Out of the Black Land

Chapter Eight

Mutnodjme

Tey my mother reported the Queen recovering, the child suckling his wet nurse, and herself pleased with our silence and attention to our teacher. Because of a lack of brothers—my only brother was grown and married—and my father’s frequent absences on matters of estate management, we had been a female household, and the presence of Teacher Khons put us on our best behaviour. Tey was less likely to shriek, I was less likely to ask so many questions because Khons was there to answer them, or—his especial strength—ask me another, even curlier, which would keep me silent and thinking for hours.

We adjusted to the presence of the teacher very well. He slept on his reed mat in the smallest sleeping-chamber, never went out to get drunk, (except on the festivals, and he was a very considerate and quiet drunk) and told us stories every day. Merope my sister learned cursive, I mastered the priests pictured letters, Khons learned Kritian, and peace reigned in the household of the great Royal Nurse and Divine Father Ay. Even he noticed the change in the atmosphere and approved of the deferential young man whom the Queen had sent. He also approved of the fact that his expenses were paid by the Great Royal Wife. My father was a very rich man, and stayed so because he regarded every bead, every thread, every scraping of copper as a close personal friend.

Tey my mother regarded me with more tolerance because Teacher Khons told her that I was clever. He delighted in arguing with me and though, so far, he had always won, he told my mother that I had an original mind which would take me far, especially if I was to study in the temple of Isis among the priestesses of the Lady of Magic and Learning. Since Tey had often despaired of finding me a husband so wealthy that Divine Father Ay would not have to pay a dowry, this presented her with a possible solution to the problem posed by Mutnodjme.

Thus I was allowed to come along with her and Nefertiti as the hot wind died down and we moved into the month of MesorŽ, seasons of harvests. We were going to renew our interrupted consultation with Queen Tiye about the impotence of the King Akhnamen may he live. The situation had not improved, and my sister was worried. She had tried getting the royal lord drunk. She had tried all manner of baths and unguents, and also the attentions of pretty dancers of both sexes. But the King Akhnamen, when merry, fell into a laughing fit and then into a heavy sleep from which it proved impossible to rouse him. When bathed he drifted into a trance. When massaged he sighed and dozed; when caressed by the dancers he had giggled as if they were tickling him and fallen asleep. He was pleasant and loving, but utterly impervious to all sexual advances.

‘Nothing,’ sighed Nefertiti in reply to my mother’s questions. She herself was nervous, prone to start at sudden noises and to fall into periods of despondency. Mother Tey, after Nefertiti had gone back to her loveless bed the previous evening, had snapped at Father Ay, ‘That maiden needs a man, and if something is not done, she will find one, or one will find her.’

‘Impossible, she is Great Royal Spouse and a virtuous girl,’ my father had puffed, then added, ‘Do you really think so?’

‘Love will have love, heart will have heart, mouth will find mouth,’ quoted Tey ‘As Divine Amenhotep says. I will go to the queen again tomorrow, husband. She said that she might have a solution. I hope that she has.’

‘If the lord Akhnamen may he live, dies without an heir my endowment of royal estates will blow away with the wind,’ snarled my father. ‘The red-headed woman is astoundingly fertile and so is King Amenhotep may he live forever. She has already borne him two sons, and though Thutmose died early it was by accident. The young Smenkhare is thriving. She may yet bear more children. Go, wife, and ask Queen Tiye. We must have an heir, and she must contrive it.’

‘I will go tomorrow,’ said Tey, and I stopped listening.

So we walked along the corridor to the queen’s apartments. As usual, they were crowded with petitioners, slaves, maids and the Great Royal Heir’s household. The baby was crying and someone was commanding, ‘Put him to nurse, he never cries unless he’s hungry’.

As we came in the Great Queen was saying to a pair of farmers lying at her feet, ‘Yes, yes, I see the justice of your claim and I have given you a note to the Great Royal Scribe, the Lord Ptah-hotep, who will listen to you; go now. A slave will guide you. Sahte, I am going to lie down until the noon meal. Bring some wine for the Great Royal Wife and the Great Royal Nurse and the Lady Mutnodjme.’

Sahte, the thin-faced sour maid who had been the Great Royal Lady’s own nurse, sniffed and announced, ‘My Mistress is retiring for a rest. Make way,’ and she led us to the Queen’s Room of Silence, where no raised voice could be heard from outside. The door, unusually, was of thick wood and had a bolt on the inside. After Sahte had brought the wine, the Queen shut the door and latched it and sank down into a chair with a sigh.

‘Greetings, ladies, have you eaten?’ asked the Queen conventionally and wearily. We assured her that we had and poured her some heavily watered wine. Tey rose and laid a professional hand on the ivory forehead and chided, ‘The Great Royal Wife needs to rest more and talk less.’

‘True, but the Great Royal Wife has petitions to hear and household matters to arrange, and that cannot be done by resting,’ agreed the queen. She looked tired. The coppery hair was loose and fell in waves down her back. I noticed that a streak of white had formed at each temple. She was wearing a cloth with fine blue patterns along its edge but little jewellery. We waited until she had recovered a little and sipped from her cup, and even then we did not have to introduce the subject. She knew what we had come to discuss.

‘He’s impotent, isn’t he, Nefertiti? You’ve tried everything. Including a troupe of very well skilled dancers. And nothing has worked.’

Nefertiti nodded. Her hands were clenched in her lap.

‘And this is not what you expected when you agreed to be Great Royal Wife, is it?’ asked the Queen kindly. ‘You are a young woman and unmated, and your body is restless.’

‘Yes, lady,’ said my sister. She was so beautiful that she hurt my eyes, but there was an edge to her beauty now, a fine grey shadow like a spiderweb over her comeliness.

‘The heirs of the Pharaoh have to be heirs of a Pharaoh’s body, but not necessarily…’ began the Queen.

I caught her drift at the same time as Tey did. Her eyes lit.

‘The Pharaoh Akhnamen,’ Tey finished the sentence.

I did not speak, but I was horrified. To give my sister to that old man! A nice old man, admittedly, a kind and very wise old man, but old.

‘Will you accept this?’ asked the Queen. ‘It is entirely your choice, Nefertiti. This will be the only way you can conceive a Great Royal Heir.’

Nefertiti was thinking. She was never good at quick decisions. Given a chance to consider for long enough, she usually made a wise reply, but she hated being pressured. And now she was on the edge of panic.

Tey said ‘Come, daughter, this is a way out of all our difficulties. The Lord Amenhotep is fertile, as he has amply proved, and he is gentle and wise. Make up your mind, Nefertiti!’

But Tiye, whose slate coloured eyes saw very clearly, took Nefertiti’s slim hand in her own strong ones and told her, ‘You need time to think, lady. Go to your own apartments and consider what you wish to do, all on your own.’

Tey shot the Queen a glare which expressed how much she wanted to take Nefertiti home and rage at her until she agreed. Queen Tiye returned the look with one which said that she knew exactly what Tey wanted to do and was determined that she would not do it; and which, by one arched eyebrow, posed the question which could be summarised as, ‘Who is Queen?’ Tey looked away first. I was delighted and strove to keep my face straight.

‘No one will disturb you, but before night falls you will send your sister, the little scribe, and she shall bring your answer to me. I will not have you take my lord unwillingly; or with half a mind yea and half nay. He does not deserve that. To conceive you must enjoy him—ask any physician. To do that, you must want him. He gets no enjoyment from rape. Have I not lain with him all these years, and never left his arms without regret? Unbolt the door, Lady Mutnodjme, and call Sahte to me.’

I did as I was bid and Sahte’s disapproving face appeared at the door.

‘This young woman will come with a message for me tonight,’ said the Great Queen. ‘I wish to hear it, wherever I am and whatever I am doing. Do you understand, Sahte?’

Sahte sniffed, but nodded. This order was essential, because she was frequently known to banish all visitors from her Royal Mistress’ door and often kept messages until the time of arising the next day if they arrived after the Queen had retired. I was delighted at being referred to as a young woman. I was, of course, now ten, and my woman-blood was expected next year, after which I would be fully female.

‘When I receive it, I may want to speak to my son. Make sure that you know where he is tonight. Now, Sahte, we will allow the lady Nefertiti to leave, and perhaps the Great Royal Nurse will assist me in some of my household problems?’

Nefertiti left without a backward glance at my mother, and Tey subdued her rage. The Queen was keeping us with her so that King Akhnamen’s wife had time to get to her own apartments and lock herself in. So I was more surprised when I saw the beautiful Great Royal Wife Tiye and my mother exchange a grin.

‘Oh, very well, Lady, I will not rail at her. But the Divine Father is worried by this lack of an heir, and this seems like an excellent solution if the silly girl will but see it.’

‘She is very young, and I will not have my husband imposed on a shocked and frightened maiden; it would hurt his feelings as well as hers. Nefertiti the beautiful must make up her own mind,’ said Tiye.

‘Now, what shall I do with this baker? I am sure a lot of flour is going astray. Look at the accounts! He must think we are stupid, or cannot read plain figures. He has drawn twenty sacks from the grain-store, and made of it only a hundred loaves of bread.’

‘Fine or coarse?’ asked Tey, after a marked delay. Peace had been declared. I exhaled the breath I had been holding. Although she was midwife to the Queen and had her confidence, there was something about the affable, smiling Queen Tiye which made me sure that Royal Midwife or not, Great Royal Nurse or not Great Royal Nurse, Tey and all of us would be out of the palace before nightfall if we dared to seriously cross her. And Tey in a temper was not discriminating in her choice of target.

After Tey had scribbled some figures on an ostracon, it became clear that even if the baker was wasting a large amount of grain in attempting to make the finest flour, he was stealing about five sacks for every twenty he drew. Finest flour is sifted three times and there is a certain amount of wastage, which, as Tey pointed out, is not actual waste, because the coarse flour makes bread for the mill-workers or the baker’s household and the husks fatten his pigs.

The palace, of course, never ate of the flesh of swine. Teacher Khons had informed me that this was because the pig was an avatar of Set the destroyer, and certainly wild boar were terrible creatures who ate babies and wrecked whole vineyards.

But since people in some places on the Nile ate crocodile, which according to place was either the God Sobek or an avatar of Set, and which also ate people, this did not strike me as a good explanation. And in any case, the commoners all kept pigs, which were slaughtered every year for the feast of the Victory-of-Horus-Over-Set and roasted, after which sausages and smoked meats were made from the remains and many a poor household fed for the summer on this cursed beast.

Khons had agreed that this was not logical but stated that Egypt had so many interesting local customs that visitors never made sense of them and that, anyway, if I wanted to taste swine he would take me and Merope to the Victory-of-Horus feast in the village of Thebes and we could eat it there. He emphasised that all meat from pigs must be cooked thoroughly, and that it was unsafe to eat it raw.

Merope and I had had no difficulty in promising faithfully not to make a meal of raw swine.

I realised that I was considering the swine problem because I did not want to think about the soft flesh of my sweet sister pressed and impregnated by that old man. It seemed wrong, cruel. Youth goes to youth, that was the way it had always been. I was very angry with my mother and father for marrying the one beautiful daughter to an impotent fanatic, and lost my train of thought.

‘What shall we do with this thieving baker?’ asked the Queen. Tey gave her invariable answer to all problems involving humans.

‘Flog him,’ she said, shutting her mouth with a snap.

Ptah-hotep

Things went more easily for me and my office once the approbation of the high priest was known—and it was known with amazing speed. Palaces have very efficient gossip-networks and the gifts-of-welcome, which had been conspicuously absent, began to pour in.

I had to purchase two more slaves to open and catalogue them and hire another scribe to send thank-you notes. On Meryt’s advice, I bought Nubians, and that caused some murmuring. People said that I had a taste for black flesh, or that I was secretly part-Nubian. This might have been true. My father was always cagey about who my mother’s family had been and where he had acquired her. But what I needed was a household which would get along with Meryt, my chief slave and housekeeper, and she naturally preferred her fellow countrymen. Hani, Tani and Teti were pleasant people, cheerful enough, though showing marks of cruel usage, and seemed to be happy with their change of occupation. It never once occurred to me, as someone suggested, that the Nubians might mutiny and massacre me during the night. The people who were trying to kill me had all been pure-bred Egyptians.

I was delighted to find that my principal scribes were attentive and intelligent, and by balancing Khety’s account against Hanufer’s, I could arrive at a reasonable view of any situation.

My office was complete when the Master of Scribes brought me Bakhenmut, returned from the feast of Apis.

They found me listening to Hanufer’s account of the depredations of a landlord, who was demanding higher taxes than the Inspectors had assessed, in return for what he said was a spell for conferring magic fertility on seed, direct from Isis herself. The farmers who had not bought it had found their promising fields of barley and spelt-wheat withered overnight. This might, of course, have been supernatural but it seemed suspicious.

‘A letter to the Chief Watcher of that village, Hanufer,’ I dictated:

‘To the Chief of the Watchers of the village of the Son of Horus, Greetings. May your eyes never grow dim and your vigilance be maintained. Find out the movements of men around the stricken fields at night, and taste the soil of the fields where the crop has died. If you have reason to think that they may have been spread with salt, arrest the landlord and bring him before the court of the Nomarch.

‘Call also the Principal Priestess from the Temple of Isis and ask her to perform an apology to her goddess, who will have been affronted by this fraud—this to be paid for by the landlord.

‘If you find nothing to suggest fraud but instead divine intervention, then divert the debts of the farmers to the Temple of Isis, who presumably had a reason in bespelling some fields and blighting others. Convey this to the priestess also. Know that if you are virtuous and diligent, Pharaoh and the gods are well aware of what you do and you will be rewarded. Report the result to me so that I may instruct the temple to adjust the taxes. The Lord Ptah-hotep, usual titles.

‘How is it that you know of that trick about the salt, my lord Ptah-hotep of the usual titles?’ asked my amused Master, alerting me to his presence.

‘Master, how good to see you!’ I exclaimed, getting up and laying aside a sheaf of reports on the maintenance of dykes and walls. I noticed, as I put them down, that I might have to levy some labour to repair the worst, and that would be costly. Levied labourers eat like donkeys, but not, alas, of the same food.

‘Master, a landlord tried something very similar in my own village, though in that case it was sowing weed seeds through the crops.’

‘There are advantages in being a commoner, lord,’ he commented. ‘I have brought your scribe, as we agreed.’

‘Welcome.’ I took the hand of the short stocky priest with pleasure. He smiled shyly and said, ‘I am honoured by the Lord Ptah-hotep’s condescension and will strive to repay his trust.’

‘I’m sure you will. Now, here are Khety and Hanufer, you will remember them, and here is Meryt, she is my housekeeper and ruler of all matters which do not involve my office.’

Meryt knelt and Bakhenmut patted her shoulder gingerly. Meryt’s subservience had a royal arrogance about it now which made nervous people more nervous. She rose and smiled at him and he smiled back in relief.

‘Lord Bakhenmut, will you take up your apartments today?’ she asked practically.

‘Yes, yes, my wife is moving our household there now, very beautiful rooms. She is pleased,’ he told her, beaming. ‘She is a woman of refinement, you know, my Henutmire, and of noble lineage, and she is delighted at our elevation.’

‘But you will have a room here for late work, lord, and if you will come with me now I will show you,’ said Meryt.

Did I notice a shade of more relief on the devoted husband-of-Henutmire’s face? It was gone too quickly for me to be sure.

I left Meryt to settle the new overseer of scribes into his room and took my Master into the inner office, to which only my household had access. One of the Nubian twins poured wine.

‘Tashery?’ asked the Master of Scribes, smiling at me.

‘Did you get them?’ I asked.

‘Certainly, Ptah-hotep, and they were a generous present. My ancient colleague Snefru is beside himself with joy at the cartload of old manuscripts you sent and he has plans for the purchase of so many more that he may have to be dug out of the pile. That was kind, lord. And I hear that you acquitted yourself so well with the High Priest that he declared you to be almost adequate and invited you to play senet with him.’

‘You are well informed, Master of Scribes,’ I smiled. It was very pleasant to revert to being a student again.

‘Many have had to alter their view of you, Chief Royal Scribe,’ he returned. ‘But I knew, of course, all along. Can you tell me of the interview, lord, before I perish of curiosity?’

I recounted the whole evening, including my silent, lonely walk along the avenue of sphinxes.

‘He would have liked that,’ chuckled Ammemmes. ‘No attempt to bolster your position with soldiers or guards, just the solitary young man and the terribly dangerous old man. A duel of more than wits, and you have impressed him. Very well done.

‘Now, Ptah-hotep, you seem to have ordered your work in the approved way—as I would have done myself. There is only one thing which I would venture to suggest and before I do that I think I will have some more wine.’

I gestured to the Nubian. He filled the master’s cup, and then left at my signal.

‘The Princess Sitamen visited you, did she not?’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘That has caused gossip. It would not be wise to have too close a friendship with that Great Royal Wife. You know how palaces are.’

‘I am beginning to learn,’ I said stiffly.

‘One you know of is well and has sent word; I bring this,’ he handed me a letter which I slipped into my cloth. ‘To preserve him, Ptah-hotep, it would be a good idea for you to marry. The followers of supplanted Nebamenet are restrained, but not muzzled. They speak against you and who knows what will incline the Pharaoh’s heart one way or another? Take a wife, my pupil.’

‘I do not want a wife,’ I said. ‘I do not want to take on the responsibility of a household and children when my own position lies on the edge of a knife. I will not take anyone into peril with me.’

‘That is the only impediment?’ his eyes were as sharp as pins.

‘No, I do not know if I desire women, and I would not like to make anyone miserable. Then the word would go out to all the gossips, Master of Scribes. A mysterious young man who may or may not love women is one thing; an impotent husband is a laughing stock.’

‘You have a point,’ he said. ‘And I would not presume to instruct you in your private life, my lord. But I do think,’ he added, getting to his feet and ordering his cloth, ‘that you should try and find out. Secretly, of course. With a trusted lover.’

I nodded, and the Nubian saw him out.

Meryt came in to announce that Bakhenmut was pleased with his accommodation and had already taken some of the tax-returns off the pile to be read.

I surveyed her. She was elegant and well-made, this woman whom I owned; for she had resisted being freed, saying that a freed slave had no place in my service, and that she would keep the paper for some later date, when fate might make it useful.

Her hair today was loose and floating, confined only by a length of gold ribbon. Her body was full, her breasts round, her limbs well-shaped. Did I desire her? Could I make love with her?

‘Meryt, sit down. I have something to say and I want you to listen.’

She sat down promptly at my feet and I slid down to join her, so that I could see her face.

‘Lord?’ she asked politely.

‘Meryt, I value your service and I could wish for no better housekeeper and companion.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, puzzled.

‘The Master of Scribes has told me that I must marry, but…’

‘But your heart belongs to another,’ she finished the sentence.

‘Yes. But there is another problem. I do not know women, and I do not know…’

‘I will lie with you tonight,’ she said, reading my heart as she often did. I seldom had to spell things out to Meryt. ‘Then you shall know. Is that all, Master?’ Her voice sounded careless, as if it was a minor matter in a busy household.

‘Yes,’ I answered.

She relented and stroked my cheek, a caress which felt as intimate as a kiss. ‘It will be all right, Master,’ she said, and was gone.

***

She came to me after the household was bedded down for the night. Hanufer and Khety in their room, my new scribe with his family, Anubis on guard, the three Nubians in an untidy heap on their mats before the door.

There was a breathing silence, and Meryt came in naked on the wind of it.

‘Look at me,’ she whispered, and I saw by lamplight the rich curves of her shoulder and hip, the rounded belly, the full breasts. She came closer and I smelt a strong female scent, oil of Hathor from the temple. It mingled with the scent of her skin and made me giddy.

She knelt beside me and guided my hands to her nipples, to the wet cleft between her thighs. I had never touched a woman, and slid one finger inside, feeling her slippery flesh with curiosity but, as yet, no desire.

Then she bent her head and kissed my mouth, and she tasted of honey. Her lips parted and I felt her tickle my inner lip with her tongue. Still, though I felt interested and a little breathless, I was unaroused.

‘Isis lay with Osiris after he was murdered,’ she whispered, and her hands caressed my body, sliding down over my chest to my belly and then to my phallus, which at last began to rise.

‘I will show you how she conceived Horus the Revenger,’ Meryt said softly. ‘I will show you how she received his seed inside her.’

I moved under her hand, and she pushed me down firmly. For a startled moment, I felt her mouth encompass my phallus, a sudden indescribable wetness, and then she was astride me, her knees on either side of my hips, and my phallus was inside her, in the soft liquid heat of her vessel, and it felt wonderful. I lay still, transfixed, and she rode me like a warrior rides a horse, rising and falling, and the stimulation passed towards unbearable until it flowered in a gush, a stream of semen, a sensation so strong that it hurt deep in my loins, and she exclaimed with pleasure.

She would not let me withdraw, but rolled so that we lay side by side, and strong muscles held my softening phallus inside the Nubian woman until it hardened again and we moved now with some confidence, and at the second climax I heard myself cry aloud.