Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,108

had been drifting past, saw us and threw another load of gold at us in token of his pleasure.

Then I saw what beast had been served for the consumption of the royal family alone.

It was a beautifully-displayed roasted hawk, both Horus Avenger and Re-Harakhti, the most sacred of all creatures, symbol of Amen-Re at noon, the hawk in the horizon.

Ptah-hotep

As I ate a mouthful of the ibis flesh I dedicated myself again to Thoth, god of learning, and knew as my sister and spouse ate the same amount of holy beast that we would never be the same again, and neither would Egypt.

But we still burned. The feast was degenerating into such an orgy as Mentu my second in command had described as taking place in the more expensive brothels of the river-margin. Wine was spilled and rolled in, so that the floor was awash with it and trodden bread, broken pottery and the remains of shamefully slaughtered holy creatures.

I took Mutnodjme’s hand and we crawled away through the tipped over chairs past the copulating lovers and the vomiting drunks until we came to the door, crept unobserved over the threshold, and ran.

We ran away from the sed festival feast as though we were running for our lives from a terrible foe. We slipped, leaving wine red smears on the floor from our tainted feet. We clutched each other in fear and kept running until we came to my own apartments, startling Anubis into a warning snarl before he recognised our scent.

We barred the doors successively behind us as we went in through the outer office, inner office, outer living quarters and finally the inner rooms, which only contained my bedroom, a small store for treasures, and my bathroom.

‘Ptah-hotep,’ gasped my lady, freeing her body from cloth and jewellery. ‘I am horrified, I am revolted, but I am so sick with lust that I will not be able to think unless…’

I was in the same condition. Even when we had run—and why had we run like that? No one was chasing us, certainly no one would have missed us or noticed our going—I had been aroused almost to pain. I tore at the strings of my loincloth and threw it away and dropped the king’s gifts on top of it.

No delicacies were between us this time, no more words, just raw need. I slid down onto the floor, lying on my back; she swooped down upon me like a heron, and we were joined so close and so hard that we reached a climax in what seemed like moments. Before my phallus had time to shrink, it was hard again, and this time our coupling lasted longer.

I had never mated like that, not with man or woman. It was so ferocious, straining to get closer, to bury myself in the female body which strove to swallow me into herself and suck an orgasm from me. Her muscles closed around my phallus like a fist. Our shared perception was gone. This was almost like battle, a struggle to wrench satisfaction from the other body, and when we climaxed again and collapsed, her body over mine, we were winded and shocked and unable to explain why we had been so rough with each other.

I was inside her heart again, and she in mine. Very carefully, we helped each other to our feet and stood on the cool marble of the washroom and bathed each other.

‘Oh, my lord, my love,’ she said, sluicing cool water over my body. She lathered my head and body with the soft herb-scented soap which Meryt made for me, and I felt oil and semen and wine wash off my skin and run down my body in runnels of filth. My lady used a whole huge well-jar of water on cleansing me, then she stood trembling as I did the same for her, soaping her hair and rinsing her until the water ran clear.

Then we were cold. We wrapped ourselves in several Nubian blankets made of softest goat’s wool and lay down together and fell asleep as though we had been stunned.

I was woken in the dead of night by Meryt knocking on the outer door. It was her special knock and I climbed out of bed and went to let her in. She had brought the wives and children with her and Hani as bodyguard.

‘Master, you shut me out!’ she exclaimed. I must have looked at her strangely, for she did not chide me further, but bustled