Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,101

and combing our hair and anointing ourselves with our favourite perfumes. I always liked the river-scents. Labdanum, a tree-resin, and galbanum, an oil derived from the scented rushes which fringed the river wherever papyrus would not grow.

A scribe from the office of the Great Royal Scribe was admitted, however, a little after noon, and he gave into my hands a small flask made of alabaster, made in the shape of a nesting bird. In it was oil of cinnamon and cassia, a precious gift from my lord Ptah-hotep. Combined with my usual scents, it was a new compound, erotic and cool, hot and considered. Very like, I thought, our relationship, which had been formed in conspiracy and was now heavily-charged with emotion. The others exclaimed at the delightful smell.

‘There is more in you than meets the eyes, Mistress of Isis,’ said Widow-Queen Tiye, inspecting me with her slate-coloured gaze. I flicked a glance at the scribe, but he preserved a blank countenance as though he had not heard the King’s mother using the name of a forbidden god. I bade him thank my lord Ptah-hotep for his present, and he left with one of my finger-rings wrapped in a veil as a return gift.

‘If I didn’t know better I would swear that the perfume was a morning-gift,’ said Tiye may she live forever. ‘But such is only for the first time, not for lovers of such long standing as you and the Great Royal Scribe. Fortunate Mutnodjme, to have such a grateful lover!’

Widow-Queen Tiye’s guesses were always close to the mark and I turned away to sniff at my wrist, where the new blend was ripening into a truly devastating scent.

‘Was it good?’ asked Merope wistfully. I was unwilling to talk about the mating, it had been so strange, but I owed her something. Merope would not lie with a man again. Theoretically she now belonged to the heir of her husband, which was King Akhnaten. She knew as well as I did that her body would not be demanded by that King.

‘Tell me about making love to Amenhotep-Osiris,’ I said, and she drifted away into erotic reminiscence of the old man, his soft mouth, his gentle ways, his sure fingers which found the way to every centre of response. The account sounded remarkably like my experience of Ptah-hotep, and I said so.

I would never reveal, because no one would ever believe me, the sudden intimacy with his mind as well as his body, the sense of fusion of opposites into one being. Even sitting with Merope in the Widow-Queen’s apartments and combing the long hair of Tiye may she live I could feel Ptah-hotep’s concern for many matters; feel also his memory of me, which was precious to him, as he was precious to me. I had no words to describe this experience. They all belonged to mysteries, where there was a fusion of worshipper and worshipped, and it had not been like that. We were equals, primeval, one flesh.

‘He was sweet, so skilled that he melted my stiff sinews and made me cry out,’ I said, and Merope sighed. ‘I loved the fragrance of his skin, and here he has given me his own scent. His chest was a pillow for my head and his mouth delighted me. And if I add a little oil of unefer, you shall perceive him as we lay together.’

I dropped a little oil of unefer on my wrist and the perfume became unbearably erotic. I stank of mating. The mingling of scents came to Merope and she closed her eyes and blushed red.

‘We are glad that you have found a lover, Mutnodjme,’ the Widow-Queen told me. ‘But leave us to mourn, dear daughter, for I cannot bear to smell that scent anymore.’

‘I will wither,’ wept Merope. ‘I will dry up. My flesh will contract on my bones like a corpse laid in the sun. My dearest love is dead, is dead, and no man shall desire me again!’

‘I will grow old,’ said the Widow-Queen in response. ‘My hair will become grey and then white and lines will etch themselves on my face. My heart is with my love, my dearest love, who was taken from me, who waits for me, but I will come to him an old woman, and no man will lie with me again.’

I took myself and my scent of mating out of the room, and their litany went on, and I hope that they comforted each other. I