me to send to your sister?’
‘If the ingredients are here,’ she said carelessly, ‘I can probably make some for her.’
I kissed her feet and left the courtyard. I knew what shared incident I could use to convey my existence to Mutnodjme. And if the two items, a little carved potsherd and a flask of perfume, were delivered to Mutnodjme, my most beautiful lady—far more beautiful to me than the lady now honouring the lotus with her attention—then she would understand in a matter of seconds that she was not alone, that I was not dead, and that I still loved her.
And if they were delivered with their origin-mark as a shield and crossed arrows—the symbol of the city of Sais but also of the goddess Neith—then she would know where I was.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Mutnodjme
I had been a month the wife of the General Horemheb and I was not accustomed to being Mistress of the House.
It was intensely frustrating. The general had had no household to speak of, only a few servants to keep him clean and fed, after a fashion. Their idea of dinner appeared to be bread and a dish of beans, and their idea of a large festival dinner was bread, beans, and a piece of dried salted goat.
This had to change. After a few days of sulking and a few more days of outright defiance, the three original servants settled down with the seven new ones and began to form alliances and foster feuds. I did little to discourage this, while doing nothing to encourage it. While they were vying for my favour, I thought, they were probably not plotting mutiny. The general had given me a free hand, stating that the household was my concern and he would never question my governance of it, but that meant that I had to rule it as mistress or I would never be able to take some time away to pursue my studies in cuneiform. I did not mean to tolerate a group of servants who could not be relied on to manage the house from one moment to the next, and that is what I had.
So I listened to hours of complaint from my new cook, about the old cook who had been relieved of burning roasts and boiling beans to pursue his natural talents—which were complaining, and a remarkable skill at carving wood where he had shown no flair for carving meat. None of them had to do lowly work like carrying water; and all of them were well-fed and well-housed. After a week spent being served grudgingly by the household, who resented my advent and were taking advantage of their master’s absence, I gathered them together for a conference.
There were my four house-women, my own choice and therefore my own fault. Ankherhau and Ii had been priestesses of Isis, though one would never guess it from the way they had reverted to the Amarna ideal of women—brainless and promiscuous. Takhar the cook was a young woman who had just been cheated of marriage by a manservant and who had become despondent. Wab was a little girl who had been mistreated in the kitchen, whom I had personally rescued.
There were my six manservants, ranging from Ipuy, a surly old soldier whom I had inherited from Horemheb—he had been in his first campaign and I assumed that he had sentimental value —to Kasa, a pouting boy of about ten who had a vague connection to the cook.
They all came in and knelt before me. I sat in the chair of state, missing Horemheb and especially missing Ptah-hotep. He was always in my mind, my sweet scribe. What would Ptah-hotep have done with this collection of grumblers? He would have found a weak point in all of them, and used it.
I considered, allowing them to shift from knee to knee, awaiting my pleasure. Every man has a lever, and he who governs men must find it, the Divine Amenhotep-Osiris had said, and he was famed for his wisdom.
What did this crowd have in common? Naught but General Horemheb and me. Horemheb was fighting Tushratta’s war on the border; therefore they would have to contend with me.
I took a deep breath and made my announcement. ‘I have listened to you all for a decan, and I cannot judge between you in your quarrels. I am willing to dismiss anyone who wants to leave, though I will make no presents-of-parting.
‘None of you have served me well and you deserve nothing of me.