Out of the Black Land (46 page)

‘
These have never been filled, can never be filled
,’ repeated Ptah-hotep slowly. ‘
The hands of the ape, the claws of the vulture, the mouth of the crocodile and the eyes of man.

‘I suppose that you are right. I could wish that Widow Queen Tiye-Osiris had taken him with her. Ay would have made a good footstool for the journey. Or a chamber-pot. He demands tribute from foreign kings, and the crown never sees a deben of it. I can’t accuse him of profiting from his office again—the little king threw the latest charge out when Ay begged him to remember how he had carried him on his back to the festivals of the Aten when he was three.

‘Ay is a centre for the remaining corrupt officials, though I am weeding them out. But he is protecting some and while he does that I cannot get rid of them. Ah, well,’ he said, and looked so sad that I ordered musicians to attend at dinner and Ii to attend on him while he was washed and massaged.

In all, I expected that my life would continue in its pleasant path until I died and went to the Field of Reeds. I had mastered cuneiform and was consulted by the scribes on any difficult passages, as I could read it easily in Babylonian or Hittite. I walked down to the temple of Amen-Re now and again for a refreshing argument with the keeper of cuneiform, or to talk to the priestesses of Isis about medicinal plants or to swap stories. When the court went on journeys, I went too, to feast on fried fish at New Year or eat hippopotamus cakes in Tybi.

I was getting old for a woman—nearly thirty. Horemheb had already purchased a suitable tomb for us, painted with his favourite scenes of marching soldiers and war, and I had a sub-chapel there with Isis looking down on me. Ptah-hotep and Kheperren would lie there as well in their time, and I expected that after such a strenuous youth, this was my time of peace.

Horemheb was away, Ptah-hotep was in the south on the usual circuit, when a maid came running. Little Wab, who had grown into a fine woman, threw herself at my feet and wailed, tearing off her wig and scratching her breasts with her nails.

‘What has happened?’ I dropped the tablet I was translating and it smashed on the floor. Whatever the spy at the King of Hatti’s court had to report was now in a thousand pieces.

‘Someone is dead? Is it Ptah-hotep? Kheperren? The general?’

She shook her head, gulping down tears, and finally managed to cry: ‘The Lord of the Two Lands Tutankhamen is dead, Mistress, the Great Son of Amen-Re is dead!’

I shook her by the shoulders. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, girl, he’s only seventeen, he’s healthy, he can’t be dead!’

She went on crying. I left her there in a heap on the floor and went to the door.

I heard the noise of wailing, close and loud. Women were screaming and tearing their hair. Men were weeping as they stood. I saw a soldier crying on guard, which I had never seen before. But the source of the grief seemed to be outside the walls, and I went to find out what had happened.

I did not need an escort. Women walked alone in Egypt again. All our ancient rights had been restored by this same king. I was jostled by court ladies as we jammed in the main doorway and then saw a sight which beat most of them to their knees.

Four priests were carrying a body. It was the young king. I saw his face. His pelvis seemed to have been broken and one leg and one arm dangled at acute angles. I looked because I could not take my eyes away. The boy’s wig had fallen off. His skull was fractured. Also his spine. No living spine would allow a neck to drop like that. I had only seen such injuries once before, in a man who had slid off the roof of the temple of Isis.

Tutankhamen had fallen from a height onto hard ground, for there were smudges of the sand that servants use to cleanse marble on his face and body. Pitiful, broken, dead. From whence had he fallen?

I looked up at the walls, and there was Divine Father Ay, his face a mask, no emotion at all, watching them carry the body of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen-Osiris to the House of Life to be embalmed.

I gathered my wits and went back inside and told my household the news. I bade them send an urgent message to the general and to call Ptah-hotep back from Memphis. I said nothing of my dreadful suspicion. I might be able to gather some proof, though surely not even Divine Father Ay would have dared to murder a Pharaoh?

Not when it would not advantage him.

Though I had heard from Ptah-hotep that he believed that his urgings had finally borne fruit, and that the intelligent and far-seeing Pharaoh was about to dismiss Divine Father Ay.

I let my hair down from its pins and cast a handful of ash on my head while I thought. Assume Ay had murdered the King. Why would he do that? How did this fit in with his all-encompassing greed?

A thought occurred to me. There was no heir. The Great Royal Wife had never borne a living child. The Princess Sitamen had died in a chariot accident three years before, a fitting end for such a warrior. Mentu the Scribe had died with her.

And now, the last living child of the Pharaoh Amenhotep-Osiris had just died. Therefore the only persons with any rights to the throne were Ankhesenamen, who had been Great Royal Wife twice and was a Great Royal Heiress; and possibly me, Mutnodjme who, as child of Divine Father Ay and Great Royal Nurse Tey, and sister of Queen Nefertiti, had been awarded the rank of Royal Princess; though I had never used it, .

Resolving to die rather than marry my father, no matter what happened, I went to find the Great Royal Wife and warn her of her fate.

Ptah-hotep

I heard of the death of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen from many sources, and the question of the safety of my household was uppermost in my mind as I ordered my crew to re-load the vessel
Glory of Thoth
and set out at once for the capital. I had been complacent. I had not expected anything more to happen in what had been, by any measure, a very active life.

The hawser was freed and dragged back into
Glory of Thoth
and we were loosed into the current. The rowing-master ordered the sweeps out. I accepted a bite of bread and a cup of wine and sipped and thought as the cultivation slipped past, date palms and men ploughing with oxen, someone driving a light carriage between two villages, women coming down to the river for water.

I looked into my cup, swilled and tasted with pleasure. I still liked the Tashery vintage best, though that produced by the Ammemmes vineyard was very promising. I had expected to spend the night at the house of my father, who was very old and ill. I had expected to spend tomorrow judging a complicated land tenure case. My mind was full of the laws of measurement and taxes, not the matters of state which I now had to consider.

I had grown sure of my place, and that is not a good thing for a man or a judge. I lived in the combined household which contained all that I loved; Kheperren and his general and Mutnodjme. It also contained all that I needed, a place to lay my head, someone to help me wash and dress and take care of my garments, and a table laid with good food. Unlike some of my contemporaries, I had not become dyspeptic over the years, and I could even join the general in his favourite dish of leeks, garlic and onions, though such an indulgence meant that we would sleep together, because both Kheperren and Mutnodjme were sensitive to garlic breath. My mind was dwelling on these domestic matters because I did not want to think about the death of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen-Osiris.

There was the question of the succession.

Now that the boy was dead, it was up to Ankhesenamen to choose the new Pharaoh. Whoever she married, within limits, would be king. I did not know her well, she seemed a pleasant young woman, though remarkably unlearned like all the Amarna princesses.

Suddenly I recalled Khons, dead many years, and the fate of learning under Akhnaten, and the pull-along clay horse in a pool of blood.

I found myself praying as the
Glory of Thoth
sped along towards the capital to whatever fate waited for me there.

I found the palace in an uproar, all of the furnishings of the dead king being carried to the docks to be placed in his tomb.

My household was going about its business as usual. Ipuy, very old and gnarled now, challenged me at the door and then let me in. I found Mutnodjme sitting quite still. I spoke to her, but she did not seem to hear me. When I came closer, I saw that she had a knife in her lap and was looking at it.

‘Ptah-hotep, I have a terrible suspicion,’ she said, as though I had just been at court and come home as usual instead of being summoned from Memphis and exhausting my rowers in getting to Thebes in record time.

‘Tell me,’ I said, sitting down. I did not touch the knife.

‘I saw the body of the young king,’ she said slowly, choosing her words. ‘He had various broken bones: a fractured skull, a broken arm and leg. He fell from a height, Ptah-hotep, that is the only way he could have sustained such injuries. They picked him up from the courtyard. The walls are very high there.’

‘Yes?’ I prompted her gently, as one encourages a reluctant witness.

‘When I looked up to see where he fell from,’ she said, making herself speak, ‘I saw Divine Father Ay looking down on me.’

‘And?’

‘He wasn’t shocked,’ she said.

Though this was not evidence, it was evidential. I still didn’t understand the knife. I touched it and raised an eyebrow.

‘I have been trying to summon the courage to go and confront my father about this death,’ she said. I took the knife away.

‘If this terrible thing did take place,’ I told her, ‘we must wait. If he means to take power, he will show his hand.’

‘He already has,’ she said tonelessly. ‘He sent to Ankhesenamen and told her to prepare to marry him, when her husband is buried. You can hear her,’ she said.

Indeed; a long, sobbing shriek in a female voice had been noticeable from the moment I walked into the palace.

‘Then we must tell the general,’ I said.

‘I have sent a message to him, but he is on the border, dealing with the Canaanite incursion. I have tried to call him, but we were never close like you and I are close. He will not be able to feel my fear. He might, however, get my message. But it will take him a long time to get here,’ she said.

I worried about her. She did not seem angry. She was not reacting at all. It seemed that this dreadful murderous act of Ay, her father, might be the last straw which broke the ass’ back for Mutnodjme.

‘Come, woman, where is your hospitality?’ I demanded. ‘Here I am, your husband, newly returned from a long journey, and are there garlands? Is there wine? Must I kiss your feet, Mistress of the House, for a wash and some oil?’

‘You may kiss my feet if you wish,’ she said with a return of some spirit. ‘And you shall certainly be tended. Come, my dear.’

If I felt her emotions, she felt mine. And I was not afraid.

If Ay took power, then things might not go so badly for Egypt, though they would certainly go badly for me. There were worse persons than misers for Pharaoh. If Ay proved incompetent, then returning Horemheb might have another solution. In any case, we could do nothing on our own, and just for my own sense of justice, I would investigate who had been where when the young king fell from the wall.

It did not take me long, just by walking around and asking idle questions, to locate the king on the wall. He had gone up there shortly before noon, without any guards. I could not speak to the Great Royal Wife because she was still wailing. She had been doing this for days. I understood how bitter her fate was, but I wished that she would mourn it in silence. The sobbing wail was hurting my ears.

But I did speak to one of the servants of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen-Osiris; the son of that Khety who was Half Great Royal Scribe. The boy had known me since he had been a small child. Khety-Tashery, which means Little Khety—for an imaginative man Khety was surprisingly unimaginative at naming children—was willing to be taken on a walk by someone whom he looked on as an uncle, and willingly accompanied me on the king’s last journey.

‘He came here to look at the river,’ said Khety-Tashery. ‘You get the best view of it from here, because the temple of the Aten isn’t in the way.’

I could see a long way down the Nile in one direction, and several shoeni up the river the other way. I could see the docks where the fishing boats came in, and the front door of the palace. Yes, it was a charming place to stand and look out over one’s domain.