Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,109

the little ones into their places and ordered Hani to take Anubis and mind the door. Hani was sleepy and drunk, but Anubis was alert. He was an old dog now, but his reflexes were as sharp as ever.

‘I have heard strange things,’ she said. ‘But they can wait until morning, Master.’

I staggered back to the blankets, and wrapped myself so that I was lying as close to my lady as I could, and fell asleep again.

Morning brought Meryt with an infusion of bitter herbs and the news that most of the palace had gone mad the previous night.

‘You were well out of that feast, Master,’ she told me, watching to make sure that I drank her infusion and handing a pottery cup to my lady. I assumed that Meryt used pottery cups for her infusions because they would eat through bronze. While I was testing the inside of my mouth to see if all my teeth were there and trying to recollect the previous evening—which had ended agreeably, it seemed—Meryt continued.

‘This morning the servants came to clear up and found three people dead of some sort of frenzy, Master. Dead among the broken wine cups and torn clothes and spilled beer. The floor was slippery with blood and man-seed, what happened at that feast? I have heard of such things in barbarian tribes such as the vile Kush, but never in the painted feasting-hall of an Egyptian King!’

‘Oh, Lady Isis, I remember,’ exclaimed Mutnodjme, and in a rush, so did I. We groaned. ‘Did we…did the King…’ she began, and I agreed.

‘Yes, we did. We coupled like animals. And the King served up a special dessert. It was composed of all the sacred beasts of Egypt, and he made us eat it.’

I beat my lady by a whisker to the closet, where we vomited up all the holy flesh which we might have eaten, as well as a lot of wine. Meryt, understanding only that something terrible had occurred, made us a drink of beaten eggs and milk and cinnamon to settle our rebellious insides.

Then we washed again and clothed ourselves and sat down out of earshot to watch Meryt teaching Hani’s youngest how to feed himself with a spoon—he was now three and had been newly weaned—and to consider what we had seen.

‘There was an aphrodisiac herb in the wine the King poured for us,’ Mutnodjme told me. ‘It is possible that the whole feast was designed by the King to make us lose control. The wine was double strength, the food was excellent, and the music was exciting.’

‘Someone designed this other than the King Akhnaten may he live,’ I protested. ‘He has little tact and has already presented us with the statement that there are no gods other than the Aten and we had better believe so, on pain of death. No, this is a dark plotting mind. This was to drag us all into dreadful sin, to turn us away from whatever we might have had left of devotion to the old gods. For now everyone at that feast, including me and even you, have committed an unforgivable sin.’

‘So we cannot afford to believe in the old gods, because if we do believe in them, we condemn ourselves to everlasting torment?’

‘As long as it takes for a heart to be eaten by Aphopis, yes.’

‘And now we are accomplices, are we not? Co-offenders. We are all in the same prison wearing identical fetters having committed identical crimes.’

‘That is the idea.’

‘Huy,’ she decided.

‘Pannefer,’ I argued.

‘Possibly both,’ she conceded. ‘Do you feel burdened by a dreadful sin, Ptah-hotep, my beloved?’

‘Not really. If I had been force-fed ibis flesh, I would have committed no sin, and that was close to force-feeding such as men do to geese. In the same fashion, watch the way Meryt distracts the child and then pops a spoonful of porridge into his mouth. It was like that. What could we do, with the King actually watching us?’

‘We could say,’ she observed, ‘that by eating the flesh of our gods we have communed with them, taken them inside us.’

‘That’s a good thought, and it comforts me.’

I embraced her gently, my wise lady, careful of the bruises, and she kissed what she said was a bite on my throat.

I had another thought. ‘Mark the ingenuity of it, my beloved lady. First they served fish, a forbidden creature, but every farmer in the Black Land eats fish so that did not seem sinful. Certainly not customary but not