Out of the Black Land

Chapter Seventeen

Mutnodjme

Time passed. I knew that Widow-Queen Tiye may she live was willing to help in mitigating the effects of her son’s fanaticism after the release of the Prince of Mitanni. The King did not visit his mother often, for fear of what she might say.

Every tenth day treasure was distributed to the inhabitants of Amarna, every day the sun-disc was worshipped according to the King’s ritual, and the Nile did not flood, and the land grew drier, as though ousted Amen-Re was angry with us on behalf of Hapi, God of the Nile.

At the beginning of Tybi, Merope and I were inducted into the mysteries of the Phoenix.

Nefertiti came for us before dawn, a time when sensible people are still asleep. She led us in darkness to a door in the Queen’s Palace which gave onto a set of steps and we groped our way down, for apparently no light must penetrate the place of the Phoenix before Aten’s own rays.

In that case it might have been wiser to leave the initiation until after dawn, I thought, but I said nothing. Meekness was my name and butter would not have melted in my mouth.

Merope was walking behind me, holding on to my shoulder, for she was as blind as a bat in the dark. I reached up and took her hand and she impudently brushed my nipple in passing, trying to make me laugh. I did not laugh, but pinched her earlobe hard to warn her that this initiation was to be taken very seriously, with the solemnity that my sister Nefertiti was exhibiting as we walked along a complicated corridor in the darkness.

Some little light leaked down through joins from the soldier’s torches above, and I could in any case feel that there were many doorways on either side. The openings breathed vacancy and cooler air. Nefertiti was confident and led the way, her hand in mine, and Merope and I followed after, oppressed by darkness and no longer in the mood for tricks.

We came into a small round chamber where I struck my shins on a large pot of water and bit back a curse.

‘You must strip and wash,’ said Nefertiti. ‘Did either of you lie with a man last night?’

‘No,’ said Merope. I nodded, realised I could not be seen, and said, ‘I did not lie with a man last night.’ Of course, I had lain with my sister Merope, but that probably did not count.

We were required to strip naked and bathe very thoroughly with laundryman’s oatmeal and lye. This stung the skin but certainly rendered it clean. Our clothes were left behind, our jewellery and all our goods.

Nefertiti did not know, and I did not tell her, that the insignia of the Goddess Isis was tattooed on my scalp. It had been done when I came to the temple, when my head was shaved of the lock of childhood, and the hair had long since grown. I had a distinct feeling that being permanently marked with something which effectively meant, ‘This woman belongs to Isis’ might not be the advantage it was meant to be, and in fact might mitigate against my survival.

Breathing an inaudible prayer to my Lady Isis to assure her that I had not forgotten her worship, I followed the naked Merope out of the chamber into what seemed to be a large underground room and thence into a tunnel.

We emerged into the open. I heard water running. A channel of some sort was near. Nefertiti led me and we walked into water. It was only shin deep but it was a surprise. Merope clutched my hand as if she were frightened. I smelt spices and dust. Then I heard voices—women’s voices—chanting in harmony:

Hail, bird of fire.

Hail, fire-feathered, emerald-eyed,

Hail thou who nesteth in spices!

I was through the channel and hauled my sister Merope up behind me. There was a grey predawn light in the sky and we could now see, though at that hour all faces are ghastly and haggard and all colours are absent.

We were in a courtyard, roofed over except for the open space at the end where there was a Benben pillar, a stele with a rounded top; the perch for the Phoenix when she flew into Egypt. This was open to the sky. Each doorway had a channel in front of it so that no one could enter without walking through what was presumably sacred or blessed water. Thus purified, one could approach the worship of the Phoenix.

We were naked, more naked than I can recall being, for I had no jewellery, no sandals, and I felt as though a protective layer of skin had been removed by the lye. Merope crossed one arm on her breasts and shivered, though it was not cold. I held her other hand in mine as Nefertiti brought us forward to face a choir of women, all robed in red and gold robes of great richness and weight.

I could discern the red and gold; the sun was rising. Nefertiti shivered with pleasure as the chorus sang:

Hail, most excellent lady,

Avatar of the fire-wing,

Lady of splendour!

And Nefertiti cried:

This is the worship of the Phoenix,

She who bears her own self inside her,

She who is unique,

For there is only one Phoenix, ever, Self-created, self-generating, lady of fire!

The women, raising their arms, cried:

She comes, she comes

Behold the Phoenix!

Merope and I cried out in amazement. I saw the Firebird, a huge creature, bigger than every bird that flew. In the new sunlight she shone like metal. I could not look at her. And still the women chanted:

She is coloured like the pomegranate,

like the wild poppy;

her wings are gold,

and the rainbow has coloured her head.

My eyes filled, I blinked and looked again, and then I realised that I was seeing an image made of gold with red and copper feathers and coloured glass melted into every scale of her legs. Her eyes were emeralds. She was a masterpiece.

And as the women cried out:

She who is last and first, she who is unique, worship her!

Merope and I dropped to our knees and then kissed earth in front of the Phoenix, while the women did the same. Some of them were crying, some moaning. I had been staggered by the apparition, which was made the more startling by the long journey in the dark.

Nefertiti raised her arms, her robes falling back to reveal that she was draped in red and gold feathers, and the women cried:

Hail most excellent lady,

Keeper of the Firebird,

Prophet of the Phoenix.

The Pharaoh Akhnaten was not the only one who wanted to be worshipped, it seemed. Merope and I screamed along with the rest as they repeated this three times.

Nefertiti said:

She comes from Africa bearing spices for her nest.

She flies into the Black Land escorted by all of the birds of the air,

For she is their monarch and they delight to serve her.

‘They delight to serve her,’ repeated the women.

And Nefertiti continued:

Soaring she settles into the perch we have prepared for her,

And there she sings her last song,

Marvellously sweet to hear.

‘Marvellously sweet,’ murmured the women.

There she gathers cinnamon and balsam and cassia;

She makes her cradle and her sepulchre of frankincense and spikenard.

‘Frankincense and spikenard,’ said the chorus.

Here she lays an egg which is her,

A ball of myrrh and seed which will hatch her again,

And then she cups her wings and summons fire.

‘Summons fire,’ breathed the women, echoing Nefertiti.

And the fire of Aten her lord licks up into her limbs,

And she burns

‘She burns,’ murmured the chorus.

Hail to the Phoenix!

For though she is burned to ashes,

Yet she leaves her own self to hatch again from the ball of precious spices,

And she is herself never dying and never dead,

For in her own death she finds life.

‘Hail!’ cried the chorus.

And Nefertiti, her creamy voice rich with triumph, called:

Thus we shall rise.

‘We shall rise…’

We shall rise like the Phoenix.

‘We shall rise…’

We shall rise over death, which has no power,

For we are as the Phoenix.

Hail!’

‘Hail!’ cried the women as they leapt to their feet.

Pipes and drums began from a group of musicians in the centre of the courtyard. I noticed as I was swept into a step-dance that they were men and that they were blind, and I was consumed not with religious ecstasy but pity as I danced, Merope holding one hand and a court lady the other.

And as we danced we chanted the Phoenix litany, and I apologised to my lady Isis for taking part in this paltry ceremony.

Isis demanded that I starve three days before she accepted me, in order that I should understand hunger. Isis required that I should not taste water a day and a night, so that I would understand thirst. To Isis I swore to alleviate pain and misery, to feed the hungry and nurture the fatherless.

The Phoenix only wanted me to strip naked and dance.

But I could do that, and I did. We went round and down in a chain, split into pairs, and then into the round again. The pace was fast and the drums throbbed like heartbeats in fever, and as the sun rose higher we were wet with sweat. Hands slipped out of my slippery grasp. I was out of breath but I could not break the chain, and I reminded myself that I was a priestess of a much sterner lady than this bird, and kept moving.

Fortunately my sister the Queen, who has never had a lot of stamina, left the dance and brought us with her. The priestesses continued, round and round the Benben pillar, and I flopped down on the tiled floor as the drums throbbed and the pipes trilled, making bird calls for the silent image.

When the courtyard was fully lit, Nefertiti raised her arms again and silence fell.

‘Listen,’ she said, and no one breathed.

‘One day,’ she told the worshippers,’ You will hear the rustle of feathers, and the song of all the birds in Egypt escorting her to this place. Listen every day,’ said Nefertiti, looking so beautiful that I could hardly bear to see her. The lines of her throat and breasts were perfect in the bright light, and she shone ivory, carmine and gold. She was alight with joy, with triumph, as enchanting as a goddess, and the worshippers fell to the ground, screaming and weeping and kissing her feet.

Had this been what my sister had always wanted?

We were escorted back to the palace blindfold through the passages under the ground, and I had no real idea of where the courtyard of the Phoenix lay.

Before we came into the palace again, Queen Nefertiti said, ‘If you have any questions, sisters, ask them now, for you may not speak of the mystery of the Firebird outside this place.’

‘Lady, what of the musicians? I thought all men were banned from this mystery.’ I was curious about the musicians; the mystery itself seemed self-evident.

‘They are not men,’ said Nefertiti in her gentle voice. ‘Their goddess castrates them. She is called Astarte; they are priests of Attis. So they are no longer men, and being blind cannot see the Phoenix, so they are allowed.’

‘Who carries out such a terrible deed?’ I asked, a little taken aback.

‘They themselves, with a curved knife. But we blinded them, of course. Have you any other questions?’

‘No, lady,’ I said. We blinded them? Who was we? Mutilation was sometimes imposed by the law, when a judge ordered that a traitor or a murderer should be deprived of nose or ears and banished to the desert as an alternative to execution. It was not something which anyone could just do so that a Phoenix could have male musicians at her ceremony.

Nefertiti was waiting. Something more was obviously needed, and Merope, my clever Kritian sister, supplied it.

‘We are overcome by the honour you have shown us,’ she said, and knelt for the Queen’s blessing, closely followed by me. After all, knees are made to bend, as Lady Duammerset had said. I resolved then to survive if I could, but to do as much as I could to ensure that no more excesses were ordered in the name of the Firebird, even if it meant becoming head of the cult myself. I was beginning to lose my taste for the beauty and airy lightness of the palace.

The rescue of the Mittani prince had been easy because I had Queen-Widow Tiye’s trust. How long could the Lady live, so grief-stricken for the old man Amenhotep-Osiris? And when she was gone, would there be any check on the King Akhnaten and his Lady Nefertiti at all?

The eldest remaining son of the Queen was with her when Merope and I returned in mid morning, having bathed again and been oiled and massaged to soften skin which had been dried out by the lye. Another sorrow was on Tiye may she live, and I didn’t know how much more she could stand. Her youngest daughter, Bekhetaten, her last gift from Amenhotep-Osiris, had died in the arms of her nurse on the way to Amarna. Many children were dying. There was a plague of summer fever amongst the babies. It began with a high temperature, an unwillingness to feed, then the child developed diarrhoea which could not be stemmed, and so died of weakness. Setepenre the youngest Amarna baby was also ill, and I did not think she would survive.

‘My husband the King is dead, and his children are dying with him,’ mourned Tiye, dry-eyed. ‘Perhaps it is better so. Soon I will join him.’

‘Mother, live,’ begged Smenkhare. He was a beautiful boy. His mother had given him fineness of bone and her coppery hair, and he was straight and slim.

His tutor reported him intelligent and studious, though that meant nothing. After the murder of Teacher Khons, no tutor was likely to overtax a royal child.

Smenkhare had also inherited, it seemed, his father’s shrewdness, because he was using on his despairing mother one of the few arguments that might persuade her to stay on an earth which had become void for her.

‘Who will advise my Royal Father when he is confused, if you leave us?’ he demanded, moving away from her embrace. ‘What will become of the Black Land without you? Do not the foreign kings write to you, Lady, as Mistress of Egypt? What will Egypt do without its Mistress?’

Tiye said nothing, but I saw her drag in a deep breath.

Prince Smenkhare may he live forever saw that he was having an effect and added, ‘My father was a wise man and a faithful man, he will build a house for you in the afterlife with the Aten, lady. He will not forget you, how could he? He waits for you. But there are those here who love you almost as much. There is my little brother Tutankhaten, he is only two years old, he needs you, Mother, and I need you. You cannot leave us yet!’

He allowed the Queen to lay her head on his smooth shoulder and stroked her cheek, adding with just a trace of mischief, ‘And you have to come to my coronation,’ and Tiye laughed. It wasn’t a very good laugh, being bitter and brief, but it was a laugh.

‘Very well, sweet son,’ she agreed. ‘I will stay awhile yet,’ and Smenkhare kissed her.

Ptah-hotep

I woke, hearing voices at the door, very late on the night which was once the feast of Isis and Osiris, and a sleepy Meryt admitted a lamp-bearing woman into my chamber and shut the door after her with a slam. Meryt hates to be woken from her first sleep. My sandclock showed the time to be almost midnight. I heard the guard changing outside.

‘All well?’ asked the relieving guard.

‘All well,’ answered the soldier, and I heard him march away.

No wind was blowing. It was so still that I heard Meryt grunt as she lay down beside Teti in the outer chamber where she insisted on sleeping so that I could not be surprised. Meryt had appetites and her brother Teti supplied them. I wondered that the Nubians had similar customs to our own Royal House until I found that Teti was not the son of Meryt’s father or Meryt’s mother, but what in Egypt we would call a cousin. I had lain alone more nights than I could count, hearing them making love, which emphasised my loneliness.

Now I was not alone. I knew of only one woman whom Meryt would have allowed into my bedchamber without introduction.

‘Lady Mutnodjme,’ I said, struggling up onto one elbow and tipping over my neck-rest. ‘This is an unexpected honour.’

‘I mean you no harm,’ she said, crossing the room with her peasant’s stride. She set down the lamp. It was a small saucer-shaped oil lamp in the shape of an opium-poppy. It gave very little light, just a small bead of pale flame. In the half-darkness I saw that the lady Mutnodjme was quite naked.

She was rounded and full, with heavy breasts, wide hips and strong thighs. Her ringletted ebony hair fell almost to her waist and she shook it back impatiently. At the junction of thighs and belly was a perfect triangle of pale flesh and a cleft which was the entrance to the female mystery.

‘What do you want of me, lady?’ I asked. She came closer and sat down familiarly on the edge of my bed.

‘I want you to listen to the mysteries of the Firebird,’ she said, and I listened to her voice as she whispered to me of blinded musicians and a sister possessed of a strange worship. I wondered why she had come to tell me such things in the middle of the night and caught myself in a yawn. I knew now what no man knew, but it was not a useful secret. Misuses of the law had become commonplace. I said so.

‘Lady, the King orders whole provinces flogged if they do not pay his bounty,’ I said, my mouth almost touching her ear.

‘He ordered the Nomarch of the Nome of the Black Bull to have his ears cropped for not providing labour, even though it is the wrong season.

‘He sent the Nomarch of Set to the quarries and he sends men who are not slaves to work in the mines. And they die, but he does not care, for they provide him with eye-stones for his statues and gold for his bounties.’

‘That is true,’ she sighed, and for some reason we lay down together, her thigh touching my thigh, her hand clasping mine on her rounded belly.

‘There is no justice in the Black Land, and no peace, and no safety for any man, for at any moment the Pharaoh Akhnaten may order his home, his sons and his cattle seized to pay a tax which he has just imposed for the construction of Amarna and the glory of the Aten,’ I said, a litany of misery which I had never voiced before.

‘It is true,’ she responded, very sadly.

‘The Nile does not rise and the farmers will hunger this year,’ I said into the dark, rush-scented hair. Her mouth was very close to my mouth as she breathed, ‘This is true.’

‘And the old gods are angry, for their altars are empty and their worship abandoned; their priests wander the roads and their fires are cold,’ I added.

And then the lady Mutnodjme said, almost inaudibly, ‘But tonight is the marriage of Isis and Osiris.’

Then I knew why she had come to me.

The marriage of Isis and Osiris is—was—celebrated with a feast, after which a priest and priestess re-enact the mystic marriage in the light of the star Sothis, which is Isis and Orionis which is Osiris. This is done when the lights of both stars are in the sky, as they were tonight, before midnight when the stars move in the great wheel which takes them, during daylight, below the earth to the Tuat.

After the marriage of the gods is consummated, all people lie down with their lovers and dedicate their love to the festival, and that which is done this night is pleasing to the god and the goddess.

I allowed my mouth to meet her mouth. Meryt had taught me about women. I breathed in the scent of her skin and her hair, sour, not sweet, a biting sourness like persimmon or the golden apples of Nubia. Her mouth tasted of wine and honey and herbs, and she held out her arms to me.

I felt her hands slide surely across my chest and down to find the phallus, but she did not immediately clasp it, but with her nails and a touch as weightless as a butterfly alighting on a petal she stroked and teased my loins, until I was shivering. I reflected her caress, finding the cleft and touching it as gently as I could, a repeated tapping until I felt her thighs loosen and open, parting easily to allow me to find the pearl which is the centre of all female mysteries.

I felt my skin flush with heat. Beside me, my lover burned. I slid down beside her, finding first the nipple as hard as a metal bead in my mouth, then as her thighs wrapped my shoulders I found myself lapping at the waters of the womb which gave all men life.

Something took me then. Something flowed into my receptive body, some great force which had roamed the night, seeking an outlet. My hands were magnetised like the wise iron and everywhere I touched gave pleasure. Three times I felt the womb convulse under my tongue, heard a moan of delight, not from my lady Mutnodjme but from woman herself, all women, and I was making love to her as all men.

She reclaimed my mouth, sweet with her waters, drawing me into her embrace, her breasts soft under my weight and on that kiss I entered her with a shock like being struck by lightning. We were fused together. Thus must metal feel in the welding. I cried out; so did she. We moved slowly to begin with in a sacramental dance of female and male, of Isis reclaiming her dead husband, of life making love to life.

I abandoned thought; I was no longer Ptah-hotep. She was no longer the dark woman Mutnodjme who came to me in the night whom I had known as a little maiden. We had no history but the god’s, no story but the legend. The phallus that moved in and out of the sheath in slow strokes that made the woman cry out like a bird was not mine; the sheath was not hers.

We were one entity; one perfect union of god and goddess, earth and sky, fire and water. We were elemental, strong, unimaginably pure. I saw her face in starlight and she was transfigured, the goddess Isis under my hand, enfolding me, embracing me, so beautiful that my eyes dazzled.

There seemed to be no time. I was in her body, feeling the phallus inside me, the soft flesh close tightly about it, and every movement brought me such delight that my bones were filled with honey. She was me, feeling the penetration of the woman, the skin of my belly on her belly, the union of opposites which were the same.

We reached a climax. Lights exploded in front of my eyes. The rush of fire along my bones was close to pain, beyond pain. Still part of her, I felt her convulse as the womb grasped and sucked at the fluid of generation as though the womb was mine. We bled inside each other, shared veins and heart beating wildly, breath panting. We were one in the triumph of the consummation of the mystic marriage of Isis and Osiris.

I lay beside her, my phallus still inside her, her arms locked around my neck, my mouth on her mouth. We were soaking wet, shuddering with release, dazed.

‘Don’t let go of me,’ I whispered, for I felt unreal.

‘Hold me close, for I am afraid,’ she replied. We did not move for some time until our bones began to complain. Then we separated, reluctantly, and lay side by side, still touching.

‘My lady,’ I said uncertainly, for I did not know how to address the avatar of Isis.

‘My lord,’ she whispered. There was a quaver in her voice.

‘I was inside you, I was you, did you feel…’ I began.

And she answered me, ‘I felt you. I was a man and a woman, I was the lady and the lord; such a thing has never happened to me before, I am very frightened and I love you.’

‘I am also afraid,’ I said very softly. ‘I am awed before the power of the gods and I love you.’

We slept the rest of the night without dreams. When I awoke she was lying with her head on my breast. She opened her eyes when she felt me looking at her. We were sensitive to each other. I had only heard of this happening in the case of twins. The night had twinned us.

‘You pleased me,’ she said, sounding bewildered, tracing patterns on my chest with the very tips of her fingers.

‘You pleased me,’ I told her, caressing her rounded shoulders and strong thighs.

‘It is a strange matter. My lord I do not know what to say to you…’ she began. I didn’t know either. I solved the problem by kissing her and putting back the black hair.

‘You are my lady, and I am your lord,’ I said, and that seemed to satisfy her, for she called to Meryt for bread and wine.

Thus the lady Mutnodjme became my lover indeed, just as palace gossip said she had always been, and I never argued with palace gossip.

But the night remained unaccountable. Something had come to us, even to Ptah-hotep the scribe and Mutnodjme the priestess, who had lain down together on a sacred night in an Egypt which had abandoned its ancestral gods.