Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,128
another person is agonising. I could think of nothing to do after I saw my dearest love walk out between two soldiers to what Huy, at least, grinning through his rotten teeth, thought was a terrible fate.
Ptah-hotep walked calmly to whatever doom the mad king was going to put him.
‘I’m going to the general,’ gasped Kheperren, and was gone in a flash of limbs. I told Meryt to send for me as soon as any word came and ran to the Widow-Queen Tiye.
She was loading Merope with gold so that she would not go to her husband with nothing. Divine Father Ay had sent around a list of the jewellery and goods which had arrived with each princess, and he wanted it all back or accounted for before they left the palace.
‘Oh, dearest sister,’ Merope grabbed me as I whirled into the inner chamber. ‘Tell me, is he kind? Is he young? Will he be a good lover?’
‘I suspect he’ll be an excellent lover, dear Merope, but he’s forty. There was not a young man in the whole scribal school who was fit for you to wipe your feet on. I’ll tell you more later. Great Royal Lady Tiye, what does the king want with Ptah-hotep?’
‘There is nothing that you can do,’ said Tiye slowly. ‘Go on telling your sister about her new husband. Has this Dhutmose sealed the deed?’
‘Yes, I saw him. The deal is made. What do you mean, lady, that there is nothing I can do?’
‘I mean what I say, which is my habit,’ snapped Tiye. ‘We will see. If I can help your man, daughter, you know that I will. But he has to make his own destiny to live or die. We must await events. Now, tell us about Merope’s new owner.’
‘He’s a cuddly forty, a scribe, a man of learning, with a small daughter who is motherless. He was a priest of the temple at Thebes before the present one, now a priest of the Aten so he qualifies,’ I prattled.
What did she mean, the red-headed woman, that Ptah-hotep must make his own destiny? He had always done so, hadn’t he? He had dealt with loss and pain and loneliness as best he could, suffered high office which was thrust upon him, lived within his own code in a palace with no rules.
I assumed that the Widow-Queen’s calm meant that either his death had been decreed beyond doubt or that this was not a threatening situation. It didn’t feel like the latter. I was distracted, but if she said there was nothing I could do then there really was nothing. Tiye would not have discounted any action; secret murder, treason, bribery, if the method would achieve her intended result. Widow-Queen Tiye alarmed me almost as much as the situation. She was a woman to whom literally nothing was, in itself, out of the question.
And she said that there was nothing I could do.
So I swallowed fear, digested anxiety, and gave such of my mind as I could locate to preparing my dear sister Merope for her new husband.
Merope was flushed with excitement. I had never seen her so beautiful. She had combed out her own ash bark coloured hair and garlanded it with lotus blossoms. Her cloth was gauze and draped her slim flanks and thighs as she inspected the growing pile of gold armrings and pectorals in her lap.
‘This is too much,’ she told the Widow-Queen.
‘Are you not my sister, Great Royal Wife of my husband?’ asked Tiye, adding a little pouch of the most precious of jewels, the blue rounded ‘eye-stone’ which came from deep in Nubia, eight dark-blue gems with a flash of white light in them.
‘In case you are stripped of your adornment before you are allowed to leave, my dear, place these stones where they will not be found by any man except the one to whom you are pledging your future,’ she said with a chuckle. Such a hiding place would only have occurred to that most ingenious of ladies. Merope blushed.
‘I’ll help you conceal them,’ I promised, and she laughed and kissed me.
What was happening to Ptah-hotep? I could feel his calm, his acceptance. He was going to his death with perfect ease, perhaps even a tinge of relief. My whole mind and body rebelled against such an end to his life, to what might have been our shared life. Was this why he did not marry me? So that I would not share his downfall?