Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,117

years, my Lord Ptah-hotep.’

He leaned forward and stared into my eyes. He had dark eyes in a broad face, much like the common people, a beaked nose and wide cheekbones. The eyes were very tired but shrewd and deep and they held my attention. ‘This I must tell you, Great Royal Scribe; unless we can contrive something, you and me and the Great Royal Wife Tiye, we are going to lose most of Egypt before the next Inundation.’

Chapter Twenty-one

Mutnodjme

Tani and Hani escorted me into the inner chamber of my lord Ptah-hotep’s office. They were both carrying spears and were grave—no jokes about lust this night. The Widow-Queen Tiye and I had groomed ourselves very carefully for this meeting. She was wearing her greying hair loose, threaded through with garlands and ribbons, and the finest gauze draped her limbs. I had borrowed Merope’s block-patterned cloth with indigo riders all over it and had tucked my own hair under a heavy court-wig, decorated with a lotus crown.

We wanted to look like we were going to a feast with no other thoughts but good wine and good company. The Widow-Queen had sung a little song as we paced the corridors. When I could hear what she was singing, it was not a feasting or a love song but a curse, sung to a light melody.

The Widow Queen Tiye says

The crocodile be against him in water

The snake be against him on land

He shall have no offering

No bread and no beer

No wine and no oil

The earth shall not be dug for him

The offerings shall not be made for him

When he dies, when he dies.

She was frightening me, this red-headed woman, and I began to wonder whether there might have been something in the old superstition that red hair is a sign of the children of Set the Destroyer.

The occupants of the room rose as we came in. There was my dear Ptah-hotep, and with him a young man equally slim and well made, with black eyes and dark, weathered skin. He smiled and bowed, as did the huge man hauling himself out of the chair of state.

General Horemheb still stood a cubit above me. His chest was massive, his hands were huge as he took mine very carefully, bowed, and then knelt to the Widow-Queen as was proper. She put her right palm on his head and told him to rise and we all sat down.

‘Meryt has made a feast and we will have to eat it,’ said Ptah-hotep with a trace of apology. ‘Otherwise my domestic life will not be worth living.’

‘That does not seem to be a heavy task,’ said General Horemheb, smiling, and when Meryt and Teti came in escorting a train of children, all bearing dishes, he greeted the Nubians in very good Nubian.

‘Hail, lady of the Village-between-two-trees!’ he said, and Meryt was so surprised that she almost dropped her big platter of cooked meat. She replied in her own tongue, ‘Hail, Great Warrior! You do my family honour by eating with us. When were you in the Village-between-two-trees, lord?’

‘But last year. The children who were babes when the Egyptians came are grown now and your uncle is Chief. He sends you greetings, sister.’

It was a measure of the worth of the General Horemheb that he had remembered the slave Meryt, whom he had seen perhaps twice, and had enquired into the state of her home village. The Nubians all bowed to him.

Then I collected a piece of egg panbread and a slice of fennel cake and Meryt’s speciality, flat fried goat, from a very self-important toddler. The food was exclusively Nubian and very tasty.

‘How are you getting along in your study of cuneiform, lady Mutnodjme?’ asked Kheperren. This was my lord’s heart’s love and I examined him closely, hoping that he was worthy of such regard.

‘It is very difficult. I shall try learning a few new signs every day, practicing the previously-learned ones, and I may master it before I die of old age. I stand in awe of anyone who can decipher three languages from the same script. Babylonian is not too difficult to learn if you have someone to talk to, and there were three Babylonian ladies in the temple where I learned such things,’ I replied, censoring the name of Isis may she forgive me. ‘How is your Nubian? Your general is very fluent.’

‘Not too bad, but I have had to learn it, lady, we have a large number of Nubian troops. It is not a particularly