raw. ‘Lady, I will do as you wish.’
She punched me lightly in the chest and sent me away to look at the manuscripts while the warrior women shot arrows into targets in the courtyard of her palace.
***
I found that the days were slipping past without anything to mark them. I found that I could sleep, though I had vivid dreams. I dreamed one night that Kheperren was lying beside me and the disappointment when I woke alone was so acute that I burst into tears. I dreamed strange little pictures which had no connection with anything I had ever seen. I saw Mutnodjme cleaning a soldier’s armour, humming as she often did, under her breath, and I had certainly not seen that in waking life. I saw Kheperren throwing a spear, though I could not see his enemy, but woke with the sensation of dust in my eyes and war-shouts echoing in my ears. I heard the sound of wailing and saw the funeral of a royal princess through eyes which were quite dry.
I also wondered that they sent no word to me, and so, after Inundation had failed again, did the Princess Sitamen.
‘I have had no word from my mother,’ she announced, walking into the house of books. I was sitting easily on the floor, reading a full copy of the Prophecies of Neferti, pleased that my reconstruction had been, as far as I could remember, accurate to the word.
‘You are worried, lady?’
‘Very worried.’ She bit her knuckle. ‘Never has such a long period gone past without some greeting from her, even if she had nothing in particular to say she would not fail to write to me. I have written four letters to her and received no reply. My messengers have handed over the correspondence to the right people, I have questioned them. Something has happened in that cursed city.’
‘Nothing more probable,’ I assured her, putting down the prophecy and allowing the scroll to roll up under its own weight.
‘Could he have killed her?’ she asked with a soldier’s bluntness.
I thought about it. I shook my head.
‘I really don’t think so, lady. I cannot imagine him having the courage even to order such an execution. What do your messengers say? Is there gossip about the Widow-Queen’s fate?’
‘No, there is nothing. You are accounted dead, Ptah-hotep; and so is the queen Nefertiti. You both perished in the fire of spices. The daughter of the king who was married to him that night, Mekhetaten, is dead, died the next morning, and the townspeople are whispering that Tey poisoned her.’
‘That does not seem likely,’ I said.
‘No, she would want the royal daughter alive, though there are more royal daughters. Meritaten is the next in age. Bitter will be her fate and that of my brothers. Smenkhare is already invested as Great Royal Wife and is being used, they say, by Divine Father Ay as though he was a woman. And there is still Tutankhaten and Ankhesenpaaten to play with. Poor children, to be so abused.’
‘But the Widow-Queen, what does gossip say of her?’
The Princess scowled at me. ‘Nothing, I told you, scribe. There is no word of her at all. Not alive, not dead. I came to you to ask if there was someone to whom we could write who might know more.’
‘Mutnodjme,’ I said, delighted by the idea of communicating with my loves again. ‘Or Kheperren. One is Tey’s daughter, one is the scribe of General Horemheb.’
‘Horemheb has gone, taking his personal guard to the borders where Mitanni wars with Assyria. It will have to be the lady. Very well, you may write, but you must use such words as cannot be attributed to you,’ she warned.
‘We do not know what is happening in Amarna while the rest of the country goes to ruin and destruction. The message may be intercepted. I wish I knew what was happening in that cursed place!’
She began to pace and I began to think.
What could I send to Mutnodjme which would tell her where I was? A terrible thought occurred to me.
‘Lady, when did the Widow-Queen go into seclusion? Do you know when?’
‘She has not been seen or heard from since the night of the sacrifice to the Phoenix, why?’
‘Because my lovers have been thinking me dead unless she has managed to get some word to them,’ I knew now where the load of despair which had descended on me had come from. They mourned me. They thought me gone. If they had not