sister the Queen?’ I cried. ‘If not I, then another will light that pyre. Do no evil deed in the service of the gods, that’s what they taught me. If I do not die instead of her, then another will light the pyre, and the Royal Wife will die a terrible death!’
‘Better her than you,’ Mutnodjme flatly. She shocked me. Was she so willing to watch her sister immolated? She loved her sister. I said as much.
‘Certainly I love her. But she is the king’s accomplice in the evils of this reign. She rules the House of the Phoenix, and it may be fitting that she is the sacrifice, she may even be eagerly anticipating this end.’ Mutnodjme was thinking, elbow on knee, chin on fist. She sat like a man, legs spread, and stroked where she would have had a beard, thumb moving across her chin.
‘She knows what she is doing, she knows what the king is and what he has made of Egypt and of her. You know that such a death would condemn you to be nothing, to blow away. She may well be anticipating a happy afterlife, united with the Firebird. In any case, this choice which has been thrust upon you is not made for a religious reason.’
‘I agree,’ said Kheperren. ‘The king perhaps has always worried about your loyalty. You have never asked to be made a priest of the Aten. This is his way of testing whether you are still wedded to the old beliefs, which of course you are. The person who should light this pyre is Divine Father Ay, curse him with many curses.’
‘She is his daughter and he loved her once,’ put in Mutnodjme. ‘Perhaps he cannot bring himself to do it, so he has suggested this dreadful substitution to the king.’
‘No, he may well have suggested finding someone else; but he approves of your love for me, as it relieves him of any responsibility for you,’ I said, following her line of argument. ‘Either or both of Pannefer and Huy have done this to me.’
‘So they have. Now, we need to make plans for your escape,’ said Mutnodjme as if it were all settled. My heart ached for my loves, my dears. But I could not let them do this.
‘No, there will be no escape,’ I said. ‘I will appear tomorrow in the courtyard of the Phoenix, and on that I am not to be dissuaded. You see that it must be so,’ I said.
They must have seen, for they stopped arguing.
Chapter Twenty-four
Mutnodjme
I left him only to see my sister Merope bestowed on her new husband. The courtyard was buzzing with women’s voices, shrill and alarmed. Few of the women had been able to make choices such as I had made for my dearest sister, and most were afraid and all of them were talking. They had lived in palaces all their lives, I thought, looking at them with as much pity as I could summon.
What would they do, conferred on some unwashed commoner as secondary wife, dealing with the hatred and envy of his first wife and banished to the kitchen? Most of them were destined to be water-carriers or servants and few of them had the strength or the skill to even do that. The luckiest might find a kind man or a sex-starved youth who would appreciate them. But kind men were at a premium in Egypt, and I did not like their chances. They had been raised, trained and nurtured as the Ornaments of the King, and their fate was bitter.
So was mine. But if Ptah-hotep was to die on the morrow and there was still nothing that I could do, I could lie with him tonight, and I was resolved on that. If he tried to shut me out on my return I would break down his door.
Merope was scanning the crowd, greeting friends and searching for the sight of her new man. I wished her heartily well and said, ‘Sister, may you bear many children and be happy,’ as was customary.
‘Sister, I am desolated to leave you,’ she replied, which was true enough; she was in tears. But this fate was better than others which could come upon the king’s women.
Great Royal Spouse Whom the King Loves Who Exudes Fragrance Ruler of the Ruler of the Double Crown Nefertiti was carried into the middle of the expostulating women and set on the dais above the pile of precious wood.
‘Women, you are divorced of