Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,127
we were casting about for more work when a slave slammed the door open and announced, ‘The Great King’s Chamberlain Whom He loves, Huy!’
And there was Huy’s oily countenance and his scent of cassia, his usual perfume, offending my apartments. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of onions and garlic which Kheperren still exuded.
‘My lord, what can a humble servant of the King do to honour your visit?’ I asked in the accepted mode of address between superior and inferior, which I knew would annoy him.
‘My lord has sent me to order you to come to his presence,’ he said, using no words of ceremony at all.
‘I come,’ I said, climbing to my feet and brushing down my garment. This summons was unusual. I had not been called to the King’s presence since he had dictated poetry to me. He seemed happy to know that the office of Great Royal Scribe went on efficiently—or perhaps he did not care what I was doing.
Now, however, something had attracted his attention, doubtless bought to him by either Pannefer or Huy, or perhaps the Divine Father Ay. It might have been a coincidence that this summons came after we had heard that something was going on to change the status of the Great Royal Spouse Nefertiti. I shot a look at Paneb, the boy whom I suspected of being the spy, but he looked blank.
I brushed Kheperren’s neck with my hand as I stood up, and the lady Mutnodjme’s knee. I straightened my cloth, which smelt of onions, and smiled reassuringly at my worried staff. I took up a papyrus roll and my writing board, ink and stylus, the tools of a scribe to which I was entitled.
Then I went out, flanked by soldiers, feeling like a prisoner.
They stopped in an antechamber to the great temple of the Aten and motioned to me to sit down, so I sat. Huy paused for a parting sneer at the door and left. Waiting has never worried me. I had a lot to think about.
The lady Mutnodjme and Kheperren appeared to be getting along well. This was excellent. I remembered the stab of jealousy I had felt when I realised that Kheperren was the general’s lover, and his flash of rage when he knew that I had lain with Meryt so long ago. There had been nothing like that this time. Of all lucky men in the Black Land—and there were not many fortunate men in Egypt at this present time—I was probably the most blessed. I had position and wealth which had not made me proud like Pannefer, corrupt like Huy or a miser like Divine Father Ay. I had been able to benefit those whom I loved, my family and my Master Ammemmes. Those who loved me called me generous. I was healthy and over the age when field workers die of exhaustion and poverty, and I might live twenty years more. I had two lovers who both loved me and liked each other.
No one else could have made this boast, though I was not boasting. In spite of the advent of the Aten, I knew what I had to confess after I was dead, and I knew my Book of Coming Forth by Day by heart. I would say: Lord Osiris, I did no evil, except that under duress I ate the flesh of a sacred beast which I afterwards vomited forth. I gave food to the hungry and water to the thirsty and to those who could not cross the water I have boats. I lay with no woman when she was still a child. I took no bribes. I did not oppress the widow and the fatherless. No man cried to me for mercy that I did not hear.
And in my mind’s eye I could see my funeral, and I could hear the voices of the priestess of Isis and a scribe of the army, stretching out their arms to me, crying, Ptah-hotep, dear love, come back to thy house!
When the King’s soldiers came for me, I was quite prepared to die.
Chapter Twenty-three
Mutnodjme
I had never been so frightened in my life.
Danger is all right if it’s you. Not that I ever went seeking it. But if I am the threatened one, I am immersed in the action, and until it is over my attention is firmly engaged. In real peril one does not usually even have time to notice that one is afraid until it is all over.