Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,146

who saw me would assume that their eyes had deceived them. I should have been elated. I had defied the Pharaoh, I had not done a vile deed in the name of his god, and I had escaped, moreover in the company of the most beautiful woman in Egypt.

But I was close to tears. I shook myself. Thousand Fishes in a Net heeled a little then the current caught her; we were going towards the Delta. I curled up on my fish-scented boards and watched the ship’s cat, who was still staring at the same corner of the same basket.

She did not move for hours, and I found my attention entirely engaged by the hunter. She was a slim stripy cat, very like Basht, the cat belonging to the little princesses Merope and Mutnodjme in the days before terror and madness had ruled Egypt. The cat was resting easily on all four paws, her tail out behind her to act as a balance for any swift movement. I concentrated on her, the alert ears, the spread whiskers, the eyes never moving from the place where her prey must, eventually, emerge. The cat had immense patience. She would stay where she was until she caught that rat. Its doom was already written in the book of life.

My lady Nefertiti, finding me disinclined for conversation, took herself to a corner and began to comb out her hair with a crude bone comb which must have belonged to a sailor. Her head must have been shaved recently, for the hair was no more than a span long, but it was gummed to her head with sweat and dust. I heard her exclaim every time she found a knot, and after a while I heard her weeping.

I was too tired to rise and comfort her. I lay on the decking and watched the intent face of the cat.

We had sailed all day. I had been interrupted once by Aapahte coming to see that all was well with his prisoners, and several times by sailors bringing food or loading split fresh fish into the salt-baskets which lay on the other side of the hold.

Their advent did not disturb the cat, or me. I thought it sensible that the vessel Thousand Fishes in a Net was behaving as it usually would. We did not want to attract any attention. By the number of fish which were being deposited, she was also living up to her name.

I wondered how the queen—clad only in the gauze cloth suitable for the City of the Sun—was feeling about having naked sailors carry burdens past her as she lay in her corner. But they were extremely well behaved, passing her as though they did not see her. They ignored me, too, except for the one who apologised for treading on my foot.

We had turned and I heard the order for oars. We were rowed into a harbour, perhaps, or the jetty of a city. Aapahte came down to tell us that we had arrived. He had just set foot on the boards when the striped cat sat back on her tail and batted something with a skilled deadly paw. It flew through the air and landed beside my hand, and she was on it in a flash. It was, however, quite dead. Its neck had been broken by that ferocious blow. A huge rat, almost as big as she was. The cat hoisted her prey proudly in her mouth and carried it away to show her captain, its tail trailing on the ground behind her.

A good omen, perhaps, to mark the arrival of Ptah-hotep and Nefertiti at the palace of the Widow-Queen’s daughter—the Great Royal Lady of Amenhotep-Osiris, Daughter of the King’s Body Whom He Loves, Sitamen, devotee of the goddess of hunters, Lady of the Arrow, Neith.

I was so weary that it was all I could do to drag myself across the landing-plank, up the steps, and fall into a ‘kiss-earth’ at the Princess Sitamen’s bare, calloused feet.

Chapter Twenty-six

Mutnodjme

We wailed for the little princess, and for a wonder I saw the King Akhnaten—may he perish—weeping. He was now completely isolated, I realised. No one still lived who might have told him the truth. He had disposed of his wife, who although foolish and ambitious had loved him; and his Great Royal Scribe, who would always have been truthful because it was his nature. His most blasphemous and horrible ceremony in the courtyard had lost him the most beautiful woman in