Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,158

the king would not abate the taxes because there was less grain this year. I cursed him daily for his sole and only god.

Not that the Aten was to blame. It was a venerable concept which had its roots in the oldest known ennead, the group of nine gods at Karnak. But the king’s monomania had blinded him to every other consideration. He had broken the power of the priests of Amen-Re, which his wise father had not done.

Amenhotep-Osiris had known that the temple of Amen-Re was too powerful and had striven to reduce its influence by taking some of its functions away and giving them to other temples. But he had known that without the priests of Amen-Re there were no tax inspectors, no keepers of weights and measures, no record keepers, no river watchers.

The temple of Amen-Re was essential for the smooth government of Egypt. It balanced its power against the throne and the army, and as long as all three were in the hands of reasonably competent men then the country would work. In fact it worked even if the throne was occupied by a child or a drooling idiot as it had been before.

It had taken a poet, a dreamer, a devoutly religious man, to attack the temple and destroy it, along with most of the historians, scholars and learned men in Egypt. And we still did not know what had happened to the Widow-Queen Tiye.

***

Mutnodjme’s reply arrived in at the same time as my beloved Kheperren, who threw himself at me, held me away so that he could look at me, then hugged me so tight that he left fingermarks in my shoulders.

‘Oh, praise to all the gods, I wondered if I had misinterpreted Mutnodjme’s message so I came straight here as soon as I got it. How did you survive, dearest?’ he asked.

‘I was kidnapped. What message did Mutnodjme send you?’

‘Here,’ he shoved a piece of papyrus at me. It bore a crowned goat sitting on crossed arrows. Its mouth was gaping and in the space between upper and lower teeth was the character in cuneiform for ‘talk.’

‘And her cuneiform lessons are obviously coming along,’ I said, impressed as always by this learned lady. ‘Have you seen her? She is well?’

‘No I have not; I came straight here to find you—alive, you scoundrel! We wept for you and buried your ashes in a rock tomb above Amarna in the strictest secrecy, ’Hotep. How can you possibly be alive? The lady went and sifted through that pile of ashes for your bones.’

‘That must have been a terrible task,’ I stopped laughing with joy at my reunion with my dear Kheperren.

‘She has a lot of courage—more than me. I was afraid of what I might find, but she wasn’t. Come and lie down under this vine and talk to me, kiss me; gods, I don’t know what to say to you. I feel like you’ve been to the Field of Reeds, and I ought to ask you what it was like.’

A man and a woman lying down in love might have attracted comment in the palace of the lady Sitamen, but not a man and another man. I laid Kheperren down and put my head on his chest, listening to his heart, which beat wildly under my cheek.

The sun shone hot above the vine, making dazzling patterns through the leaves, outlines in gold against the plain marble tiles. We lay so quietly that I heard fish splash in the pool and dragonflies zooming amongst the lotus flowers.

Then he began to kiss me and to laugh, and to kiss me again, and although I had never thought him dead I had thought him lost, and I had missed him. So we made love under the vine to the apparent approbation of a few of Sitamen’s women who wandered past, not averting their eyes.

‘So, will you stay here?’ he asked me, as the cool air dried the sweat on our skin.

I kissed his neck. The skin was wet against my lips. ‘I don’t know. I cannot go back to the City of the Sun. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want any office. By the way, have you any news of the Widow-Queen Tiye?’

‘The king has not released her from seclusion. He had her locked up for forty days, supposedly mourning the death of Mekhetaten, and since has just forgotten to let her out. She is reported to be well, though her temper will not have