Out of the Black Land (27 page)

In fact, I knew that he was, so I went to find him.

Ptah-hotep

I was in love as I had not been since I had first lain with my Kheperren, and I was more than a little confused. What had I to do with a woman, when I had given my heart to a man? What especially had I to do with loving a woman, when Kheperren lived and still loved me?

I banished all my servants and sat in my room, where her scent still lingered, and thought, closing my eyes. Somehow I was aware of her. I felt a sudden stab of sorrow—what had happened? It was not my sorrow, it was hers, it was flavoured with her emotions. What could I do to comfort her?

I sent Hanufer’s scribe to my lady with a present of perfumes, and felt her pleasure as she blended them and remembered me.

This was altogether strange and I did not know what to make of it. However, there it was and there is no use in continually re-testing something which is true, as my Master of Scribes used to say.

And after long reflection, I realised that I could love Kheperren, that I did love him as well as ever. He still had my heart, but so did my lady Mutnodjme. Unusual, perhaps, but my entire life had been marked by odd events. My mother had told me when I was still a naked child that a star had fallen when she gave birth to me, and that she knew I was destined for great things.

My parents were still proud of me. When the King allowed, I would go home to the Nome of the Black Bull and they would hold a welcoming feast, very rustic and delightful, and all the men of the village would congratulate my father on his son. I decided that, when I could, I would take the lady Mutnodjme home to meet my parents and drink the wine of their vineyard, lying under the sycamores by the fish-pool, one of my favourite places in the world. I could imagine her there without any sense of strain, the strong woman with the peasant walk, swapping recipes with my mother and discussing the ancient texts with my father until they proclaimed, ‘She is a jewel who holds our son’s heart!’

My mind was made up. I did love the lady Mutnodjme, I did love Kheperren, and I could do both at once.

Having reached this decision, I got up, washed and dressed in an entirely new cloth and a good selection of jewellery, the lady Mutnodjme’s unobtrusive ring on my finger, and went to the sed festival to see the king rededicate his kingdom to the Aten.

The king did not cut a very good figure at the festival, though we all cheered dutifully as, at the fourth attempt, he finally managed to slay his bull. I suspected that Divine Father Ay actually delivered the killing blow but I was not watching carefully. The bull, in the end, died, and the flesh was butchered by the King’s Aten priests and roasted in the fire which was kindled by a burning glass, a sacred fire lit by the sun itself.

The courtyard began to be redolent less of expensive oils and more of cooking and the commoners of Amarna beyond the walls smelt this and cried out blessings on the King Akhnaten.

‘
Joy to the blissful child of the Aten!
’ they screamed. ‘
Hail the most favoured child of the Great God!
’

Fill-belly-love, nurses call it. As soon as I decently could, I left the ceremony, while the foreign dignitaries were still falling at the feet of the re-crowned king and delivering themselves of laudatory messages. I was pleased that Keliya, the son and heir of King Tushratta of Mittani was there, looking well-fed and shining with oil. I waited to make sure that he gave voice to no complaint about his outrageous treatment—he didn’t; and left the ceremony to return to my office, where the new diplomatic correspondence had come in. The tablets were piled in a basket, and no one could read them but Khety and the two old scribes I had brought from Karnak. Khety and his family would be at the festival, but I might be able to find either Harmose or Menna. They were old and had limited taste for new gods or festivals.

I found them both in close conference with my lady Mutnodjme. Now I had supplied these old men with lodgings and food and greeted them with honour and they had repaid me with respect and the exercise of their learning, translating difficult words in all possible ways and doing their utmost to make the writer’s meaning clear. They had been diligent and polite, but I had received no sign of friendship from them and had decided that their learning had dried out their hearts and that they did not particularly care for humans.

And here they were, lounging—Harmose, lounging!—and drinking beer and instructing the Lady Mutnodjme in basic cuneiform as though she was a favoured child and they were both her doting uncles.

I stood at the door for a while and watched them. Menna, who had never broken into even a brief smile while I had known him, was actually laughing at something my lady had said, and Harmose was a little taken aback and surprised as she commented that the name of the king must mean ‘lion’ because the same word was used in three Nubian dialects.

‘My lady,’ I said, and she looked up. Our eyes met and our gaze meshed, like sunlight and lamplight, though I could not have said which was the sun and which the lamp. She did not even have to touch me to know me intimately, but she did.

She took my hand and laid it to her cheek and told the two old men, ‘Here is my lord.’ She poured me a cup of beer and moved a chair so that I could sit, disarranging my office, and then resumed what was evidently a learned conversation.

Menna and Harmose were so enchanted by my remarkable Mutnodjme that they did not resume their previous gravity.

‘I believe that you are correct, Mistress of the House,’ said Menna. ‘If that form means ‘lion’ then the determinative is here, ‘the lion’ meaning the sole and only one, the royal lion. Hmm. Tushratta has written to the Widow-Queen Tiye, master,’ he said to me. ‘It is a difficult passage with many possible meanings. But this is what Harmose and I think it means—with some help from the Mistress,’ he nodded at Mutnodjme.

‘So, what says Tushratta?’

‘To the Mistress of Egypt, Royal Queen Tiye Whom the Royal Lord Akhnaten Loves, Greeting,’ deciphered Menna. ‘The situation of the royal lion is grave, for do not his enemies surge against him like the sea? Do not the birds scorn him, screaming insults into the ears of the King? Send therefore some wise counsel to the lion, lest he be overthrown and his kingdom lost.’

‘Cryptic,’ I said. ‘But one grasps the meaning.’

‘Does one? What does it mean? Who are these birds?’ asked Mutnodjme.

‘Khatti’s banners are always painted with an eagle, ‘I told her. ‘King Suppiluliumas of Khatti is young and ambitious and the only way he can expand is into Tushratta’s territory, because of his neighbours. The Apiru are dangerously unstable, the Babylonians well-organised, the Assyrians very aggressive and the borders of Egypt are guarded. In any case he could only get to the Assyrians through Mittani. Suppiluliumas is taking a huge risk, however, if he is attacking Tushratta. That king has forgotten more about diplomacy, treachery and extortion than Suppiluliumas has ever known, or his father before him. Is there any other way you can read this but for a request for arms?’

‘He’s asked for “wise counsel”, my lord,’ Mutnodjme pointed out.

‘Look at the sign next to it,’ Menna touched the clay tablet with his old, clean hands. ‘See that sign? It means counsel, but it has a secondary meaning.’

‘What is that?’ she asked, leaning close to see and rendering me dizzy with her scent.

‘It means “spear”,’ said Harmose. ‘And written like that, it means a hundred spears.’

‘I see. Clearly this diplomacy is a study for a hundred lifetimes.’

‘Indeed,’ Menna smiled at her. ‘What shall we do, lord Ptah-hotep may you live?’ he asked.

‘We must tell the Widow-Queen,’ I said. ‘We have a treaty with Tushratta and mutual defence was one of the first sentences. We are required to go to his aid if he asks for it.’

‘There have been three letters prior to this one,’ Menna said uncomfortably. ‘The King came in one day when we were working on the translations and took them away with him, saying that his Master of the House would deal with them.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I demanded, seriously worried. The Aten alone knew what the King might have done with a demand for aid, let alone Huy the unreliable.

‘The King said not to bother you with such matters,’ Menna was equally uncomfortable. ‘So we assumed that it was taken care of. And now here is Tushratta writing to the Queen Tiye may she live so he must have received no answer.’

‘Don’t make such an assumption again, my scribes, if you love the Black Land. And make sure I know what is going on. How can I make political decisions if I am not fully informed?’ They seemed suitably abashed and it was not their fault, so I stopped berating them and thought.

‘Let the Lady Mutnodjme take the letter to the Widow-Queen,’ Menna proposed. ‘She is wise and discreet.’

‘I will certainly do that gladly, Master Scribe. She needs something to occupy her mind, but what can the Queen do if she wants to send troops to Tushratta? All the soldiers are coming here,’ replied Mutnodjme.

She was right. By order of the King Akhnaten may he live as many serving soldiers who could be summoned were converging on Amarna to receive new orders from the King. Only the very farthest borders were left garrisoned, and that only because General Horemheb had insisted and the Widow-Queen had backed his orders with her own. And if Khatti took Mittani, we would have a victorious foe on our border and no army to repel an advance.

‘Tushratta must live or die, may his gods protect him,’ I said despairingly, ‘for there is no help we can send him.’

Chapter Nineteen

Mutnodjme

The sed festival feast was engrossing.

My sister Nefertiti had clearly not been told of the death of the little princess, or else she was unaffected by it. She was dressed in a gauze gown so sheer that one could see her perfect body and rounded limbs through it. Her short Nubian wig was crowned with a cone of solid perfumed oil which would melt in the course of the evening, matching the one on my own head. I was worried about the state of Egypt, certainly, I would always be concerned about it while the Eunuch King sat on the throne, but one cannot always be concerned.

Sometimes one has to feast and forget. I did not like my chances of persuading my dear lord Ptah-hotep to do so, but I was going to try. The first thing I needed to do was to dose him with an reasonable amount of wine, and that would not be difficult.

He was sitting across the room with his scribes and their families, and I was already friends with his scribes. Khety, who had the eyes of a dreamer whose dreams have been fulfilled, had agreed to keep Ptah-hotep’s cup filled with the strong wine of the south, a vintage as red as blood, which went down like honey and struck like a serpent.

Widow-Queen Tiye and Merope could not come to the feast, for they were still in mourning for Amenhotep-Osiris. So now I thought of it, was Akhnaten, though he had shaved his chin and put on his jewellery again and showed no sign of missing his revered and wise father. I watched him across the room as he offered a bite of quail to Nefertiti and caressed her breast, pinching a nipple between thumb and forefinger while she purred like the once-sacred cat. The lord Akhnaten was undoubtedly incapable of generation, but he had learned a few things, it seemed, about pleasing women.

‘Drink!’ exclaimed the maiden who was pouring wine for me, quoting a saying of the wise Amenhotep-Osiris. ‘For yesterday’s wine will not quench today’s thirst!’

Under the circumstances, I drank.

The wine was excellent and of the feast there seemed to be no end. A bewildering number of dishes were laid before us. There was roasted goose and boiled pigeon and roasted and boiled birds of every description, in dishes and on skewers; there was a whole great fish, previously forbidden to the palace, cooked with fennel and leeks. There was a soup of small fish, spices and onions, dishes of new cheese, fifteen types of bread, fruits of all types from the rare golden fruit of Libya to the plain peasant’s fare of dates and figs. To refresh the palate, there were bunches of sour herbs, lettuce with its pearly juice for the lecherous, and brown beans and garlic to strengthen the weak-stomached.

The musicians of the Queen’s palace were sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. I hoped that they had eaten before they came, as was the practice in the reign of Amenhotep-Osiris, who said that no person could play a pipe while they were salivating and the groaning of musicians’ empty bellies put him off his food. They began to play dancing music, and the acrobats came in turning somersaults.

I was covertly watching Ptah-hotep through the flashing limbs. They were beautiful, slim and muscular. How could a thick-bodied creature such as I hold his attention when sweat gleamed on fine flesh and the ear was charmed by the strings of little chimes they wore around their ankles? Each nipple was painted red, each mouth rouged, and their hands and feet were patterned with henna.

But he was looking at me, and smiling. I was suddenly hot, and a serving maiden noticed this and began to fan me with a palm-leaf fan.

The acrobats retreated, walking out of the room on their hands, and in came a singer. She was an old woman, a heset, one of the Singers of Hathor when Hathor had been worshipped. That meant that she had spent her whole life since childhood in the acquisition of erotic skills. These naturally included singing and dancing, for Hathor is—was—the Lady of Music. She carried a sistrum and sat down next to the woman with the small drum.

Silence fell. This was the famous Makhayib. Everyone in the Black Land had heard of her.

I wondered suddenly what had become of the dedicated women of Hathor. They had no other skills but copulation, singing and dancing, then I chided myself for an idiot. With such talents, they would never lack for a protector in Egypt.

Makhayib clapped her hands together several times, then started to sing. Her voice was not sweet like those of the Attis’ priests I had heard in the ceremony of the Phoenix. It had a sharp edge to it which compelled attention, even though she was singing of love, the song of a maiden to her chosen man.

It is sweet, favoured boy,

To bathe in the river.

If you come this way

Down the green path

You may see me naked

Standing in the water.

Everyone was listening. The voice came from an old woman. Under the long Hathor-wig, with its curled-up ends, her hair was white; her breasts had fallen, her loins under their beaded belt and tassel must have been as dry as old leather. Even her hard-soled feet were wrinkled, with horny nails like the yellowed nails on her hands.

But what I could see, if I closed my eyes, was a slender maiden teasing a boy no older than herself with erotic visions.

I shall stand in the water

So you can see me;

I shall turn from you

So you shall see all of me.

Look at me, beloved,

I am worth your gaze.

I felt an emotion rising which was not mine, though I shared it. My lord was thinking the same as I; how sweet it would be to go down to the river and bathe, then lie together in the reeds. I had never done such a thing, but he had.

I shall swim down

And bring up a red fish.

I shall hold it between my fingers

It will be happy in my hands

I shall lay it between my breasts

Beloved, come and watch!

If anyone in that hall was in any doubt as to the variety of red fish which the singer wished to make happy in her hands, they must have been deaf. The Singer of Hathor allowed the musicians to play a bright dance tune while she drank some wine.

I smiled at my lord, and he left his scribes and came to me, sitting down at my feet. I was amazed that he would sit thus, a sign of submission, and I could not have it so I joined him on the floor and we sat shoulder to shoulder while maidens passed by us with more wine and the heset began to sing again. She sang sadly to a heartrending tune.

My love is on the other side,

My desired one is across the river

The water is deep and runs strongly

The water is the crocodiles’ home.

The pipes joined in, playing a sad lament behind the harsh voice, which now sounded male. The heset was clearly a woman of power.

Ptah-hotep touched my side, just above my hip bone with the tip of one finger, and I gasped. Then I drew my nail very lightly across his shoulder where the collar bone leaves a hollow, and felt him react. Whatever power we had been given by the gods, we still had some of it.

I do not fear the river depths.

I do not fear the waiting teeth

I walk the riverbed as though it was land

I will come to you, my love.

The lament changed imperceptibly to a celebration. The voice swooned with pleasure as Hathor’s singer finished the verse:

Wet, I will walk into your house.

Wet, I will lie down beside you.

Wet, you will embrace me

Wetter still shall we be.

The song shifted into more dancing music, and a troupe of Nubian women came in, wild dancers in body-paint and feathers. I could not get near Makhayib to congratulate her, nor did I have any little ornaments or beads with me to throw.

And Ptah-hotep was beside me and I did not want to move. He leaned closer to me in the salutation called ‘the exchange of breath’ and rubbed his cheek against mine. He smelt sweet, felt sweeter. I wanted to caress him, make love to him; my urgency astonished me, and I punched down my desire as a woman kneads prematurely-risen dough.

‘We will have to stay until the last of the food is served. I am told that the King has ordered something special which he wants us all to taste,’ he whispered. ‘After that, lady, will you come to my bed?’

‘Yes,’ I said promptly. I had never learned the art of teasing and flirting and it was too late to start, now that I had given away my heart.

‘More wine!’ declared a woman near me. She was swaying on her chair and I moved aside in case she was about to throw up all over me—which had happened at these feasts often enough.

‘You, Lady Mutnodjme, you have a lover with you! Let him declaim a poem to you. It is a night for love!’

I was about to demur—I was sure that Ptah-hotep, though an excellent person and the object of my profound desire, had had no training in love poetry—when he took my hand and said in his clear, precise voice:

Ask of the lotus, what say you?
My petals are her skin,
And my scent her scent.

This was a variant of a word game I had played as a child. It was a riddle game. “What says the wood? My arms are folded” for instance, meant a shut door. The drunken woman cheered and others leaned closer to hear what Ptah-hotep would say next.

Ask of the net, what say you?
I am my lady’s hair, ensnaring her lover.

‘Very good, very good!’ enthused the audience. ‘More wine and more words of love! Your turn, lady Mutnodjme.’

So I obliged:

Ask of the sycamore tree, what say you?
I am a young man’s arms, strong and supple.

Ptah-hotep lifted a hand to my breast and cupped it very gently, yet I could feel the whorls on each finger’s end, and said:

Ask of the pomegranate, what say you?
My pips are her teeth, my fruit her breasts.

The Nubian dancers had gone and the whole court was gathered around us, waiting to hear what Ptah-hotep and Mutnodjme would invent next. It was my turn again:

Ask of the cat, what say you?
I am his strong spine, his hidden claws.

Ptah-hotep continued:

Ask of the night, what say you?
I am her beginning and her ending,
I am her musk and her mystery.

Nefertiti filled my wine cup again, and Ptah-hotep leaned on my shoulder, fatigued by love and poetry.

My lord Akhnaten dropped a golden arm ring into my lap and another into Ptah-hotep’s hand. He smiled down on us, the vague and misty smile of a prophet.

‘You are well-matched,’ he told us.

I tasted the herb menhep in the wine. It was a known aphrodisiac, not that we needed it.

What was the King trying to do? Were we all to couple on the floor, as the peasants did at the festival of two gods in which he no longer believed?

I resolved at least to find a suitable corner for myself and my lover if we were overcome by lust.

When we were overcome by lust; there was no if. My blood was heated by the wine and the proximity of my lover and the music, which was now sinuous and erotic, the marriage music of the Black Land.

The heset raised her voice again, cutting through the babble of people calling for more wine or bread, to sing: