Out of the Black Land (32 page)

‘Shut up here in this city which the King says he will never leave,’ I said, ‘we know nothing of what is happening in the rest of the Black Land.’

‘I will tell you all if you wish and have the heart to hear it, but it can be summed up in one word: ruin,’ said Kheperren quietly.

Horemheb nodded. Ptah-hotep sighed and Widow-Queen Tiye sighed with him.

‘The festival of Opet did not take place this year, it was forbidden by the King Akhnaten, and the priests have been expelled from the temples of Amen-Re all over the country. The Nile did not flood and the people are saying that the country has been cursed for abandoning its old gods. The harvest last year was small and this year it will be less,’ Kheperren said.

‘The King takes more and more taxes for the building of his temples and this city, and the farmers will be on short rations this year. Without the central authority of the temple of Amen-Re, the local officials are cheating the people but not the King. The Watchers are being bribed and I even heard that Houses of Eternity are being robbed; the thieves’ excuse being that they were made without acknowledgment of the Aten and are thus heretical. Some of the officials of the Necropolis are allowing this to happen provided that they get a percentage of the stolen treasure.

‘Men are being taken for building labour even in the sowing season—even though this year all water for inner cultivation has to be lifted by hand from the river—so less land is being farmed and there will be less wheat.

‘And since the loss of the Temple of Isis, lady…’ Kheperren looked at me, ‘superstition rages, fevers sweep villages and sorcerers have made their appearance. A whole Nome worshipped the birth of a two-headed calf last year. A wandering magician convinced three villages to slaughter all their cattle and have a great feast, because the world would end the next day. The people did as he said because there was no one to persuade them otherwise. They committed murders and various abominations because it was the end of the world, and then when they woke up the next morning the world was still there but…’ he hesitated.

‘ But the magician had gone and so had all of their goods,’ I concluded. ‘There have always been people who see their chance for gain in a bad situation. And as Duammerset, Singer of Isis, used to say,
There is never a disaster but humans will make it worse
.’

Ptah-hotep

‘There’s worse,’ said my dear Kheperren. ‘Wise women are shunned now, and most children under five die because the mothers have no one to help and advise them. Many women die in childbirth because midwives are banned as witches.

‘In one village in the Delta they burned an old woman in a fire, saying she was a sorceress and had put a curse on their cattle, and in Elephantine they are throwing offenders to the crocodiles.’

‘The system of government is breaking down,’ mused Widow-Queen Tiye, ‘that means that all people will revert to whatever they believed before the wise lords of old introduced gods into Egypt. I would expect that fetishes and house gods will be venerated again, and that, as you say, human sacrifice and the long-forbidden cannibal feast will happen once more in places where there has been peace and stability for centuries. That would explain the crocodiles,’ she said. ‘Sobek was a local god before ever he was placed in the pantheon.’

‘And the old woman,’ Lady Mutnodjme agreed. ‘Before Isis there was a female demon with her head turned backward who crept into houses and put the evil eye on children, gave cattle diseases and blighted crops.’

‘And now,’ I added to the general gloom, ‘our lord is not only going to offend all of our allies by giving away their princesses like honey-cakes to beggars, but he is refusing to send aid to Tushratta of the Mittani; and if the Mittani fall we shall have Assyrians on the threshold.’

‘There is something, at least, that can be done for Tushratta, evil old scoundrel that he is,’ said Lady Tiye. ‘General, you have your own honour guard, have you not?’

‘Lady, I have,’

‘And how many men are they?’

‘Lady, one thousand. Three hundred mounted archers, three hundred light infantry, three hundred heavy cavalry and one hundred cooks, runners, scribes and others who count as light auxiliaries. They can fight if they need to, eh, Kheperren?’

My sweet love grinned at the general and touched the lock of white hair which covered the scar.

‘Your men will not be sent on the Aten’s business, my dear General, because they will be needed to guard your person, which is valuable and cannot be hazarded,’ said Widow-Queen Tiye. ‘There is nothing to stop you making a visit for me to Tushratta’s court, is there, taking a present to the old ally of my husband?’

She drew off a very heavy and valuable arm ring, embossed with the discredited symbol of Sekmet, She Who Loves Silence, the blood-drinking lion-headed avenger. She tossed it to the general who caught it deftly and stared at it.

‘I am ordering you, General, to take this arm ring to my old friend Tushratta with this message:

The Mistress of Egypt Tiye sends greetings to Tushratta of Mittani, and bids him remember that a lioness is more dangerous than a lion.

‘Will you do this, General?’

‘Lady,’ the general left his chair and knelt down at the Queen’s feet. ‘I will deliver your message.’

‘To Tushratta in person, mind, wherever he may be. You should try his border with Khatti. And try to kill Suppiluliumas if you can, he’s very ambitious.’

The grin was now very broad but the general merely replied, ‘Lady, I am your slave.’

‘I know,’ said the older woman dryly. ‘I may ask you to carry further messages for me. In fact, the Great Royal Scribe here will draw up a document which will authorise you to be anywhere at all with your thousand men, on my personal business. While I am alive, no one will interfere with you. When I am dead you must manage as best you may.’

That was my cue, obviously, to rise and get papyrus and wax for a seal. Kheperren and I wrote a commission from the Widow-Queen Tiye in the broadest and vaguest of terms, added a translation into two other languages underneath and carried it to the lady Tiye with a little pot of warmed wax for her approval. She read it, demanded a translation of the other parts, sloshed wax over the bottom and rolled her personal seal along it. I had not realised that Sekmet Destroyer of Mankind was her deity, but that goddess had a very fitting devotee in the Widow-Queen. That seal said to everyone, down to the meanest peasant who could not read in any language, that this scroll had come from the Great Royal Spouse Mistress of the Two Lands Widow-Queen Tiye and it would be much better to obey the bearer.

Still on his knees, General Horemheb accepted his commission with both hands and kissed the Widow-Queen’s feet.

‘You may do another task for me, if you will lend me your scribe,’ said the Widow-Queen, and Kheperren shot me an alarmed look. He was scared to death of the lady Tiye.

‘You may have him for any task which does not compromise his honour or risk his life,’ replied the General, replacing his gigantic frame in the chair of state.

‘Take my daughter Mutnodjme and allow her to walk in Amarna with your escort,’ the old queen smiled at my lady. ‘I want her report on these Priests of Aten. I need to find a reliable one for my sister widow Merope. She is young and wishes to marry again,’ said the Queen.

‘Do not women walk alone in Amarna?’ I asked in surprise.

‘No, my dear scribe, they are constrained to stay at home, mind their children, be an ornament for their husband’s house. A woman alone is hissed at as a whore, and may be attacked. A woman walking with a soldier, on the other hand, is safe. Wear subdued clothes, daughter, and do not stare any man in the face.’

‘Why not?’ objected Mutnodjme. ‘How am I to judge if he is a good man or not if I cannot see his eyes?’

‘Listen to his voice and watch his hands,’ the Widow-Queen informed her. ‘Discuss with your sister Merope as to what sort of man would meet her desires. It would be wise to do this quickly. When are you bidden to be gone, General Horemheb?’

‘Two decans, lady, for I am required to wait until the first reports come back as to the progress of the work in destroying the cult of Amen-Re and advise Pannefer as to further action.’

‘Good.’

‘Lady,’ said Mutnodjme, ‘Why cannot Kheperren take my sister Merope out to find her own husband?’

‘Because she cannot see him until the marriage is contracted; so said the King through his Queen Nefertiti.’

‘Why in the name of all the gods…’ she began, and the Widow-Queen laid a finger on her lips.

‘Because the King is afraid of everything; most of all he is afraid of the power of women. He gave the cult of the Phoenix to his wife to make her important and give her a position; a sop to satisfy her craving for adoration. She has not noticed that she has lost all her rights—the right to sit in council, the right to her own palace and her own guards, to her own general and army, to her own property, and even the rights over her own body, though that is not an issue. All women in the Black Land have lost these things, because the Queen has lost them. And he is marrying his eldest daughter, which is proper, but he is giving the mating of her to a priest of the Aten.’

‘But she’s only eleven, still a child. Which priest of the Aten?’

‘The head priest of course, Mutnodjme. Nothing is too good for the head priest of the Aten. Not even a child princess of Egypt.’

‘Divine Father Ay!’ choked Mutnodjme, and I knelt down beside her, ready to support her head if she vomited. She mastered her disgust in a moment, but her hand remained on my shoulder.

‘We can do nothing for the Princess Mekhetaten,’ said the Great Royal Wife. ‘But we can at least get one innocent out of this palace. Tomorrow, Mutnodjme, you will go looking for a husband for Merope.’

‘As you will, Lady,’ she said softly.

She sounded like the very pattern of humility, but I could feel her fury in my embrace, as though we were communicating skin to skin. I hoped that she was not angry with me. I hoped that she would not take her anger out on the innocent Kheperren. He knew very little of women, living almost his whole life as a man among men.

I remembered that the priestesses of Isis walked where they willed as did all women, and began to realise how terrible a prohibition this order might be to her. I was not only picking up anger from the lady. I was sensing despair.

I could not comfort her with words, though I could feel her side warming against mine and my touch might have soothed her. I had nothing, however, to say.

Kheperren had. He lifted his cup and said ‘Few scribes receive such delightful orders! The last one I was given sent me into an ambush by the vile Kush, lady.’

‘This one may be less perilous,’ said my lady Mutnodjme, and smiled at him.

Chapter Twenty-two

Mutnodjme

I had never chosen a husband for anyone before. Merope had been unable to tell me anything particular, how could she? But she said she wanted a kind man, gentle and strong, with proven fertility and no vices, and we broke down giggling as we realised that what she was describing were the points of a good horse.

The stud market of Aten was open for business and Kheperren and I entered as worshippers. I knew that the Aten was a predominately male religion, but I was not prepared for the temple, which was beautiful beyond belief, decorated with friezes of rural scenes and golden images of the sun disc. All the walls of the inner chamber were carved with images of the royal family, worshipping the Aten together, with the sun’s rays ending in little hands which came down to bless them; Nefertiti the Queen and Akhnaten the King and the little princesses.

I walked away from Kheperren to examine a particularly fine frieze, and at once I was surrounded by men. For the purposes of selecting a suitable man for another woman, I had donned an opaque cloth belonging to my days as a temple maiden and had covered my shoulders and breasts with a plain shawl. This did not preserve me from peering and whispering. I became very uncomfortable. I was behaving in the way which the lord Akhnaten required, I was modest, I was humble, I looked no man in the face, I kicked no man in the crotch for the vile things which they were suggesting to me, but it was not helping. Fingers slid inside my clothes and I was just about to forget this veil of humility and fight back when Kheperren came to my side and all the tweakers and whisperers fell silent. I looked up into his grave scarred face with a look of silent appeal.

He took my hand and said, ‘Come, lady, this is no suitable place for you,’ and I saw the feet shuffle aside as he passed, clearing a way for the soldier and his woman.

‘There is no man in that temple whom I would allow to touch my sister’s sandals,’ I spat as we came out into the sun.

‘I know. Things have become bad for women; the state of the country is very evil. “This land is in commotion and no one knows what the result will be, for it is hidden from speech, sight and hearing,” but that is Neferti’s old prophecy and has already come to pass,’ he replied, leading me through the broad, flat, sanded avenue of sycamores to a square building marked like all others with the rayed disc of the sun god Aten. ‘We may fare better here.’

‘More priests?’ I said, not quietly enough.

‘Lady,’ said a polite voice with a temple accent. ‘How can we serve you?’

Heedless of this modesty taboo, I looked him in the face. He was a middle aged man, clearly a scribe. He did not seem to be horrified by either my person or my actions, which inclined me toward him.

‘I am the Princess the Lady Mutnodjme on an errand of Widow-Queen Tiye, Ruler of the Ruler of the Double Crown, Mistress of Egypt,’ I said, tired of anonymity and driven into using my conferred rank, which I usually forgot. I could not look around quietly for a suitable man, and all the whisperers and tweakers would not leave me alone.

‘Lady Mutnodjme, I and all my men are servants of the Mistress of Egypt may she live,’ he replied, bowing to a proper depth.

‘Who are you and what is your position?’ asked Kheperren.

‘I am the servant of the Aten, the Lector of the Sole and Only God, my name is Dhutmose and I work here writing the stories and miracles of the Aten as far as they have yet been told. There are a hundred and twenty men under my command.’

‘Are they all priests of the Aten?’ I demanded

‘Yes, Lady.’

‘I need to find a husband for one whom the Widow-Queen loves. I need a man who has sufficient wealth to keep her, a lady of birth and position. I need a man who is gentle and kind and well spoken, one who will make her laugh.’

‘One who is not already married?’

‘Of course.’

His brow furrowed. He bowed us into a chamber which was clearly his; there were pictures on the walls of a dwarf and a dog driving a gazelle in harness, a cat’s funeral procession celebrated by mice and some very athletic lovers in a variety of positions. A sexually-active man with a taste for satire, it seemed. I began to be interested in Dhutmose. He had a round face and fringed brown eyes like a cow, with a goat’s wary gleam.

‘Now, lady, let me send for some beer, it is disagreeably hot today, isn’t it? And perhaps your escort would like some too. Soldiers drink beer.’

‘He’s a scribe,’ I said shortly. The trip into the temple had ruffled my temper. ‘But let us have beer, by all means.’

‘He’s a scribe? I beg your pardon, brother scribe, I did not recognise…’ began Dhutmose, flustered. Then he peered closer at my escort and said, ‘By the Aten, it’s Kheperren, isn’t it? My dear boy, don’t you know me? I taught you demotic all those years ago. Where have you been, boy, to get so burned and scarred?’

‘With the army, Master,’ Kheperren broke into a huge smile. ‘Master, I lost track of you ten years ago when I went with the army, and Ptah-hotep became Great Royal Scribe. I thought you dead,’ said my escort.

‘Beer!’ Dhutmose called out the door. ‘The best brew. Right away is not too soon, if you please, gentlemen.’ This call brought an instant scurry of feet as someone raced off to get the best beer.

‘No, no, dead, us? Not at all,’ said Dhutmose. ‘Our master Ammemmes bought himself a large house and estate with the present which he says Ptah-hotep gave him—that boy really did turn out well—and settled down with the scribes who were too old to start again. He’s growing grapes. And making wine. And drinking it. But I was too young to rusticate so I came to the service of the Aten in Thebes. Then my wife died and I’ve been living in Amarna since we opened this house of books. Fine manuscripts we are producing, too. You’ve seen Ptah-hotep? Is he healthy?’

‘Very well, master, he’ll be delighted to learn that you are happy also.’

‘Tell him I wish him very well, and refer him to line 37 in the Prophecies of Neferti,’ said Dhutmose, his bright smile a little quenched. ‘Now, lady, you are looking for a man?’

‘Not for myself,’ I said hastily, and Dhutmose laughed, a good rich hearty laugh.

‘I can see for myself that you are suited,’ he patted my knee. ‘But for this protégé of the Widow-Queen Tiye may she live forever. A young woman?’

‘Eighteen, as I am. Used to the old king.’ I did not name him because I would have had to use the name of the forbidden god Osiris; and that did not strike me as a good plan in the temple school of the Aten.

‘It is going to be very difficult to find a young man with the skill of the old king; especially it is going to be very difficult to find a young man who is unmarried who has those skills unless he has been taught by a very clever young woman. Now, let us see. Eighty-three of them are married. Twenty more are boys. Let me think. We have seventeen possibles. How would you like to proceed, lady?’

‘Call each of them in and let me speak to them and touch them,’ I said. ‘We should be able to weed out the impossibles fairly quickly. I know the lady’s tastes.’

Then we began a weary round of interviews. I had never seen such an unattractive collection of youths. The ones who were not unwashed were over-clean and over-decorated and at least three of them met Kheperren’s eye and blushed or looked away; pretty boys who had been in the army camp, picking up soldiers as brief chance-met lovers. They, clearly, would not do. Not one had a spark of humour or imagination. I would not have lain down with any of them if I had been unmated for a year.

‘Lady, they are all the young men I can show you,’ apologised Dhutmose, reminding me irresistibly of a stock merchant regretting that he had no good horses this year. ‘I agree that they are filthy and unlearned. I am thinking of ordering compulsory bathing before they enter the building. I can show you thirty nice young men with impeccable manners and learning, but they are all married and I can see that the Widow-Queen Tiye may she live would not want to give away her adoptive daughter to be a secondary wife. ‘

‘Then, Master, in default of a pretty young man, I’m afraid it is going to have to be you,’ I said, consulting Kheperren with a lifted eyebrow and getting a nod in response.

‘Me?’ Dhutmose sat down suddenly in his chair of state.

‘I was sent to find a man of humour and intelligence, of kindness and gentleness, one without a wife who had sufficient wealth to support my sister,’ I said firmly. ‘Are you alone?’

‘I am,’ Dhutmose took a sip of beer and fanned himself.

‘Have you sufficient property to take a woman without a dowry?’

‘I have, but a royal lady…’

‘Your wife, she taught to you make love well?’

‘She was pleased with me after a couple of months,’ he said, and then looked so sad that I wanted to hug him.

‘Do you wish to please the Mistress of Egypt?’

‘Of course. The question is, of course, will I please this daughter? What if she wants a strong young man? I am forty, getting a little thick around the middle and my hair is marching backwards across my scalp. I am not the figure of a lover in a song. If she had been the same age, well then, I would like some company, especially if she could read. My wife was a learned woman from the temple of Isis, and we used to read aloud by lamplight on the hot nights when no one can sleep.’

‘She can read and write both cursive and hieroglyphics. She is slim and has light brown eyes and dark brown hair. She likes children and honeycakes and singing. She can dance all the Egyptian dances and Kritian too. She is…’

‘By the Gods,’ gasped Master Dhutmose, forgetting his lately-learned monotheism. ‘Are you telling me that the King Akhnaten may he live is giving away the Royal Women?’

‘Yes, without dowries, within the month and only to priests of the Aten, and the Widow-Queen Tiye is very anxious to make sure that her sister-queen goes to a good home,’ I said angrily. ‘She would do as much for any stray cat.’

‘I speak a little Kritian,’ mused Dhutmose.

‘Good, then please put your seal here and here and you can come and fetch her as soon as the King divorces her.’ Kheperren laid out a scroll on the table.

‘That is outrageous,’ he whispered. ‘Those poor women!’

‘Exactly so, master, now seal the document, if you please.’

‘What is her name?’

‘Merope. The Widow-Queen Merope of Kriti in the Great Green Sea.’

Even the shock he had just received could not induce a scribe to seal a document without reading it, and he spelled his way through the edict.

‘This confers on me all rights over the lady, with or without her will,’ he observed. ‘I hope it is with her will. But if she is wishing to be out of the palace, she might like my house, the friezes are rather fine, and my little daughter needs a mother even if the lady does not want to undertake any more of the duties of a wife. I will understand. Poor woman!’

He sealed the papyrus and Kheperren rolled it up again. My private view was that of all the duties of a wife, the one which Dhutmose was prepared to forgo was the one which Merope was most eager to comply with. I only hoped that he was equal to the challenge.

We left the astonished and gratified Dhutmose calling for a Kritian grammar, and walked back through the wide airy streets to the palace.

I had not looked at it from this angle before. It was like a castle. All the walls were sheer and very high, crowned with square bevelled battlements. There were four gates into the palace, and we were taking the one which led to the Queen’s palace.

‘Tell me of Neferti and his prophecies,’ I asked, remembering the message which Dhutmose had sent to Ptah-hotep.

‘Not here,’ said Kheperren.

Ptah-hotep

I was delighted to hear that my old teacher Dhutmose had found a place in the new regime, and thoroughly agreed with Mutnodjme’s choice. He was, as I remember, a shrewd man, but gentle and kind. It was always Dhutmose who comforted the homesick and sat with the feverish. He loved only women. I recalled that one of the boys had tried to seduce him and totally failed. Dhutmose had lifted the boy’s cloth, pointed at his phallus and said, ‘You are very beautiful, boy, but that thing would get in the way.’ He was just the man to soothe the wounded feelings of an ex-Great Royal Spouse.