difficult dialect. But I can’t speak Babylonian at all.’
He was far too thin for a scribe, who usually tended to fat due to the sedentary nature of their profession. He had a scar on his forehead, running up into his hair which was white over the track, giving him an appearance of being painted, like the Nubians warriors who had been known to dye their heads and beards red or blue. He looked like a child of the common people, his colouring much like my own. But I knew, because Tiye the Queen had told me, that his father was a nobleman and his connections were very high indeed. His hands were restless. He had them clasped so that they would not move or tap. I recognised my own method of restraining tension. The knuckles were pale under the tanned brown skin. He wore a scribe’s long cloth, entirely plain, and a pectoral and earrings of stylised lotus blossoms, exceptionally beautiful and very valuable.
His general was wearing the same armour and cloth as any common soldier. I wondered that he had no medals of honour, because I had actually been there when Amenhotep-Osiris had given him a commendation for bravery, a golden fly, and the King had commented that he had a whole flock of flies already settled on his mail-shirt. That deed, I recalled, had been the rescue of a band of troops cut off and besieged under a mountain with no chance. Horemheb had sent his soldiers climbing down the cliff, going first himself, and had got all his soldiers out when the enemy’s attention had been diverted by a line of bonfires on the opposite ridge.
Horemheb was relaxing. I knew that he was seldom in company and perhaps he was not used to the presence of ladies. He did not go to feasts, saying that he was merely a rough soldier and did not know how to behave at such things. There was a saying in the palace at Thebes, used when someone talked about an unlikely happening; That will be when General Horemheb attends a feast!—meaning, never. But here he was at a feast, a small feast but a feast nonetheless, with garlands and wine and music.
The music was provided by Teti on double-pipe, his wife Hala on a drum and one of the other wives singing, all accompanied by any spare Nubian children clapping in time. Nubian children seem to absorb musical skill with their mother’s milk. I had seen one of them sit down quietly with a little drum and play for hours, teaching himself how to produce a variety of sounds. Like Egyptian music, the Nubian ‘day-long-song’ consisted of one voice singing a verse and the rest singing the chorus. Most of the songs were about love. This one was no exception. I could not follow all of it and I asked Kheperren the scribe to translate.
‘They are singing, Oh, my love, my maiden, she who is as slender as the pine tree, as sweet as the melon, as faithful as the sun,’ he sang along gently in Egyptian.
‘Come to me, my maiden, when the moon rises, when the night is loud with frogs, and lie down under the tree of fragrance, take me in your arms, make the night fall in love with the day.
‘It is a courtship song. A Nubian can keep singing it for months, until finally the object of his affection is seduced.’
‘Or she cannot bear one more verse and complies,’ I suggested.
He laughed and said, ‘On the condition that he does not sing anymore.’
We were friends. This pleased me and would certainly please Ptah-hotep who had been worried about having two lovers. I did not see any difficulty and it did not seem that Kheperren did, either. This was a relief. The song continued—I could see how, after a decan or so, it would begin to irritate the nerves—and the general who never went to feasts made polite conversation with the Widow-Queen Tiye and even made her laugh.
He still had the blue beads which I remembered from my encounter with the Nile. He was still huge and I imagined that he was still as strong as he had been when he had been a youth with smooth shoulders. He felt me looking at him and turned very quickly, as if expecting an enemy at his back, and laughed when he saw that it was only me.
‘Lady, I hope I did not startle you,’ he said. ‘I felt your