Horemheb, and no one could take me away from him.
Ptah-hotep
I was worried. I could not account for my sense of dread. I was in the palace of the Great Royal lady Sitamen—not even an edict of the king could make her change her name to delete the forbidden god and turn her into Sitaten—and I could not have been more safe. The daughters of Neith—warrior women and well-armed—guarded every entrance.
The lady Nefertiti had been handed over to a clutch of doting ladies who had obviously been longing for someone to look after.
I had tired of her continual wailing about how her husband could do this to her—‘how could he?’—for it was beyond me that she could ask such a thing when she had seen there was nothing he would not do to honour his foul god; when she had been his active accomplice in, for instance, the suppression of learning in Egypt.
She was very beautiful, but only if she was out of earshot.
I concluded that my nerves were obviously out of order and left the room I had been allotted—a cool shaded one, under a vine—to go and find someone to talk to. Preferably, I wanted the Princess the Lady Sitamen. I needed some task.
I found her watching archery practice. She did not seem to have taken her eyes off the field, but she greeted me by name.
‘Lord Ptah-hotep, blessed be Amen-Re in his rising.’
‘Praise to the good god,’ I answered, after a moment’s fumbling in my memory. I had used this only once since the Aten had been established, and that was when Mutnodjme and Kheperren had bidden me farewell and I had walked out to my death.
‘It was a close thing,’ she said, motioning me to sit beside her. ‘My mother had only time to send me word that you were coming an hour before you came. If you had arrived unannounced, the guards would have kept you in the boat until daylight, and that might have been dangerous.’
‘Indeed, though I doubt that we were pursued.’
‘If the king finds out that his wife is here, I may have to stand a siege,’ she answered, then clapped her appreciation as a stalwart woman drew back a full-sized bow to her ear and the arrow thudded into the exact centre of the cloth and straw target.
‘Lady, that is true. Princess, what would you have me do here? For I would not exchange one prison for another, and I am used to working.’
‘Hmm,’ I had caught her attention. ‘You wish to leave?’
‘Not precisely, lady. I am delighted to be alive, or I would be if a cloud of misery had not settled on me. Give me something to do.’
‘That is easily found,’ she said. The Princess had aged like a soldier, as Kheperren had aged. Here were the helmet galls, the crows’ feet, the harsh lines on throat and forehead from staring across the plain and from the weather. But she was vigorous and strong still, this daughter of Amenhotep-Osiris. Her eyes were bright and their gaze was level.
‘When the temple of Amen-Re was closed we rescued a huge bundle of documents,’ she said. ‘Some of the citizens had found them, dug them up and were using them to light fires. No one has looked at them yet. Some of my women are literate, but none have a taste for learning or they would have gone to the temple of Isis. I would esteem it a favour if you could catalogue the writings.
‘Come every evening and read something to me, Ptah-hotep. It is not safe for you to be abroad, not yet, and in any case it is too hot for journeys. When inundation comes with Akhet and the days are cooler, men will have ceased to search for Ptah-hotep.’
‘If they are searching at all. No one was near when the pyre blazed up but the Widow-Queen Tiye.’
‘Who would never forgive me if anything happened to you after she has gone to such a lot of trouble and put herself in such danger to rescue you. You still wear her pectoral, lord. She must have commended you highly.’
‘She said that Amenhotep-Osiris would have been proud of me.’
We paused to watch the archers. They were very skilful. I made up my mind. Learning had always served me well. As that very same Amenhotep-Osiris had said: The one comfort which will not fail is learning.
I took the Princess Sitamen’s calloused hand. Her nails were cut short and her knuckles had recently been rubbed