Out of the Black Land

Chapter Twenty-six

Mutnodjme

We wailed for the little princess, and for a wonder I saw the King Akhnaten—may he perish—weeping. He was now completely isolated, I realised. No one still lived who might have told him the truth. He had disposed of his wife, who although foolish and ambitious had loved him; and his Great Royal Scribe, who would always have been truthful because it was his nature. His most blasphemous and horrible ceremony in the courtyard had lost him the most beautiful woman in the Black Land and his new little Great Royal Wife had died the next day. He would have to wait some time before the next princess, Meritaten, suffered under the phallus of the Divine Father, though she was ten and youth had not given her sister any immunity.

Things had changed a great deal in a few years. When he had established the city of Amarna, Akhnaten may he die had a wife and six daughters. Now the king had lost his wife, three of his daughters—for little Neferneferure had died of the summer fever a week after her sister Setepenre—and he had to endure growing unpopularity. The dispersal of the Royal Women had been seen as disgraceful. The sacrifice to the Phoenix would not increase his reputation. Even in an Egypt grown corrupt and cynical, such things were not done in the courts of the Pharaoh.

I looked at the royal family at the Window of Appearances. Standing next to the king was the boy Smenkhare, a slim youth with a very new wig-of-state. Before my eyes, the King Akhnaten kissed the boy on the mouth, pinching between his thumb and forefinger the nipple on the flat chest.

Standing next to his brother in this strange gathering was Tutankhaten, the last remaining child of Amenhotep-Osiris. Both Meritaten and Tutankhaten were dusted with the ash of mourning and I could see tears on their cheeks. Ankhesenpaaten had her arms around her brother’s shoulders and he was leaning back into her embrace. I reflected that of all those present the princess Ankhesenpaaten was the only one who appeared to be finding something useful to do.

The rest just stood there, the ministers of state with their mouths open. Huy looked even more like an unsuccessful ass-seller than ever, and Pannefer appeared to have been struck dumb. Mekhetaten’s untimely death had surprised them all and disarranged their plans.

The only person who had maintained their demeanour was my father Ay. He was not smiling, but he looked full-fed and satisfied. Whatever befell the royal family, Ay’s position was secure. He was, in a way, a pure man. He had no human ties, though he was perhaps a little fond of Nefertiti and my mother Tey in his way. But he was devoted, body and soul, to gain. There was only one thought in his mind, how to own more and more of everything; not to do anything with it, but to own it. His rape of the little princess would have had no lust in it. The likelihood that he would have to lie with possibly all of the remaining Amarna princesses in blood and against all propriety did not concern him either, if it meant that by committing any foul action he could increase his wealth. He did not even want power. Just wealth.

I repeated the Widow-Queen Tiye’s little curse on him as I watched the bearers bring out the litter. Mekhetaten was going to the House of Life, and after forty days her embalmed body would lie in the new rock-cut tombs to the east of the city. I had no more tears.

When the litter had gone and the wailing had died away, I went back inside. I needed to speak to the Widow-Queen Tiye.

But when I came to her door, I found my way barred by the king’s guard.

‘The lady is in mourning for the Princess Mekhetaten,’ they told me. ‘She has given orders that she is not to be disturbed for forty days, until the child is buried.’

‘Can you tell her that I am here and I will share her mourning?’ I asked.

‘The lord Akhnaten may he live has ordered us to let no one in or out,’ he said solemnly. ‘The lady is in mourning.’

‘Surely she will see me?’ I persisted. ‘Ask her, if you please, captain.’

For the first time he met my eyes. In his face I saw the stolid inflexibility, the puff-faced righteousness, of a man doing something which he knows is wrong because he has been ordered. The captain was taking refuge in his orders, and against that I had no argument which would succeed in getting the door open.

‘If she should ask for me, I will be with General Horemheb.’

‘If she should ask,’ he said, ‘I will tell her.’

I knew, just from the way he said it, that she would not ask. I hurried away to find Kheperren. The Widow-Queen was imprisoned. I did not know if she were dead or alive, though she was probably alive; she had said that her son would not dare to kill her and she was probably right. But now I had no one to advise me. What to do? Ptah-hotep would know, I thought. But he would not be able to advise me, because he was dead. I missed him suddenly with an almost unbearable pang. My dearest love, my sweet scribe.

I gathered my strength. I could not expend the rest of my life in weeping for him. He was gone. If I was lucky and managed the remainder of my days well, I might meet him again in the Field of Reeds, for I was sure that he would be there. After all, he knew all of the Book of Coming Forth By Day and if the judges would not hear him because his body was ash then there was no justice. I felt weary beyond belief. I stopped and looked out of a window, leaning both palms on the sill, trying to focus. For some reason, I could smell the river, the dock smell of water and fish and tarred ropes. I sniffed again and it was gone. All I could smell was the stench of spices and the usual palace smells, perfumed oil and people. Grief was making me hallucinate.

Kheperren was with his general and they both looked grave.

‘Lady Mutnodjme, I have done a thing which you may not like,’ began the general.

‘Tell me,’ I said, sinking down onto the floor at his feet. My head ached. He leaned down from his chair. His big hands took my shoulders and began to massage them. He was very strong but he did not hurt me, and some of the pain began to ease.

‘I am anxious to protect you, lady. You are at the mercy of your father and mother if you remain unmarried. I do not trust the motives of either.’

‘Neither do I.’ I closed my eyes as the wise fingers found knots and kneaded them.

‘And now your sister is dead, your mother is ill and the Widow-Queen Tiye has been put under house arrest by her son, if it is no worse,’ continued Kheperren, taking my hands in his.

‘This is all true,’ I agreed.

‘So we thought to find a way to give you an unassailable place, Lady Mutnodjme,’ rumbled Horemheb. ‘A position which even the king may think twice about violating. You need an establishment of your own. And failing that, you need a line of retreat. A good general always secures a line of retreat for his soldiers. One must never assume that one is going to win a battle, even if the omens are excellent.’

‘Indeed,’ I murmured. Who would have thought that those big spade-like hands had this much sensitivity?

‘Kheperren, who might be an acceptable husband, is not of sufficiently high rank to offer for the dead Queen Nefertiti’s sister and the daughter of Divine Father Ay,’ said the general, still holding my shoulders. ‘So I have asked for you in marriage, and I have been accepted.’

This news did not sink in immediately. Then instead of pulling away from him, I considered as the clever hands took away some of my pain. The general’s position was, indeed, very high. As long as he commanded the Klashr he had ten thousand soldiers and a possible levy of thirty thousand more to back any decision he might make. If Divine Father Ay tried to have him dismissed, there was a good chance that his faithful Klashr might rebel and stay with their general, and that would leave him in possession of the throne, if he wanted it. I would survive as the wife of Horemheb against anything which my parents or the mad king might want to do to me.

And I did not greatly care what happened to my body now that Ptah-hotep was gone. If the general wanted Mutnodjme, then he should have her. That, too, I could survive.

‘Lord, I am unworthy,’ I said. I felt their astonishment. Clearly, they had anticipated disagreement, and had marshalled all their arguments in favour of their action. I did not need to hear them. I knelt and laid my hands on the general’s feet in token of submission, though he knew that I was not submitting and so did Kheperren.

‘Lord, it is very kind of you to take me, knowing that I loved another man and am devastated by my loss. It is very kind of you to want to protect me and the action you have taken will do so. I will serve you faithfully.’

‘I accept your service.’ Horemheb put his hand on my head. ‘I will reward your fidelity with love and your loyalty with gold. You are a remarkable woman, Lady Mutnodjme. I do not require your body if you do not wish to give it, and if you wish to lie with my scribe Kheperren then it shall be consummation of this contract as if you were lying with me.’

This was doubly gentle of my husband Horemheb. He knew that marriages have to be consummated or they can be annulled. He knew that I could not have borne the touch of a new lover with anything but cold jaw-clenching endurance.

But Ptah-hotep had loved Kheperren and they were sufficiently similar that I could lie with the scribe almost as though I was lying once again with my heart’s love. I hoped that Ptah-hotep, who should have got past the various doorkeepers by now, would understand. I was sure that he would.

‘Tonight, husband, we have a ceremony to perform, and I cannot eat or make love before that is done,’ I told General Horemheb. ‘But tomorrow, if it pleases you, I will consummate this marriage with your scribe in your place.’

‘That will please me,’ he said. ‘In four days we will be gone and I will not trouble your household or your manner of ruling it. This marriage does me honour, Mistress of the House. Now sit down again, if you will. There is a knot in those neck muscles which I still have not smoothed out.’

***

Kheperren and I laid the pitiful collection of dust and charcoal which had been our lover Ptah-hotep in a niche in the tomb which would one day contain a royal body. The ashes were in a mummiform case. We poured the libations and made the sacrifice, a lamb made out of pastry for we dared not risk a bleat being heard, and a vessel of the best wine. Four soldiers stood impassively on guard as we whispered all the prayers, consecrating our lover to the trial of the weighing of the heart in the name of the abandoned gods, Osiris and Isis and Maat who is truth. Then, because blood was required, we cut our wrists and sprinkled our blood over the tiny casket as we bade farewell to Ptah-hotep and wailed for him as Isis and Nepthys had called to Osiris, ‘Come to thy house!’

Then the soldiers escorted us back to the City of the Sun. I tightened a bandage around my wounded flesh and stemmed Kheperren’s bleeding with another. We could not die yet.

‘He will wait for us,’ I comforted my scribe and brother. ‘He will build for us a little hut amongst the reeds.’

‘He will miss us, even in the Field of Offerings,’ he responded. That was true. The sand crunched beneath our feet. The stars blazed.

‘You are the only woman I have ever lain with,’ he told me as we came close to the city. ‘I had thought myself impotent with women.’

‘You are not,’ I assured him. ‘Let doubters ask Mutnodjme, if you need references.’

‘This consummation will not be against your will, then?’

I took his hand. If I had to lie with a man again, better it should be with this my brother, who loved the same man as I loved.

‘It is with my will,’ I said.

And the next day I lay down against Horemheb’s thigh in the general’s bed, in the manner required of any substitute consummation. In such a way had the King Akhnaten watched the violation of his daughter by Divine Father Ay.

I dismissed the thought from my mind. This was a willing sacrifice. If I closed my eyes, Kheperren felt like Ptah-hotep; the same long muscles, slim body, hard hip-bones, the same scent of cinnamon oil, the same soft hair tickling my face. Washed clean of the ashes and thirst of our mourning, slaked of our fasting and half-drunk on the last of the wine, I caressed Kheperren and he caressed me. I tasted tears on his lips. With a sudden, almost desperate movement, his phallus was inside me, eased in its passage by the oil with which I had been anointed. Horemheb stroked my breasts which were pressed against his body, pinching the nipples which were engorged and hard. I had not expected a climax, but when I felt seed spring inside me, it came. Fast and hard, a joy close to pain, instantly extinguished in remembered grief.

Thus I was married to General Horemheb, and no one could take me away from him.

Ptah-hotep

I was worried. I could not account for my sense of dread. I was in the palace of the Great Royal lady Sitamen—not even an edict of the king could make her change her name to delete the forbidden god and turn her into Sitaten—and I could not have been more safe. The daughters of Neith—warrior women and well-armed—guarded every entrance.

The lady Nefertiti had been handed over to a clutch of doting ladies who had obviously been longing for someone to look after.

I had tired of her continual wailing about how her husband could do this to her—‘how could he?’—for it was beyond me that she could ask such a thing when she had seen there was nothing he would not do to honour his foul god; when she had been his active accomplice in, for instance, the suppression of learning in Egypt.

She was very beautiful, but only if she was out of earshot.

I concluded that my nerves were obviously out of order and left the room I had been allotted—a cool shaded one, under a vine—to go and find someone to talk to. Preferably, I wanted the Princess the Lady Sitamen. I needed some task.

I found her watching archery practice. She did not seem to have taken her eyes off the field, but she greeted me by name.

‘Lord Ptah-hotep, blessed be Amen-Re in his rising.’

‘Praise to the good god,’ I answered, after a moment’s fumbling in my memory. I had used this only once since the Aten had been established, and that was when Mutnodjme and Kheperren had bidden me farewell and I had walked out to my death.

‘It was a close thing,’ she said, motioning me to sit beside her. ‘My mother had only time to send me word that you were coming an hour before you came. If you had arrived unannounced, the guards would have kept you in the boat until daylight, and that might have been dangerous.’

‘Indeed, though I doubt that we were pursued.’

‘If the king finds out that his wife is here, I may have to stand a siege,’ she answered, then clapped her appreciation as a stalwart woman drew back a full-sized bow to her ear and the arrow thudded into the exact centre of the cloth and straw target.

‘Lady, that is true. Princess, what would you have me do here? For I would not exchange one prison for another, and I am used to working.’

‘Hmm,’ I had caught her attention. ‘You wish to leave?’

‘Not precisely, lady. I am delighted to be alive, or I would be if a cloud of misery had not settled on me. Give me something to do.’

‘That is easily found,’ she said. The Princess had aged like a soldier, as Kheperren had aged. Here were the helmet galls, the crows’ feet, the harsh lines on throat and forehead from staring across the plain and from the weather. But she was vigorous and strong still, this daughter of Amenhotep-Osiris. Her eyes were bright and their gaze was level.

‘When the temple of Amen-Re was closed we rescued a huge bundle of documents,’ she said. ‘Some of the citizens had found them, dug them up and were using them to light fires. No one has looked at them yet. Some of my women are literate, but none have a taste for learning or they would have gone to the temple of Isis. I would esteem it a favour if you could catalogue the writings.

‘Come every evening and read something to me, Ptah-hotep. It is not safe for you to be abroad, not yet, and in any case it is too hot for journeys. When inundation comes with Akhet and the days are cooler, men will have ceased to search for Ptah-hotep.’

‘If they are searching at all. No one was near when the pyre blazed up but the Widow-Queen Tiye.’

‘Who would never forgive me if anything happened to you after she has gone to such a lot of trouble and put herself in such danger to rescue you. You still wear her pectoral, lord. She must have commended you highly.’

‘She said that Amenhotep-Osiris would have been proud of me.’

We paused to watch the archers. They were very skilful. I made up my mind. Learning had always served me well. As that very same Amenhotep-Osiris had said: The one comfort which will not fail is learning.

I took the Princess Sitamen’s calloused hand. Her nails were cut short and her knuckles had recently been rubbed raw. ‘Lady, I will do as you wish.’

She punched me lightly in the chest and sent me away to look at the manuscripts while the warrior women shot arrows into targets in the courtyard of her palace.

***

I found that the days were slipping past without anything to mark them. I found that I could sleep, though I had vivid dreams. I dreamed one night that Kheperren was lying beside me and the disappointment when I woke alone was so acute that I burst into tears. I dreamed strange little pictures which had no connection with anything I had ever seen. I saw Mutnodjme cleaning a soldier’s armour, humming as she often did, under her breath, and I had certainly not seen that in waking life. I saw Kheperren throwing a spear, though I could not see his enemy, but woke with the sensation of dust in my eyes and war-shouts echoing in my ears. I heard the sound of wailing and saw the funeral of a royal princess through eyes which were quite dry.

I also wondered that they sent no word to me, and so, after Inundation had failed again, did the Princess Sitamen.

‘I have had no word from my mother,’ she announced, walking into the house of books. I was sitting easily on the floor, reading a full copy of the Prophecies of Neferti, pleased that my reconstruction had been, as far as I could remember, accurate to the word.

‘You are worried, lady?’

‘Very worried.’ She bit her knuckle. ‘Never has such a long period gone past without some greeting from her, even if she had nothing in particular to say she would not fail to write to me. I have written four letters to her and received no reply. My messengers have handed over the correspondence to the right people, I have questioned them. Something has happened in that cursed city.’

‘Nothing more probable,’ I assured her, putting down the prophecy and allowing the scroll to roll up under its own weight.

‘Could he have killed her?’ she asked with a soldier’s bluntness.

I thought about it. I shook my head.

‘I really don’t think so, lady. I cannot imagine him having the courage even to order such an execution. What do your messengers say? Is there gossip about the Widow-Queen’s fate?’

‘No, there is nothing. You are accounted dead, Ptah-hotep; and so is the queen Nefertiti. You both perished in the fire of spices. The daughter of the king who was married to him that night, Mekhetaten, is dead, died the next morning, and the townspeople are whispering that Tey poisoned her.’

‘That does not seem likely,’ I said.

‘No, she would want the royal daughter alive, though there are more royal daughters. Meritaten is the next in age. Bitter will be her fate and that of my brothers. Smenkhare is already invested as Great Royal Wife and is being used, they say, by Divine Father Ay as though he was a woman. And there is still Tutankhaten and Ankhesenpaaten to play with. Poor children, to be so abused.’

‘But the Widow-Queen, what does gossip say of her?’

The Princess scowled at me. ‘Nothing, I told you, scribe. There is no word of her at all. Not alive, not dead. I came to you to ask if there was someone to whom we could write who might know more.’

‘Mutnodjme,’ I said, delighted by the idea of communicating with my loves again. ‘Or Kheperren. One is Tey’s daughter, one is the scribe of General Horemheb.’

‘Horemheb has gone, taking his personal guard to the borders where Mitanni wars with Assyria. It will have to be the lady. Very well, you may write, but you must use such words as cannot be attributed to you,’ she warned.

‘We do not know what is happening in Amarna while the rest of the country goes to ruin and destruction. The message may be intercepted. I wish I knew what was happening in that cursed place!’

She began to pace and I began to think.

What could I send to Mutnodjme which would tell her where I was? A terrible thought occurred to me.

‘Lady, when did the Widow-Queen go into seclusion? Do you know when?’

‘She has not been seen or heard from since the night of the sacrifice to the Phoenix, why?’

‘Because my lovers have been thinking me dead unless she has managed to get some word to them,’ I knew now where the load of despair which had descended on me had come from. They mourned me. They thought me gone. If they had not been able to speak to Tiye the Queen then they did not know that I was alive. Nor did they know the fate of the complaining woman who had shared my boat. This was awful.

But the Princess was right. All correspondence was probably intercepted. I had to find a way of conveying to Mutnodjme—for Kheperren would surely have left with the general to assist Tushratta—that she could write to Sitamen and would find both her sister and me. I racked my brains.

‘I will consider this, lady. I will not do anything which would bring your palace or the lady Nefertiti into peril. I must speak with her. She might know something, some shared incident of their childhood which would convey the message to her sister.’

‘Rather you than me,’ snarled Sitamen, and stalked out.

The lady Nefertiti, who had been Great Royal Wife and Queen of Egypt, was sitting by a pool when I found her. She was staring listlessly into the water, where silver fish swam under the lotus flowers. It was a beautiful place, a courtyard shaded by a great vine which had grown across the space, supported by trellises. She looked up as I came through the gate, sighed, and returned her gaze to the water.

‘Lady, we need to speak,’ I began sitting down next to her on the broad marble rim.

‘Once you would not have dared to approach me except on your knees,’ she commented.

‘Lady, that is true, though as the husband of your sister I might have been allowed some familiarities,’ I agreed.

‘You were never her husband, only her lover,’ snapped Nefertiti. I began to see why the Princess Sitamen had avoided this interview. Clearly loss and fear had not improved the lady’s temper.

‘Do not quarrel with me, most beautiful of women,’ I said. I needed her cooperation, and I have always found flattery very reliable. ‘Look kindly on a fellow fugitive, jewel of the Black Land, peerless daughter of the Aten.’

To charm this sulky woman into helping me, I was even willing to speak the name of the Aten, a god whose worship I had utterly abandoned.

‘I am old and cast aside,’ she said bitterly, but her expression, which had been that of a stone image, had softened.

‘Lady, no man could cast you aside. Your husband is mad,’ I said truthfully. ‘For who could plot the murder of beauty? Shed the light of your smile upon me, lady,’ I pleaded and sank to my knees, embracing her shins.

She did smile then; and she was still beautiful, once the lines of discontent had been smoothed away. Even abandonment and betrayal could not take away the pure lines of her brow and throat, the delicate line of her mouth. She was designed to be sculpted.

Not entirely without some truth then, I said, ‘Lady, your beauty dazzles me.’

She ordered me to rise with a graceful wave of her pale hand and I resumed my seat.

‘What do you want of me?’ she asked with a flirtatious lilt. That was more than I had bargained for, and was certainly not my desire.

‘I would never aspire to any more grace than the touch of your hand, Great Royal Lady. The Princess Sitamen is worried about her mother, the Widow-Queen Tiye, to whom we owe our deliverance. Nothing has been heard from the Widow-Queen for two months. She may be captive or dead. Therefore I need to write to your sister Mutnodjme to assure her that I, that we, are alive and well, and I need to do this without words. I want you to cast your mind back to your childhood, and find me an incident which will convey this news.’

She looked a little disappointed—I may have been flattering myself—but obliged me by thinking.

‘We did not really share a childhood,’ she said slowly. ‘I was with my step-mother and she was with her nurse. Her mother, my step-mother Great Nurse Tey, nurtured me very carefully, considering that, although I was not the daughter of her own body, I was the most valuable of the children of Father Ay. As I was. He sold me to the Pharaoh for a mountain of gold.

‘Mutnodjme was never beautiful. She was wilful and far too sharp for Mother Tey’s liking. The only thing I can think of which would convey me to her is a flask of my perfume. It was mixed from the finest oils, precious and distinctive.’

‘If the ingredients can be found, daughter of the sun, can you make some of this perfume for me to send to your sister?’

‘If the ingredients are here,’ she said carelessly, ‘I can probably make some for her.’

I kissed her feet and left the courtyard. I knew what shared incident I could use to convey my existence to Mutnodjme. And if the two items, a little carved potsherd and a flask of perfume, were delivered to Mutnodjme, my most beautiful lady—far more beautiful to me than the lady now honouring the lotus with her attention—then she would understand in a matter of seconds that she was not alone, that I was not dead, and that I still loved her.

And if they were delivered with their origin-mark as a shield and crossed arrows—the symbol of the city of Sais but also of the goddess Neith—then she would know where I was.