Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,175

Heart, in Whose Hand is Maat Which is Truth Ptah-hotep, who was also my friend and sometimes, my lover, was ruling his courts with his usual meticulous equity. I was a little surprised when he ordered a beating for one who had brought a false claim and looked on with outward calm as this was done. He had the scales of life and death in his hands, he told me later, and could not afford any false charges. There were enough real ones to occupy him for the rest of his life and beyond, and the courts were always busy.

In the combined household which contained Kheperren, Ptah-hotep, the general and me, and all our servants—we occupied a whole wing of the palace of Thebes—Ptah-hotep often came home bone-weary and needed to be fed soup, massaged with oil, and put to bed. Horemheb returned filthy and occasionally injured from his forays into the disputed lands. Kheperren, always with the general, once brought home a putrid fever which had to be nursed in isolation and which may have brought on my third miscarriage, because I caught it as well.

The Great Royal Wife Ankhesenamen had the same problem, miscarrying twice of six-month children, and wise women attributed this to her being abused when young. But this was certainly not the case with me. The priestesses of Isis consulted their hoarded writings and took counsel, and told me that it was the wisdom of Maat that I could not carry a child, because doing so might result in my death. I tried to be philosophical about it, but it was difficult, when my servants seemed to engender at the flick of a loincloth and bring forth bouncing fat babies with perfect ease.

I suggested to the general that he might take a secondary wife, but he always refused, saying there were enough women in his household as it was and that he was comfortable with my ways.

The only real insect in the ointment was my father Ay and his wife Tey, who were still very powerful. Tutankhamen cherished them as the only stable people in his erratic, fearful childhood. Of course they were stable. Ay wanted only gold, Tey wanted only what Ay wanted, which was more and more gold. He was appointed Great Royal Chamberlain over heated objections from Ptah-hotep and both generals, but the king Tutankhamen may he live liked him and there was nothing to be done about it.

Ay particularly hated Ptah-hotep. Ptah-hotep, being a honourable person, was puzzled by Ay because he was so devious and so greedy, even when he had all that he could possibly use.

‘Why does he want to divert the temple offerings to his own pocket?’ he asked me, as he slashed a line through the order and sent it back to the office of record. ‘Why, especially, does he want to steal, when Tutankhamen is a nice boy and will give him all he wants?’

‘Great Royal Wife Ankhesenamen doesn’t like Ay at all,’ I replied. ‘He was the one who raped her, lying on her father’s belly, when she was a child, and that may be reason why she cannot give Egypt an heir now. She won’t let the young king give Ay all that he wants, and in any case even if the Pharaoh could give Ay most of Egypt it would not be enough. He is as rapacious as a crocodile; he is the mouth that can never be filled of the old riddle.’

‘These have never been filled, can never be filled,’ repeated Ptah-hotep slowly. ‘The hands of the ape, the claws of the vulture, the mouth of the crocodile and the eyes of man.

‘I suppose that you are right. I could wish that Widow Queen Tiye-Osiris had taken him with her. Ay would have made a good footstool for the journey. Or a chamber-pot. He demands tribute from foreign kings, and the crown never sees a deben of it. I can’t accuse him of profiting from his office again—the little king threw the latest charge out when Ay begged him to remember how he had carried him on his back to the festivals of the Aten when he was three.

‘Ay is a centre for the remaining corrupt officials, though I am weeding them out. But he is protecting some and while he does that I cannot get rid of them. Ah, well,’ he said, and looked so sad that I ordered musicians to attend at dinner and Ii to attend on him while