Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,119

eyes, and most eyes which have been fixed on my back have had an arrow trained along their gaze.’

‘It is nothing, lord general, and I do not startle easily,’ I replied. He examined me.

‘No, you don’t, do you? Tell me, lady Mutnodjme, where have you been since I last saw you?’ I liked his voice, it was deep and a little harsh.

‘In the temple, General, learning all I could learn, and then here, since Amenhotep-Osiris went to the Field of Reeds.’

‘And what do you do here? Apart from feast and make love?’

‘I learn, lord, one can learn anywhere. Good speech is rare, but it can be found in the speech of common women at the mill-stone, as was said in…’

‘The Maxims of Ptah-hotep!’ exclaimed General Horemheb. ‘My scribe has been quoting him to me for years. A very wise man.’

‘So is the present Ptah-hotep,’ I told him.

‘So I hear. You know, lady, I have been avoiding feasts for years. Do you know why?’

‘No, lord. Perhaps you were shy?’ I grinned at the huge, confident man.

‘Because I have never been to a feast where I have not had to listen to hours of elaborate compliment about being a soldier, together which a lot of ill-informed curiosity about what it feels like to kill someone. Not that they really wanted to know, you understand, not enough to actually listen. I tired very quickly of bringing stay-at-home sluggards the thrill of action, so I just refused all invitations. This is the first time I can recall that I have actually enjoyed myself at a feast.’

‘Perhaps because we know some of it, and would not think of asking the rest,’ I said.

‘Lady, I find it difficult to ascertain exactly what you know, but you are no palace ornament of the king, are you?’

‘No, lord, I am merely, as you know, the base-born half-sister of Nefertiti the Great Royal Wife; and my father, I regret to say, is Divine Father Ay and my mother is Royal Nurse Tey; and I must ask you not to hold my parentage against me. And I would never qualify as Ornament of the King,’ I said, making a play on the title of the Royal Women. General Horemheb was shaking his head.

‘Certainly not. You are very beautiful,’ he said consideringly, ‘but you are far too intelligent to be a concubine. What is this I hear, by the way, about your father making the Royal Women marry? I never heard of such a thing!’

‘Neither did I,’ I agreed, signalling to him to keep his voice down. ‘Not only is it shockingly unfair—some of the Royal Women have been here since they were small children, and they are old now—but what will the King tell the allies when they ask what has become of our sisters whom we sent you for espousal?

A lot of treaties were sealed with a marriage with Amenhotep-Osiris. The treaty with Kriti in the Great Green Sea was sealed with the gift of my dearest sister Merope, a princess of her island. If she is given away to a priest, what will King Minos of Kriti say about the insult?’

‘And what will Merope say?’ asked the Widow-Queen, who had caught some of this. ‘He even had the audacity to tell me that I must marry again—I, his mother!’

Ptah-hotep, who had clearly not heard of this, looked startled. ‘But, lady, are you sure that’s…’ he began, caught the Widow-Queen’s eyes, and said hastily. ‘I am sure that you are, of course, naturally, one would not make a mistake about such an outrageous proposal. But whoever thought of this must not have considered the foreign implications. One cannot give away the wives of a previous King as though they were a handful of festival ribbons!’

‘Why can’t he, if he does not care for the opinion of any but the Aten?’ demanded Kheperren.

‘Who are the priests of the Aten?’ asked General Horemheb.

‘Some of them are priests of Amen-Re who have seen the error of their previous ways,’ said Ptah-hotep. ‘Some are traders out of the market or commoners from the fields who do not even wash before they don their fine crowns and vestments. And some are boys, taken like I was taken, out of the schools. There is a school for scribes in the new temple of the Aten in Amarna now, and the children of the nobility go there. Some are aiming to repair their family’s fortunes and all of them are aiming to amass as much treasure