey sat down and I sat, as I always did, at her feet. Nefertiti, a little nervous at being in the presence of this powerful woman, examined her sandals and did not venture to speak.

‘Hmm.’ The Queen exchanged a long look with my mother. ‘The lady has lain with my son?’

Tey nodded.

‘And it is as I feared?’

‘If you feared that he would be impotent, Lady of the Two Lands, then it is so,’ said Tey bluntly. Nefertiti blushed purple.

‘She is very young; she can not have had many lovers. Can it be that she does not know…’ Tiye smiled at Nefertiti, who was still too miserable to return it.

Tey shook her head so decisively that her earrings rang like bells.

‘I have examined her account of what happened and my other daughter agrees. Nefertiti is fresh and beautiful and skilled, and entirely willing. She tried in all ways to please the son of the lord may he live but to no avail. She doubts that he is capable of producing an erect phallus, and without that there is no seed, and with no seed….’

Tiye wrapped the rope of her hair meditatively around her hand. ‘Does she wish then to return to her mother’s house?’

‘No, Lady,’ Nefertiti came to life and threw herself to her knees at the Queen’s feet. Tiye, surprised, embraced her in the curtain of her coppery hair.

‘Daughter, can it be that you love this weakling who cannot even lie with you as a man does with a woman?’ she asked in an astonished tone.

‘Yes, yes,’ whispered Nefertiti into the linen towel. ‘It is not his fault, it is the will of the Gods, who made him so. He is crippled, but he is so gentle. He did not hurt me, as another man might have done, disgusted by his failure. He did not blame me.’

‘What, then, did you do all night?’ asked Tiye, a little amused.

‘We talked, Lady, and then we slept.’

‘What did you talk about? There, daughter, be comforted, I will not tear you from your heart’s longing, I wished merely to be sure that you were not discontented. Egypt does not need an unhappy Queen.’

‘We talked about the Aten, Lady.’

‘The Aten? Ah, religion,’ said the Great Royal Wife, her mouth twisting as though she had bitten a persimmon. ‘Sometimes one questions the wisdom of attempting to penetrate such mysteries. In any case, I am no guide, daughter. My son is philosophical, even whimsical, and perfectly unreasonable on that subject. I have always found it best not to argue with him.’

‘What happens if you do argue with him?’ I asked. Three sets of eyes turned on me. My mother’s glare was as hot as a silversmith’s furnace.

Tiye, however, was looking at me with great interest. She tipped up my chin with a strong forefinger and looked into my face.

‘A good question, little daughter, and one that not many would dare to ask, Mutnodjme. I wonder what your father means to make of you, questioner?’

‘She will be a wife,’ snarled my mother. ‘To an old man who will beat her.’

‘There are worse fates than to be loved by an old man,’ said the Queen gently, who was herself so married, and Tey bit her lip. I had made it possible for her to make a mistake in speaking with the Great Royal Wife, and she was going to beat me until I bled when she got me home, I could tell. But the question had not been answered and I looked at the Queen again. She laughed.

‘What does my son do when he is crossed? He argues, and then if he is further opposed, he screams, and if anyone persists with their opposition, he throws himself on the ground. I recall that his nurse would not allow him to play with one of the guard dog’s puppies, because she was afraid it would bite him. He shrieked until he turned blue and she was afraid and sent for me. I agreed that the prohibition was wise. My son found that he could not move us, and seemed to surrender. But the next day the puppy was found dead, its head beaten in by a stone. If he could not have it, no one could. It is not wise to persist in opposition to his desires.’

I stared at the Queen while my heart slowly chilled. Into what blood-stained hands had my Father delivered my beautiful and innocent sister?

‘If he is…thwarted,’ said my mother carefully, ‘what remedies do you suggest?’

‘Instant compliance,’ said the Queen, still with her bitten-persimmon mouth. ‘And if he is foaming and screaming, an infusion of valerian and reed-heads will calm him. I never expected to raise him,’ she said slowly. ‘When he was thirteen he was struck with a fever which raged for three days. He was as hot as a smith’s brand and no medicine could quench it. All the physicians said that he would die. But then, quite suddenly, he fell into a sweat and then into a sleep, and when he awoke he was…distant. His ka had travelled, he said, to the Field of Reeds and found it empty but for the god Aten, the sun-disc.

‘And then he did not develop like other boys. I thought it was just laziness—he has never liked to run or fight—when he fattened like a heifer, growing breasts and belly. I told myself, he is young and his father is solid and stocky, may he live forever. I thought nothing of it. By the time I knew that it was not so with my son, he was changed into what he is now. You are gentle and beautiful, Nefertiti, and he likes beautiful things. Love him as best you may. I can only hope that this child,’ she caressed the mound of her belly, resting heavily on her thighs ‘is a boy, for if my son Akhnamen becomes sole ruler, I do not know what will become of the Land of the River.’

She clapped her hands and her four suspicious maidservants came through the curtain. They did not look on us any more kindly, and I wondered if they disliked us on principle, or if they were defending their mistress, whom they evidently loved, from exertion. The old one knelt for her orders.

‘The presents for the Great Royal Wife and her mother and sister, Sahte,’ said Tiye gently, and the old woman blushed, muttered something, and gestured to the others, who brought a large basket. According to custom this could not be opened until we were back in our own apartments, so we bowed and kissed her sandal and were going away with a lot to think about, when the Queen Tiye said to my mother, ‘I will send a scribe to your daughter Mutnodjme, Lady, if it please you. I think that she should be literate.’

‘She can write and read as much as any princess,’ said Tey, displeased at this slur on our household.

‘I think she should be able to do more than that,’ said the Queen, and now there was no doubt that it was a command. ‘I will send a scribe tomorrow for the lady Mutnodjme, and a companion. She is a stranger here, and I think that she will be a friend to another stranger.’

‘I and my family are in the Queen’s hand,’ replied Tey conventionally.

The plump woman shifted in her chair, cradling her burden. ‘Yes, you are,’ she agreed. ‘So do not beat your little questioner, Great Royal Nurse Tey. It is never wise to beat children for exhibiting intelligence.’

‘As the Queen says,’ responded my mother through gritted teeth.

I walked behind her out of the Royal Bedchamber, thinking hard. A companion? I had been torn away from my friends when we had moved into the palace, and there were few children of my own age in the marble halls of Amenhotep may he live. And although I could read and write at least as well as my sister, my father had not considered that women needed much education, and had recalled his scribe to his other duties after we had mastered letters and numbers in the ordinary script enough to keep our household accounts, and understand recipes and prayers.

Father’s scribe had been the old man Ani, a stern greyish man in a linen cloth with ink stains on his clever fingers. He had kept his eyes averted from us. I expected that a Royal Scribe would be sterner and older, and hoped that he would not hit me and my new companion if we made mistakes, as Ani had.

Running to keep up with my mother as she walked briskly down the corridor of tribute bearers, I did not ask questions. I had escaped one beating by divine favour, and I did not want to press my luck.

And the problem of the impotence of the Son of Egypt had not been addressed. Instant compliance, as recommended by the Queen, would not make an impotent King potent.

It never occurred to me that it was not my problem. I was intent on a solution. I could only think of one, and had already dismissed it as impossible.

When we were back in our own quarters, my mother not only did not beat me, but gave me a quick, fierce hug. My face was pushed into her breast and my cheek dented by her elaborate pectoral. I was eye to eye with a vulture, but Tey hugged me so seldom that I was resolved to enjoy it.

‘Little questioner,’ she held me out at arm’s length and smiled at me. ‘Tey’s true daughter! Always one to ask the question that is on every tongue and to which no one dares to give voice…I wonder what will become of you?’

‘Will you marry me to an old man who will beat me?’ I asked slyly, and Tey laughed again and replied, trying to look stern, ‘It might at least curb your inquisitiveness. You did well, daughter. For now we know, and otherwise she might not have told us.’

‘About Akhnamen may he live,’ I said.

‘About him, yes. I had not heard about his… temper, ’Nodjme, had you?’

‘No, Lady,’ I replied honestly. ‘They say that he is vague and gentle and lazy, that he sleeps a lot, that he is impulsive and pays no attention to right conduct or precedence. No one said that he is cruel, not where I heard them, or that he has tantrums.’

‘Hush! That should not be said, daughter, not outside our home. Nefertiti, are you determined to stay with your husband?’

‘Yes, Lady,’ said my sister.

‘Even though he may be dangerous?’

‘He will not be dangerous to me,’ said Nefertiti.

I had heard that tone before. Just so had she spoken before she had knelt down before a mastiff, her beautiful face inches from its teeth, and freed it from the wire snare which was wound around its leg. The dog had been wild with terror and pain, snarling and struggling, but under her hands it had lain quite still, even when she unwound the wire and hurt it afresh. The leg had never recovered, but the mastiff had been devoted to Nefertiti ever since, though it bit everyone else.

She was probably right about the devotion of the King. But men, I had heard, were more cruel than beasts, taking pleasure in pain, and who knew what gave a eunuch pleasure?

I resolved to ask, and to watch. I would know.

Ptah-hotep

To whom can I speak today?

I am heavy-laden with trouble

I have no friend of my heart.

To whom can I speak today?