Out of the Black Land

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:

When I see your eyes shine

When I press close to look at you

Oh my beloved

Ruler of my heart!

The guests had begun to dance, not step dances but the marriage dances usually performed in private. The air in the hall was hot. My perfume cone had melted into my wig. Over my shoulders and down my breasts trickled cooling oil which tickled and made my skin shine. The same phenomenon emphasised all the muscles in the chest of Ptah-hotep the scribe.

The king and all the royal household were dancing. Pannefer and Huy were on their feet, mostly naked and smeared with oil, and their wives with them, giggling like children, as the Singer of Hathor continued.

This hour is happy

As you lie between my thighs

May this hour of bliss

Last forever, forever…

People were already seeking corners so that they could lie down with their chosen lovers. The drunken woman seized a passing servant and pulled his head down to her breast, spilling the ewer of wine which he had been carrying. I began to be afraid that I could not contain my lust much longer. The music was wild, shrilling over a grumble of fast-beating drums.

‘Something is happening,’ Ptah-hotep pulled away from my caress. ‘My love, my heart, wait a little longer, I must see…’

I ground my teeth in frustration, dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand and saw that trays were being carried amongst the guests by clean kitchen servants. I saw roasted flesh laid out as always, but the source of the flesh turned me sick with revulsion instead of lust.

This is what it was; it was all the venerated animals of Egypt, cooked. Yet there was nothing wrong with the way they had been cooked, dog and ibis and cat and crocodile. They smelt appetising and everyone was eating, snatching pieces of holy flesh, tearing the carcasses apart.

‘We will have to eat,’ I whispered.

‘Take a piece of the ibis for me,’ he said, and we bit and swallowed the white cooked flesh of the avatar of Thoth, god of wisdom and writing, judge of the netherworld, Ptah-hotep’s god.

The King, who had been drifting past, saw us and threw another load of gold at us in token of his pleasure.

Then I saw what beast had been served for the consumption of the royal family alone.

It was a beautifully-displayed roasted hawk, both Horus Avenger and Re-Harakhti, the most sacred of all creatures, symbol of Amen-Re at noon, the hawk in the horizon.

Ptah-hotep

As I ate a mouthful of the ibis flesh I dedicated myself again to Thoth, god of learning, and knew as my sister and spouse ate the same amount of holy beast that we would never be the same again, and neither would Egypt.

But we still burned. The feast was degenerating into such an orgy as Mentu my second in command had described as taking place in the more expensive brothels of the river-margin. Wine was spilled and rolled in, so that the floor was awash with it and trodden bread, broken pottery and the remains of shamefully slaughtered holy creatures.

I took Mutnodjme’s hand and we crawled away through the tipped over chairs past the copulating lovers and the vomiting drunks until we came to the door, crept unobserved over the threshold, and ran.

We ran away from the sed festival feast as though we were running for our lives from a terrible foe. We slipped, leaving wine red smears on the floor from our tainted feet. We clutched each other in fear and kept running until we came to my own apartments, startling Anubis into a warning snarl before he recognised our scent.

We barred the doors successively behind us as we went in through the outer office, inner office, outer living quarters and finally the inner rooms, which only contained my bedroom, a small store for treasures, and my bathroom.

‘Ptah-hotep,’ gasped my lady, freeing her body from cloth and jewellery. ‘I am horrified, I am revolted, but I am so sick with lust that I will not be able to think unless…’

I was in the same condition. Even when we had run—and why had we run like that? No one was chasing us, certainly no one would have missed us or noticed our going—I had been aroused almost to pain. I tore at the strings of my loincloth and threw it away and dropped the king’s gifts on top of it.

No delicacies were between us this time, no more words, just raw need. I slid down onto the floor, lying on my back; she swooped down upon me like a heron, and we were joined so close and so hard that we reached a climax in what seemed like moments. Before my phallus had time to shrink, it was hard again, and this time our coupling lasted longer.

I had never mated like that, not with man or woman. It was so ferocious, straining to get closer, to bury myself in the female body which strove to swallow me into herself and suck an orgasm from me. Her muscles closed around my phallus like a fist. Our shared perception was gone. This was almost like battle, a struggle to wrench satisfaction from the other body, and when we climaxed again and collapsed, her body over mine, we were winded and shocked and unable to explain why we had been so rough with each other.

I was inside her heart again, and she in mine. Very carefully, we helped each other to our feet and stood on the cool marble of the washroom and bathed each other.

‘Oh, my lord, my love,’ she said, sluicing cool water over my body. She lathered my head and body with the soft herb-scented soap which Meryt made for me, and I felt oil and semen and wine wash off my skin and run down my body in runnels of filth. My lady used a whole huge well-jar of water on cleansing me, then she stood trembling as I did the same for her, soaping her hair and rinsing her until the water ran clear.

Then we were cold. We wrapped ourselves in several Nubian blankets made of softest goat’s wool and lay down together and fell asleep as though we had been stunned.

I was woken in the dead of night by Meryt knocking on the outer door. It was her special knock and I climbed out of bed and went to let her in. She had brought the wives and children with her and Hani as bodyguard.

‘Master, you shut me out!’ she exclaimed. I must have looked at her strangely, for she did not chide me further, but bustled the little ones into their places and ordered Hani to take Anubis and mind the door. Hani was sleepy and drunk, but Anubis was alert. He was an old dog now, but his reflexes were as sharp as ever.

‘I have heard strange things,’ she said. ‘But they can wait until morning, Master.’

I staggered back to the blankets, and wrapped myself so that I was lying as close to my lady as I could, and fell asleep again.

Morning brought Meryt with an infusion of bitter herbs and the news that most of the palace had gone mad the previous night.

‘You were well out of that feast, Master,’ she told me, watching to make sure that I drank her infusion and handing a pottery cup to my lady. I assumed that Meryt used pottery cups for her infusions because they would eat through bronze. While I was testing the inside of my mouth to see if all my teeth were there and trying to recollect the previous evening—which had ended agreeably, it seemed—Meryt continued.

‘This morning the servants came to clear up and found three people dead of some sort of frenzy, Master. Dead among the broken wine cups and torn clothes and spilled beer. The floor was slippery with blood and man-seed, what happened at that feast? I have heard of such things in barbarian tribes such as the vile Kush, but never in the painted feasting-hall of an Egyptian King!’

‘Oh, Lady Isis, I remember,’ exclaimed Mutnodjme, and in a rush, so did I. We groaned. ‘Did we…did the King…’ she began, and I agreed.

‘Yes, we did. We coupled like animals. And the King served up a special dessert. It was composed of all the sacred beasts of Egypt, and he made us eat it.’

I beat my lady by a whisker to the closet, where we vomited up all the holy flesh which we might have eaten, as well as a lot of wine. Meryt, understanding only that something terrible had occurred, made us a drink of beaten eggs and milk and cinnamon to settle our rebellious insides.

Then we washed again and clothed ourselves and sat down out of earshot to watch Meryt teaching Hani’s youngest how to feed himself with a spoon—he was now three and had been newly weaned—and to consider what we had seen.

‘There was an aphrodisiac herb in the wine the King poured for us,’ Mutnodjme told me. ‘It is possible that the whole feast was designed by the King to make us lose control. The wine was double strength, the food was excellent, and the music was exciting.’

‘Someone designed this other than the King Akhnaten may he live,’ I protested. ‘He has little tact and has already presented us with the statement that there are no gods other than the Aten and we had better believe so, on pain of death. No, this is a dark plotting mind. This was to drag us all into dreadful sin, to turn us away from whatever we might have had left of devotion to the old gods. For now everyone at that feast, including me and even you, have committed an unforgivable sin.’

‘So we cannot afford to believe in the old gods, because if we do believe in them, we condemn ourselves to everlasting torment?’

‘As long as it takes for a heart to be eaten by Aphopis, yes.’

‘And now we are accomplices, are we not? Co-offenders. We are all in the same prison wearing identical fetters having committed identical crimes.’

‘That is the idea.’

‘Huy,’ she decided.

‘Pannefer,’ I argued.

‘Possibly both,’ she conceded. ‘Do you feel burdened by a dreadful sin, Ptah-hotep, my beloved?’

‘Not really. If I had been force-fed ibis flesh, I would have committed no sin, and that was close to force-feeding such as men do to geese. In the same fashion, watch the way Meryt distracts the child and then pops a spoonful of porridge into his mouth. It was like that. What could we do, with the King actually watching us?’

‘We could say,’ she observed, ‘that by eating the flesh of our gods we have communed with them, taken them inside us.’

‘That’s a good thought, and it comforts me.’

I embraced her gently, my wise lady, careful of the bruises, and she kissed what she said was a bite on my throat.

I had another thought. ‘Mark the ingenuity of it, my beloved lady. First they served fish, a forbidden creature, but every farmer in the Black Land eats fish so that did not seem sinful. Certainly not customary but not really sinful, and churlish to refuse in the middle of such a lavish feast.’

‘Yes, I ate some of it, it was very good,’ agreed my lady. ‘But I have often eaten fish. Except for the one kind which consumed Osiris’ phallus, it is not forbidden to Isis, just to the palace, and I always thought that that prohibition had something to do with making sure that the palace didn’t eat all the fish and leave nothing for the common people.’

‘To be sure, and many people at the feast would have eaten fish on their country estates. So it eased us into the greater transgression of the laws, do you see? By the time that grisly collation was being carried around, we had already broken one law so why not another? Be exiled for a flock, not one single goat, so says the maxim of the Divine Amenhotep-Osiris, how I wish that he had lived forever.’

‘I, too,’ she sighed.

‘I still think it is Pannefer,’ I stated.

‘Huy. A career selling broken down asses to unwilling buyers teaches that sort of dirty skill,’ she insisted.

‘You may be right, my heart. Now, how do you feel? As though you are doomed to be eaten after death? As though your heart must sink against the feather?’

‘We ate as little as we could,’ she said slowly, curling one strand of night-black hair around her strong finger. ‘We ran away as soon as we could. We coupled like beasts, but that was the night and the feast and the poisoned wine, and our own lust which it magnified, and lust is not a sin if the object is free and consenting.’

‘You flung me to the floor, lady, I didn’t have time to consent,’ I protested.

And she said gravely,’ You were consenting in your heart. I could tell from the way you tore off your clothes.’ Then she grinned and her eyes were much brighter than they had a right to be after the night we had spent and the wine we had consumed. I laughed at her reply and she continued.

‘So therefore, no, although I will confess this to Maat and Thoth, I do not expect that one act to weight against my heart too badly. As long as I don’t do it again.’

‘The mating?’ I objected.

‘The blasphemy,’ she reproved.

‘Ah,’ I was comforted.

‘But what they will do to the author of this abomination,’ she said slowly, ‘Does not bear thinking about.’

We sat together companionably, both considering with vengeful pleasure the centuries it would take the serpent Apep to digest my lord Akhnaten in its boiling belly, and we laughed so much that Meryt released her prisoner, wiped porridge off her face, and asked us what the joke was. And we couldn’t tell her.