Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,129

my mind away. In mid afternoon the messenger from the office of the Master of the Household came to deliver to Merope the papyrus which decreed that she was no longer a Great Royal Wife and the order that she was to attend on the Queen in the courtyard an hour before night. There she would be given away to her new husband, the Aten.

‘It appears that we are in the presence of sophistry,’ commented the Widow-Queen Tiye. ‘My son will say to all those Kings who ask for their daughters and sisters that they are all married to the Aten, and since the King is the Aten then they are all, in a way, still married to him and the alliances sealed with their bodies are still in force. I wonder who thought of that?’

‘Probably my father,’ I said. Was there no end to his meanness? I sent word to the temple school in the town that Dhutmose should come and collect his bargain after the ceremony.

The messenger came back breathless and reported, ‘They are building the strangest fire in the courtyard!’

‘Strangest? How do you mean?’ I asked. Tiye gave me a look which bade me ask no more and I ignored her for the first time in my life.

‘It’s made of precious woods. Cinnamon wood, and cassia, and myrrh.’

It meant nothing to me. It did mean something to the Widow-Queen Tiye, however, for she immediately ordered the Royal Sculptor to attend on her. When he arrived—the best of the Amarna artists, a true genius with wood and stone—she drew him into her own bedchamber, leaving Merope and I to talk of her new husband.

I rapidly ran out of things to say about the worthy Dhutmose. Merope kissed me and drew me close, and we occupied a hour, perhaps, in pleasing her and inserting the eye stones into their treasure-chest. I brought her easily to a climax, but I was far too tense to take pleasure even in the breasts and the mouth of my most delightful sister, even though I was about to lose her.

Why was there no word of Ptah-hotep? I could not lie still even in Merope’s embrace. I kissed her and said, ‘Sister, I must go and discover what I can,’ and with moist eyes, she released me.

I went to the office of the Great Royal Scribe and found it silent. Immense diligence was being exhibited by all of the scribes, even Mentu, who was translating Hittite letters into Egyptian. No one looked up and I was directed to the inner apartment by a wary wave of Khety’s stylus.

When I reached the place where Meryt and her brothers lived, I found them packing. Bundles were being made of fine cloth and small children compulsorily fed and washed. Babies wailed. Teti, who was the calmest of the brothers, stubbed his foot on a table and swore explosively. Anubis was stalking stiffly from one group to another, whimpering.

‘You have something heard?’ Meryt’s Egyptian was deserting her. I shook my head. She continued to fold cloth into a roll which would go over someone’s shoulders, secured with leather straps.

‘You’re expecting the worst,’ I commented. She finished the roll and grabbed my hand, leading me to one side, out of the way of Hala who was loading onto a small wriggling child all the bracelets which its little arm could carry, stiffening it from shoulder to elbow.

‘All our lives together he has been living on the edge of a razor,’ she whispered. ‘We have orders as to what to do if he is summoned unexpectedly to the king. See, here I have all our freedoms, not written by him but by the old man Amenhotep-Osiris and sealed by the office.’ She replaced the papyrus in the bosom of her cloth.

‘We have title to all of our goods and we have a safe-conduct to the Village-between-two-trees sealed by the Pharaoh Akhnaten and countersealed by General Horemheb. As soon as any word comes, Kheperren’s soldiers are waiting to take us to the river.’

‘Kheperren is here?’

She waved at the bed chamber and I went that way, feeling superfluous. Meryt had the household in hand and would get it away safely at the earliest opportunity. I had not known my lover long enough to have received any instructions as to what I should do in this eventuality. I began to wonder whether I knew him at all.

But there was the emotion, which was not mine, on the edge of my feelings; calm acceptance.