Out of the Black Land

Chapter Thirty-one

Mutnodjme

I agreed with my lord Ptah-hotep that no action should be taken about Ay until Horemheb came home, so I went to visit Ankhesenamen to try and calm her. The Great Royal Wife had been screaming for two days and two nights with pauses of a couple of minutes, presumably to take a breath. No one was getting any sleep and I wondered that her throat had held out as long as it had. I was forbidden the door by her little maidens, but I smiled at them and refused to move until the Mistress of the Queen’s Household came out to see what the trouble was.

‘Let me in,’ I said. ‘I need to speak to the Royal Lady Ankhesenamen.’

‘You are the daughter of Ay,’ she said suspiciously.

‘I am also the wife of General Horemheb and the friend of Ptah-hotep the Just Judge,’ I rejoined.

She seemed to feel that I had jumped her pieces and signalled to the small girls to let me in.

When the door was safely shut and barred, she conducted me into the inner chamber, where three young women were sitting in a group with the Queen. A fourth maiden was wailing at the top of her voice. When she saw me, she broke off and another immediately took up the cry.

‘What are you doing, Ankhesenamen?’ I asked, for in neither case was the voice that of the Great Royal Spouse.

‘Providing music for your father’s ears,’ she snapped.

‘He is your grandfather,’ I pointed out, joining the maidens on the floor.

‘I know, and I am not going to marry him.’

‘Well, there are ways and ways,’ I said. Her intelligent face lit up and she descended from her chair to join me.

‘You have a plan? I can’t think of anything but to try and find a husband out of Egypt. I am not going to marry Ay,’ she said with unshakeable determination.

‘You can’t marry out of Egypt; in you resides the right to the throne,’ I objected.

She looked instantly guilty, but I could not see how she could have contacted anyone who might be able to bring her a foreign prince so I forgot about it and returned to the matter at hand.

‘Do you remember deciding not to throw your spindle at the wall in the apartments of the Widow-Queen Tiye-Osiris, lady?’ I asked.

She smiled. ‘Yes, and just after I got the knack of spinning. I recall it, Aunt. What’s your point? I mean, here I am, I’ve been a plaything for the royal house since I was born. I had to marry Smenkhare who was utterly corrupt, then I had to marry Tutankhamen-Osiris. I really did like him but now he’s dead, and I’m sick of it. I won’t marry again, I won’t be Great Royal Wife again, and I will die rather than marry my grandfather. He’s a cold cruel miser. He hurt me when I was a child and he’d hurt me again, too.’ She shuddered with loathing. ‘He doesn’t even want me. Not me, myself. He just wants the throne.’

‘Well, you could give it to him,’ I suggested.

There was a silence which could be felt. The young woman who had been wailing had stopped and the next one had been so astounded that she had missed her cue.

‘Aunt, Aunt, you’re dreaming!’ Ankhesenamen shook her head at me. ‘He has to have me to have the throne.’

‘He doesn’t have to have your body, your person, he just has to have your consent to marriage,’ I pointed out.

I had asked Ptah-hotep about the law of marriage, and he had agreed that perfectly valid marriages could be made without one party being there. They could be repudiated later, of course, but that would not matter. It all depended on whether Ankhesenamen really meant to give up power.

‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘Wonderful. I’ll do it. I don’t actually have to be here to marry him, do I? Just to agree, or at least never to disagree. Yes, yes, I’ll do it, find me a scribe, where’s my seal?’

‘But you must leave the palace, leave all your wealth, for he will not let you take anything with you. You must leave everything,’ I said.

‘I don’t care,’ said the Great Royal Wife flatly. ‘I want to learn. I want to be able to read and write. I can’t bear a living child and I don’t like men; I never want to be fumbled by sweating hands again. They can keep their love. It’s all false. It’s not important. I have seen you, Aunt, reading cursive and even Hittite. I’ve got a good mind. I can learn. Let me out of this palace or I’ll go mad. If I leave, there must be somewhere I can go! I’m tired of pregnancy and pain.’

‘There is the temple of Isis,’ I suggested.

‘Would they take me? With nothing?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, for I knew that the Singer of Isis the lady Peri was back in charge. I also thought that Ankhesenamen would make a good scholar, and Isis appreciates dedication.

‘Here’s a papyrus roll, write my consent to the marriage with my revolting grandfather. Then all I need to do is stay for the funeral—poor Tutankhamen, he was a nice boy—and then I’m free.’ She clapped both hands together with joy.

‘But once gone, you cannot pine for your pretty fabrics and your jewels and return,’ I warned. ‘Ay is not scrupulous; you know that. I would not make any optimistic predictions about the length of your life if you come back and challenge his right to reign.’

‘My dearest Takha is coming with me,’ she said firmly. ‘She has already taught me the beginnings of my letters. See?’

She exhibited a child’s writing board with exercises in black ink, corrected in red. The maiden who had been wailing smiled shyly at me. This was the studious and learned young woman Takha. She could not have been more than eighteen. I looked at her hands. Yes, there was the flattened middle finger with the permanent ink-mark. This was a scholar.

‘Ptah-hotep the Just Judge shall write it, you will seal it, and I will deliver it to Divine Father Ay after you have safely gone. You must go to the funeral, as you say, poor Tutankhamen deserves that of you and he is to be buried in the full Osirian ritual, which requires your presence. Then, niece, we shall slip you out of the palace, and your grandfather need never come near you again. I will go now to the temple of Isis and arrange your admittance. If you are sure, Ankhesenamen? This is your last chance to change your future and be queen again.’

‘I am sure,’ she assured me, and she had always known her own mind, even as a child.

‘Give me a pectoral and a few pairs of earrings. You should not go to the temple unprovided-for and Ay has not done an inventory of your jewels yet.’

She handed over the gems. On my way out, I turned and said, ‘Don’t resume the wailing. It has served its purpose,’ and walked straight out of the room and into Divine Father Ay.

He was pot-bellied and double-chinned and hung about with gold. There was a greasy mark down his chest where he had spilled something sticky.

‘Daughter,’ he said. ‘You have been with the Great Royal Wife?’

‘I have,’ I said, instinctively stepping back a pace. His black eyes scanned me and focused on the bag I held in my hands. It was uncanny. I believe that he could smell the gold through the fabric.

‘What is in there?’

‘Father, I have just, I believe, talked the Great Royal Wife into marrying you,’ I exclaimed in disgust. ‘I have even made her stop screaming. She has given me a few presents in token of her affection and soon you will have everything she owns.’

‘She will agree?’ he asked, eagerly.

‘I think so, if you leave her alone. Don’t try to see her and especially don’t remind her of the good old days at Amarna. That will not work on this royal child of Akhnaten.’

‘You have been of some use after all, daughter,’ he admitted. Then he extracted a pair of earrings from my bag—commission, perhaps, or because he could not help himself—and let me go on my way.

I commended the Great Royal Wife’s decision in my heart as I went unmolested out of the palace and into the street, to talk to the Singer of Isis about two new pupils.

The next visitor who graced my house was General Khaemdua. I found him sitting in the chair of state, condescending to sip a little of the very best wine and eat a few crumbs of Wab’s special date bread. He was immaculate, as ever; very bored, as ever; and elaborately simple in his clothes, as ever.

I bowed to him and he waved a distracted hand.

‘Mistress of the House, I am trespassing on your hospitality. I need a translation of a clay tablet, and there are no scribes free in the house of archives.’

‘General, I and my household are at your service as always,’ I responded correctly, and found my basket of scribe’s tools. He gave me a tablet and I sat down to construe it.

‘This is in Assyrian,’ I noted. ‘My knowledge of that language is not perfect, but this is what I believe it says. It is from Suppiluliumas for an Egyptian woman called Ankhati, and he says:

Why should I send you my son? Never has it been heard of that an Egyptian princess married out of her own land.”

Isis protect us!’ I added, staring at the square writing. I read it again. That is certainly what it said.

‘Have you any idea who the traitor Ankhati might be?’ he asked with his affected laziness, allowing Wab to pour him some more wine.

‘Oh, I know who it is, and I have just solved this problem! I thought she looked guilty when I mentioned that she could not marry out of Egypt.’ I explained what was to become of the Great Royal Wife of Tutankhamen-Osiris, and General Khaemdua almost smiled.

‘Well, then, as long as someone intercepts Suppiluliumas’ son—the king has one hundred and seventeen sons, so he will probably send one—then no harm is done. That’s the trouble with young women, they are impulsive.

‘And since I now do not have to rush off and invade Assyria, I will have some more of that very pleasant date cake,’ he said, and Wab cut him another slice.

Ptah-hotep

The late king was on his funeral trip, and the new King Ay had been crowned, though without the actual presence of the Queen Ankhesenamen. She and one of her maidens had slipped undetected out of the palace on the night of the funeral, dressed in servant’s clothes. No one could find the Great Royal Wife but her written consent to the marriage was on record and I was forced to suffer the sight of Divine Father Ay crowned Lord of the Two Lands. His Great Royal Spouse was the crone Tey. They both looked indescribable in the pomp of state, but such sights need not be remembered.

The trouble began when Pharaoh Ay found out how much he was spending on the army.

‘It costs a fortune to keep all these soldiers in the field,’ he protested, and would not be dissuaded from sending most of the standing army home.

Without gifts-of-valour or severance allowances to which they were entitled, he disbanded regiment after regiment. They laid their standards in the hall of warriors and went home to the land which the government had given them.

Reports soon came in from all of the borders, crying for help. The combined Great Royal Scribe Khety and Hanufer came to me almost in tears, relating letters received from garrisons who were going under, besieged villages which would shortly be destroyed—and there was nothing that I could advise. Though I was interested in a letter from the King of Assyria, demanding to know the fate of his son. It had been sent to a lady called Ankhati, but there was no one in the palace of that name and I replied to that effect.

I was still, to my astonishment, Great Royal Judge Ptah-hotep, possibly because I was too well guarded to poison and too well-regarded to dismiss.

Apart from his meanness, which was legendary—it was said that Ay would skin a louse for its hide—the new Pharaoh spent most of his time ordering an exceptionally grand tomb, in which we all hoped that he would soon lie.

And General Horemheb still did not come home. He and his thousand men were the only effective force left on the borders of Canaan and he could not leave. Mutnodjme and I worried about him and Kheperren, and kept the household going and advised the king when he would take advice, and we waited.

No one expected the manner of the general’s return.

Late one night, I was out keeping watch on the high walls. I quite often had trouble sleeping, and I liked to walk where the little king had walked and remember that the present Pharaoh was his murderer. The night was still—it was Ephipi, still and hot, before the Southern Snake’s breath scorches Egypt, crisping every leaf.

A lone horseman came galloping straight across the plain. I heard the hoofbeats. A soldier, perhaps. Another warning from the edges of mismanaged Egypt that another fortress was about to fall. Another spokesman from some small town ringed with bandits. And nothing I could do because all of the soldiers were home on their farms, waiting for harvest.

I heard the sentry’s challenge, saw them fall back and salute as the horse passed into the courtyard. So, an officer of some sort, and one whom the sentries recognised.

Idle and uncomfortable, the heat pearling my skin with sweat, I marked the horseman’s progress as he dismounted in the yard. He grunted as his feet hit the ground, and the horse staggered and almost fell. A servant led it away to be groomed and watered, and the soldier strode into the king’s side of the palace.

For no good reason, I followed him. I had been hoping for some major invasion, in a way, something which would force a few debens of silver out of Ay’s fist. I did not know the news which the soldier brought, but it was probably dire.

I passed the guards on the king’s door and came into the outer apartment, which had no guards and no attendants. Divine Father the Pharaoh Ay had dismissed most of the servants to save their board. A sleepy Master of the House was standing by the door to the inner apartment, obviously listening. He clutched at my wrist.

‘Lord Judge, go in, I fear that the Pharaoh Ay may he live is in danger.’

I went.

Under a huge painting of Maat who is truth, Pharaoh Ay was backed up against the wall and General Horemheb was confronting him. I had never heard the general talk in the voice he was using this night. It was low, clear, and almost toneless. It was the voice of one tried beyond endurance and weary almost to death.

‘I have come from the Canaan border, Pharaoh Ay. You left me my one thousand men, with which I have been attempting to hold a stretch of land almost as long as the Nile.’

‘Soldiers are expensive. You did not need all those men.’

‘So you say,’ said General Horemheb, ‘but you have not seen what I have seen. Villages raided, smoking ruins with weeping, dazed children lying on the bodies of their dead mothers. Violated women swallowing hemlock rather than live a moment longer with their pain. The Shasu have crossed the border at twenty points, all of them little raiding parties, and I am like a man who is trying to put out a hundred little fires with only one bucket.’

‘You are the Chief of the Army,’ sneered Ay. ‘It is your job to hold the border.’

‘I have held it, for the moment,’ he replied. ‘I left ten men at each little post, you see, to hold it against the raiders. They do not want to stay. The Shasu, they just whip across the border, slay a few men, rape a few women, steal the flocks and drive them back. In a well-run country they would only be a pest. But we cannot hold them off.’

‘Then we shall appoint another general, one who can manage his post,’ said Ay. He seemed to feel no fear, even though Horemheb stood over him, a cubit taller and strong as an ox.

‘The Assyrians are coming,’ said Horemheb, quietly. ‘You will not be able to ignore them. The King of Khatti is a persuasive man. I have just fought a battle; I have just met Assyria,’ he said. ‘Shall I tell you how I won?’

‘If you must,’ Ay yawned.

‘I took the shepherds and the goatherds of the threatened village,’ Horemheb’s voice had never risen above an ordinary speaking tone. ‘I gave them no weapons because I had none, and in any case they were used to pruning hooks and mattocks.

‘I am a soldier, I have always been a soldier, and they might have made good troops if I had had time to train them, but I had no time. You gave me no time, Ay. It was a small village but they were proud of it and wished to save it and they had courage, those shepherds.

‘I could see no way of keeping the Assyrians back but by encircling them in a narrow place and blocking the ends of the pass. It was a reasonable strategy and it worked. But they are all dead, Ay. Every one of those goatherds has died, cut to pieces by the Assyrians, calling for their mothers as they bled. If they had had real weapons they might have survived. My own ten men are dead, except for one whom I left in the village to live or die under the care of the women. They had been with me for years. But they are soldiers and soldiers face death willingly, it is part of their service,’ he said.

‘But the goatherds of Palm Tree Village are yours, Ay; the deaths of seventy men and boys almost too young to hold a stick are your fault.’

Even then, perhaps, Ay might have retrieved the situation if he had demonstrated some remorse. But instead he sneered.

‘What are goatherds?’ he asked. ‘We have plenty of goatherds in the Black Land. And what are armies? Open mouths and open hands. I care nothing for the deaths of a thousand such. I will not have to feed them.’

Horemheb’s great hands were around his throat in a second, crushing the life out of him. And in the doorway the crone Tey shrieked, ran and clawed at Horemheb and was shoved backward with such force that her head impacted against a table and she fell to the floor.

I said, ‘Let him go, he is dead,’ and Horemheb dropped the body of the Pharaoh Ay-Osiris and wiped his hands on his shirt.

I bent and inspected the body of the woman. ‘She is also dead,’ I told the general. He sank into a chair and passed his hand across his forehead. It came away black with dirt. He stared at it, as though he wondered whether he had turned into a Nubian overnight.

‘He murdered Tutankhamen, you know,’ I commented. ‘Maat has been done.’

I pointed to the picture on the wall. The Goddess of Truth, crowned with her feather, had not altered her expression.

Ay-Osiris lay where he had fallen, a broken doll. I reflected that we had better get him to the House of Life immediately. Bruises putrefy faster than other flesh.

I sat the old Master of Household down and gave him some wine.

‘They’re both dead?’ he quavered.

‘Yes, do you want to join them?’

‘No. He was as bad as she and they were both as mean as rats,’ he said frankly. ‘I’m glad they are dead.’

‘Good. Summon the priests of Osiris. We are about to have another royal funeral. Ay-Osiris is going to his tomb before his decorations are complete,’ I observed.

Then I went into the inner room, where Horemheb still sat slumped in his chair. I knelt down and slid into a full ‘kiss earth’ and nearly kissed his feet. They were filthy.

‘Why are you kneeling to me, Ptah-hotep?’ he asked with unutterable weariness.

‘Because you are now Pharaoh,’ I told him. ‘Come along. You need a wash, and Mutnodjme has been worried about you. General.’

Then I asked the question which was making my heart as cold as ice, ‘What of Kheperren?’

‘I left him in the Village of the Palm Tree,’ said Horemheb, still bemused. ‘He’s got a broken arm, which means that his scribing days may be finished. I’ll ask… no, I’ll send, by all the gods, I can send a whole regiment to get him. For he fought like a lion, and only fell at the last.’

Relieved, I dragged the corpse of Ay-Osiris into his room and laid him on his bed, his wife beside him. I looked for the last time on the face of greed, then closed his eyes and left him to judgment.