Out of the Black Land (48 page)

A lone horseman came galloping straight across the plain. I heard the hoofbeats. A soldier, perhaps. Another warning from the edges of mismanaged Egypt that another fortress was about to fall. Another spokesman from some small town ringed with bandits. And nothing I could do because all of the soldiers were home on their farms, waiting for harvest.

I heard the sentry’s challenge, saw them fall back and salute as the horse passed into the courtyard. So, an officer of some sort, and one whom the sentries recognised.

Idle and uncomfortable, the heat pearling my skin with sweat, I marked the horseman’s progress as he dismounted in the yard. He grunted as his feet hit the ground, and the horse staggered and almost fell. A servant led it away to be groomed and watered, and the soldier strode into the king’s side of the palace.

For no good reason, I followed him. I had been hoping for some major invasion, in a way, something which would force a few debens of silver out of Ay’s fist. I did not know the news which the soldier brought, but it was probably dire.

I passed the guards on the king’s door and came into the outer apartment, which had no guards and no attendants. Divine Father the Pharaoh Ay had dismissed most of the servants to save their board. A sleepy Master of the House was standing by the door to the inner apartment, obviously listening. He clutched at my wrist.

‘Lord Judge, go in, I fear that the Pharaoh Ay may he live is in danger.’

I went.

Under a huge painting of Maat who is truth, Pharaoh Ay was backed up against the wall and General Horemheb was confronting him. I had never heard the general talk in the voice he was using this night. It was low, clear, and almost toneless. It was the voice of one tried beyond endurance and weary almost to death.

‘I have come from the Canaan border, Pharaoh Ay. You left me my one thousand men, with which I have been attempting to hold a stretch of land almost as long as the Nile.’

‘Soldiers are expensive. You did not need all those men.’

‘So you say,’ said General Horemheb, ‘but you have not seen what I have seen. Villages raided, smoking ruins with weeping, dazed children lying on the bodies of their dead mothers. Violated women swallowing hemlock rather than live a moment longer with their pain. The Shasu have crossed the border at twenty points, all of them little raiding parties, and I am like a man who is trying to put out a hundred little fires with only one bucket.’

‘You are the Chief of the Army,’ sneered Ay. ‘It is your job to hold the border.’

‘I have held it, for the moment,’ he replied. ‘I left ten men at each little post, you see, to hold it against the raiders. They do not want to stay. The Shasu, they just whip across the border, slay a few men, rape a few women, steal the flocks and drive them back. In a well-run country they would only be a pest. But we cannot hold them off.’

‘Then we shall appoint another general, one who can manage his post,’ said Ay. He seemed to feel no fear, even though Horemheb stood over him, a cubit taller and strong as an ox.

‘The Assyrians are coming,’ said Horemheb, quietly. ‘You will not be able to ignore them. The King of Khatti is a persuasive man. I have just fought a battle; I have just met Assyria,’ he said. ‘Shall I tell you how I won?’

‘If you must,’ Ay yawned.

‘I took the shepherds and the goatherds of the threatened village,’ Horemheb’s voice had never risen above an ordinary speaking tone. ‘I gave them no weapons because I had none, and in any case they were used to pruning hooks and mattocks.

‘I am a soldier, I have always been a soldier, and they might have made good troops if I had had time to train them, but I had no time. You gave me no time, Ay. It was a small village but they were proud of it and wished to save it and they had courage, those shepherds.

‘I could see no way of keeping the Assyrians back but by encircling them in a narrow place and blocking the ends of the pass. It was a reasonable strategy and it worked. But they are all dead, Ay. Every one of those goatherds has died, cut to pieces by the Assyrians, calling for their mothers as they bled. If they had had real weapons they might have survived. My own ten men are dead, except for one whom I left in the village to live or die under the care of the women. They had been with me for years. But they are soldiers and soldiers face death willingly, it is part of their service,’ he said.

‘But the goatherds of Palm Tree Village are yours, Ay; the deaths of seventy men and boys almost too young to hold a stick are your fault.’

Even then, perhaps, Ay might have retrieved the situation if he had demonstrated some remorse. But instead he sneered.

‘What are goatherds?’ he asked. ‘We have plenty of goatherds in the Black Land. And what are armies? Open mouths and open hands. I care nothing for the deaths of a thousand such. I will not have to feed them.’

Horemheb’s great hands were around his throat in a second, crushing the life out of him. And in the doorway the crone Tey shrieked, ran and clawed at Horemheb and was shoved backward with such force that her head impacted against a table and she fell to the floor.

I said, ‘Let him go, he is dead,’ and Horemheb dropped the body of the Pharaoh Ay-Osiris and wiped his hands on his shirt.

I bent and inspected the body of the woman. ‘She is also dead,’ I told the general. He sank into a chair and passed his hand across his forehead. It came away black with dirt. He stared at it, as though he wondered whether he had turned into a Nubian overnight.

‘He murdered Tutankhamen, you know,’ I commented. ‘Maat has been done.’

I pointed to the picture on the wall. The Goddess of Truth, crowned with her feather, had not altered her expression.

Ay-Osiris lay where he had fallen, a broken doll. I reflected that we had better get him to the House of Life immediately. Bruises putrefy faster than other flesh.

I sat the old Master of Household down and gave him some wine.

‘They’re both dead?’ he quavered.

‘Yes, do you want to join them?’

‘No. He was as bad as she and they were both as mean as rats,’ he said frankly. ‘I’m glad they are dead.’

‘Good. Summon the priests of Osiris. We are about to have another royal funeral. Ay-Osiris is going to his tomb before his decorations are complete,’ I observed.

Then I went into the inner room, where Horemheb still sat slumped in his chair. I knelt down and slid into a full ‘kiss earth’ and nearly kissed his feet. They were filthy.

‘Why are you kneeling to me, Ptah-hotep?’ he asked with unutterable weariness.

‘Because you are now Pharaoh,’ I told him. ‘Come along. You need a wash, and Mutnodjme has been worried about you. General.’

Then I asked the question which was making my heart as cold as ice, ‘What of Kheperren?’

‘I left him in the Village of the Palm Tree,’ said Horemheb, still bemused. ‘He’s got a broken arm, which means that his scribing days may be finished. I’ll ask… no, I’ll send, by all the gods, I can send a whole regiment to get him. For he fought like a lion, and only fell at the last.’

Relieved, I dragged the corpse of Ay-Osiris into his room and laid him on his bed, his wife beside him. I looked for the last time on the face of greed, then closed his eyes and left him to judgment.

Chapter Thirty-two

Mutnodjme

On the night that Ay joined Osiris, I received into my arms a stunned, filthy, blood-stained general, and woke my household to care for him. It took three jars of well-water to scour him clean, and I found five arrow wounds on his chest which had pierced his armour. None of them were deep but they must have been very painful. On his wrist was the mark of a bite and he had ridden for so long that the skin on the insides of his thighs was raw and weeping. I had to cut off his cloth.

Ii ran for the strongest wine and Wab for bread to be soaked in it, and Ipuy talked to the general as we cared for him. The old soldier said that he had seen this before, this unresponsive state.

‘This is battle-shock. You leave it to me, Mistress,’ he said. And so he sat down at the general’s head while I and the others worked on his body.

For a long time he said nothing. Just when I was about to shake him, he spoke in the most casual manner.

‘A nasty business, soldier,’ Ipuy said, and for the first time Horemheb reacted. He began to talk.

‘There were more than a hundred of them, escorting one of the sons of Suppiluliumas,’ he said, not even wincing as I peeled the blood-soaked inner shirt away from the wounds.

‘Only the gods know what they were doing in Egypt! I had them hemmed in and the children poured rocks down on them, and we shot our arrows until there were no more arrows. Then they began to break out. The goatherds were afraid, of course, not battle-hardened, and the Assyrians bold and well armed. All I had were hoes, Ipuy, hoes and reaping hooks. It was a massacre. But they didn’t flee. They died where they stood, and they all died. But so did the Assyrians.’

‘How did that happen, general?’ asked Ipuy.

‘I think I killed them,’ said Horemheb. ‘Yes, Kheperren and I were back to back, I saw how they killed the children, I charged them. Then I fought them all, and they all died. At least, when I could see again, there were no more enemies, not alive.

‘Then I helped my brave scribe to the village where the women said that they would set his arm; but it’s a bad break. I’m sorry, Ptah-hotep, I don’t think he can be a scribe any more unless he can learn to write with his left hand. And he had at least one arrow in him.’

‘General, rest easy,’ said Ptah-hotep. ‘As long as he’s alive, it doesn’t matter.’

I patched the wounds with bandages and it took all of us to carry the general to his bed, administer wine and poppy, and watch until he slept.

‘He killed them all by himself,’ commented Ptah-hotep.

‘That’s the general,’ agreed Ipuy.

Ptah-hotep told me that Ay was with Osiris and Tey was dead; and the manner of their deaths, which I felt that they had deserved. However, they were my parents. I searched for a reaction, but could not find one. They had never loved or wanted me, and lately they had done their best to ruin Egypt.

So though I played Isis for their funerals, I did not weep.

I was to be the Pharaoh Horemheb’s Great Royal Wife, because I was the only remaining royal princess of the whole Amarna dynasty.

Ankhesenamen was in the temple of Isis and proud of her learning, and in any case by marrying me, Horemheb became Ay’s son-in-law and therefore had a double claim, though not a strong one if there had been a living son.

On the day we laid Tey and Ay-Osiris in their tomb—and hoped that they might reform in the otherworld, though I had little hope of it—Ptah-hotep came to me. Kheperren was with him. Horemheb had sent a whole regiment to fetch him and the women of the village had cared for him as best they could.

Horemheb had sent two good masons to make the Shepherd’s Stone, and had exempted their village from taxation for ever after, though he could not bring back their men.

The frontier forts were reinforced. Horemheb did not have to call his soldiers from their farms. At Opet they flooded in, their harvests done, ready to follow the general and to share in his triumph. He had been very moved by that.

Kheperren’s arm had healed cleanly enough, but it would never be serviceable again. He had been honourably discharged from the army.

‘Lady, I am resigning my post,’ said Ptah-hotep. I had more than half expected this, ever since Kheperren had been discharged. But it was a shock, anyway.

‘But you’re Great Royal Judge!’ I protested.

‘I was. For eight years I have been a judge, and I am getting old. I am very tired. I wish to enjoy the remainder of my life, lady, and I want your permission to leave your palace.’

‘You have my permission,’ I said, though he must have seen my disappointment in my face. I was looking forward to an expanded household, a whole palace of my own, in which both of my dear ones could have beautiful quarters. And, selfishly, I wanted him with me. I still loved him. But I could see that he was in earnest.

I was to be Great Royal Wife, the Lady Mutnodjme in Whom the Pharaoh Delights, and she must lie only with her husband. And Horemheb would need my help in re-ordering Egypt. He was a good man, and I could not leave him.

I put my necklace around Ptah-hotep’s neck, looked for the last time as a lover into his beautiful eyes still fringed with jet black lashes. He still wore my thin gold ring. My heart was wrung, but it would not repay him for his love if I was to weep on his breast, so I did not weep.

Ptah-hotep kissed my hand, and Kheperren kissed my feet. I watched them go away, hand in hand. I had not noticed that they were aging, but now they were both old men, forty at least, and they deserved their peaceful end.

And I would still see them. Sometimes.

***

The general was drafting a document when I came into the inner apartment. He looked up and smiled at me.

‘I am making an edict,’ he said. ‘I need your help with the wording. How shall I put it that all bad judges shall be dismissed, that all lawless acts by the soldiery shall be suppressed, that all bandits are to be hunted down, that all tomb robbers shall be exiled?’

‘Begin at the beginning,’ I suggested. ‘With your reign name.’

It was going to be a long edict, the statute of abuses which Horemheb was pledging himself to abolish. He lifted a strand of my hair and put it to his lips. I leaned over and kissed his neck where the blue beads still dangled.

‘Are you content, lady?’ he asked.

‘I am content,’ I replied.

My husband, the general and Pharaoh wrote:

Horus Mighty Bull: Ready in Plans: Golden Horus: Satisfied with Truth: Creator of the Two Lands: Favourite of the Two Ladies: Great in Marvels at Karnak: King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Djeser-kheperu-re, Ruler of Truth, He-whom-Re-has-chosen, the Son of Re, Horemheb.

Wab bought me wine and beer for the Mighty Bull of Horus, and he began with his claim to the throne, which was through me.

Behold, this fortunate Son of Re proceeded to the palace, and he brought before him the revered eldest daughter Mutnodjme. She embraced his beauty, she placed herself before him.

I nodded. ‘That is probably better than saying:
I fished her up out of the Nile
.

King Horemheb laughed. ‘Now for the reformation of Egypt,’ he said with relish, and wrote again:

His majesty took counsel with his heart as to how to destroy evil and suppress untruth. Behold, his majesty spent his time seeking for ways to remove oppression and to deliver the Egyptians from violence.

Then he took palette and brush and wrote:

Lo, my majesty commands, concerning all instances of oppression in this land.

If a poor man has made for himself a boat in order to be able to serve the Pharaoh, and he is robbed of his craft and his taxes, then my majesty commands that every officer who seizes the boat and the taxes of any citizen, the law shall be executed against him, and his nose shall be cut off, and he shall be exiled to Sinai…

It was going to be a very useful reign, and I was happy.

Ptah-hotep

Honourably discharged ex-scribe, my heart’s brother Kheperren led me by the hand down the steps of the palace of Thebes and onto the docks. He was being very mysterious about where we were going, but I was so pleased to be with him that I didn’t mind.

I had come to my decision to retire when I had felt ice in my heart when I thought that Kheperren was dead.

Now, fortunately, he could leave his general and I could leave my Mutnodjme whom I still loved, because I did not know how many days I had left and I wanted to spend them all with Kheperren.

The servant loaded my basket of belongings into a boat. It was not a large craft like Glory of Thoth, which I had left for the next Great Royal Judge. It was a middle-sized and well-built wooden vessel and its name, according to the writing around its prow, was Rider of the Reeds which was a nice name for a flat-bottomed craft, which would indeed ride the reeds.

Kheperren loaded another basket in beside me and jumped in, casting off and grabbing the tiller.

‘Come along, Ptah-hotep,’ he urged. ‘Have you forgotten how to row?’

I had not, and it was not really rowing anyway; just steering. The current carried us gently. The early morning mist was burning off the river. Later it would be hot. I asked how far we were travelling.

‘Not a long way,’ Kheperren smiled. ‘We will be there long before noon. I hope you like it, ’Hotep. It’s not a grand place. I’ve lived all my life in army camps, so any place is good enough for a soldier. But you’ve lived in palaces. This is…’

I bade him to stop worrying and mind his steering. We were in the middle of the river, the current was running quickly, and I had already seen one hippopotamus. Hippopotamuses, like troubles, seldom come singly.

I wasn’t worried about where we were going. I was free of all loves but this, my first. Free of all learning except a few curious scrolls which I meant to spend a few years puzzling out. Free of all command, all responsibility, all allegiance. I was a little intoxicated by being loosed from captivity. I began to sing, and soon Kheperren joined in.

Rise thou, my glad heart,

With thy diadem in the horizon of the sky

Grant thee glory in heaven

Power on earth

That I may go forth with gladness

That I may lie down in peace.

That my heart may be satisfied

That my journey be at an end.

I woke late at night. Kheperren was asleep beside me. He had bought me to a small well-made house by the river, surrounded with a vineyard. I had been introduced to the three men and two women who were to care for us.

I had admired the fish pool and approved of the vintage. It was a very pleasant place. We had eaten a peasant’s supper, of beans, bread, roasted fish and melons.

We had lain down in love and slept, and now I was awake. I could hear the rustling of the reeds, but there was something else, animal feet moving, a sniffing, and then a sharp thief-scaring bark.

‘Kheperren,’ I shook him by the shoulder and he drowsed awake and kissed my neck. A wave of delight was sweeping over me, but there was something I had to know.

‘Kheperren, what is the name of our dog?’

He pulled me down into his arms on the reed-mat bed.

‘Wolf,’ he said.