Out of the Black Land

Chapter Five

Mutnodjme

We opened the basket and it was full of treasures. Nefertiti exclaimed as we spread out cloth worth half a Nome—finest gauze, the sort which we call ‘woven air,’ which takes a skilled spinner and weaver half a season to make and for which barbarian kings pay their weight in silver.

My mother doubled and redoubled a length and found that even folded ten times it would still go through a finger ring. It was beyond price.

Under it were well-made lengths of printed material, a handful of silver bracelets and jewellery made by some Theban craftsman, delicate beaten gold and small bright stones. There were also several heavy arm-rings.

In the midst of this a nurse was announced and came in pushing a reluctant miserable child before her. This, it appeared, was my new companion.

She had hair the same silvery brown as sycamore bark and eyes like good beer. She was dressed in a tunic of strange fashion, covering her shoulders instead of knotting around the waist. Her skin was milk white, like the Great Queen Tiye.

‘This is the Lady Merope the Klepht, Princess of Kriti in the Islanded Sea, Royal Wife of Amenhotep may he live. On the orders of Queen Tiye, Favourite of the Two Lands, she is to be the companion of your daughter the lady Mutnodjme,’ said the nurse, gesturing to a slave who was carrying a clothes-case and a basket to set them down. The basket yowled and something struggled within it, almost tipping it over.

‘Please send my thanks to the Great Royal Lady and convey our understanding of her condescension,’ said Tey.

The Lady Merope looked into my face with her strange brown eyes. I put out my hand and she took it. Her palm was damp with sweat. I could see that she was lonely and frightened and her loneliness matched my own. I smiled. So did she.

‘Where is Kriti?’ I asked. ‘And why are you a Royal Wife?’

‘I was sent as wife to the Pharaoh to seal a treaty, I mean, to the Lord Amenhotep may he live to ensure peace between Kriti and the Black Land,’ she corrected herself hastily.

I was shocked. Egyptian princesses are never sent to another country, for in them resides the succession. Merope was continuing, ‘And I will lie with the King when I am old enough, that is after my woman-blood begins. But now all I do is teach a slave how to speak the language of my home and learn Egyptian and wait. The lady the Queen Tiye may she live sent me here because she told me that you were in need of a companion. Is that true?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, suddenly made aware of how much I needed someone to talk to, preferably someone with something interesting to say in reply. ‘And we are to have a scribe to teach us.’

‘I have yet to learn to write,’ said Merope. ‘At home we do not use writing for anything important, only for lists.’

‘Lists?’

‘Of tribute to the temple and palace,’ she explained. I knew about this.

‘We do that here, as well, but there are many other things written down, the wisdom of our ancestors. “If you do not write it down, the words of wise ones will be lost.”’ I quoted Ani, my father’s scribe.

‘We do not need to write it down. We remember. Bards can recount the story of a man dead a hundred years,’ returned Merope with spirit.

‘Here we know what words were said a thousand years ago,’ I boasted. Tey my mother broke up the promising argument.

‘Lady Merope, choose a gift to celebrate your arrival,’ she said, gesturing at the array of treasure on the floor.

Merope smiled shyly, lifted aside the cloths, and pounced on the jewellery. She laid it out gently: pectoral and counterweight, elaborate earrings and chiming bracelets such as temple-dancers wear, and solid gold arm-rings.

‘I like these,’ she said, and my mother gave her an armband of thick gold, inlaid with little ibises for Thoth.

‘Thoth is the protector of scribes, little daughter, and that should be worn while you are being instructed. I am glad that you are not greedy of gain, daughter Merope. Now my daughter will show you where to sleep and we will all lie down. And be quiet. The wind has given me a headache.’

Nefertiti had gone to lie down with her husband, my mother had lain down on her saddle-strung bed in the coolest corner, and I took Merope and the vociferous basket into the next room, where there were no windows and the air came up coldly from the staircase down to the cellars.

‘This is Basht,’ she said, undoing the basket. A striped cat shot out swearing, landed in a remote corner, glared wildly around to make sure that there was no threat in her immediate surroundings, then sat down to make an elaborate toilet, licking every ruffled hair into place deliberately and slowly. She was anxious to make perfectly sure that we didn’t think that we had disturbed her at all by stuffing her into a nasty smelly basket and dragging her halfway across the palace without her leave.

‘She is very beautiful,’ I commented. Our own animals had been left at our house, and the palace cats had not seemed interested in our apartments.

‘She is a gift from the King may he live. She sleeps on my mat, when she feels like it.’

‘You have seen the King?’ I asked.

‘Yes, they brought me to him when I came, and he patted my cheek and told me to try to learn Egyptian, and gave me Basht to be company for me. He is a nice man and I will not mind in the least when I can lie with him, even if he is old. He has kind eyes.’

‘I know,’ I agreed, remembering that shaft of understanding and fellow-feeling he had sent me at the coronation.

Basht finished her wash, stood up, yawned, and walked over to Merope, indicating that it was time for a rest. Merope had a sleeping mat of clean reeds, and we unrolled it and lay down, still too new in our acquaintance to sleep.

‘Are you a wife of the Pharaoh, too?’ asked Merope, settling her neck on a headrest and pulling out an errant strand of hair as it caught and pulled.

‘No, I am just a daughter of Divine Father Aye and the Great Royal Nurse Tey. My half-sister is Nefertiti the Divine Spouse of Akhnamen may he live.’

‘Oh,’ she murmured. ‘Not King Amenhotep, then.’

‘No.’ There was something pointed about the way she made no further comment, but it was too soon to talk about that dangerous subject. I did not know if I could trust her yet, this barbarian princess. What was always a safe subject?

‘Tell me of the island of Kriti,’ I urged.

‘It’s a fertile and green place, an island ruled by Minos the King, a nation of sea farers. Our ships go all over the Islanded Sea, as far as the river Oceanos extends, half across the world.’

‘Is it a peaceful place?’ I had heard that barbarians spent all their time fighting.

‘Certainly,’ she seemed offended. ‘I don’t know why Egyptians always think that their ways are superior to all others!’

‘Divine Amenhotep says: Go around the world, speak to all peoples, and you will not find one who will change his country’s customs for another’s. And he is right. I beg your pardon, sister, but don’t be so touchy. I wish only to know.’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve been so lonely and everyone thinks I’m a savage. But that is what the men of my island would say about Egypt, I expect. Is it always this hot here?’

‘No, this is Ephipi, the hottest month. That’s when the lion-wind blows, the poison-breath of the Eastern Snake. Soon it will be Mesoré, and the grapes will ripen and we will have the harvest festivals.’

‘I don’t understand your year,’ she said plaintively. ‘At home we had four seasons, but here there are only three.’

‘That is because we are the gift of the river. The Nile is our mother. We have three seasons of four months each, made of three decans of ten days,’ I instructed my foreign sister.

‘Shemu, which is harvest, that’s now; Akhet, which is flood; and Peret, which is sprouting, the time of plants. Every time has its festival and every day its god, and over all of them is Amen-Re, Lord of Lords.’

‘It is well known that Gaia Mistress of Animals is the head of the gods!’ objected the foreign princess.

‘Not in Egypt. But we will ask the scribe about gods; Mother says that they are not fit subjects for humans.’

‘I know.’

She might have been about to say something more, but Basht walked off her chest and onto mine, dipping her head to sniff delicately at my neck and settling down with her pin tipped feet folded under her richly-patterned body.

‘We were meant to be friends,’ concluded Merope. ‘Basht is never wrong about people.’

‘Of course not. She’s the avatar of Basht the Lady, Goddess of love and motherhood.’

‘She couldn’t be just a cat, then?’ asked Merope slyly.

‘No more than a crocodile is not the avatar of Sobek or a hippopotamus of Set the Destroyer.’

‘But the crocodile will still bite and the hippopotamus break boats,’ she argued. ‘Acting like animals, not gods.’

‘It’s a mystery,’ I replied, thinking about it for the first time and taking refuge in the scribe Ani’s invariable response to such questions.

‘Egypt is a strange place,’ concluded my new sister, and we drowsed into sleep.

For the first time I had met someone who asked more questions than I did, and I thought the Queen Tiye wise to put us together. It might even preserve my own mother’s temper.

***

The Kriti princess was equally pleased, it seemed, with me as a companion. Though she refused to abandon her tunic, which covered her chest, for a proper knotted cloth, and would not have her head shaved to a sidelock, as we did for cleanliness and convenience, she adapted to life in her new country well. She had learned the language very quickly, though some words still eluded her, and some of the grammatical constructions which I had learned before I knew that I was learning them gave her trouble. She could not differentiate between the three levels of formal address, so spoke to all persons as though they were Pharaoh or a High Priest, which gave her a reputation for humility. And she asked me why my mother had commended her for lack of greed when she had asked for a solid gold bracelet.

‘Because you did not ask for silver, the most precious metal in the Black Land,’ I explained.

‘In Kriti the most precious metal is gold,’ she protested.

‘Here gold is as sand,’ I replied, beginning to laugh. After a moment she joined in. ‘Whole shiploads of it come from Nubia in Upper Egypt every day. Whereas silver has to come from barbarian lands and is traded for three times its weight in gold.’

‘Come, then you shall learn some Kritian, if I must learn Egyptian,’ she said.

‘Why should I do that?’ I teased.

‘Because it would be sweet to speak again in my own tongue, and I shall never see my home again,’ she responded, and burst into tears.

I was shocked at my insensitivity. I would never be sent away from my country, never have to learn difficult words in another tongue to speak to my captors. I tried to imagine how much she must miss the green island and the sound of her own language, and thought how I would miss the land of the Nile, the speech of the women, the scent of dung fires which kept off mosquitoes, the taste of plum and melon. I imagined it so well that I made myself cry and hugged her close and she wept into my neck, strong sobs which hurt her slim body. When the tears had died down a little, we kissed, I mopped her face with a linen cloth and we began to learn Kritian as I re-drew the kohl around her strange brown eyes.

‘Adelphemou,’ she taught me as my first words, which means, my sister.

Ptah-hotep

The summons from the High Priest of Amen-Re came for dinner the next day, when I had settled my scribes into my office and instructed them in their duties. It was basic record keeping, really, as the master had said. Not difficult, but requiring steady attention and some skill. Few actual orders issued from the office of the Great Royal Scribe, but he acted as auditor for the whole of the nation, expected to uncover fraud and misreporting, to protect the common people from over-zealous officials and extortion, and to oversee the administration of the kingdom.

He was—I was—also responsible for receiving the Nomarch’s accounts, the Chief Watcher’s report on the state of lawlessness in Egypt, and for recording the Lord Akhnamen’s thoughts and orders.

That seemed to be enough for one very youthful scribe whose previous heaviest responsibility had been as overseer of a class of ten boys.

And Pharaoh still had not sent for me. I wondered if he had forgotten me, and if I should ask for an audience with him. Perhaps he was leaving me for a decan to find out if I could avoid assassination for ten days.

That might prove to be harder than I thought.

Meryt had come to me at dawn, brow wrinkled.

‘Lord, someone tried to get into my chamber last night.’

‘There could be many reasons for that,’ I said sleepily. With her beautiful smile and her rounded body, many men would have found Meryt attractive. She shook her head and her earrings chimed.

‘Nothing as innocent as that,’ she protested. ‘Besides, no one would dare. I belong to you, Master. I don’t like this. I heard someone try the door; saw the handle move. Lord, I want to spend some of your gold and make you a gift.’

Her face was solemn, and I shook myself into real wakefulness.

‘You may spend my gold. I will accept your gift,’ I said, matching her seriousness.

‘Thank you. I will be gone perhaps an hour, Master. Wait for me, fasting, if you will.’

‘Very well,’ I agreed. Fasting was no great pain to me. I doused a pang of some unexpected emotion—was it disappointment as to the nature of her gift? Since I had refused her offer of her body, she had not attempted any intimacy. Meryt bowed and left, closing my door behind her.

She had returned within her time, towing a heavy chain behind her. It appeared to be suspended in the air and I was surprised at the size of the hound to which it was attached. He was huge.

‘This is Anubis,’ Meryt informed me. ‘A Nubian hound for a Nubian slave, and he has cost you an ingot of gold, Master.’

Anubis sat down, all paws together, and regarded me with an intelligence which was vaguely disturbing from a canine. He was part-jackal, perhaps, a black, high shouldered dog with a pointed muzzle, long legs and a long whip-like tail. I had seen such hounds racing alongside chariots.

‘He’s a hunting dog, a war-dog,’ I said. ‘Meryt, what have you spent my gold ingot on? He surely will not be comfortable in a palace.’

‘His kind comes from the Mountains of the Moon; my home now lost forever. Such hounds belong to kings, and his father belonged to my father, captured as loot when my village was raided. He is a Nubian, as I am, and we are faithful to death.’

Meryt stood with her dark hand on the hound’s black head. Both pairs of eyes were regarding me almost dispassionately, but with such steadfastness that my own eyes burned and I had to look away. What had I done to deserve such loyalty? I was only a scribe, son of a scribe, no great warrior or captain.

Meryt continued, ‘Once he knows that you are his Lord, he will allow no thief or murderer close. He will not bay and arouse the palace, but come and wake you. And at a pinch, Master, he will defend you with his life. That’s why I wanted you to fast. He needs to identify your scent, not mixed with onions or wine.’

She led the hound forward and pushed his muzzle into the gap between my arm and my side. I felt the cold nose tickle, and the dog took two deep snuffling breaths, recording my scent. Then he pulled away from Meryt’s grasp and lay down, putting his head between my two hands. In that position he was helpless and at my mercy. It was an act of formal obeisance as graceful as any courtier, as graceful as the other Nubian in my service.

‘Anubis, I accept your fealty,’ I said gravely, deeply touched.

Meryt nodded and went to fetch our breakfast. Anubis accepted the two scribes, sniffing them as they came in, carrying bundles of possessions and their working tools.

‘Lord, it’s a wolf!’ exclaimed Khety.

‘It’s a dog,’ Hanufer reproved him. This was typical of their relationship. Hanufer had no imagination at all. Khety had too much. Together, I hoped, my office would be balanced.

We laid out the work for the day and the two scribes sat down to become familiar with the extent of the Great Royal Scribe’s responsibility. It did not look so unmanageable with someone else to read the endless reports and tell me what was happening. We were in the middle of the Hare Nome’s report on the repairs to the canals when there was a disturbance in the outer office and I went out.

‘Call him off!’ gasped a tall young man wearing an expensive, food-spotted cloth and a wig which had evidently not been cleaned since last night’s feast. The perfume cone which had dripped scented oil was matted into it and he stank of wine. Anubis had backed him against the wall and the oil from his headdress was marking my lotus frieze.

‘Anubis, release him and come here,’ I said quietly, wondering if the hound would obey me.

Meryt had spoken truly, as was her habit. Anubis left the cowering young man and came to me, sitting down composedly at my side.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Mentu; you called for me,’ blurred the man, straightening the wig and wiping more oil over my delicately painted wall.

‘Come away from there,’ I ordered. ‘Anubis will not hurt you, unless I so order him. Meryt, some wine, if you please. Sit down,’ I told my second.

‘What a remarkable hound,’ said Mentu, sitting down as ordered and discarding the wig. He dropped it to the floor where it lay like a dead rabbit. ‘Where did you get him, Lord?’

‘He comes from Nubia,’ I evaded the question, because I did not know from whom Meryt had bought him. ‘From the Mountains of the Moon. Mentu, I am minded to appoint you as my Second Scribe. Will you accept the appointment?’

Now that I was close to him, I could see that he was not so young. Hard drinking and some hard exercise—chariot racing, perhaps?—had put harsh lines into his face and crow’s feet around his eyes. Though presenting a picture of dissipation, he was examining me with eyes which were quite bright and present.

‘It would please my father, and he holds the key to the treasure-chest,’ said Mentu consideringly. ‘What would you wish me to do?’

‘You can do as you like,’ I said. ‘You can attend here and help in the management of the kingdom, or you can race horses and drink every night.’

‘I see,’ Mentu accepted a cup of Tashery vintage—the amphora was already open—and sipped. His eyebrows rose.

‘I see your plan,’ he commented. ‘I would be the last person anyone would want as Great Royal Scribe.’ This was a rather alarming insight, but I said nothing. ‘In fact, the scheme may work to both of our advantages, Lord Ptah-hotep. I wish to feast and enjoy myself, you wish to run the kingdom. Or maybe it is true that you were just selected at random out of the school of scribes solely to annoy the old man Nebemanet, who made his disapproval of the Divine Akhnamen’s religious views so distressingly plain to Pharaoh’s Royal Father?’

‘I was selected by Pharaoh may he live out of the school of scribes,’ I agreed. ‘Why, I still do not know and I have not seen Divine Akhnamen since.’

‘He will call for you,’ said Mentu, sipping more of my wine. ‘Do not, if you will accept my advice, argue matters of gods with him. They say that he is perilous if crossed, and as he elevated you out of the school, he can cast you down again, and all those who hold with you.

‘Do I wish to involve myself in office, when I could thus be ruined if you make a false step; or if Divine Akhnamen takes against you? A pretty problem. I believe that the answer lies in the bottom of another cup of wine.’

Meryt poured more wine for him. He looked at her.

‘A Nubian hound, a Nubian slave they are powerful arguments for your influence, Lord. Neither give their allegiance lightly. You, woman,’ he addressed Meryt roughly.

She knelt. A slave is required to kneel if she is spoken to by the nobility. Her face was perfectly blank, like a carving in ebony. I struggled with rising anger.

‘Lord, what do you require?’

‘Are you owned by this young man?’ he pointed at me. Meryt nodded.

‘Has he your loyalty?’

‘He has,’ said Meryt. Mentu considered her, then reached out and playfully tugged a tress of beaded, plaited hair.

‘You’re a good girl,’ he commented, and gestured to her to rise. She did so with perfect, athletic ease. ‘I might be of use to you, Lord, though not as a scribe. I know the palace, Lord Ptah-hotep. I accept your appointment. I will serve you faithfully. Now, what do you want to know?’

‘Tell me about the Master of Scribes,’ I said, as a test of his accuracy.

‘A good man, if dry as the papyrus he studies. From an old family. Reliable, loyal, all those cold virtues.’ So far I agreed with my new second in command.

‘The Nomarch of the Nome of the Hare?’ I asked at a venture, having just read his report.

‘Drinks too much and quarrels incessantly with the Nomarch of Heliopolis. They share family connections—his First Wife is the Heliopolitan’s sister. Spends too much of his inheritance on boats and huge feasts.’

‘Is he cheating on his taxation?’ I hazarded, not knowing how far Mentu would be willing to go in informing on his friends.

‘Probably. Look for inconsistencies in the returns on fish; it’s been a wonderful season for fish. And turtles.’

‘How about Heliopolis, then?’

‘Fat and lazy, do anything to avoid trouble. Wouldn’t run the risk of cheating, because it would mean that he had to make an effort. Has a longstanding argument with the Temple of Osiris on the bank opposite the city. Study the temple’s share closely; he’ll shave their ingots if he can.’

‘And Thebes?’

‘Ah, that is my cousin.’

Without being asked, Meryt filled the cup of this loquacious informant. I found myself beginning to like Mentu, though he was everything I disapproved of in a man.

‘Your cousin?’

‘Indeed. Now he will pay more than he is required to pay to the Temple of Hathor, because he and the temple priestesses have an understanding. Whenever he feels the need of comfort, he calls for them and they attend his palace and relieve his… monotony,’ Mentu laughed and I joined in.

‘They are very skilled, the ladies of the Lady of Love and Beauty. The feast of Horus and Hathor is famed all over the known world. Achaeans and Trojans and Klepht travel many leagues to lie down in their smooth arms and taste their divine kisses. May I hope that my Lord will come with me to Edfu when the season comes?’

This was a loaded question, and I contented myself with a nod. I had never lain with a woman and did not know if I desired to taste such well-travelled flesh.

‘Apart from his fascination with the priestesses?’

‘Thebes is rich in his own right, no commoner’s son.’

I allowed the silence to grow long after the initial discomfort.

Mentu shifted on his chair. Finally he said, ‘No insult was meant, Lord. But if he is rich in his own right, he is less likely to peculate. Except for his expenses in love, you can trust the Theban Nomarch.’

I recalled my invitation to the temple at Karnak. ‘The High Priest of Amen-Re?’ I asked.

‘Death in a white robe,’ said Mentu promptly.