Out of the Black Land

Chapter Thirty

Mutnodjme

I reflected, when I looked across the feasting multitude, how well the boy who had been born Tutankhaten and was now Tutankhamen had managed. He was slim and bronzed and good looking, greatly resembling his brother Smenkhare whose fate had been so bitter. He was soft-spoken, serious, ready to take advice, but decided in his own mind.

I wondered how many scars the Amarna regime had left on his mind and soul. He showed no signs of them, except that he paused occasionally if the name of the god Amen-Re was mentioned, as though he was still not altogether sure that he could mention the god, or as if he had been mispronounced.

He was sitting with the Great Royal Wife Ankhesenamen on chairs of state, decorated with gold and silver and lapis lazuli. They made a pretty picture and I rested my eyes on them.

Ptah-hotep was lounging at my right, Horemheb at my left, and I was comfortably full and slightly merry, when the Pharaoh Tutankhnamen called to me, ‘Come, Aunt, and play the song game!’

‘Ask of the scented rush, what say you?’ I replied. ‘I am the scent of his hair.’

‘Ask of the lotus-pod, what say you?’ responded the Lord of the Two Thrones, looking at his sister and wife. ‘My curve is her breast.’

Ankhesenamen stroked the smooth shoulder of her little brother and husband and replied readily, ‘Ask of the palm tree, what say you? I am his strong back.’

‘Ask of the lion, what say you?’ Ptah-hotep put in, pouring more wine for Kheperren and leaning over to kiss his wrist,’ I am the strength of his love.’

Ankhesenamen kissed Tutankhamen full on the mouth. I realised suddenly that this was no mere mating for dynastic reasons, but a true, if sisterly, love. She was always fussing over the boy-king, massaging him with scented oil and making him take strengthening potions. He was a little abashed still by his royalty, but he was growing into majesty just as his father Amenhotep-Osiris had done. The realm was in safe hands.

Horemheb growled into his cup, ‘I wish he’d allow me to give him more guards.’

His train of thought was similar to mine. So much hung on this life, and although the boy was strong and healthy, he had been frail as a child and a lot depended on one human life. Humans were so very fragile, mortal, and easily snuffed out.

‘There is no one here who wishes him ill,’ I whispered into the general’s ear.

He shook his head like an annoyed bull so that the blue beads clicked together. ‘There is always someone who wishes Pharaoh, may he live, ill,’ he objected.

And of course he was right. But they looked so beautiful and so secure, the older sister and the younger brother, now abandoning the song game for simpler riddles. Ankhesenamen never displayed what I suspected was superior wit and learning in front of his majesty. She also must have spent her childhood in terror. I was delighted to see them, after such suffering, so happy with each other.

And Egypt was flourishing.

‘Aunt, Aunt,’ called Tutankhamen. ‘What says the wood? My arms are folded.’

‘I can’t guess,’ I said, and he beamed.

‘A shut door,’ he announced.

***

Another feast, another meeting found Horemheb and General Khaemdua, Ptah-hotep, Kheperren and me, and Divine Father Ay all sitting in the outer room of the Pharaoh’s audience chamber. We were anxious about news from the borders, and Divine Father Ay was anxious, though with an air of strange complacency, about Ptah-hotep’s allegations—backed by a pile of scrolls—of his thefts from various temples.

‘Daughter,’ Ay beckoned to me and I went to stand next to him. I knew that the protocol required me to kneel when speaking to a parent but Ay had long ago forfeited any respect, at least from me.

‘Father?’ I disliked him even more than usual when he was exuding this greasy benevolence.

‘Are you happy with your husband?’

‘Yes, Father,’ I said warily.

‘Then you would grieve if he should put you away?’

‘That will not happen, Father.’

‘You have not borne a child for him,’ insinuated Ay, sliding a hand up to my thigh. His fingers curled inwards and might have touched my inner parts if I had not stepped aside.

I could not believe that he was suggesting what I thought he was suggesting.

‘He is content, Father,’ I said firmly. ‘Ask him yourself if you do not believe me.’

I moved away from him to Horemheb’s chair. His big hand dropped to my shoulder, caressing my neck under the long court wig.

‘Tell me later,’ he grunted, though I doubted that I would.

We were ordered inside and Tutankhamen came in with his Great Royal Wife. I listened as he dealt efficiently with the requisitions for the army, the call up of some thousand soldiers, the pleas of Rib-Adda, who was destined to remain unsupplied because Horemheb said he couldn’t get men through to the vassal without fighting most of the Canaanite states.

‘And there are these,’ said Ptah-hotep softly, laying the pile of papyri on the King’s lap.

The boy-king examined them carefully. All his actions were considered.

‘These are all accusations against Divine Father Ay,’ he commented in his soft sure voice.

‘They are,’ agreed Ptah-hotep.

‘I cannot deal with them now,’ said Tutankhamen. Beside him, Ankhesenamen pulled at his shoulder and hissed into his ear. I could not hear what she was saying but some of Ay’s full-fed assurance departed from him and he began to look almost haggard.

‘He was kind to me when no one else was,’ said Tutankhamen, almost pleading. ‘He was with me when all others deserted me. I cannot hear these matters now,’ he said, giving them back to the Great Royal Judge. ‘Claim whatever has been lost from the Throne and replace the lost goods from my treasury.’

‘Lord, you will eventually have to hear me on this matter,’ said Ptah-hotep gently. ‘Justice requires…’

‘I know,’ said Tutankhamen, almost in tears. It was a pity to oppress the poor boy so. Ankhesenamen slid an arm around his waist but continued to whisper to him, directing occasional glances at Divine Father Ay which should have left little smoking holes in his body and probably set fire to the curtain behind him.

‘Not yet,’ said Tutankhamen. ‘Lord Ptah-hotep, come to me again with this if…if it is repeated.’

‘As the Lord of the Two Thrones commands,’ said Ptah-hotep, and kissed the slim fingered boy’s hand, loaded with rings.

‘I have decreed a feast, for Horus goes to Hathor this year,’ said Tutankhamen, drawing a deep breath of relief. ‘And next year…’ he exchanged a conspiratorial glance with his sister-wife, who giggled, ‘we may have the birth of a new Pharaoh to celebrate.’

‘May the Lord of the Two Lands live forever,’ said Ay.

I hated him more than ever. I didn’t know how much loathing one human soul could contain until I looked on my own father.

‘You remember Amenhotep-Osiris, Aunt Mutnodjme?’ the young Pharaoh said to me as we filed out of the audience chamber.

‘I remember him very well, lord.’

‘Do you think, do you think that…’ he struggled with words. For all his sixteen years, he was very young. ‘Do you think that he might be pleased with me? I saw him in a dream, that old man. He was smiling.’

My heart caught. To dream of the dead was an omen of death. I hugged the King and Pharaoh of the Black Land to my bosom and he rested his forehead on my shoulder. He felt lithe and smelt young, like a puppy.

‘I’m positive that he is very pleased with you,’ I whispered into the beautifully-shaped ear.

***

The years had been busy. Seven years spent caring for the general, caring for my household, which kept growing, caring for Kheperren and Ptah-hotep when I housed them.

Seven years since Widow-Queen Tiye had brought the Amarna nightmare to a conclusion. I never forgot her, the barbarian woman who had begun and then finished the reigns of her sons. When the court moved back to Thebes, General Khaemdua and the Pharaoh arranged that Tiye’s body should be moved also, where she could receive regular offerings. We left Akhnaten to his rock-cut tomb on the wrong side of his city. I later heard that tomb robbers had broken in and destroyed the corpse in their search for the gold amulets which should have been there, and weren’t. It struck me as fitting; but then I have never had a forgiving nature.

People drifted away from Amarna, which was a foolish place to put a city anyway, as they drifted away from the cult of the Aten; though it still had its die-hard enthusiasts. They were tolerated by the priests of Amen-Re, still too new in their authority to start a religious purge. In fact, as the general remarked, the reign of the Aten had had one advantage. It had subdued the priests of Amen-Re and would probably keep them subdued for a generation.

The years slipped by. Everything seemed hopeful. Gratified perhaps by the celebration of Opet again, inundation had come every year and the granaries were full. The people were still complaining of oppression in the country, and the borders were never really calm, but that, Horemheb told me, was what borders were like—centres of instability.

Invested by the solemn boy-king’s own hands, Great Royal Judge, He Who is Pure of Heart, in Whose Hand is Maat Which is Truth Ptah-hotep, who was also my friend and sometimes, my lover, was ruling his courts with his usual meticulous equity. I was a little surprised when he ordered a beating for one who had brought a false claim and looked on with outward calm as this was done. He had the scales of life and death in his hands, he told me later, and could not afford any false charges. There were enough real ones to occupy him for the rest of his life and beyond, and the courts were always busy.

In the combined household which contained Kheperren, Ptah-hotep, the general and me, and all our servants—we occupied a whole wing of the palace of Thebes—Ptah-hotep often came home bone-weary and needed to be fed soup, massaged with oil, and put to bed. Horemheb returned filthy and occasionally injured from his forays into the disputed lands. Kheperren, always with the general, once brought home a putrid fever which had to be nursed in isolation and which may have brought on my third miscarriage, because I caught it as well.

The Great Royal Wife Ankhesenamen had the same problem, miscarrying twice of six-month children, and wise women attributed this to her being abused when young. But this was certainly not the case with me. The priestesses of Isis consulted their hoarded writings and took counsel, and told me that it was the wisdom of Maat that I could not carry a child, because doing so might result in my death. I tried to be philosophical about it, but it was difficult, when my servants seemed to engender at the flick of a loincloth and bring forth bouncing fat babies with perfect ease.

I suggested to the general that he might take a secondary wife, but he always refused, saying there were enough women in his household as it was and that he was comfortable with my ways.

The only real insect in the ointment was my father Ay and his wife Tey, who were still very powerful. Tutankhamen cherished them as the only stable people in his erratic, fearful childhood. Of course they were stable. Ay wanted only gold, Tey wanted only what Ay wanted, which was more and more gold. He was appointed Great Royal Chamberlain over heated objections from Ptah-hotep and both generals, but the king Tutankhamen may he live liked him and there was nothing to be done about it.

Ay particularly hated Ptah-hotep. Ptah-hotep, being a honourable person, was puzzled by Ay because he was so devious and so greedy, even when he had all that he could possibly use.

‘Why does he want to divert the temple offerings to his own pocket?’ he asked me, as he slashed a line through the order and sent it back to the office of record. ‘Why, especially, does he want to steal, when Tutankhamen is a nice boy and will give him all he wants?’

‘Great Royal Wife Ankhesenamen doesn’t like Ay at all,’ I replied. ‘He was the one who raped her, lying on her father’s belly, when she was a child, and that may be reason why she cannot give Egypt an heir now. She won’t let the young king give Ay all that he wants, and in any case even if the Pharaoh could give Ay most of Egypt it would not be enough. He is as rapacious as a crocodile; he is the mouth that can never be filled of the old riddle.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not when it would not advantage him.

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

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

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

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

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

Ptah-hotep

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

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

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

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

There was the question of the succession.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And?’

‘He wasn’t shocked,’ she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And from here he fell,’ I said quietly. I could see no marks on the stone. Khety-Tashery began to weep.

‘He wouldn’t let us come with him,’ he sobbed. ‘But he came up here with someone.’

‘So he wasn’t alone?’ I asked.

‘No, lord. He said he had something to say to the person that he didn’t want anyone else to hear; so they wouldn’t be shamed.’

‘And you don’t know who it was, Khety-Tashery?’

‘No, lord.’ He paused, as though he might have been going to say something more. I did not speak but raised an eyebrow and motioned for him to continue.

‘It’s nothing, lord. Nothing much, anyway. He talked about dismissing some officials, lord, because they had been stealing from the crown. He’d been about to summon two of them to come to him, then he countermanded the orders.’

‘Whom did he summon? It’s all right, child, no one is angry with you. I am as grieved as you are that the young king is now with Osiris. It’s all right to talk to me.’

‘Of course, lord,’ Khety-Tashery looked shocked. ‘You are the just judge, lord, and anyway my father says that you were never unjust even when you and he were boys together.’

‘Ask your father about the night that Hanufer, Ptah-hotep, Kheperren and Khety stole four sesame-seed cakes from the Master of Scribes’ kitchen.’ I smiled at the boy and the memory.

‘I’ll ask him. Oh, the names of the persons he summoned? It was Nakhtamin, lord; and Divine Father Ay. But then he called the messenger back.’

‘Thank you, Khety-Tashery.’

I took a small constitutional to the office of Nakhtamin, Fan Bearer on the King’s Right Hand, about whom I had always had doubts. He was responsible for the conduct of the king’s entertainments and feasts, and for a long time I had heard rumours, though nothing I could substantiate, that he was being given presents by troupes of dancers so that he would employ them. Performing at the palace was a way of ensuring success and many subsequent engagements.

The office was silent; as it should be. No business was supposed to be conducted in the seventy days in which the kingdom prepared for the burial of a king and the accession of a new Pharaoh. I knocked at the door, and heard a flurry of movement and then a smothered giggle.

‘Nakhtamin, it is Ptah-hotep,’ I said, and the door was flung open and I was ushered inside by three entirely naked women. They were shining with oil. They looked like tumblers with their long hair tied into tassels and the dancer’s muscular, long-limbed build. They were all avoiding my eyes, though their nakedness was part of their trade.

Nakhtamin was disclosed, also entirely naked—which was not proper for his trade—lying on a pallet bed with a young woman astride him. He saw me, lost firmness in the part in which the girl was most interested, detached her and waved his hands at the women to go away. They dived for the door but I ordered them to halt.

‘Sit down, most beautiful of women,’ I said. Do not tear our eyes from the contemplation of your beauty. Greetings, Nakhtamin, I am sorry to have disturbed your mourning. I was wondering if you had spoken to the Pharaoh Tutankhamen-Osiris just before he died? I seem to have no note of the conversation in the records.’

‘He wanted to see me,’ agreed Nakhtamin. ‘About some of these scandalous rumours about bribery which are, of course, not true.’

‘Indeed, I can see that,’ I said politely. The girls giggled again, covering their mouths with their hands. They really were very attractive, and may have thought that mating with Nakhtamin, who was presentable enough, was a reasonable fee for an engagement at the palace.

‘And what did the Divine King have to say to you? I asked.

Nakhtamin scowled. ‘I was to see him at one o’clock in the afternoon,’ he said. ‘See, I wrote it down.’

I had before me an ostracon with the day and ‘Lord of T.T. T.M.H.L 1’ scrawled on it.

‘Lord of the Two Thrones Tutankhamen may he live, at one o’clock,’ I translated.

‘Yes,’ Nakhtamin said. ‘But he was dead before then.’

‘You keep no permanent household here?’ I asked.

‘No, lord, but the maidens were with me just before, I asked them to audition at noon for the feast, and then just when we were getting friendly, the wailing started.’

‘Your acquaintance seems doomed,’ I agreed, ‘for today in walked a judge just when you were getting friendly again. Is this the case, young ladies? Tell me the truth. I am a Royal Judge, and you will have your engagement whether or not you please this man. Did you come here just before that time on that dreadful day?’

They consulted each other and then one was elbowed into a ‘kiss earth’ from which I raised her. Her hands were very strong.

‘Lord, it is as he says. We came to show him our tumbling, and we were just showing him our other skills—we were trained by a priestess of Hathor, Lord Judge—when we heard the screaming that the poor Pharaoh had died.’

‘Thank you. Where was he going to meet you, Nakhtamin?’ I asked as I was leaving, wondering if the Fan Bearer would recover his potency and at least have enough sense to lock the door. From the way his parts were twitching, I assumed that he would.

‘On the wall, lord. He liked to stand on that part of the wall and watch the ships.’

I walked a little further to the quarters of Divine Father Ay. A maiden in correct mourning opened the door, scurried away to find her mistress, and returned with Great Royal Nurse Tey.

She had not aged well. The ashes and dishevelment of mourning does not improve the appearance, of course, but she was thin and acidulated and her voice was meagre, as though she would not even release a word from its cage until it had been drained of juice.

‘Ptah-hotep,’ she acknowledged awarding me no titles at all. ‘What do you want? The Divine Father is in mourning, as are we all.’

‘I just wondered if he could clear up a little point which is worrying me,’ I said.

She raked my face with a hard stare. Well?’

‘I have no note of his conversation with Tutankhamen-Osiris on the morning of his death. I believe that Divine Father Ay had an appointment with him?’

‘No,’ she snapped.

‘No? But I am quite sure that he had an appointment with the king. To discuss the dismissal of corrupt officials?’

‘No,’ she snarled, and closed the door in my face.

I walked away quite convinced, though I still had no proof, that the Pharaoh Tutankhamen-Osiris had been murdered by Divine Father Ay.