Out of the Black Land

Book Three

The Hawk at Sunset





Chapter Twenty-five

Mutnodjme

I did not see his ending, for the clouds of smoke drove Kheperren and me back despite our longing to watch the unbearable, but we heard his defiance flung to the lord Akhnaten on his high seat. The fire had burned with a flame hot enough to melt bronze. There might not even be bones for us to bury fittingly.

We had nowhere to go to indulge our grief and horror. I could not take a man to the Widow-Queen’s apartments so we trailed back to the office of the Great Royal Scribe. There Kheperren and I gathered all the personal belongings of our lover, weeping as we did so. I wept as I picked up a garment he had thrown aside to make love to us the night before, and Kheperren wept as he found Ptah-hotep’s favourite stylus under a chair. We took his vials of Nubian oil, his store of copied papyri, his cloths and his sandals. We wrapped it all in the Nubian blanket on which we had made love together.

It was a burden for one man in the way such weights are measured. Not much for all those years of dedication. He had given away all his jewels—those of his office to the new Great Royal Scribe, those of his own to his slave Meryt and her household. We were not taking away anything that would be valuable to anyone but us.

Kheperren shouldered the burden. As I picked up my own, he said, ‘Come with me, lady,’ and drearily, I followed.

On the way out we passed a pop-eyed lady, very decorated, who was superintending the removal of her own furniture into the apartments. A line of servants carried beds and chairs and baskets. Bakhenmut, the new incumbent, gave us an apologetic look as we shouldered past the bearers.

The wife of the new Great Royal Scribe said nothing to us as we left, but her shrill orders to the servants: ‘Mind that corner! By the Aten, what dreary decorations! Husband, we must have this all re-painted immediately!’ followed us down the corridor.

Kheperren took me to the quarters of General Horemheb, who allowed us to come in, showed us to his bedchamber, closed the door and left us alone with our anger and fear. We lay and wept together as the day grew hotter and noon passed, and still the fire in the courtyard smouldered, a stench of spices.

‘I knew he wouldn’t do it,’ choked Kheperren.

‘I, too,’ I wiped my face on my cloth.

‘I go with my general to deliver the Widow-Queen’s message to Tushratta,’ he said to me, holding me close. ‘You are the only woman I have ever lain with, the only woman I could ever love. Come with us. There is nothing for you here.’

‘I still belong to the palace,’ I responded automatically, then thought about it. Where was I to go, what was I to do? I had stayed in Amarna because of my sister Merope, but she was now gone. My sister Nefertiti was dead, sacrificed to the Phoenix; and my lover Ptah-hotep. He too was most horribly and gloriously dead, defying the Pharaoh, refusing to play Amarna games. He had died true to the old gods, but he had still died.

Why should Mutnodjme stay in the palace of the King Akhnaten? Not for the sake of her parents, to whom she was an embarrassment. There was only one person in the palace of the king who deserved my loyalty.

‘I’ll have to talk to the Widow-Queen,’ I told Kheperren.

Then, worn out with grieving, we slept until the general woke us. He did not mean to, but he needed clean clothes for his audience with the Pharaoh, and he tripped over a chair in the half-light and swore and we woke.

Waking when one is mourning is hard. One wakes and for the first few moments one cannot recall grief; then it lands like a stone from above. I woke next to a male body, slim and young, and thought him Ptah-hotep. Then Kheperren rolled over and yawned and I recognised him and Ptah-hotep’s death crashed down on me and I groaned.

‘Waking is hard,’ agreed the general, sitting down on his big chair and rubbing his stubbed toe. ‘It is easier for soldiers, because they have an enemy and they may still die. Therefore rise, wash, you must face the world. There is a terrible task before you, and none but you can do it, Lady Mutnodjme, as men are forbidden to walk in the court of the Phoenix.’

I staggered to the wash-place and poured water over my head, wrung out my hair and mopped my tear-swollen face.

‘What is the task, lord?’ I asked. Even my voice seemed reluctant and words were slow in forming.

‘The fire in the court of the Phoenix is, at last, out. You must sift the ashes for bones,’ he said. Generals must often give orders which they know may result in the recipient’s death and he gave this one calmly.

But this task was not as hard as he seemed to think. If I could find some bones—perhaps a skull, skulls do not readily burn—I could reassemble enough of Ptah-hotep for his voyage to the afterlife, and if ever man deserved to feast in the House of Osiris it was my dear love Ptah-hotep. It was the last service that I could do for him, and I was anxious to do it.

‘I will go directly,’ I said.

General Horemheb gave me that puzzled look again. Though I did not mean to, I kept surprising him. I tied my cloth close about me, grabbed another to put the bones in, and was starting for the door when Kheperren caught up with me.

‘I will come with you,’ he said.

‘No, you are still too shocked and you are not used to handling the dead are you?’ I demanded.

He was white as linen under the sun-darkened skin. He shook his head.

I was eager to keep my task, and did not want to have to support anyone else in doing it. I was just about sure that I could support myself, but I had no strength to spare.

‘Stay, Kheperren, he would not want you to be further harrowed by his death. Besides, the general is correct. You are a man and cannot go into that cursed courtyard, whereas I—may all the gods forgive me—am an initiate of the Phoenix cult. Let me do Ptah-hotep this last service. We shall conduct the funeral together.’

The general patted me on the shoulder as he might do to a comrade, and I went out of the palace into the yard. There were no guards. No one challenged me.

The heap of ashes was not great. The spices had been tinder dry and had burned very bright, leaving little sign that a Nome’s worth of precious wood had been destroyed there. The sweet scent was still extremely strong but in it I could detect no lingering scent of burned flesh, which was odd. But then no one had ever burned so many spices together before, so it was possible that any other reek had been entirely subsumed in the perfumes.

No one was there. No one watched me as I began at one side of the mound and spread the ashes, running them through my fingers, looking for bones. It was the second decan of Ephipi, very hot and dry, and the furnace wind rose, the breath of the Southern Snake. This usually blows all morning, and it was now long toward evening, but the wind blew harder. It seemed that the gods wished to assist me in my task. The hot wind was winnowing the ashes, blowing away the light bonfire fluff and stirring the heavier charcoal at the bottom.

I stood in the midst of a whirling cloud of ash. I covered my mouth and nose with the cloth I had brought with me and strove to see through watering eyes. Bone ash is white, and I saw no streaks of the right colour as the detritus blew around me, funnelled in the hollow of the courtyard. Two people had burned to death in this pyre, and they seemed to have burned away to nothing, so hot had the fire been. I saw the ghost of a garland of cornflowers as it flew past, dissolving even as I thought I saw it; the pins of a heavy court-wig; and some jewellery—possibly the ring I had given Ptah-hotep—were melted into little metallic globs puddled on the marble pavement which was cracked and discoloured by the heat of the fire. I gathered up the gold, two handfuls of charcoal and two handfuls of ash before it all blew away into the west where the dead journey to judgment.

Then, scoured by the heat, I entered the palace again and walked slowly toward General Horemheb’s quarters. I carried, wrapped in his own cloth, all that remained of my sister and my lover, and it was a very light burden.

On the way I was stopped by two soldiers of the king’s guard. They did not touch me—I must have presented a terrible spectacle, a reproach to those who had officiated over the blood-sacrifice. I knew that my hair was loose and filled with dust and I could feel ash stiffening into a mask on my face.

The taller of the two said, ‘Lady, your mother would speak with you.’ They were clearly not going to allow me past until I had spoken to Great Royal Nurse Tey, so I allowed them to usher me along a corridor painted with dancing gazelles.

‘Mother,’ I said as I came in. ‘What do you want of me?’

‘Daughter,’ responded Tey, ‘I am ill.’

This was a surprise. I had not seen my mother at the shameful sacrifice last night. I assumed that she had been there. I assumed also that the death of the Queen Nefertiti, his daughter, had been some part of Divine Father Ay’s scheme to eventually own all Egypt. Though what he would do with it I had no idea. He could not sit and brood like a spider on a mountain of gold.

‘Lady, what form does your illness take? And you are aware that I am forbidden to practice medicine? You told me so yourself. Tell one of your tame soldiers to bring you the palace physician.’

‘I have done so,’ said Tey. She was lying on a couch, picking at the straps with her restless fingers. ‘He says that it is an illness which is not to be cured. He says that I have cancer of the womb.’

‘Then that is the end of the matter, lady,’ I said. I hated her with a remarkable depth of feeling, considering how exhausted I was.

Tey had warned me off trying to take Nefertiti away from the worship of the Firebird. Tey had watched over the sacrifice. Tey had seen the immemorial rights of every woman in the Black Land vanish into smoke and had applauded the loss. Tey had denied me my freedom and the use of my hard-earned skills. Also, I knew of no cure for such a cancer. She would die, and it could not be soon enough for me.

‘You have sifted the ashes?’ she changed the subject, seeing that I was not disposed to help her.

‘As you see,’ I sat down, placing the folded cloth in my lap.

‘You found…traces?’

‘Lady, I did.’

She glanced around as if someone might be listening and then said in a voice which was rich with pain, ‘Give me something of my daughter Nefertiti.’

‘No,’ I said. Had she gone into that pile of ash and searched for the concubine’s daughter as I had gone to seek my lover? Tey had no claim over what I carried.

‘Cruel,’ said Tey, very softly. ‘Cruel, and it is I who raised you, educated you, unfitted you for a woman’s life.’

‘How, unfitted?’ I demanded. The only reason that I was discussing this so calmly was that I was too shocked and grief-stricken to engage in petty arguments with my mother about her treatment of me. She had said this kind of thing before, mostly while gloating that I would not longer be able to use my talents.

‘The little princess is sick.’ She avoided the argument again.

‘Then you must summon the palace physician,’ I repeated.

‘The King married her last night,’ said Tey with something less than her usual ferocity. ‘Ay lay with her though she is still a child. Now she is feverish and cannot sleep.’

‘That is to be expected,’ I said as calmly as I could, revolted by the idea. ‘I’m sure that she will resign herself to the difficulties of a life in the palace, as I have had to do.’

‘You will not help me, but you will help her,’ said Tey with some of her old venom. ‘You are a priestess of Isis!’

‘I was a priestess of the lady whom I must not name, mother, but that worship has been discredited. Now I must go.’ I said.

I did not look back as I went to the door. Tey rose on one elbow. She did not shriek curses at me. She only said one word, one which I had never heard from her mouth before.

‘Please.’

So I turned back, hating myself. I took the lid off an alabaster dish which stood on the table, a beautiful thing carved in the shape of a bird breaking out of an egg. Into it I put a pinch of fine bonfire ash.

‘Tell your soldiers to take me to the Great Royal Wife,’ I said, and she clapped her hands to summon them.

But when I reached the room where the poor little princess Mekhetaten lay, they were already mourning her. I spoke to the women, but they could not tell me what killed her. She might have died of shock, of loss of blood, of horror or of suicidal or homicidal poisoning, and of course there was always disease. Any underlying condition would have flared up under such conditions, and it was Ephipi, the season of fevers. There was nothing for me to do and I no longer had an escort so I went back to the general’s quarters, a ghostly woman, masked with death. I saw the women making the sign against the evil eye as I passed.

Ptah-hotep

The boat was not a royal barge, but a big fishing vessel, high-prowed and deep-keeled, able to take to the Great Green Sea. On the shrunken Nile it was wallowing, and the lady Nefertiti was sick.

I had found myself under hatches and wondered if I had been abducted or whether this was some strange dream from which I might wake to defy the Pharaoh and burn. But it felt very real. The sound of the water lapping against the side, the smell of the river, the noise of a queen vomiting into a bucket—not the stuff of a death dream. I might have had a queen in my last vision, but she would not have been so sea-sick.

In any case, my love was already given away. I wondered how my lovers had taken this escape. I hoped that they had not mourned me for too long. Doubtless they were even now receiving an explanation from the Widow-Queen. I could do with some explanation myself. I examined my surroundings.

I was in the hold of the boat. I shared it with a queen and a large collection of baskets, which to judge by the way a cat was staring fixedly at one corner, contained grain and a few attendant rats. Sitting composedly in the middle of the hold was a soldier, the golden feathers of his headdress marking him as one of the Widow-Queen’s personal guard.

‘Good morning,’ I said to him.

‘Good morning, lord,’ he replied. ‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Better than the lady,’ I replied. ‘Where am I, where am I going, and what is happening?’ I asked, three good questions.

‘Lord, you are on the boat Thousand Fishes In A Net. You are safe, you are going to a place owned by one of the Widow-Queen Tiye’s daughters, and you have been saved from certain death,’ he replied. Three good answers.

‘Have we anything to drink?’ I asked. I was coated with ash from head to foot and some of it had dried out my throat. The young man gave me a flask of mixed wine and water and I swilled, spat, and then drank thirstily.

‘Can I go up on deck?’

‘No, lord, I have orders to make sure that you are not seen by anyone. We will put ashore as soon as it gets dark. Then you may go up and breathe the air,’ he responded.

‘This seems to have been a very well-conducted rescue.’

‘Lord, the Widow-Queen planned it, and there is no better strategist. I am her chief of the guard, Lord Ptah-hotep. My name is Aapahte.’ He bowed slightly from where he sat and I nodded.

Then he went on in a worried tone, despite his crisp military delivery, ‘I have been with her for years, the red-headed woman. I and my men are the Sekmet guard. I have never known her to make a major tactical error. Though I am worried about her now. If the king or his two slimy ministers saw her in the courtyard of the Phoenix, she may be in danger. She never agreed to initiation into that cult.’

‘But what about the body of the queen? I saw it myself, it was definitely Nefertiti may she live.’

‘No, lord, it was…’

‘Yes, what was it?’ asked the queen, her nausea abated. ‘He meant to kill me, to burn me to death, my husband meant to kill me! I have done all he wished, comforted him and soothed him, given him children, even watched over dreadful things done in his name and the name of his god. And then he tried to kill me; he really meant to kill me!’ Her voice rose to a tearful wail.

I did not know if it was in the least proper, but I accepted her as she flung herself into my arms and held her close.

She wept for some minutes, racked with pain, then demanded of Aapahte, ‘Who went into the flame instead of me? Not Mutnodjme, not my sister—tell me that it was not her!’

‘No, lady, it was a model, a huge puppet such as the dancers for Osiris used to make and carry around the streets,’ said Aapahte. ‘The best sculptor in Amarna made it. He has the measurements of your face, lady, and he made a carving, a mask which fitted over the puppet’s head. It wore your jewellery and your wig, lady. It looked just like you.

‘Meanwhile you had been drugged and smuggled out of the palace. I myself had the honour of carrying you. The Widow-Queen did not know whether you might be consenting to that sacrifice, lady, perhaps out of love for your husband. She could not afford to chance asking you.’

‘I see that,’ said Nefertiti slowly. ‘Yes, if my lord Akhnaten had put it to me that I would rise again as myself, I might have consented; but he did not. He just sent Huy to tell me to ready myself for death, because I was old and no longer fertile and he was marrying my daughter Mekhetaten that night. I suppose he must have married her by now. No, the Lady Tiye acted rightly, though not in accord with my royal dignity,’ decided Nefertiti.

I began to think that perhaps she was not very intelligent.

‘Lady, why did you ask Aapahte here to tell you that it was not Mutnodjme who died in your place?’ I asked.

‘Oh, that odious Huy told me that if I would not die, then Mutnodjme would have to die in my place. I told him that it could not be her. She was initiated, of course, but I was the avatar of the Phoenix so it would have to be me. The very idea!’

Nefertiti had clearly been shocked by the notion. She put back a lock of intrusive hair and sighed. She was terribly beautiful and very stupid, but she had at least not offered up her sister to the fire in her place. Any other woman may have leapt at that chance to save her own life. Or at the next offer which she proceeded to disclose.

‘Huy then laid a hand on my thigh and told me that if I mated with him he would save me. He smirked at me, the animal! The Great Royal Nurse Tey urged me to accept, but I had the soldiers throw him out. I was so shocked by my husband’s perfidy that I resigned myself to die. Then the soldier from the Widow-Queen Tiye came and offered me a potion to deaden the pain. I thought that it might be poison, to cheat my husband of his sacrifice—the Widow-Queen Tiye has never liked me—but I took it anyway, and woke up here. It is very strange and I suppose I should be grateful, but how could he? How could he?’ She wept again.

I met Aapahte’s eyes over the bowed royal head. He shrugged. I allowed my burden to cry for a little longer, then shook her gently. I needed more information.

‘What then of Mutnodjme, lady? Is she safe?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ That wasn’t enough and she saw or felt that. ‘Yes, the Widow-Queen said that she would look after her. Besides, Mutnodjme is strong and clever. She should have been a man. And your friend is the scribe of the general, of Horemheb Cunning in Battle, isn’t he? He won’t let any harm come to her. But what will become of me? Not queen anymore, my children abandoned to the care of their father who does not love them, what will become of Nefertiti?’ she lamented, and this time I let her weep unmolested.

What would become of all of us? I still felt that mysterious connection to Mutnodjme, and all I felt was sorrow. Deep, aching sorrow, which lay on the stomach like lead.

I slept with sorrow and woke with mourning. I was perhaps mourning my own life, Meryt and the Nubians lost, my office and titles stripped from me by my own hands, the loss of all that I once owned. My wealth would now go to satisfy the greed of Bakhenmut’s wife. Henutmire would enjoy my lands and my estates, probably converting them into jewels to decorate her already overdecorated person.

Fortunately, she could not retrieve what I had rightfully given away in my lifetime. My parents would still own their estate, my Master Ammemmes his house full of old scribes and his vineyard. Both those gifts had been from my private fortune, the salary and presents which the lord Akhnaten—may the breath of life be removed from his nostrils—had given me freehold. Once they had changed hands not even Ay the miser could get them back.

So here I was. Free of all burdens. Possessed still of my scribal tools. Possessed also of a despondent queen of Egypt, a pectoral of eye stones belonging to the Widow-Queen Tiye, a monumental headache and with all I loved lost and gone.

For the moment, just for the moment. The red-headed woman would inform Kheperren and Mutnodjme of my safety and whereabouts, and even though I might not see them, perhaps for years, I would know they were there. And surely Kheperren would pass the palace of Sitamen, which was where I surmised that we were going, and perhaps if Mutnodjme tired of Amarna she could come and live with me.

That thought was comforting, and I slept until I woke in the morning loaded with misery, and wondered if both of them were imprisoned or worse, for they had seen my ‘death,’ and the mad king might have taken revenge upon them. If they were dead I thought I would have known, but this twin-feeling was too new and untried to rely upon.

Morning bought brisk activity on deck. Feet thudded over our heads. The vessel rocked and swayed as they pushed her into midstream. The doleful queen Nefertiti and I ate bread and salt fish and drank sour beer. She could not eat much, saying that the food was coarse, which it was. I was weighted down with a dread for which I could not account. I was in little danger here, under guard in a boat on the Nile, and in any case known to be dead. Anyone who saw me would assume that their eyes had deceived them. I should have been elated. I had defied the Pharaoh, I had not done a vile deed in the name of his god, and I had escaped, moreover in the company of the most beautiful woman in Egypt.

But I was close to tears. I shook myself. Thousand Fishes in a Net heeled a little then the current caught her; we were going towards the Delta. I curled up on my fish-scented boards and watched the ship’s cat, who was still staring at the same corner of the same basket.

She did not move for hours, and I found my attention entirely engaged by the hunter. She was a slim stripy cat, very like Basht, the cat belonging to the little princesses Merope and Mutnodjme in the days before terror and madness had ruled Egypt. The cat was resting easily on all four paws, her tail out behind her to act as a balance for any swift movement. I concentrated on her, the alert ears, the spread whiskers, the eyes never moving from the place where her prey must, eventually, emerge. The cat had immense patience. She would stay where she was until she caught that rat. Its doom was already written in the book of life.

My lady Nefertiti, finding me disinclined for conversation, took herself to a corner and began to comb out her hair with a crude bone comb which must have belonged to a sailor. Her head must have been shaved recently, for the hair was no more than a span long, but it was gummed to her head with sweat and dust. I heard her exclaim every time she found a knot, and after a while I heard her weeping.

I was too tired to rise and comfort her. I lay on the decking and watched the intent face of the cat.

We had sailed all day. I had been interrupted once by Aapahte coming to see that all was well with his prisoners, and several times by sailors bringing food or loading split fresh fish into the salt-baskets which lay on the other side of the hold.

Their advent did not disturb the cat, or me. I thought it sensible that the vessel Thousand Fishes in a Net was behaving as it usually would. We did not want to attract any attention. By the number of fish which were being deposited, she was also living up to her name.

I wondered how the queen—clad only in the gauze cloth suitable for the City of the Sun—was feeling about having naked sailors carry burdens past her as she lay in her corner. But they were extremely well behaved, passing her as though they did not see her. They ignored me, too, except for the one who apologised for treading on my foot.

We had turned and I heard the order for oars. We were rowed into a harbour, perhaps, or the jetty of a city. Aapahte came down to tell us that we had arrived. He had just set foot on the boards when the striped cat sat back on her tail and batted something with a skilled deadly paw. It flew through the air and landed beside my hand, and she was on it in a flash. It was, however, quite dead. Its neck had been broken by that ferocious blow. A huge rat, almost as big as she was. The cat hoisted her prey proudly in her mouth and carried it away to show her captain, its tail trailing on the ground behind her.

A good omen, perhaps, to mark the arrival of Ptah-hotep and Nefertiti at the palace of the Widow-Queen’s daughter—the Great Royal Lady of Amenhotep-Osiris, Daughter of the King’s Body Whom He Loves, Sitamen, devotee of the goddess of hunters, Lady of the Arrow, Neith.

I was so weary that it was all I could do to drag myself across the landing-plank, up the steps, and fall into a ‘kiss-earth’ at the Princess Sitamen’s bare, calloused feet.