Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,169

completely silent. I heard a woman giggle, a man whisper, then the noise of kisses as someone made love just behind the wall against which I leaned. Down in the kitchen courtyard, someone was making dung and straw fuel-bricks. I heard the clamp and thud as the bricks were pressed into their moulds and then released, to be laid out to dry in the sun. A soldier paused when he saw me standing by the wall, identified me and went away.

Light grew. I could not wait for full sunrise, and I did not want to be on the wall when the mad king again came forth to hail his Aten at its rising.

I hurried to the quarters of the Widow-Queen Tiye and I found her; still alive—though the others were all dead.

Both guards were lying across the threshold with not a mark on them, even the feathers in their helmets undisturbed.

Akhnaten had fallen at Tiye’s feet. His eyes were open, still strange and dreamy, though the personality behind them had fled to its maker. Tiye cradled Smenkhare in her arms. His wig had fallen off, revealing his vulnerable boy’s scalp and nape of the neck, which the red-headed woman kissed.

Master of the Household Pannefer lay in his place, Chamberlain Huy on the other side, bundles of fallen garlands and wigs and jewels.

‘I gave them life,’ the Widow-Queen said with an effort, trying to smile. ‘Now I have taken it away. Tell your father Ay that I am sorry he missed my festival—I wanted to take him with me as well. The deed is mine,’ she said with immense dignity.

Then she drained the cup in her hand. The poison was fast acting, and in moments she had joined her sons on their journey to the Otherworld.

I knelt down and sprinkled some of the poisoned wine over my lady the Widow-Queen Tiye, and offered up long-forgotten prayers for her soul, saying to the judges:

She was a great Queen, and by her actions she has saved Egypt. She lived in Maat and died in Maat, and truth was in her.

She will live, she will live, she will live!

For Isis has her hand and Nepthys her arm.

For Neith is her guardian and Sekmet her defender.

The lioness of the peak is her lady, She Who Loves Silence, and she has died in carrying out her desperate strategy like any general who dies in battle.

I could not bear to look on the scene any more. The air was heavy with death. But now there was another chance for the Black Land, for the intelligent boy Tutankhaten was now Pharaoh, and the maternal and well-disciplined Ankhesenpaaten his Great Royal Wife.

Widow-Queen Tiye had paid for the salvation for Egypt with her life, and I could not condemn her. My principal feeling as I looked on the dead face of King Akhnaten was great relief that the nightmare in which we had all been enmeshed was now abolished.

When I came back with Horemheb the sunlight was falling full on Tiye’s face, and she looked like the young girl she had been when she had been married to Amenhotep-Osiris the Wise, who would by now be aware that she was coming to dwell with him in the Field of Reeds, and who would welcome her back into his embrace.

Ptah-hotep

The news came to Thebes with a thudding of drums. Sitamen caught me as I went through the gate and told me that she was coming with me to inter her mother as befitted a Great Royal Wife. My captivity had ended and I was free in the world again, for both the Pharaohs were dead, though I did not know until I saw Mutnodjme again what the manner of their deaths had been.

She came to the landing dock and embraced me, pressing close. She was older and heavier and the trials of the Amarna household had aged her, but she was still very beautiful to my eyes. She took my hand and led me to a waiting litter, preceded me inside and sat down to embrace me and tell me everything that had happened, very rapidly and very clearly, which had always been her practice.

Perhaps in getting older I had outlived the nervous shocks of my youth, but her account of the deaths of the two ministers and the Pharaoh and his brother did not strike me aghast. I was moved because Tiye had died so well and for such a good cause, when the king was on the verge of