Out of the Black Land (7 page)

That seemed to be enough for one very youthful scribe whose previous heaviest responsibility had been as overseer of a class of ten boys.

And Pharaoh still had not sent for me. I wondered if he had forgotten me, and if I should ask for an audience with him. Perhaps he was leaving me for a decan to find out if I could avoid assassination for ten days.

That might prove to be harder than I thought.

Meryt had come to me at dawn, brow wrinkled.

‘Lord, someone tried to get into my chamber last night.’

‘There could be many reasons for that,’ I said sleepily. With her beautiful smile and her rounded body, many men would have found Meryt attractive. She shook her head and her earrings chimed.

‘Nothing as innocent as that,’ she protested. ‘Besides, no one would dare. I belong to you, Master. I don’t like this. I heard someone try the door; saw the handle move. Lord, I want to spend some of your gold and make you a gift.’

Her face was solemn, and I shook myself into real wakefulness.

‘You may spend my gold. I will accept your gift,’ I said, matching her seriousness.

‘Thank you. I will be gone perhaps an hour, Master. Wait for me, fasting, if you will.’

‘Very well,’ I agreed. Fasting was no great pain to me. I doused a pang of some unexpected emotion—was it disappointment as to the nature of her gift? Since I had refused her offer of her body, she had not attempted any intimacy. Meryt bowed and left, closing my door behind her.

She had returned within her time, towing a heavy chain behind her. It appeared to be suspended in the air and I was surprised at the size of the hound to which it was attached. He was huge.

‘This is Anubis,’ Meryt informed me. ‘A Nubian hound for a Nubian slave, and he has cost you an ingot of gold, Master.’

Anubis sat down, all paws together, and regarded me with an intelligence which was vaguely disturbing from a canine. He was part-jackal, perhaps, a black, high shouldered dog with a pointed muzzle, long legs and a long whip-like tail. I had seen such hounds racing alongside chariots.

‘He’s a hunting dog, a war-dog,’ I said. ‘Meryt, what have you spent my gold ingot on? He surely will not be comfortable in a palace.’

‘His kind comes from the Mountains of the Moon; my home now lost forever. Such hounds belong to kings, and his father belonged to my father, captured as loot when my village was raided. He is a Nubian, as I am, and we are faithful to death.’

Meryt stood with her dark hand on the hound’s black head. Both pairs of eyes were regarding me almost dispassionately, but with such steadfastness that my own eyes burned and I had to look away. What had I done to deserve such loyalty? I was only a scribe, son of a scribe, no great warrior or captain.

Meryt continued, ‘Once he knows that you are his Lord, he will allow no thief or murderer close. He will not bay and arouse the palace, but come and wake you. And at a pinch, Master, he will defend you with his life. That’s why I wanted you to fast. He needs to identify your scent, not mixed with onions or wine.’

She led the hound forward and pushed his muzzle into the gap between my arm and my side. I felt the cold nose tickle, and the dog took two deep snuffling breaths, recording my scent. Then he pulled away from Meryt’s grasp and lay down, putting his head between my two hands. In that position he was helpless and at my mercy. It was an act of formal obeisance as graceful as any courtier, as graceful as the other Nubian in my service.

‘Anubis, I accept your fealty,’ I said gravely, deeply touched.

Meryt nodded and went to fetch our breakfast. Anubis accepted the two scribes, sniffing them as they came in, carrying bundles of possessions and their working tools.

‘Lord, it’s a wolf!’ exclaimed Khety.

‘It’s a dog,’ Hanufer reproved him. This was typical of their relationship. Hanufer had no imagination at all. Khety had too much. Together, I hoped, my office would be balanced.

We laid out the work for the day and the two scribes sat down to become familiar with the extent of the Great Royal Scribe’s responsibility. It did not look so unmanageable with someone else to read the endless reports and tell me what was happening. We were in the middle of the Hare Nome’s report on the repairs to the canals when there was a disturbance in the outer office and I went out.

‘Call him off!’ gasped a tall young man wearing an expensive, food-spotted cloth and a wig which had evidently not been cleaned since last night’s feast. The perfume cone which had dripped scented oil was matted into it and he stank of wine. Anubis had backed him against the wall and the oil from his headdress was marking my lotus frieze.

‘Anubis, release him and come here,’ I said quietly, wondering if the hound would obey me.

Meryt had spoken truly, as was her habit. Anubis left the cowering young man and came to me, sitting down composedly at my side.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Mentu; you called for me,’ blurred the man, straightening the wig and wiping more oil over my delicately painted wall.

‘Come away from there,’ I ordered. ‘Anubis will not hurt you, unless I so order him. Meryt, some wine, if you please. Sit down,’ I told my second.

‘What a remarkable hound,’ said Mentu, sitting down as ordered and discarding the wig. He dropped it to the floor where it lay like a dead rabbit. ‘Where did you get him, Lord?’

‘He comes from Nubia,’ I evaded the question, because I did not know from whom Meryt had bought him. ‘From the Mountains of the Moon. Mentu, I am minded to appoint you as my Second Scribe. Will you accept the appointment?’

Now that I was close to him, I could see that he was not so young. Hard drinking and some hard exercise—chariot racing, perhaps?—had put harsh lines into his face and crow’s feet around his eyes. Though presenting a picture of dissipation, he was examining me with eyes which were quite bright and present.

‘It would please my father, and he holds the key to the treasure-chest,’ said Mentu consideringly. ‘What would you wish me to do?’

‘You can do as you like,’ I said. ‘You can attend here and help in the management of the kingdom, or you can race horses and drink every night.’

‘I see,’ Mentu accepted a cup of Tashery vintage—the amphora was already open—and sipped. His eyebrows rose.

‘I see your plan,’ he commented. ‘I would be the last person anyone would want as Great Royal Scribe.’ This was a rather alarming insight, but I said nothing. ‘In fact, the scheme may work to both of our advantages, Lord Ptah-hotep. I wish to feast and enjoy myself, you wish to run the kingdom. Or maybe it is true that you were just selected at random out of the school of scribes solely to annoy the old man Nebemanet, who made his disapproval of the Divine Akhnamen’s religious views so distressingly plain to Pharaoh’s Royal Father?’

‘I was selected by Pharaoh may he live out of the school of scribes,’ I agreed. ‘Why, I still do not know and I have not seen Divine Akhnamen since.’

‘He will call for you,’ said Mentu, sipping more of my wine. ‘Do not, if you will accept my advice, argue matters of gods with him. They say that he is perilous if crossed, and as he elevated you out of the school, he can cast you down again, and all those who hold with you.

‘Do I wish to involve myself in office, when I could thus be ruined if you make a false step; or if Divine Akhnamen takes against you? A pretty problem. I believe that the answer lies in the bottom of another cup of wine.’

Meryt poured more wine for him. He looked at her.

‘A Nubian hound, a Nubian slave they are powerful arguments for your influence, Lord. Neither give their allegiance lightly. You, woman,’ he addressed Meryt roughly.

She knelt. A slave is required to kneel if she is spoken to by the nobility. Her face was perfectly blank, like a carving in ebony. I struggled with rising anger.

‘Lord, what do you require?’

‘Are you owned by this young man?’ he pointed at me. Meryt nodded.

‘Has he your loyalty?’

‘He has,’ said Meryt. Mentu considered her, then reached out and playfully tugged a tress of beaded, plaited hair.

‘You’re a good girl,’ he commented, and gestured to her to rise. She did so with perfect, athletic ease. ‘I might be of use to you, Lord, though not as a scribe. I know the palace, Lord Ptah-hotep. I accept your appointment. I will serve you faithfully. Now, what do you want to know?’

‘Tell me about the Master of Scribes,’ I said, as a test of his accuracy.

‘A good man, if dry as the papyrus he studies. From an old family. Reliable, loyal, all those cold virtues.’ So far I agreed with my new second in command.

‘The Nomarch of the Nome of the Hare?’ I asked at a venture, having just read his report.

‘Drinks too much and quarrels incessantly with the Nomarch of Heliopolis. They share family connections—his First Wife is the Heliopolitan’s sister. Spends too much of his inheritance on boats and huge feasts.’

‘Is he cheating on his taxation?’ I hazarded, not knowing how far Mentu would be willing to go in informing on his friends.

‘Probably. Look for inconsistencies in the returns on fish; it’s been a wonderful season for fish. And turtles.’

‘How about Heliopolis, then?’

‘Fat and lazy, do anything to avoid trouble. Wouldn’t run the risk of cheating, because it would mean that he had to make an effort. Has a longstanding argument with the Temple of Osiris on the bank opposite the city. Study the temple’s share closely; he’ll shave their ingots if he can.’

‘And Thebes?’

‘Ah, that is my cousin.’

Without being asked, Meryt filled the cup of this loquacious informant. I found myself beginning to like Mentu, though he was everything I disapproved of in a man.

‘Your cousin?’

‘Indeed. Now he will pay more than he is required to pay to the Temple of Hathor, because he and the temple priestesses have an understanding. Whenever he feels the need of comfort, he calls for them and they attend his palace and relieve his… monotony,’ Mentu laughed and I joined in.

‘They are very skilled, the ladies of the Lady of Love and Beauty. The feast of Horus and Hathor is famed all over the known world. Achaeans and Trojans and Klepht travel many leagues to lie down in their smooth arms and taste their divine kisses. May I hope that my Lord will come with me to Edfu when the season comes?’

This was a loaded question, and I contented myself with a nod. I had never lain with a woman and did not know if I desired to taste such well-travelled flesh.

‘Apart from his fascination with the priestesses?’

‘Thebes is rich in his own right, no commoner’s son.’

I allowed the silence to grow long after the initial discomfort.

Mentu shifted on his chair. Finally he said, ‘No insult was meant, Lord. But if he is rich in his own right, he is less likely to peculate. Except for his expenses in love, you can trust the Theban Nomarch.’

I recalled my invitation to the temple at Karnak. ‘The High Priest of Amen-Re?’ I asked.

‘Death in a white robe,’ said Mentu promptly.

Chapter Six

Mutnodjme

Merope and I had slept, though we were not aware of having slipped into a doze until we were woken abruptly by a flurry of movement in the outer chamber, and voices crying, ‘The Queen is in labour, send for the great Royal Nurse Tey, the Queen’s midwife!’ I heard my mother grunt as she rose from her saddle-strung bed.

‘Quick,’ I whispered to my new sister. ‘Put on your sandals and we can follow in the confusion.’

‘Why should we?’

‘Because it’s childbirth, and I’ve not been allowed to see it.’

‘Nor me,’ she agreed, tying strings rapidly.

We slipped into the outer chamber, where my mother was stripping off her robe and stepping into a decorated tub. Slaves sluiced her down with cool water and scrubbed her with handfuls of oatmeal mixed with laundryman’s lye and then rinsed her. She then tied a clean cloth about her waist, another around her head, and raised her voice.

‘I am coming!’ she cried. ‘Be silent, women. The Great Queen Tiye has already borne children. She knows what is happening. But she will not be assisted by a clamour like a marketplace on the day before a feast! The birthroom has been prepared; has anyone thought to carry the Queen thither?’

She stilled the babble of replies with a gesture.

‘Good. We will go there now, and she who makes an outcry which upsets the Great Royal Lady will be beaten until she bleeds.’

This threat calmed the crowd nicely and Tey walked composedly out of our apartments and into the corridor. Merope and I followed.

The mammisi was prepared. It had bare walls, a bare floor, and a pallet made of clean linen on the floor. The birth chair had been scrubbed and repainted. Not for the Lady of the Two Lands the peasant delivery, squatting on bricks. The chair was bottomless and at an easy height for the attendant to catch the baby as it was delivered.

So far, so good. The Queen was standing with two women massaging her back. Her hair was dark red with sweat and she looked old. She greeted my mother with a smile which was a sketch of the one I had seen before.

‘Lady,’ she said.

‘Where does it catch you?’ asked Tey.

‘My back, it always hurts my back,’ replied the Queen, and Tey directed the women to massage lower down, in the flat space just above the buttocks. The Queen seemed to feel some relief. She was offered an infusion and drank it.

‘Now what?’ whispered Merope.

‘We wait,’ I replied.

Nothing happened all afternoon. The sun sank towards night and still nothing happened. I was carrying a scroll, one of the few which I owned myself. Ani had copied it for me. It was the tale of Ptah and the Destruction of Mankind. Merope and I sat down against the wall, out of everyone’s way, and peered through the legs of the attendant women. Nothing still seemed to be happening, and we were getting bored, so I opened the scroll and began to read, telling Merope of the sins of humans which made Ptah the creator disgusted with his creation:

Humans blasphemed against the god, saying, ‘His bones are like silver, his limbs are like gold, his hair is like lapis, in truth he is old and weak.’ Then Ptah called to him the gods who were with him in the primeval ocean and took counsel with them…

‘Who were the gods from the primeval ocean?’ asked my sister.

‘Shu who is air, Tefnut who is water, Nut who is sky, they were the first ones, in this story,’ I replied.

The Queen groaned, and we strove to see, but a rush of attendants blocked our view. I consulted my text again:

The gods came and bowed before the majesty of Ptah who made the firstborn gods out of words, out of his lips and teeth, Lord of Speaking Creatures, Maker of Humans. They said before him, ‘Speak to us, for we are listening.’

A woman stubbed her toe on us as she hurried to the door for more cloths and another infusion of the birth herbs, and did not even stop to notice who was sitting in that corner.

I continued the tale:

Ptah said to his gods, ‘Tell me of humanity, what shall I do to these blasphemous ones? I have given them the world, and they say that I am old’.

The gods took counsel, and they replied to Ptah Creator, ‘Lord, you must slay them, so that they shall know fear of the gods.’

‘Who shall I send to slaughter men and women?’ asked Ptah.

The Spreader of Terror rose, lioness-headed Sekmet who is out of Hathor the Goddess, and said, ‘It shall be I.’

And Ptah agreed that it should be so.

‘Who is telling a tale?’ asked the labouring Queen. ‘Bring them here.’

We were discovered, hauled out of our corner, and shoved into the middle of the room where we stood, heads hanging, before Tey’s wrath. The Queen was sitting on the birth chair and laid a sweating hand on my mother’s shoulder.

‘Let her read on,’ she ordered. ‘Sit down, little scribe, and continue. I need something to distract my mind.’

‘Lady, this is not a good story for one in your situation,’ warned Tey, but the Queen merely said ‘Read on.’

‘Do as you are bid,’ snapped Tey.

Greatly wondering I sat down, Merope at my side, and continued with the story of the destruction of the world.

Sekmet Destroyer went forth, and great was the slaughter amongst men and women. She struck fear into their hearts, and Ra said to Ptah, ‘Behold them fleeing into the mountains in terror, and there terror waits for them.’

I stopped as the Queen groaned again. My mother wiped the Lady’s forehead with a wet cloth and instructed me ‘I don’t know what you are doing here against my express orders, Mutnodjme, but now you will learn the way of birth, so pay attention. The pains come at intervals, getting closer and closer until they are almost simultaneous and then the child is born if the gods are kind. While the pain is upon her, she will not hear. When it has passed, she will listen again. This story may not last long enough; do you know any more?’

‘Yes, Lady.’

‘Good. Go on.’

The Queen was attending again, and I resumed the tale:

Great was the slaughter, great the mourning. Corpses littered the mountains and the living could not bury the dead, because there were too many.

Fearing that they would all be destroyed, Re said to Sekmet, ‘Return, return in peace, Sekmet, you have slain enough.’

She replied, ‘You gave me life and this power to kill. I am not glutted; I will not return but slay and slay until no one lives on the earth.’

I risked a look at the Queen. Her thighs were tensed, tendons shaking under immense strain. Her female parts were wet with escaping fluid. I felt elated, frightened and compelled. I could not look away from this body in such agony.

Tey slapped me over the ear and recalled me to myself. I began reading again:

Then Re spoke to the priestesses of the Lady, saying, ‘Do thus and you shall be saved. As women pound barley for beer, they shall crush mandrakes from Elephantine in great number, and they shall make beer which is as red as blood and fill seven thousand vessels.’

And such of the women who lived pounded mandrakes instead of barley, and made seven thousand jars of beer as red as blood.

It was not a groan this time. It was closer to a scream. I waited out the contraction and continued:

Therefore came the Majesty of the South and the North, Re who is Amen and the Sun, Glorious in Might, sailing up the Nile in the barge which is called Glory of Amen-Re and he came to the fields of Suten-henen where the goddess waded in blood.

Another pain, another cry. A priestess from the temple of Isis laid an ankh, symbol of life, on the Queen’s stomach, swollen so tight that I thought that the skin might split. Tey did not have to scowl at me, however, I resumed as soon as I could.

Then came the four, the good gods, and Tefnut filled this field with rain. Then the women poured out the seven thousand jars of beer made with mandrakes of Elephantine, and the water became as blood.

Sekmet the Spreader of Terror snuffed the air and smelt blood, and she dipped her muzzle and drank. And merry was her heart as she drank the blood, and she became drunk on this water, and fell asleep and knew not slaughter any more.

There was a shift in the room. Some spirit had come in. Tey was biting her lip, which she only did when she was seriously worried. I saw blood begin to drip from the Queen’s genitals onto the floor. Bright red, drop by drop, it splashed on the clean marble and pooled. Tey cast a red cloth under the chair so that the Queen should not see the blood and be afraid, and urged, ‘Lady, think, speak, listen,’ and snarled sideways at me ‘Talk, daughter! It’s what you’re good at!’

I stood up and spoke louder. Merope was huddled at my feet, overawed. I wished fiercely that I hadn’t come, but it was too late to repent and time cannot be poured back once the jar of life has been broached.

‘Come, come, oh most beautiful,’ called Horus the Eye to the sleeping Sekmet as she lay in the field of blood. ‘Come with me, most excellent lady, be my own love, for my heart is moved for you.’

And he was to her eyes as the fairest and most delightful of men, and as she woke she loved him. She took his hand and he led her north to a lake called Bubastis, where he said to her, ‘Let us swim, dear one, and be clean.’

And she went in to the water, and came forth a beautiful woman and a cat, and Horus said to her, ‘We shall call this your benign avatar Basht, elegant and fair; and you, Lady, shall always have my heart.’

And they lay on the banks of the lake called Bubastis and had great joy. He imbued her with the perfumes of his body, and she was gladdened by his touch.

I glanced at Tey and she motioned me to go on.

And ever since the cat Basht has been worshipped at Bubastis, city of cats, and ever since the priestesses of Sekmet have made barley beer with mandrakes at the Festival of the Deliverance, and thus shall it always be.

The Queen gave a great, forceful shriek, half of agony and half of effort. Her legs flexed, her hands closed on the arms of the chair with force enough to crush the wood. The cry came again, and the child was born into my mother Tey’s hands in a slippery flash followed by a fountain of blood.

I heard my sister Merope retch, but I was not sick. I was fascinated. As Tey cleared its mouth, the baby began to gasp and then to cry. Tey held it carefully close.

‘Rejoice, Great Queen,’ she said to the woman, as the attendants swathed her loins in red cloth, bound tight to stop the bleeding. ‘You have given your Lord another son.’

‘Smenkhare,’ whispered Tiye. Then she collapsed, and we were thrown out.

Ptah-hotep

I occupied the remainder of the day by instructing my new scribes, ordering more wine for Mentu’s visits, and inspecting the chest full of beautiful cloths. As a Great Royal Scribe, I could wear what I chose and I did not like much decoration. It smacked of ostentation. I was therefore considering the difference between creamy linen with a thin gold border and a starkly white one when Meryt announced, ‘Someone’s coming—someone with a lot of attendants—sit in your chair, Master, take your writing board, tell your scribes to instruct you in something; it’s the King Akhnamen may he live!’

I did as she bade me, throwing myself into my chair and grabbing a plaster board. Hanufer stood beside me and read the complaint from the temple of Osiris that the Nomarch of Heliopolis was reducing his offerings—just as Mentu had said. It was a long wait, and I had time to give him orders to send an investigator to the Nomarch and suggest that he hand over the ingot-shavings to the temple or suffer an afterlife spent inside the Great Snake, Apep. What sort of idiot risks his Eternity for a minor quarrel?

Khety, on my other side, had time to begin a summary of the preparations for the feast of Hathor-at-Dendera—she goes to Horus-of-Edfu at the end of Ephipi and there are always problems with public order—when the King finally arrived, flanked by two soldiers.