Out of the Black Land (40 page)

I would have said the same. Ii brought in a linen towel, with which she rubbed and polished the boy, trussed him into a clean loincloth and sat him down in the general’s chair. I judged that Ii had been in charge of at least three little brothers. She had such sisterly jurisdiction that the boy had surrendered immediately.

‘Now, what are you?’ I asked the child. ‘A burglar?’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘Are you Mutnodjme daughter of Ay?’ he asked, as if repeating a lesson.

‘I am Mutnodjme, daughter of Ay,’ I told him.

He grabbed the remains of his cloth, which had been wrapped around a small parcel, which had escaped the worst of the excrement with which this now-immaculate child must have been coated. Ii carried the cloth away to be washed, for weaving is valuable and cannot be wasted unless it is completely worn out or irreparably stained.

I examined the parcel. It was covered with oil cloth, sewn together, the stitches coated with beeswax. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to render it waterproof. Ipuy gave me his knife and I cut the stitches, wondering what could be so valuable and so secret to require sending a child in through the sewer.

When opened, it merely contained a carved potsherd and a vial of common glass, such as is used to contain perfumes. I examined the wrapping, which was sealed with a clay seal marked with the shield and crossed arrows of the city of Sais.

It all meant nothing to me, thought it was clearly supposed to convey a message. Well-wishers with gifts of perfume did not usually send them anonymously through the drains.

‘Where did you come from, child?’ I asked the boy.

‘Docks,’ he said, shining with pride. ‘Man said he’d give me a pair of gold earrings if I could get this parcel to the lady Mutnodjme daughter of Ay without being seen.’

‘What did the man look like?’ I persisted. The child shrugged.

‘Just a man,’ he said. ‘An old man,’ he added. “Same age as him.’

He pointed out Nebnakht, a youthful nineteen.

‘Feed him, Ii, will you?’ I instructed my maid. ‘Then get him out of the palace by a side door. He’s deserved his gold earrings. Just in case you miss your man,’ I told the boy, ‘Here is a piece of copper.’

‘Return,’ said the boy, struggling with an unfamiliar word or concept. ‘You got to send a return message.’

‘How very mysterious,’ I said, turning the strange presents over in my hands. I opened the vial.

‘Even so, it is but a minor mystery. Doubtless someone is playing some sort of joke on me—those soldiers have a crude sense of humour,’ I said, returning the knife to Ipuy.

I was smiling, though—and could not help it—for I had just realised what the carving on the potsherd meant; and I had inhaled the perfume.

‘I’m going to find something to write on. Everyone can go back to work,’ I hinted, walking into my bedchamber and rummaging for a stylus and some papyrus under the general’s bed. I found them and then sat on the floor, knees drawn up, clutching the potsherd to my breast.

Who else would have sent me a drawing of a goat with the cuneiform for ‘I talk’ scratched over its head? Who else would have sent me a phial of the perfume which only Nefertiti knew how to mix? And where else would Ptah-hotep be but in the palace of Sitamen, the daughter of Widow Queen Tiye, who had sworn friendship to him when he was a young man? The daughter who was a devotee of the goddess Neith, whose symbol was crossed arrows on a shield, identical with the city of Sais?

Nefertiti was alive, which was more than she deserved; but most importantly, Ptah-hotep was alive, and I felt as though someone had removed a sack of rocks from the back of my neck.

But I was married to the general; and I could never marry Ptah-hotep now.

No wonder I had sensed him close. We were still twinned, he was still feeling as I felt. No wonder that I had not found any bones in the ashes. There had been no bones to find. He was alive, alive! I almost laughed aloud.

And what did it matter if I never lay with him again? It was pure selfishness to question the ways of fate. I had married the general, well, that had been a kind gesture of the general’s and it had preserved me from being given away or banished or possibly even sacrificed to something.

All things can be cured but death
, as Amenhotep-Osiris the Wise had said. What mattered was that I was alive and in the world and so was Ptah-hotep. I thought that I felt an answering rush of gladness from him, as though he had leaned down and kissed my mouth.

Now what could I reply which would not give me away in my turn? The precious potsherd looked like any old ostracon on which an artist had scrawled a satirical cartoon, like the cat’s funeral on the wall of Merope’s husband Dhutmose’s living room. I could do the same. I found a piece of broken pottery under the bed and blew dust off it, reminding myself that I must speak to Ii about her sweeping.

I scribbled a double-crowned goat, that would tell him that I recognised that both he and Nefertiti were alive. I gave the goat breasts and a bow and arrow—altering the symbol to that of a woman warrior that would mean that I had worked out that he was not in Sais, but with Sitamen. At the bottom I carved a heart, which would tell him that I still loved him.

Then I gave it to the boy, who was now stuffed full of honey-bread and figs, and watched Ii lead him out of the room by the hand, the picture of an obedient palace child. I knew that she would get through the gates without trouble. Ii knew most of the soldiers in the king’s guard intimately.

Ptah-hotep was alive. I returned to the office of the Great Royal Scribe, outwardly placid, inwardly vibrating with joy.

Ptah-hotep

I knew the moment when she opened the parcel and understood; or I thought I did, for out of nowhere came a great wave of joy and relief. I was reading the
Instructions of Amenemope To His Son
, which was not likely to have produced such a response, though it was a worthy text. I was convinced that at that day and hour my dearest Mutnodjme discovered that I was alive, having thought me dead. I wondered how she would contrive to get word to Kheperren, though I knew she would.

Life in the palace of Sitamen was peaceful, though the season had been bad, the Nile had not risen, and if it did not rise the next year the farmers would be looking famine in the face.

This should not have been so. Amenhotep-Osiris in his wisdom had retained enough grain to provide seed for seven years of failure; but his son had poured out grain like water before the feet of merchants who fetched him precious woods from Nubia and jewels and gazelles and strange foods. I doubted that there was another year’s grain in the stores. And of course the king would not abate the taxes because there was less grain this year. I cursed him daily for his sole and only god.

Not that the Aten was to blame. It was a venerable concept which had its roots in the oldest known ennead, the group of nine gods at Karnak. But the king’s monomania had blinded him to every other consideration. He had broken the power of the priests of Amen-Re, which his wise father had not done.

Amenhotep-Osiris had known that the temple of Amen-Re was too powerful and had striven to reduce its influence by taking some of its functions away and giving them to other temples. But he had known that without the priests of Amen-Re there were no tax inspectors, no keepers of weights and measures, no record keepers, no river watchers.

The temple of Amen-Re was essential for the smooth government of Egypt. It balanced its power against the throne and the army, and as long as all three were in the hands of reasonably competent men then the country would work. In fact it worked even if the throne was occupied by a child or a drooling idiot as it had been before.

It had taken a poet, a dreamer, a devoutly religious man, to attack the temple and destroy it, along with most of the historians, scholars and learned men in Egypt. And we still did not know what had happened to the Widow-Queen Tiye.

***

Mutnodjme’s reply arrived in at the same time as my beloved Kheperren, who threw himself at me, held me away so that he could look at me, then hugged me so tight that he left fingermarks in my shoulders.

‘Oh, praise to all the gods, I wondered if I had misinterpreted Mutnodjme’s message so I came straight here as soon as I got it. How did you survive, dearest?’ he asked.

‘I was kidnapped. What message did Mutnodjme send you?’

‘Here,’ he shoved a piece of papyrus at me. It bore a crowned goat sitting on crossed arrows. Its mouth was gaping and in the space between upper and lower teeth was the character in cuneiform for ‘talk.’

‘And her cuneiform lessons are obviously coming along,’ I said, impressed as always by this learned lady. ‘Have you seen her? She is well?’

‘No I have not; I came straight here to find you—alive, you scoundrel! We wept for you and buried your ashes in a rock tomb above Amarna in the strictest secrecy, ’Hotep. How can you possibly be alive? The lady went and sifted through that pile of ashes for your bones.’

‘That must have been a terrible task,’ I stopped laughing with joy at my reunion with my dear Kheperren.

‘She has a lot of courage—more than me. I was afraid of what I might find, but she wasn’t. Come and lie down under this vine and talk to me, kiss me; gods, I don’t know what to say to you. I feel like you’ve been to the Field of Reeds, and I ought to ask you what it was like.’

A man and a woman lying down in love might have attracted comment in the palace of the lady Sitamen, but not a man and another man. I laid Kheperren down and put my head on his chest, listening to his heart, which beat wildly under my cheek.

The sun shone hot above the vine, making dazzling patterns through the leaves, outlines in gold against the plain marble tiles. We lay so quietly that I heard fish splash in the pool and dragonflies zooming amongst the lotus flowers.

Then he began to kiss me and to laugh, and to kiss me again, and although I had never thought him dead I had thought him lost, and I had missed him. So we made love under the vine to the apparent approbation of a few of Sitamen’s women who wandered past, not averting their eyes.

‘So, will you stay here?’ he asked me, as the cool air dried the sweat on our skin.

I kissed his neck. The skin was wet against my lips. ‘I don’t know. I cannot go back to the City of the Sun. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want any office. By the way, have you any news of the Widow-Queen Tiye?’

‘The king has not released her from seclusion. He had her locked up for forty days, supposedly mourning the death of Mekhetaten, and since has just forgotten to let her out. She is reported to be well, though her temper will not have improved if she has heard the rumours about what the King is requiring Divine Father Ay to do to Smenkhare.

‘Mutnodjme’s mother Great Royal Nurse Tey is ill, perhaps fatally ill. I would have thought that she would be forever preserved by the vinegar that runs in her veins. And… General Horemheb has married.’

‘Oh? That is a surprise. I thought him forever devoted only to you,’ I said idly. ‘Who has he married? Not some shrinking maiden, surely?’

‘No ’Hotep, he has married the lady Mutnodjme. It was the only way he could protect her.’ Kheperren held me down with one hand on my chest.

‘You could have brought her to me,’ I said slowly.

Now I could not marry the woman I loved. I should have married her when I had the chance, but she would not agree.

Now she had married the general instead of me. He was, perhaps, a better choice—certainly stronger and bigger and probably more of a man.

But I had thought that she loved me. Surely I had not deluded myself when I felt her relief and joy at knowing that I was, after all, alive?

‘She would not leave the Widow-Queen, even though Tiye the redheaded woman is locked up, unable to communicate with us,’ Kheperren said. ‘We thought that you were dead; and her father was suggesting that she be married to any of the priests of Aten as long as he would take her away.

‘And did I say we thought you were dead? The general will not keep her from you, ’Hotep,’ he said gently.

‘Has the marriage been consummated?’ I asked, forcing the words out through reluctant lips.

‘Yes, but she lay with me, ’Hotep, because she knows that I love you, too. I felt her as she imagined that I was you, I felt her body open, melt with longing; and I felt her shock when she realised again that you were dead.