Out of the Black Land (3 page)

But I was distracted with grief at leaving my heart’s brother. The Master of Scribes, for some reason, relaxed his usual rule and allowed us to sleep my last night together. In fact the Master seemed strangely sorry for me, considering the fact that everyone else was congratulating me on my amazingly good fortune. He sent me bread and roasted goose and fruit from his own table, and the servant who brought it had been ordered to stay and serve Kheperren and myself as though we were grown and masters in our own house.

We sat in my little room, one on either side of a borrowed table, dressed in our best clothes, and the servant poured wine for us whenever our cups were empty. And because I was a boy and my heart had already been broken when Pharaoh touched my shoulders with the flail, I began to enjoy myself. The food was good, and we ate heartily and drank deep, and drunkenly embraced. Then we slept in each other’s arms all night, and I woke to the dawn twittering of the swallows who nest in the temple of Amen-Re and saw my brother, my spouse, asleep with his head pillowed on his arm. By the cool light he was to me entirely beautiful and unexpressively dear. The light embraced the curve of his olive cheek and the fringe of his sooty eyelashes. Kheperren’s other hand had been curled on my chest as I slept beside him.

I stood silently in the doorway, my bundle of possessions in my hand—a few spare cloths, a childhood amulet given to me by my father, the usual belongings. My palette and the gear of my trade had already gone to the palace. I did not want to wake Kheperren. I feared I would not survive a farewell.

So I dipped my finger in lamp-black and wrote ‘I will always love you’ on the wall near his face, where he would see it when his eyes opened, and went away.

I washed in the sacred lake, put on my best cloth, painted my eyes with kohl to protect them from the glare, and went with the servant who had come from the Lord of the Upper and Lower Lands to take me to the palace.

And despite my best resolutions, I wept all the way.

I was met by a Chamberlain, who exclaimed, ‘So young! Amen-Re have compassion on us, boy, you cannot appear before Pharaoh like that. Come in here.’ He ushered me into an anteroom where a young woman was bandaging a slave’s foot. She did it very neatly, I noticed in my dreary grief. She dismissed the slave with a pat on the toe and an injunction to rest for at least a week, and then turned her attention to me; as the Master of Slaves scolded her patient for being stupid enough to put his foot under a falling bench. ‘And you the King’s favourite cup bearer, what am I going to tell him?’

‘This is the King Akhnamen’s new scribe,’ said the Chamberlain, a fussy man of middle age wearing too much jewellery and paint. ‘Do what you can, Meryt.’

‘Sit down,’ said the young woman. ‘What’s your name, Scribe? I’m Meryt the Nubian. Where does it hurt?’

‘Only my heart,’ I said as I sat down on the stone bench. She took my hand and her warm fingers found my pulse.

‘The voice of your heart says that you are healthy,’ she said gravely. Her skin was soot-black and her eyes twinkled. ‘But drink this while I clean your face and re-apply your kohl.’

I drank obediently as she washed my face with precise strokes of a wad of damp linen and re-drew my eyes. She passed a red-ochre brush gently across my cheeks to restore the bloom of health. The drink was a warm compound of wine, honey and herbs, and it went down smoothly, not offending my already over-worked insides.

‘You have left someone you love to come to Pharaoh’s service,’ she remarked. ‘That is hard. But you will flourish in the regard of the Pharaoh, be happy, and come to your lover again.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘I am a Nubian and we have some skill in foretelling though I am no oracle. But I know,’ she said firmly.

For some reason I was greatly cheered.

‘There are many people in the palace today, is it always like this?’ I asked, as she straightened my earrings and flicked dust off my wig.

‘It’s the coronation of the great Royal Wife Nefertiti,’ she replied, laughing. ‘Where have you been?’

‘His Majesty took me yesterday from the School of Scribes to be his personal scribe,’ I told her. I felt her draw back in shock, and then she came and knelt before me, her forehead on my sandal.

‘I did not know, Lord, pardon!’ she whispered.

‘Meryt, get up,’ I tugged at her shoulder. ‘Why are you bowing to me?’

‘You are the Royal Scribe,’ she said, looking up from her crouch. ‘You rank higher than almost anyone in the kingdom, except those of royal blood or the priests of Amen-Re.’

‘In that case I order you to stand up,’ I was astounded and I needed more information. ‘This can’t be,’ I said.

‘Lord, if that is your position, then that is your rank.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ I protested.

‘If you will take some advice,’ ventured Meryt in a whisper, ‘beware the envy of others. Have your food tasted and search your rooms for serpents and your bed for scorpions. I am the lowliest of Pharaoh’s slaves, but I know this much; there will be much murmuring at this appointment. No one will say anything to you, Lord, but they will be very angry. The person who was expecting to be royal scribe was the old man the Lord Nebamenet. He has expanded his household on the understanding that he would be awarded the post.’

‘If this is true, Meryt, will you come to me and keep the serpents away?’ I asked entirely on impulse. She looked away.

‘Master, I am unworthy,’ she murmured conventionally, which meant ‘yes’.

Thus I acquired my first slave, for it was true—I had been elevated to one of the highest posts in the Kingdom, and with much more justice than Meryt I felt like saying, ‘Lord, I am unworthy’.

The chamberlain took me into the first hall, where the common people come to speak to officials and those badly treated can appeal to Pharaoh their father. It was decorated with stiff lotuses and stiff papyrus heads, the symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt. A slave was sweeping the stone floor, another was sprinkling jasmine-water, and clearly something was about to happen. The soldiers at the gate had lined up in a long double row, light gleaming off their heavy belts and helmets. The wind carried to me the jingling of their accoutrements. The Chamberlain, muttering something about inconvenience, took me through the Audience Chamber and into the palace behind, and we stood at a window looking down into the hall.

‘The Great Royal Wife Nefertiti was crowned not an hour ago,’ he said under his breath. ‘Both Kings may they live! will be here soon. They will show the new Queen to the people, then come along this corridor into the feasting hall. There the Lord Akhnamen has ordered that you should meet him. Now I really should…’

‘Wait, Lord,’ I grasped him by the arm. ‘The slave Meryt said that I had been given one of the highest offices in the kingdom. She was, of course, wrong?’

‘Nubians, they talk too much. Yes boy, I mean, my Lord, you are ranked higher than almost any, and I hope you live your first decan, for I do not know what will save you unless the Gods do.’

This was alarming and I forgot my grief for a little. Still holding him, I demanded ‘Explain!’

‘I don’t know how to explain it,’ he wailed, the paint on his cheeks cracking a little with the stress of unaccustomed facial expression. ‘Did he know you before, Lord Ptah-hotep, know you…when he was a boy?’

‘No, of course not. Yesterday I was swimming in the sacred lake and he just came and took me. I have never seen him before,’ I replied.

‘Whimsical, whimsical, that’s the Divine Akhnamen. I wish that his brother had lived. But at least he has married; a wife will settle him down.’ He spoke to himself, then remembered me.

‘Now, don’t be afraid, boy, my Lord. He won’t hurt you, he’s the gentlest creature alive, may Amen-Re shine sense upon him! He just doesn’t think, you see, he’s impulsive. But he keeps his friends, and he needs them. Be a friend to him and no courtier’s malice can touch you.’

‘Sell me the slave Meryt,’ I requested. He patted me on the shoulder.

‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Ten ingots of copper and she is yours.’

‘Should all this be true, Lord, I will owe you the copper, and you will send her to my quarters as soon as you can. I feel,’ I added, as we heard trumpets and the whole honour guard sprang to attention, ‘that I will need someone to watch over me.’

I went to the feasting hall as the procession left the Audience Chamber and walked along the corridor painted with a fresco of tribute bearers. I was puzzled and apprehensive but my heart was still too sore to be either really joyful or really afraid.

I heard the swish of the ladies’ draperies and their voices, as they were freed from ceremony to speak, pass my window and I slipped out into the passage and came along behind them.

I had never seen such splendour as that feasting hall on my first night in the palace of the Kings. The Kings and their Queens were seated on a raised platform at one end of the hall, with painted frescoes of antelopes behind them and a whole lion hunt on the opposite wall.

The tables were draped with white cloth and laden with all manner of food; bread and roasted fish and dried fish, roasted oxen, goat, roast quail and duck and goose; plums and melons and figs and grapes in black bunches, bursting with juice. There were three sorts of cheese and eleven different cakes, dates, pomegranates, and salads of lettuce and leeks.

I had never seen so much food in my life. In my father’s house we were never hungry, we had bread, fish and beans every day and roasted meat occasionally. But this abundance was astonishing and I had to restrain my hand from creeping out and stealing a cinnamon cake. My nostrils twitched with the heavenly scent. Cinnamon and, I thought, honey.

The chamberlain, who may have been feeling guilty about his casual reception of me, took me by the hand and led me through the feast to the Kings.

Everywhere people were tearing apart roasted quail and crunching bones and demanding more wine. Servants flew about the huge room with pots and jugs. Musicians strummed and plucked valiantly, but could hardly be heard above the voices and the demands for more drink, at once!

I was deafened and shaken—it was like being inside a gigantic mouth—by the time I was kneeling at the feet of the young man with the strange misty gaze.

‘Ptah-hotep,’ he said vaguely. For a delirious moment I thought he might have forgotten me and I would be sent back to my own trade and my Kheperren. Then his eyes sharpened, as if I had come into focus.

‘See, my Lady,’ he addressed a woman of surpassing beauty, who put down her wine-cup politely and smiled at me. ‘This is Ptah-hotep, my scribe.’

The old man sitting next along shot me a look as penetrating as a spear, then smiled and I smiled back. It was impossible not to smile when Amenhotep the King may he live for a hundred years smiled. But the Lord Akhnamen was my master and he was touching my bowed head with his staff.

‘Rise, Ptah-hotep, you are Great Royal Scribe,’ he said quietly, and the whole hall fell silent. The silence began amongst the great nobles, and spread with surprising speed through the feasting ladies to the door slaves. No one glared, but they all stared, some with curiosity, some with a determination to make sure that I did not keep my position while there was poison in the world. I could read them all. Meryt the Nubian had been right.

I was now required to stand and reply, and I did so. I was, for some reason, no longer afraid.

‘Life! Health! Strength to the Pharaoh Akhnamen!’ I cried, and the whole hall screamed the salutation, mostly with their mouths full.

‘Life! Health! Strength!’

I hoped that it would be so for me, too. But I would not have given high odds on my surviving until the next month.

Chapter Three

Mutnodjme

The problem with my mother Tey and myself was that we were too much alike.

She was sharp, intelligent, determined and curious, and so was I, though she called me insolent, too clever for my own good, stubborn and a spy. All her own attributes, and she didn’t like them in me.

Therefore she was all for sending me away, to my father Ay’s estates near Memphis. I think she was worried about what I might say, given the extremely delicate nature of my sister’s marriage. But Nefertiti would not allow this. Tey’s opposition faded away. Nefertiti always got what she wanted. She would persist and persist, never forgetting and never losing her temper, and eventually it became easier to allow her whatever she wanted; rather than to continue, churlishly, to oppose her will. My sister was gentle, but she was neither stupid or anyone’s dupe.

And she was determined to love her husband.

Marriages being dynastic or family matters, it was rare for the parties to have known each other before the woman came to live in her new husband’s house. Women had lovers, of course, and men had favourites, and we had no bans on youth enjoying itself.

After marriage, naturally, women and men were expected to be devoted to each other because the family was the unit established by the Gods for the comfort and protection of children and the feeding and clothing of the members. Husbands cared for wives, wives for husbands. Did not Hathor the Goddess of Beauty and Music go every year to Edfu to spend two weeks with her husband Horus in feasting and lovemaking? The world was designed for pleasure, and pleasure extended beyond the death of the body. In the Field of Reeds, the dead feasted every day on the offerings which were made in their tombs.

Despite my mother’s misgivings, therefore, I went with my sister Nefertiti when she went to lie for the first time with her husband the Divine Akhnamen.

She dismissed the other women at the door, thinking that her husband might be shy, and took only me with her, to undress her before she lay down in Pharaoh’s bed. We entered his apartments to the music of sistra and women’s voices, and the most beautiful woman sat down on a saddle-strung chair next to the bed on which the strange young man was lying.

He had retired early from the marriage feast, saying that he felt fevered, and there was an unhealthy slick of sweat on his face and his torso.

By rights, Nefertiti should have been in her own apartments, which were certainly grand enough, and he should have come to her. But it was her nature to understand fear, and she knew that he was afraid.

‘Is it you?’ he asked, reaching out a languid hand, which she took in both of her own.

‘It is I,’ she said gently. ‘Your wife.’

He twitched a little at that.

‘Is it your will that I should stay with you tonight?’ she asked, stroking the hand, which was long-fingered and elegant, unlike the rest of him.

‘It is,’ he whispered.

At her signal, I loosed the heavy pectoral and lifted it off my sister’s shoulders. I laid away all her jewellery, the rings and bracelets and the heavy gem-encrusted girdle. I loosed her sandals so that she could step out of them and laved her face and hands with cool water in which jasmine blossoms had been steeped. On impulse, I lifted King Akhnamen’s soft hands and sluiced and dried them, and then laid the wet cloth across his brow. His strange almond-shaped eyes considered me with some interest.

‘Who are you, dark lady?’ he asked, and I stifled a laugh.

‘I am Mutnodjme, lord, sister of your wife,’ I replied. He twitched again. That word definitely worried him. ‘Sister of Nefertiti, Lord. We are here to serve you,’ I added.

Naked, I could see that his body was like a child’s, not the bold genitalia which I had seen on the men bathing in the river. I glanced at my sister and could see no expression on her face but gentle concern.

I helped her lie down on the bed next to the Pharaoh, adjusted the neck rest so that they lay together like statues, then took myself to the threshold, where I would lie for the rest of the night, as was my duty as attendant on the Great Royal Wife.

The sky was black. Little glints of moonlight sparked off the gold leaf of the great bed, which had leopard’s heads at one end and leopard’s tails at the other. A fine curtain hung from the uprights to exclude mosquitoes. I could only see them as shadows.

They had not moved to touch each other. Finally, his hand shifted and lay heavily on her thigh, and she bared her body. There was no doubt that she was willing to mate with him. She lay over him, her mouth finding his mouth, rubbing her soft cheek across his face, her hands moving to cup and stroke, seeking a phallus.

Evidently these caresses had no effect, because after perhaps half of an hour I heard her say softly,’ Are you not pleased with your handmaiden, lord?’ and I heard the Pharaoh begin to sob and scream.

Words tumbled from him, but I could not understand them. He was speaking in some hieratic dialect, some priestly tongue. Nefertiti turned on one elbow and gathered him into her arms, so that his face rested on her peerless breasts, and she soothed him as she had soothed me when I skinned my knees.

‘There, my lord, my love, there,’ she said in her honey-voice.

‘It is the will of the God,’ he said, finally, into her shoulder.

‘Which God, my lord?’ asked my sister. ‘Tell me, and I will have sacrifices made tomorrow, temples built. Which God requires your potency?’

‘There is only one God,’ he said flatly.

Nefertiti said nothing in reply; for it was absurd, only one God? Everyone knew ‘the Ennead’—the Nine of Thebes: Isis, sister-wife of Osiris; Nut the Sky, Geb the Earth, and Shu the Air their father, who comes between the mating of sky and earth and makes Day; Amen-Re who is the Sun; Set the Adversary; Anubis, God of the dead; and Thoth, God of Learning. Then of course comes Horus the Avenger, child of Isis. There are also the Twelve Gods of the Night and the Twelve Gods of the Day, and the countless other little Gods of house and village all up and down the Nile—who is himself a God, Hapi. One God? Which one?

I leaned back against the door, which was uncomfortably studded with copper nails, and listened in scorn.

‘Aten,’ whispered Akhnamen. ‘My father and I believe that there is one God, only one, who rules all the Heavens.’

‘But, my Lord,’ protested my sister. ‘What of Hathor and Horus? What of the others whom our fathers worshipped?’

‘They are nothing,’ he said fiercely, this King who lay on my sister’s breast. ‘They are delusions, fantasies of men who did not know the truth. There is only one. Unknowable, invisible, uncreated.’

‘Khnum the potter, who made men on his wheel?’ hazarded my sister, who had never been very interested in religion.

‘No! Your mind is corrupted, like all the others.’ He sat up abruptly. ‘Go, leave my presence.’

‘Lord, do not distress yourself,’ said Nefertiti. ‘I spoke only from ignorance, and did not the Divine Amenhotep your father say that
Ignorance is the one disease which has an easy cure
?’

He did. I had read that maxim of Amenhotep to my sister only the week before. The agitation of anger had tired the young King, and he sagged down into my sister’s arms again.

‘Ah, my lady, ‘ he said softly. ‘Thy breast is a pillow for my aching head.’

‘That is as it should be, lord,’ she said softly. ‘Let me sing to you, and then you will sleep.’

He must have nodded, for she began to sing very softly a lullaby sung by all mothers on the banks of the great River, from mud huts to palaces.

‘Sleep little child,

Thy mother is here.

Sleep is on the water

Sleep is in the reeds.

Birds rest with wings folded

Winds sleep in the sky.

The Gods guard the night

The Gods guard the Nile.

Khons counts the hours

The moon wanes. Sleep,

Mother’s breast bears you,

Little child, sleep.’

The Pharaoh sighed and snuggled closer, and soon I too slept.

In the morning my sister went to my mother and reported, ‘It is as you feared.’

Tey shot me a hard glance and I nodded, not venturing to speak. ‘You are sure that no stimulation can rouse him?’ asked Tey, and Nefertiti blushed. ‘Is it perhaps that he prefers men?’

‘No, I do not believe that he is potent at all,’ said my sister.

‘Then we shall appeal to the Lord Amenhotep, the Divine One,’ said Tey, who always made fast decisions.

‘Mother, wait,’ Nefertiti put her hand on my mother’s arm. ‘I would not shame him. He is possessed of a God, I am sure. A new God, one God, he says, Ruler of All. He says that this God requires his seed, that He took it all away from him when he was just grown, and he sickened but did not die. He is gentle, Mother Tey, and I love him. I will not leave him.’

Tey considered. She always put her head on one side when she was thinking, like a predatory bird. I could see what she was thinking. We had position—my mother was now Divine Nurse to the Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt. My father would not abandon this, even though he had married his daughter to a eunuch. And when Nefertiti said that she loved him and would not leave him, she meant it. Was not the household of Tey overloaded with people whom Nefertiti loved, who could not be dismissed and who did no work because they were old, crippled or crazed? Nefertiti has as soft a heart as Hathor herself. It was because of the Divine Nefertiti’s devotion to the lost and strayed that we had a one-armed doorkeeper, a cook who crooned all day to a strange little conic fetish, and a watchdog with three legs. Tey had frequently remarked that the concubine’s daughter could cherish a crocodile in her bosom, or wet-nurse a snake.

And she had clearly taken her husband under her protection, and there was no remedy for it.

‘We will speak privately with the Lord Amenhotep,’ decided Tey. ‘There need be no shame. But it is his posterity you guard, daughter, and he must know of a remedy. He is, after all, renowned for his wisdom.’

Nefertiti assented and went to her own quarters to be bathed and massaged with oil.

Mother Tey gave me a piece of honeyed bread and a draft of beer, sat me down on a cross-legged stool, and cross-examined me about all the events of the night. I answered as fully as I could, every sound and every word. I also described the appearance of the King, suppressing my comparison with the boys swimming in the river, as I did not think that I was supposed to look at them.

‘It is as she said,’ she muttered. ‘Good girl, Mutnodjme. Stay with your sister. I do not think he will harm her. She is gentle and loving. But you, my sharp-witted creature, do not you argue religion with him. Agree, daughter, and if you cannot agree, be silent!’

‘But Mother, he says there is only one God!’ I objected.

‘He is Pharaoh,’ snapped Tey. ‘He is a God. Presumably Gods know about Gods. Do as I say, Mutnodjme. And don’t gossip. News of this impotence must not spread abroad. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ I understood enough. I knew that if it was known that the Co-Regent King was impotent, it would harm my sister. I loved my sister above anything, and my lips were sealed.

The next night they lay together again. She held him close, his head on her breast, and talked about Aten the Sun Disc until they both fell asleep.

I was asleep long before.

Ptah-hotep

A servant brought me to my chambers in the Palace at Thebes, and left me at the door. No courtesy could be expected, it seemed, from any of the incumbents. I was persona non grata, an upjumped schoolboy, and my most immediate need was a staff of my own, on whom I could rely.

How did one go about appointing people? Did I own anything?

I had a succession of opulent rooms, all painted with rural scenes. One room had the whole process of making flax. One wall was covered with duck hunting. Another was patterned with simple lotus and papyrus in the most enchanting blues and greens. My floor was of marble, set with gold flowers. I walked through my audience chamber, my library packed with shelves of records, my own shabby tools laid out on the inlaid table. I came to my own bathroom, my tiled alcove with water jars, my own closet, into my bedroom, where several rooms leading off it were evidently for the accommodation of my wives and children.