Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,74

and follow you.’

She was actually beginning on the most potent curse of all, the curse of Set, which is complete destruction to the body, the spirit, the shadow, the fire and the soul, the posterity and the name.

Akhnaten gasped again, ‘Mother!’ and she paused long enough for him to speak.

‘Lady, I will do as you wish,’ he whispered.

‘Do so,’ said the icy voice. ‘You may go and learn your part as Sem-priest at the Opening of the Mouth. One word wrong, my son, and my curse is on you. Purify yourself,’ she said.

There was an interval. A woman came and stood beside me. The Princess Sitamen, warrior-woman of Neith, had been listening intently to all that went on. She stood as still as a shadow, reminding me of a soldier on guard. She put a hand on my shoulder as soldiers do and I reflected the gesture.

‘Scribe,’ she acknowledged.

‘Lady,’ I replied.

We heard the outer curtain swish shut after the Pharaoh and his guard.

‘Your lord has gone, best follow him and make sure that he has the text of the Recension,’ she said. ‘Fare well, most honoured comrade.’

She punched me lightly and Sahte led me out and along some corridors and showed me into the courtyard in time to catch my Lord Akhnaten and his escort.

‘Ptah-hotep,’ he said. ‘I have decided that it is proper that my father should be escorted to eternity by the old ritual. He believed in it when he was alive. Have you a copy of the ritual?’

‘Lord, I will obtain one immediately,’ I said, and left him to find my master Ammemmes in the School of Scribes.

The temple of Amen-Re was empty. Wind carrying dust blew through the massive pillars. After wandering for a while I caught a straying boy and asked him to lead me to the master of the school of scribes, and he took me through a series of winding paths between walls to a small building within the main temple.

Then he ran away before I could reward him.

I paused on the threshold, as was polite, and clapped my hands for permission to enter, and someone let out a held breath. As my eyes grew used to the light, I saw that it was Ammemmes himself, who had been about to bludgeon my brains out with the large club he was lowering.

‘Ptah-hotep, you should have warned me. I was about to kill you.’

‘So I noticed, can I ask why?’

‘We are moving the last of the scrolls today and I promised Snefru before he died that no harm would come to them. A promise to the dead must be honoured.’

A pair of boys were completing the wrapping of a huge bundle of papyrus. They had vanished when I had appeared and now returned to their work. I searched through it swiftly and removed a copy of the Theban Recension, then bade them continue.

‘The worship of the Aten has taken all our funds,’ said the Master. He looked well, though much relieved at not having to murder to carry out his promise. ‘The estates of the temple have been given away; this was your Lord Akhnaten’s order, we received it three decans ago. So we have gathered all our learning and we are leaving,’ he added.

‘How did Snefru die?’ I asked, watching the boys stagger outside with the bundle. I did not wish to know where they were going to hide it.

‘They came to the temple and told us that, on the orders of the Pharaoh Akhnaten, the temple was closed and all of the written material which named the god Amen-Re was to be burned,’ said the Master sadly. ‘Snefru cried out and clutched his chest and died of shock. As he was dying he made me promise to store his cherished scrolls, and I have done so. And we will bury him properly when his time is completed even if I have to do the whole ceremony myself in the dark.’

‘Master, who will train scribes for the service of the people and the god?’ I asked, horrified. I had not seen this order. It must have gone through Pannefer the Master of the Household or Chamberlain Huy.

‘Aten, I suppose,’ the Master shrugged. ‘I’m going back to my own village, Ptah-hotep, to wait out the storm.’

‘Take these,’ I loaded onto his thin arm all my bracelets and put round his neck my pectoral of electrum, a very valuable thing which ought to feed him for the foreseeable future. He smiled at me and kissed