Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,166

understand why he wanted to live in the past. There was no glory to be got from a tiny room in a mud-brick house in the back streets of Thebes.

‘But the real reason for the gathering was to consider the Great Royal Heir Thutmose. You never saw him, did you?’

‘Never,’ I told him. Prince Thutmose had been bitten by a snake and had died long before I had anything to do with the palace.

‘He was a bold young man, strong, healthy, and the King greatly loved him. He had been trained in diplomacy and could speak three languages and read five. His favourite occupation was chariot-racing, and soldiers said that he would make a good commander. But he had no love for our temple. He had absorbed his father’s views on the balance of power in Egypt. He meant to devote some of his funds to the temples of the lesser gods, Sobek and Bes, Neith and Maat who is truth.’

A horror was growing on me, in the lamplight, in that small bare room.

‘In our arrogance and foolishness we thought that his brother would be more malleable. We thought that Akhnamen would eat out of our hands, once his noble father had gone into the otherworld. Should I ever get there, if my heart is not immediately eaten as I deserve, I do not know what I will say to him.’

‘Master, please,’ I begged, unable to bear the suspense.

‘When I say to you it was my fault, that all this is my fault, Ptah-hotep, I am not mad or deluded. It was the agreement of the meeting—they all agreed—and I myself administered the venom through a hollow needle placed in a chair-leg. It took him two days to die, but he died.

‘I killed Prince Thutmose, and ruined Egypt,’ confessed Userkhepesh, once Great Servant of Amen-Re.

He closed his eyes and did not speak again. I sat and held his hand. I heard the rattle which is death beginning in his throat. At the last, he opened his eyes and stared into mine, pleading perhaps, begging for forgiveness.

It was not for me to judge him. I said, ‘You are absolved,’ and the lashes of the blind eyes closed over them, and he was dead.

When the attendant came back, we arranged the body fittingly and carried it out into the street. We delivered him to the House of Life to be properly embalmed at the expense of the Princess Sitamen. The body was very light.

Then we gave away his wine and bread to the street-children, as the only funeral feast we could make for the high priest who had almost destroyed the land and the god he had sworn to serve.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Mutnodjme

Widow-Queen Tiye was henceforth free. I do not know how she explained her release to her sons, co-regents now and rulers of Egypt, but they did not attempt to lock her up again. Not even in Pharmuthi two years later, when Great Royal Wife Meritaten died of the sweating fever and Ankhesenpaaten was married to her brother Smenkhare. The little princess had borne one child, a pale and sickly creature which only survived for three hours.

In this she only lasted a little longer than her mother and grandmother, for I had news from the palace of Sitamen that my sister Nefertiti had fallen into a despondency and thus into a fever, and had died peacefully.

Ptah-hotep wrote me letters of love and I replied with love. I visited my sister Merope in her house by the square, where she quickly bore two sons for Dhutmose. They were very pretty children and her husband doted on them and on her.

Otherwise I ruled my household, learned cuneiform, lay with the general, conceived and miscarried. I had no one to consult about my state of health; and I had no suitable prayers. The only learned women left in Egypt did not dare show their learning. Although after the first few years midwives had been allowed to practice again to stem the rising mortality amongst mothers. Someone must have told those stupid men that if the mothers died in childbirth they would have no sons.

No sooner was seed settled in my womb and my purifying blood had ceased for half a season, then would come the grinding ache which meant that the child had loosed hold on the flesh, and I would shortly bleed another baby.

My mother, who had recovered miraculously from cancer of the womb, told me that I would never bear, because learning had unsettled