Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,114

turn around and go straight out again until she calmed down, but she gestured to me to come in and with Tiye may she live it was much better, in the long run, to do as one was told.

I joined Merope against the window. She was shaking. I took her in my arms and she leaned her forehead against my breast and whispered, ‘I think we are all about to die.’

‘Lady, sister, what is the matter?’ I asked, holding onto Merope and turning her face away from the Widow-Queen’s basilisk gaze.

‘The Great Royal Spouse of Egypt,’ spat Tiye, ‘has come to inform your sister Merope and I that we must marry again and confer our authority and our bodies on a commoner.’

‘Oh,’ I said lamely. This was so totally unheard-of that I really did not know what to say. The widow of a pharaoh belongs to his successor, that was the practice. She could not marry again unless Pharaoh divorced her, and if he did she had a right to take with her two thirds of all that she owned, as did any woman in Egypt. And the widow of a Pharaoh could not marry a common man, because she held in her right of marriage some claim to the throne.

Nefertiti had not remembered that she could have us all beheaded if we crossed her, and I had no intention of reminding her. My sister was frightened and looked to me to explain matters to this intransigent Royal Lady.

‘My lord Akhnaten has said, on our Divine Father’s advice, that it is of no profit to support the whole house of women of his late father,’ she quavered.

‘Therefore he has given each woman the right to choose a husband and he will release them from their marriage, requiring them only to marry another man.’

‘But, sister, that means that the Pharaoh Lord Akhnaten may he live will have to return to the Royal Women their property that is the law in Egypt,’ I said carefully. I assumed that my Divine Father Ay had thought of that, and he had.

‘No, no, sister, the priests of the Aten sole and only God will be happy to receive royal ladies into their houses, no dowry will be required.’

‘Nefertiti my sister, you are telling a woman who has been queen that she will have to go and live with a priest of Aten, and you are proposing to turn her out of the palace naked,’ I said, just to make sure that my sister got the point.

‘I really don’t think that the Lord of the Two Thrones could possibly have meant that. Are you sure?’

‘My Lord has given orders,’ she said mulishly, and there was never any reasoning with Nefertiti when she became stubborn.

‘The Royal Women will go with the priests of the Aten where they will be happy, and they have the rest of the month to prepare.’

‘Tell my son,’ said Widow-Queen Tiye, ‘that I will not marry again. If he wants me to die, I am willing to do that to please him and relieve that miser Ay of the burden of supplying my bread; but I will not marry. The others may do as they like, but not I. Is that clear, Great Royal Wife? I am staying here.’

Nefertiti nodded and made her escape.

I tried to release Merope but she clung. ‘Sister,’ she whispered, ‘Oh, dearest sister, I think that I see an escape from this loathsome existence.’

I called for some wine. She was clearly overwrought.

Ptah-hotep

The King Akhnaten may he live called us all to the Window of Appearances to hear his announcement. The courtyard was filled with soldiers in ordered ranks. The Klashr archers and heavy infantry had the place of honour at the front. They lived nearest, in Thebes and all along the shores of the river down to Bubastis. The Hermotybies were behind, soldiers from Upper Egypt.

Each soldier had his land, awarded by the Pharaoh when he was accepted into the army and each tilled it as best he could, for he might be called into active service at any time. Each wore leather jerkins and battle-cloths provided by his own household and bore shield, sword, bow and arrows. Regiment, battalion and company, they all bore their own standards, a stout pole with a symbol on top, long enough so that when held by a mounted man it was visible to all fighters on the field

I considered them, the poles surmounted with a thousand images: hawks, crocodiles from Elephantine, the