Out of the Black Land (10 page)

‘Whimsical. That is the Lord of the Two Lands, Akhnamen. I could wish that his brother Thutmose had not died. However, Amen disposes of men as he wishes.’

There was another silence, then I remembered that I had a message for him.

‘Lord, I am bidden with a message from the Great Royal Nurse Tey. The Queen Tiye was delivered this afternoon of a son called Smenkhare.’

‘Good.’ I had no doubt that he knew this already. ‘No, don’t take any of the fish, Lord. It would not agree with you.’ His old fingers were laid on my wrist. Despite the heat, his skin was cold. A slave woman took the dish away.

‘As a priest, you, of course, my Lord, do not eat fish,’ I said slowly, thinking it out. ‘Fish ate the phallus of Osiris, and may not be eaten by priests. But I, as Great Royal Scribe, have no such taboo. And the fish would not have agreed with me, High Priest?’

‘No,’ he said, showing no sign of any other emotion. ‘It is over-rich for a young man such as yourself, a young man of sense and courage, who is likely to prove adequate for his high office.’

‘If he lives that long,’ I replied.

He patted my hand. ‘If Amen-Re is kind,’ he agreed. ‘Do you play Passing-Through-The-Underworld, the game also called senet?’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘I thought that you might. Another time, Ptah-hotep, Great Royal Scribe, will you come and dine with me, and perhaps play the game of the dancers?’

‘It would be an honour, Userkhepesh, Servant of Re, High Priest of Amen-Re at Karnak.’

He smiled, this time, and I returned the smile.

I had left for the temple of Amen-Re in trembling and in silence. I returned, by order of the High Priest, in a litter, escorted by priests, announced by a trumpeter.

I was so relieved that I slept most of the way back.

Chapter Eight

Mutnodjme

Tey my mother reported the Queen recovering, the child suckling his wet nurse, and herself pleased with our silence and attention to our teacher. Because of a lack of brothers—my only brother was grown and married—and my father’s frequent absences on matters of estate management, we had been a female household, and the presence of Teacher Khons put us on our best behaviour. Tey was less likely to shriek, I was less likely to ask so many questions because Khons was there to answer them, or—his especial strength—ask me another, even curlier, which would keep me silent and thinking for hours.

We adjusted to the presence of the teacher very well. He slept on his reed mat in the smallest sleeping-chamber, never went out to get drunk, (except on the festivals, and he was a very considerate and quiet drunk) and told us stories every day. Merope my sister learned cursive, I mastered the priests pictured letters, Khons learned Kritian, and peace reigned in the household of the great Royal Nurse and Divine Father Ay. Even he noticed the change in the atmosphere and approved of the deferential young man whom the Queen had sent. He also approved of the fact that his expenses were paid by the Great Royal Wife. My father was a very rich man, and stayed so because he regarded every bead, every thread, every scraping of copper as a close personal friend.

Tey my mother regarded me with more tolerance because Teacher Khons told her that I was clever. He delighted in arguing with me and though, so far, he had always won, he told my mother that I had an original mind which would take me far, especially if I was to study in the temple of Isis among the priestesses of the Lady of Magic and Learning. Since Tey had often despaired of finding me a husband so wealthy that Divine Father Ay would not have to pay a dowry, this presented her with a possible solution to the problem posed by Mutnodjme.

Thus I was allowed to come along with her and Nefertiti as the hot wind died down and we moved into the month of MesorŽ, seasons of harvests. We were going to renew our interrupted consultation with Queen Tiye about the impotence of the King Akhnamen may he live. The situation had not improved, and my sister was worried. She had tried getting the royal lord drunk. She had tried all manner of baths and unguents, and also the attentions of pretty dancers of both sexes. But the King Akhnamen, when merry, fell into a laughing fit and then into a heavy sleep from which it proved impossible to rouse him. When bathed he drifted into a trance. When massaged he sighed and dozed; when caressed by the dancers he had giggled as if they were tickling him and fallen asleep. He was pleasant and loving, but utterly impervious to all sexual advances.

‘Nothing,’ sighed Nefertiti in reply to my mother’s questions. She herself was nervous, prone to start at sudden noises and to fall into periods of despondency. Mother Tey, after Nefertiti had gone back to her loveless bed the previous evening, had snapped at Father Ay, ‘That maiden needs a man, and if something is not done, she will find one, or one will find her.’

‘Impossible, she is Great Royal Spouse and a virtuous girl,’ my father had puffed, then added, ‘Do you really think so?’

‘
Love will have love, heart will have heart, mouth will find mouth,
’ quoted Tey ‘As Divine Amenhotep says. I will go to the queen again tomorrow, husband. She said that she might have a solution. I hope that she has.’

‘If the lord Akhnamen may he live, dies without an heir my endowment of royal estates will blow away with the wind,’ snarled my father. ‘The red-headed woman is astoundingly fertile and so is King Amenhotep may he live forever. She has already borne him two sons, and though Thutmose died early it was by accident. The young Smenkhare is thriving. She may yet bear more children. Go, wife, and ask Queen Tiye. We must have an heir, and she must contrive it.’

‘I will go tomorrow,’ said Tey, and I stopped listening.

So we walked along the corridor to the queen’s apartments. As usual, they were crowded with petitioners, slaves, maids and the Great Royal Heir’s household. The baby was crying and someone was commanding, ‘Put him to nurse, he never cries unless he’s hungry’.

As we came in the Great Queen was saying to a pair of farmers lying at her feet, ‘Yes, yes, I see the justice of your claim and I have given you a note to the Great Royal Scribe, the Lord Ptah-hotep, who will listen to you; go now. A slave will guide you. Sahte, I am going to lie down until the noon meal. Bring some wine for the Great Royal Wife and the Great Royal Nurse and the Lady Mutnodjme.’

Sahte, the thin-faced sour maid who had been the Great Royal Lady’s own nurse, sniffed and announced, ‘My Mistress is retiring for a rest. Make way,’ and she led us to the Queen’s Room of Silence, where no raised voice could be heard from outside. The door, unusually, was of thick wood and had a bolt on the inside. After Sahte had brought the wine, the Queen shut the door and latched it and sank down into a chair with a sigh.

‘Greetings, ladies, have you eaten?’ asked the Queen conventionally and wearily. We assured her that we had and poured her some heavily watered wine. Tey rose and laid a professional hand on the ivory forehead and chided, ‘The Great Royal Wife needs to rest more and talk less.’

‘True, but the Great Royal Wife has petitions to hear and household matters to arrange, and that cannot be done by resting,’ agreed the queen. She looked tired. The coppery hair was loose and fell in waves down her back. I noticed that a streak of white had formed at each temple. She was wearing a cloth with fine blue patterns along its edge but little jewellery. We waited until she had recovered a little and sipped from her cup, and even then we did not have to introduce the subject. She knew what we had come to discuss.

‘He’s impotent, isn’t he, Nefertiti? You’ve tried everything. Including a troupe of very well skilled dancers. And nothing has worked.’

Nefertiti nodded. Her hands were clenched in her lap.

‘And this is not what you expected when you agreed to be Great Royal Wife, is it?’ asked the Queen kindly. ‘You are a young woman and unmated, and your body is restless.’

‘Yes, lady,’ said my sister. She was so beautiful that she hurt my eyes, but there was an edge to her beauty now, a fine grey shadow like a spiderweb over her comeliness.

‘The heirs of the Pharaoh have to be heirs of a Pharaoh’s body, but not necessarily…’ began the Queen.

I caught her drift at the same time as Tey did. Her eyes lit.

‘The Pharaoh Akhnamen,’ Tey finished the sentence.

I did not speak, but I was horrified. To give my sister to that old man! A nice old man, admittedly, a kind and very wise old man, but old.

‘Will you accept this?’ asked the Queen. ‘It is entirely your choice, Nefertiti. This will be the only way you can conceive a Great Royal Heir.’

Nefertiti was thinking. She was never good at quick decisions. Given a chance to consider for long enough, she usually made a wise reply, but she hated being pressured. And now she was on the edge of panic.

Tey said ‘Come, daughter, this is a way out of all our difficulties. The Lord Amenhotep is fertile, as he has amply proved, and he is gentle and wise. Make up your mind, Nefertiti!’

But Tiye, whose slate coloured eyes saw very clearly, took Nefertiti’s slim hand in her own strong ones and told her, ‘You need time to think, lady. Go to your own apartments and consider what you wish to do, all on your own.’

Tey shot the Queen a glare which expressed how much she wanted to take Nefertiti home and rage at her until she agreed. Queen Tiye returned the look with one which said that she knew exactly what Tey wanted to do and was determined that she would not do it; and which, by one arched eyebrow, posed the question which could be summarised as, ‘Who is Queen?’ Tey looked away first. I was delighted and strove to keep my face straight.

‘No one will disturb you, but before night falls you will send your sister, the little scribe, and she shall bring your answer to me. I will not have you take my lord unwillingly; or with half a mind yea and half nay. He does not deserve that. To conceive you must enjoy him—ask any physician. To do that, you must want him. He gets no enjoyment from rape. Have I not lain with him all these years, and never left his arms without regret? Unbolt the door, Lady Mutnodjme, and call Sahte to me.’

I did as I was bid and Sahte’s disapproving face appeared at the door.

‘This young woman will come with a message for me tonight,’ said the Great Queen. ‘I wish to hear it, wherever I am and whatever I am doing. Do you understand, Sahte?’

Sahte sniffed, but nodded. This order was essential, because she was frequently known to banish all visitors from her Royal Mistress’ door and often kept messages until the time of arising the next day if they arrived after the Queen had retired. I was delighted at being referred to as a young woman. I was, of course, now ten, and my woman-blood was expected next year, after which I would be fully female.

‘When I receive it, I may want to speak to my son. Make sure that you know where he is tonight. Now, Sahte, we will allow the lady Nefertiti to leave, and perhaps the Great Royal Nurse will assist me in some of my household problems?’

Nefertiti left without a backward glance at my mother, and Tey subdued her rage. The Queen was keeping us with her so that King Akhnamen’s wife had time to get to her own apartments and lock herself in. So I was more surprised when I saw the beautiful Great Royal Wife Tiye and my mother exchange a grin.

‘Oh, very well, Lady, I will not rail at her. But the Divine Father is worried by this lack of an heir, and this seems like an excellent solution if the silly girl will but see it.’

‘She is very young, and I will not have my husband imposed on a shocked and frightened maiden; it would hurt his feelings as well as hers. Nefertiti the beautiful must make up her own mind,’ said Tiye.

‘Now, what shall I do with this baker? I am sure a lot of flour is going astray. Look at the accounts! He must think we are stupid, or cannot read plain figures. He has drawn twenty sacks from the grain-store, and made of it only a hundred loaves of bread.’

‘Fine or coarse?’ asked Tey, after a marked delay. Peace had been declared. I exhaled the breath I had been holding. Although she was midwife to the Queen and had her confidence, there was something about the affable, smiling Queen Tiye which made me sure that Royal Midwife or not, Great Royal Nurse or not Great Royal Nurse, Tey and all of us would be out of the palace before nightfall if we dared to seriously cross her. And Tey in a temper was not discriminating in her choice of target.

After Tey had scribbled some figures on an ostracon, it became clear that even if the baker was wasting a large amount of grain in attempting to make the finest flour, he was stealing about five sacks for every twenty he drew. Finest flour is sifted three times and there is a certain amount of wastage, which, as Tey pointed out, is not actual waste, because the coarse flour makes bread for the mill-workers or the baker’s household and the husks fatten his pigs.

The palace, of course, never ate of the flesh of swine. Teacher Khons had informed me that this was because the pig was an avatar of Set the destroyer, and certainly wild boar were terrible creatures who ate babies and wrecked whole vineyards.

But since people in some places on the Nile ate crocodile, which according to place was either the God Sobek or an avatar of Set, and which also ate people, this did not strike me as a good explanation. And in any case, the commoners all kept pigs, which were slaughtered every year for the feast of the Victory-of-Horus-Over-Set and roasted, after which sausages and smoked meats were made from the remains and many a poor household fed for the summer on this cursed beast.

Khons had agreed that this was not logical but stated that Egypt had so many interesting local customs that visitors never made sense of them and that, anyway, if I wanted to taste swine he would take me and Merope to the Victory-of-Horus feast in the village of Thebes and we could eat it there. He emphasised that all meat from pigs must be cooked thoroughly, and that it was unsafe to eat it raw.

Merope and I had had no difficulty in promising faithfully not to make a meal of raw swine.

I realised that I was considering the swine problem because I did not want to think about the soft flesh of my sweet sister pressed and impregnated by that old man. It seemed wrong, cruel. Youth goes to youth, that was the way it had always been. I was very angry with my mother and father for marrying the one beautiful daughter to an impotent fanatic, and lost my train of thought.

‘What shall we do with this thieving baker?’ asked the Queen. Tey gave her invariable answer to all problems involving humans.