him until the marriage is contracted; so said the King through his Queen Nefertiti.’
‘Why in the name of all the gods…’ she began, and the Widow-Queen laid a finger on her lips.
‘Because the King is afraid of everything; most of all he is afraid of the power of women. He gave the cult of the Phoenix to his wife to make her important and give her a position; a sop to satisfy her craving for adoration. She has not noticed that she has lost all her rights—the right to sit in council, the right to her own palace and her own guards, to her own general and army, to her own property, and even the rights over her own body, though that is not an issue. All women in the Black Land have lost these things, because the Queen has lost them. And he is marrying his eldest daughter, which is proper, but he is giving the mating of her to a priest of the Aten.’
‘But she’s only eleven, still a child. Which priest of the Aten?’
‘The head priest of course, Mutnodjme. Nothing is too good for the head priest of the Aten. Not even a child princess of Egypt.’
‘Divine Father Ay!’ choked Mutnodjme, and I knelt down beside her, ready to support her head if she vomited. She mastered her disgust in a moment, but her hand remained on my shoulder.
‘We can do nothing for the Princess Mekhetaten,’ said the Great Royal Wife. ‘But we can at least get one innocent out of this palace. Tomorrow, Mutnodjme, you will go looking for a husband for Merope.’
‘As you will, Lady,’ she said softly.
She sounded like the very pattern of humility, but I could feel her fury in my embrace, as though we were communicating skin to skin. I hoped that she was not angry with me. I hoped that she would not take her anger out on the innocent Kheperren. He knew very little of women, living almost his whole life as a man among men.
I remembered that the priestesses of Isis walked where they willed as did all women, and began to realise how terrible a prohibition this order might be to her. I was not only picking up anger from the lady. I was sensing despair.
I could not comfort her with words, though I could feel her side warming against mine and my touch might have soothed her. I had nothing, however, to say.
Kheperren had. He lifted his cup and said ‘Few scribes receive such delightful orders! The last one I was given sent me into an ambush by the vile Kush, lady.’
‘This one may be less perilous,’ said my lady Mutnodjme, and smiled at him.
Chapter Twenty-two
Mutnodjme
I had never chosen a husband for anyone before. Merope had been unable to tell me anything particular, how could she? But she said she wanted a kind man, gentle and strong, with proven fertility and no vices, and we broke down giggling as we realised that what she was describing were the points of a good horse.
The stud market of Aten was open for business and Kheperren and I entered as worshippers. I knew that the Aten was a predominately male religion, but I was not prepared for the temple, which was beautiful beyond belief, decorated with friezes of rural scenes and golden images of the sun disc. All the walls of the inner chamber were carved with images of the royal family, worshipping the Aten together, with the sun’s rays ending in little hands which came down to bless them; Nefertiti the Queen and Akhnaten the King and the little princesses.
I walked away from Kheperren to examine a particularly fine frieze, and at once I was surrounded by men. For the purposes of selecting a suitable man for another woman, I had donned an opaque cloth belonging to my days as a temple maiden and had covered my shoulders and breasts with a plain shawl. This did not preserve me from peering and whispering. I became very uncomfortable. I was behaving in the way which the lord Akhnaten required, I was modest, I was humble, I looked no man in the face, I kicked no man in the crotch for the vile things which they were suggesting to me, but it was not helping. Fingers slid inside my clothes and I was just about to forget this veil of humility and fight back when Kheperren came to my side and all the tweakers and whisperers fell silent. I looked up