Out of the Black Land (45 page)

‘It was simple,’ I told him. ‘There was nothing else I could do.’

‘When it was thought that you had perished in your brave deed,’ the general said, watching me closely, ‘your parents wept until you wrote to tell them that you were alive and safe. Being sensible people, they did not allow this to be known.

‘But ever since you ‘died’ in the pyre of the Phoenix, your parents received small gifts from the people. They were not formal gifts-of-offering—which have the name of the giver attached—but were loaves and jugs left anonymously on the threshold. People who were hungry, when there was so little grain, gave them bread and beer to honour and commemorate the scribe Ptah-hotep who was the only one of all that vast horde of courtiers who dared to defy Pharaoh. Do you see now why you must be a judge?’

A servant gave me a linen cloth to wipe my eyes. I had never thought that what I had done, which had seemed utterly inevitable at the time, would have been seen as courage.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I will be a judge. But I will be a just judge, ruling on the cases I have before me. I will not have any persecution of those who believed in the Aten if they have done no other wrong.’

‘That is also the will of Tutankhamen may he live!’ agreed General Horemheb.

Chapter Thirty

Mutnodjme

I reflected, when I looked across the feasting multitude, how well the boy who had been born Tutankhaten and was now Tutankhamen had managed. He was slim and bronzed and good looking, greatly resembling his brother Smenkhare whose fate had been so bitter. He was soft-spoken, serious, ready to take advice, but decided in his own mind.

I wondered how many scars the Amarna regime had left on his mind and soul. He showed no signs of them, except that he paused occasionally if the name of the god Amen-Re was mentioned, as though he was still not altogether sure that he could mention the god, or as if he had been mispronounced.

He was sitting with the Great Royal Wife Ankhesenamen on chairs of state, decorated with gold and silver and lapis lazuli. They made a pretty picture and I rested my eyes on them.

Ptah-hotep was lounging at my right, Horemheb at my left, and I was comfortably full and slightly merry, when the Pharaoh Tutankhnamen called to me, ‘Come, Aunt, and play the song game!’

‘Ask of the scented rush, what say you?’ I replied. ‘I am the scent of his hair.’

‘Ask of the lotus-pod, what say you?’ responded the Lord of the Two Thrones, looking at his sister and wife. ‘My curve is her breast.’

Ankhesenamen stroked the smooth shoulder of her little brother and husband and replied readily, ‘Ask of the palm tree, what say you? I am his strong back.’

‘Ask of the lion, what say you?’ Ptah-hotep put in, pouring more wine for Kheperren and leaning over to kiss his wrist,’ I am the strength of his love.’

Ankhesenamen kissed Tutankhamen full on the mouth. I realised suddenly that this was no mere mating for dynastic reasons, but a true, if sisterly, love. She was always fussing over the boy-king, massaging him with scented oil and making him take strengthening potions. He was a little abashed still by his royalty, but he was growing into majesty just as his father Amenhotep-Osiris had done. The realm was in safe hands.

Horemheb growled into his cup, ‘I wish he’d allow me to give him more guards.’

His train of thought was similar to mine. So much hung on this life, and although the boy was strong and healthy, he had been frail as a child and a lot depended on one human life. Humans were so very fragile, mortal, and easily snuffed out.

‘There is no one here who wishes him ill,’ I whispered into the general’s ear.

He shook his head like an annoyed bull so that the blue beads clicked together. ‘There is always someone who wishes Pharaoh, may he live, ill,’ he objected.

And of course he was right. But they looked so beautiful and so secure, the older sister and the younger brother, now abandoning the song game for simpler riddles. Ankhesenamen never displayed what I suspected was superior wit and learning in front of his majesty. She also must have spent her childhood in terror. I was delighted to see them, after such suffering, so happy with each other.

And Egypt was flourishing.

‘Aunt, Aunt,’ called Tutankhamen. ‘What says the wood? My arms are folded.’

‘I can’t guess,’ I said, and he beamed.

‘A shut door,’ he announced.

***

Another feast, another meeting found Horemheb and General Khaemdua, Ptah-hotep, Kheperren and me, and Divine Father Ay all sitting in the outer room of the Pharaoh’s audience chamber. We were anxious about news from the borders, and Divine Father Ay was anxious, though with an air of strange complacency, about Ptah-hotep’s allegations—backed by a pile of scrolls—of his thefts from various temples.

‘Daughter,’ Ay beckoned to me and I went to stand next to him. I knew that the protocol required me to kneel when speaking to a parent but Ay had long ago forfeited any respect, at least from me.

‘Father?’ I disliked him even more than usual when he was exuding this greasy benevolence.

‘Are you happy with your husband?’

‘Yes, Father,’ I said warily.

‘Then you would grieve if he should put you away?’

‘That will not happen, Father.’

‘You have not borne a child for him,’ insinuated Ay, sliding a hand up to my thigh. His fingers curled inwards and might have touched my inner parts if I had not stepped aside.

I could not believe that he was suggesting what I thought he was suggesting.

‘He is content, Father,’ I said firmly. ‘Ask him yourself if you do not believe me.’

I moved away from him to Horemheb’s chair. His big hand dropped to my shoulder, caressing my neck under the long court wig.

‘Tell me later,’ he grunted, though I doubted that I would.

We were ordered inside and Tutankhamen came in with his Great Royal Wife. I listened as he dealt efficiently with the requisitions for the army, the call up of some thousand soldiers, the pleas of Rib-Adda, who was destined to remain unsupplied because Horemheb said he couldn’t get men through to the vassal without fighting most of the Canaanite states.

‘And there are these,’ said Ptah-hotep softly, laying the pile of papyri on the King’s lap.

The boy-king examined them carefully. All his actions were considered.

‘These are all accusations against Divine Father Ay,’ he commented in his soft sure voice.

‘They are,’ agreed Ptah-hotep.

‘I cannot deal with them now,’ said Tutankhamen. Beside him, Ankhesenamen pulled at his shoulder and hissed into his ear. I could not hear what she was saying but some of Ay’s full-fed assurance departed from him and he began to look almost haggard.

‘He was kind to me when no one else was,’ said Tutankhamen, almost pleading. ‘He was with me when all others deserted me. I cannot hear these matters now,’ he said, giving them back to the Great Royal Judge. ‘Claim whatever has been lost from the Throne and replace the lost goods from my treasury.’

‘Lord, you will eventually have to hear me on this matter,’ said Ptah-hotep gently. ‘Justice requires…’

‘I know,’ said Tutankhamen, almost in tears. It was a pity to oppress the poor boy so. Ankhesenamen slid an arm around his waist but continued to whisper to him, directing occasional glances at Divine Father Ay which should have left little smoking holes in his body and probably set fire to the curtain behind him.

‘Not yet,’ said Tutankhamen. ‘Lord Ptah-hotep, come to me again with this if…if it is repeated.’

‘As the Lord of the Two Thrones commands,’ said Ptah-hotep, and kissed the slim fingered boy’s hand, loaded with rings.

‘I have decreed a feast, for Horus goes to Hathor this year,’ said Tutankhamen, drawing a deep breath of relief. ‘And next year…’ he exchanged a conspiratorial glance with his sister-wife, who giggled, ‘we may have the birth of a new Pharaoh to celebrate.’

‘May the Lord of the Two Lands live forever,’ said Ay.

I hated him more than ever. I didn’t know how much loathing one human soul could contain until I looked on my own father.

‘You remember Amenhotep-Osiris, Aunt Mutnodjme?’ the young Pharaoh said to me as we filed out of the audience chamber.

‘I remember him very well, lord.’

‘Do you think, do you think that…’ he struggled with words. For all his sixteen years, he was very young. ‘Do you think that he might be pleased with me? I saw him in a dream, that old man. He was smiling.’

My heart caught. To dream of the dead was an omen of death. I hugged the King and Pharaoh of the Black Land to my bosom and he rested his forehead on my shoulder. He felt lithe and smelt young, like a puppy.

‘I’m positive that he is very pleased with you,’ I whispered into the beautifully-shaped ear.

***

The years had been busy. Seven years spent caring for the general, caring for my household, which kept growing, caring for Kheperren and Ptah-hotep when I housed them.

Seven years since Widow-Queen Tiye had brought the Amarna nightmare to a conclusion. I never forgot her, the barbarian woman who had begun and then finished the reigns of her sons. When the court moved back to Thebes, General Khaemdua and the Pharaoh arranged that Tiye’s body should be moved also, where she could receive regular offerings. We left Akhnaten to his rock-cut tomb on the wrong side of his city. I later heard that tomb robbers had broken in and destroyed the corpse in their search for the gold amulets which should have been there, and weren’t. It struck me as fitting; but then I have never had a forgiving nature.

People drifted away from Amarna, which was a foolish place to put a city anyway, as they drifted away from the cult of the Aten; though it still had its die-hard enthusiasts. They were tolerated by the priests of Amen-Re, still too new in their authority to start a religious purge. In fact, as the general remarked, the reign of the Aten had had one advantage. It had subdued the priests of Amen-Re and would probably keep them subdued for a generation.

The years slipped by. Everything seemed hopeful. Gratified perhaps by the celebration of Opet again, inundation had come every year and the granaries were full. The people were still complaining of oppression in the country, and the borders were never really calm, but that, Horemheb told me, was what borders were like—centres of instability.

Invested by the solemn boy-king’s own hands, Great Royal Judge, He Who is Pure of Heart, in Whose Hand is Maat Which is Truth Ptah-hotep, who was also my friend and sometimes, my lover, was ruling his courts with his usual meticulous equity. I was a little surprised when he ordered a beating for one who had brought a false claim and looked on with outward calm as this was done. He had the scales of life and death in his hands, he told me later, and could not afford any false charges. There were enough real ones to occupy him for the rest of his life and beyond, and the courts were always busy.

In the combined household which contained Kheperren, Ptah-hotep, the general and me, and all our servants—we occupied a whole wing of the palace of Thebes—Ptah-hotep often came home bone-weary and needed to be fed soup, massaged with oil, and put to bed. Horemheb returned filthy and occasionally injured from his forays into the disputed lands. Kheperren, always with the general, once brought home a putrid fever which had to be nursed in isolation and which may have brought on my third miscarriage, because I caught it as well.

The Great Royal Wife Ankhesenamen had the same problem, miscarrying twice of six-month children, and wise women attributed this to her being abused when young. But this was certainly not the case with me. The priestesses of Isis consulted their hoarded writings and took counsel, and told me that it was the wisdom of Maat that I could not carry a child, because doing so might result in my death. I tried to be philosophical about it, but it was difficult, when my servants seemed to engender at the flick of a loincloth and bring forth bouncing fat babies with perfect ease.

I suggested to the general that he might take a secondary wife, but he always refused, saying there were enough women in his household as it was and that he was comfortable with my ways.

The only real insect in the ointment was my father Ay and his wife Tey, who were still very powerful. Tutankhamen cherished them as the only stable people in his erratic, fearful childhood. Of course they were stable. Ay wanted only gold, Tey wanted only what Ay wanted, which was more and more gold. He was appointed Great Royal Chamberlain over heated objections from Ptah-hotep and both generals, but the king Tutankhamen may he live liked him and there was nothing to be done about it.

Ay particularly hated Ptah-hotep. Ptah-hotep, being a honourable person, was puzzled by Ay because he was so devious and so greedy, even when he had all that he could possibly use.

‘Why does he want to divert the temple offerings to his own pocket?’ he asked me, as he slashed a line through the order and sent it back to the office of record. ‘Why, especially, does he want to steal, when Tutankhamen is a nice boy and will give him all he wants?’

‘Great Royal Wife Ankhesenamen doesn’t like Ay at all,’ I replied. ‘He was the one who raped her, lying on her father’s belly, when she was a child, and that may be reason why she cannot give Egypt an heir now. She won’t let the young king give Ay all that he wants, and in any case even if the Pharaoh could give Ay most of Egypt it would not be enough. He is as rapacious as a crocodile; he is
the mouth that can never be filled
of the old riddle.’