Out of the Black Land (43 page)

‘Once a twentieth of a deben would have brought you more than bread and wine,’ commented Userkhepesh.

‘I could have given him a couple of gold beads, but that might have got him murdered,’ I replied. ‘The streets of Thebes are very unsafe now for anyone carrying anything of value.’

‘Indeed. Do you recall the son of the Wise King Amenhotep-Osiris?’

‘Lord, he rules all Egypt now, and a worse king has never sat on the Throne of the Two Lands,’ I replied, wondering if he was indeed senile.

‘There was a parley between all the chief priests, before you were born,’ he went on. ‘It was held in my apartments in the great temple of Amen-Re. The priests of Ptah were there, and Khnum, the strange cosmogeny of Hermopolis. We drank wine and watched Nubian dancers and indulged our flesh with women, with hair the colour of ripe corn, who had been bought in slave-markets beyond the Great Green Sea. The feast cost me a basket of gold.’

‘Yes, lord.’ I could understand why he wanted to live in the past. There was no glory to be got from a tiny room in a mud-brick house in the back streets of Thebes.

‘But the real reason for the gathering was to consider the Great Royal Heir Thutmose. You never saw him, did you?’

‘Never,’ I told him. Prince Thutmose had been bitten by a snake and had died long before I had anything to do with the palace.

‘He was a bold young man, strong, healthy, and the King greatly loved him. He had been trained in diplomacy and could speak three languages and read five. His favourite occupation was chariot-racing, and soldiers said that he would make a good commander. But he had no love for our temple. He had absorbed his father’s views on the balance of power in Egypt. He meant to devote some of his funds to the temples of the lesser gods, Sobek and Bes, Neith and Maat who is truth.’

A horror was growing on me, in the lamplight, in that small bare room.

‘In our arrogance and foolishness we thought that his brother would be more malleable. We thought that Akhnamen would eat out of our hands, once his noble father had gone into the otherworld. Should I ever get there, if my heart is not immediately eaten as I deserve, I do not know what I will say to him.’

‘Master, please,’ I begged, unable to bear the suspense.

‘When I say to you it was my fault, that all this is my fault, Ptah-hotep, I am not mad or deluded. It was the agreement of the meeting—they all agreed—and I myself administered the venom through a hollow needle placed in a chair-leg. It took him two days to die, but he died.

‘I killed Prince Thutmose, and ruined Egypt,’ confessed Userkhepesh, once Great Servant of Amen-Re.

He closed his eyes and did not speak again. I sat and held his hand. I heard the rattle which is death beginning in his throat. At the last, he opened his eyes and stared into mine, pleading perhaps, begging for forgiveness.

It was not for me to judge him. I said, ‘You are absolved,’ and the lashes of the blind eyes closed over them, and he was dead.

When the attendant came back, we arranged the body fittingly and carried it out into the street. We delivered him to the House of Life to be properly embalmed at the expense of the Princess Sitamen. The body was very light.

Then we gave away his wine and bread to the street-children, as the only funeral feast we could make for the high priest who had almost destroyed the land and the god he had sworn to serve.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Mutnodjme

Widow-Queen Tiye was henceforth free. I do not know how she explained her release to her sons, co-regents now and rulers of Egypt, but they did not attempt to lock her up again. Not even in Pharmuthi two years later, when Great Royal Wife Meritaten died of the sweating fever and Ankhesenpaaten was married to her brother Smenkhare. The little princess had borne one child, a pale and sickly creature which only survived for three hours.

In this she only lasted a little longer than her mother and grandmother, for I had news from the palace of Sitamen that my sister Nefertiti had fallen into a despondency and thus into a fever, and had died peacefully.

Ptah-hotep wrote me letters of love and I replied with love. I visited my sister Merope in her house by the square, where she quickly bore two sons for Dhutmose. They were very pretty children and her husband doted on them and on her.

Otherwise I ruled my household, learned cuneiform, lay with the general, conceived and miscarried. I had no one to consult about my state of health; and I had no suitable prayers. The only learned women left in Egypt did not dare show their learning. Although after the first few years midwives had been allowed to practice again to stem the rising mortality amongst mothers. Someone must have told those stupid men that if the mothers died in childbirth they would have no sons.

No sooner was seed settled in my womb and my purifying blood had ceased for half a season, then would come the grinding ache which meant that the child had loosed hold on the flesh, and I would shortly bleed another baby.

My mother, who had recovered miraculously from cancer of the womb, told me that I would never bear, because learning had unsettled my female parts. I ignored her. For the first time in my life, I had Mother Tey in a vice.

On my advice, she had gone to Thebes and prayed for healing in the disestablished temple of Hathor, lady of music, and then in the remains of the temple of Isis. She reported that there were still some priestesses there, living in what had been the servant’s quarters at the back of the compound, and they had given her a potion and told her to pray to Isis nine nights in succession. She had done that and had been healed. Either the physicians had been mistaken in their diagnosis, and nothing was more likely, or Isis had healed her. Presumably Isis had some use for her, though I could not think of one, except to assist in punishing Egypt for its apostasy.

So now she was alive, which was something of a pity as she encouraged Divine Father Ay in his greed, but I held her life in my hand, knowing that she had appealed to forbidden gods.

She was probably right about my ability to carry children. I seemed to conceive easily, but the child would not stay with me. I could have visited the temple of Isis myself, and seen Ptah-hotep, but somehow there were always things in the house to be done, and somehow the general was always away when I thought of going, and somehow I never got there, and the years passed.

I never loved the general like I loved Ptah-hotep, never felt that strange feeling of being twinned by the night and the gods, but he was a good man, fair and just and kind, and I liked him well.

I was putting ointment on Kasa’s skinned knee—the clumsy child had become a clumsy man—when I heard trumpets blowing. I walked to the window. I had not heard such a clamour for years. The general woke up, sitting up in mid snore.

‘Those are battle trumpets,’ remarked Ipuy, picking up his wood-carving knife. Our soldiers had sprung to attention and grabbed their weapons. Horemheb summoned them to form a guard around us as we went out into the court of the Aten. Either an army was attacking or some amazing announcement was to be made. All the people in the palace had poured into the great court.

All eyes were on the Window of Appearances. The royal family filed out.

There was Akhnaten may he die in his most extravagant cloth, a parody of an army uniform. Long contemplation of his god, the Aten, had damaged his eyes and now he had to squint to see a hand’s span in front of him.

There was Smenkhare in the wig and jewellery of Great Royal Wife; worried and maternal Ankhesenpaaten with her little brother Tutankhaten holding her hand; and Divine Father Ay, along with Pannefer and Huy, all smirking.

‘People of the Aten’ announced the King. ‘I have called you together to hear my words.’

‘Hail sweet child of brightness,’ called the crowd, hoping for their usual ration of gold trinkets. “Hail to the Aten!’

‘Misery is upon the land,’ said the King.

I was astounded that he knew anything about what was happening in Egypt. He never left the city and he did not listen to anyone but his own dishonest ministers.

‘In my own household, three of my daughters are dead and the Beautiful-One-Who-Is-Come is gone into flame. The Phoenix has not risen.’

This was true. However, the sacrifice which he had designed to bring the Phoenix had not been properly made, though I had no intention of telling anyone that. After a year of watching on the walls to sight the first flock of birds escorting the Firebird, the cult had fallen into disfavour.

‘Hail to the Phoenix!’ cried a few voices, and were hushed.

‘Therefore I consulted with my priests.’ The king looked on Divine Father Ay.

‘Why is the Aten angry with us? Why does the river Nile not flood? Why has the Aten punished us?’ the king asked.

He was even untrue to his own theology, I thought with disgust. His Aten had no compassion, no justice, no mercy, no personality. He had constructed it as pure life-force, creating and created. It had no incarnation, unknowable and unknown, a primeval thing-which-is-all. Therefore the Aten could neither punish nor reward. As well ask the sun not to burn skin, or the water not to wet it.

‘I have communed with godhead,’ the King yelled, blinking at the crowd. ‘We have been lazy, accepting all the gifts of the Aten without trying to spread the knowledge of it to foreign lands. Therefore I have decided. Now that the name of the old god is obliterated from Egypt, now that we are pure, then we must purify the barbarians. We must go forth not as soldiers but as instructors. All of my army will be used to take presents to foreign kings, to foreign places, even as far as the Great Green Sea and the nests of the vile Kush. And the most valuable present they will carry will be knowledge of the Aten!’

I looked at Horemheb. His mouth had fallen open. I struggled to work out the implications of what the King Akhnaten had just ordered. His soldiers were to go forth to foreign kings to preach the cult of the Aten. That did not seem perilous. Someone asked the king a question.

‘What shall we do, child of the Aten before all stand in awe, if these foreigners do not accept the teachings?’

‘Why, kill them,’ said the king calmly. ‘If they will not accept, we must kill them.’

This, on the other hand, made the situation disastrous. Egypt was surrounded by desert nomads who had their own form of monotheism for which they were perfectly willing, even eager, to kill or be killed; and by kingdoms who had their own long-established gods who were just as precious to them as the Aten was to the mad king.

I could not see Babylon surrendering Nun, or Ishtar being abandoned in Assyria. Even if the rulers wished to do so—and an army on the threshold can be very persuasive in religious matters—they would not dare, for their people would rise up and slaughter them.

‘What’s the king doing?’ I whispered to my husband.

‘He’s declaring war on the world,’ said the general.

***

It being Mechir, which in the old days was the month to celebrate the story of Sekmet and the destruction of mankind—averted by the gods pouring her a lake of red beer—the Widow-Queen Tiye decreed a feast.

Sekmet was her goddess, She Who Loves Silence, the lioness in the peak. The Widow-Queen invited the whole royal family; excluding Ankhesenpaaten and Tutankhaten as too young to take part in the special celebration which she had in mind.

She did not invite me—and I was rather hurt—but she summoned me to her rooms as the finishing touches were being made to what looked like a very lavish feast. She saw my slightly downcast face and kissed me.

‘Come and open this door tomorrow morning, daughter Mutnodjme,’ she said gently. Her red hair was concealed under a full court wig, and she was wearing her own weight in gems. She was old. She was, now I calculated, over fifty.

‘Make me a promise, daughter,’ she said, sounding so serious.

I responded instantly, ‘I am your slave, lady.’

‘Help the little royal ones,’ she added, and I swore to do so. Then she put around my neck a very precious necklace, loaded my arm with bracelets and placed a lotus wreath on my head.

‘Remember me,’ she said, and then ushered me out, for her guests were arriving.

I stood by the door in the corridor of gazelles and watched them come in. Pannefer and Huy, greasy with expensive scents. Smenkhare walking in a parody of femaleness, hand on hip. His eyes were glazed. I had been told that he had become habituated to opium in larger and larger quantities, to kill misery and help him to sleep. And of course the king and his guards—he never moved without guards. Akhnaten had not aged well. The body which had been strange was now grotesque. His belly swayed as he walked, his breasts bounced. He did not notice me. The Widow-Queen welcomed them all in and shut the door.

I did not sleep well. I could not explain why I tossed and turned and eventually got up, so as not to wake the general; though nothing short of a battle alarm woke Horemheb. I lit a small lamp and sat down in the empty outer apartment and waited for the sun to rise. In the silence I heard sounds of merrymaking from the right direction, screams of mirth and the smash of dropped pottery.

I walked about. The night was not cold. The painted walls grew too close. I walked out of the general’s rooms and out to the battlements, where I would see the whole City of the Sun laid out beneath me as soon as Khephri pushed the ball of light over the horizon.

The night, of course, was not completely silent. I heard a woman giggle, a man whisper, then the noise of kisses as someone made love just behind the wall against which I leaned. Down in the kitchen courtyard, someone was making dung and straw fuel-bricks. I heard the clamp and thud as the bricks were pressed into their moulds and then released, to be laid out to dry in the sun. A soldier paused when he saw me standing by the wall, identified me and went away.

Light grew. I could not wait for full sunrise, and I did not want to be on the wall when the mad king again came forth to hail his Aten at its rising.

I hurried to the quarters of the Widow-Queen Tiye and I found her; still alive—though the others were all dead.

Both guards were lying across the threshold with not a mark on them, even the feathers in their helmets undisturbed.

Akhnaten had fallen at Tiye’s feet. His eyes were open, still strange and dreamy, though the personality behind them had fled to its maker. Tiye cradled Smenkhare in her arms. His wig had fallen off, revealing his vulnerable boy’s scalp and nape of the neck, which the red-headed woman kissed.

Master of the Household Pannefer lay in his place, Chamberlain Huy on the other side, bundles of fallen garlands and wigs and jewels.

‘I gave them life,’ the Widow-Queen said with an effort, trying to smile. ‘Now I have taken it away. Tell your father Ay that I am sorry he missed my festival—I wanted to take him with me as well. The deed is mine,’ she said with immense dignity.

Then she drained the cup in her hand. The poison was fast acting, and in moments she had joined her sons on their journey to the Otherworld.

I knelt down and sprinkled some of the poisoned wine over my lady the Widow-Queen Tiye, and offered up long-forgotten prayers for her soul, saying to the judges:

She was a great Queen, and by her actions she has saved Egypt. She lived in Maat and died in Maat, and truth was in her.
She will live, she will live, she will live!
For Isis has her hand and Nepthys her arm.
For Neith is her guardian and Sekmet her defender.
The lioness of the peak is her lady, She Who Loves Silence, and she has died in carrying out her desperate strategy like any general who dies in battle.

I could not bear to look on the scene any more. The air was heavy with death. But now there was another chance for the Black Land, for the intelligent boy Tutankhaten was now Pharaoh, and the maternal and well-disciplined Ankhesenpaaten his Great Royal Wife.