Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,84

long list. I didn’t like him and the Pharaoh may he live killed him for me.’

‘Ah,’ I choked down rage, which boiled up in my throat as bile. My dear Khons, he of the ready grin, dead on a mad King’s whim and here was this barbarous child threatening me with the same fate. There was a lot of water very near; I had already seen several crocodiles, and one swift movement would drop this royal monster into a fanged maw which would end her presumption in one bite, snap, wrench and swallow.

Ankhesenpaaten might not have been civilised, but she was perceptive enough when it came to her own safety. She climbed promptly off my lap and went to her mother, not saying a word more, and I stared out over the water while Merope my sister whispered, ‘Consider how it must have been for her, her tutor slaughtered! She had to invent something to explain it. Do not blame her, sister, she is only a child.’

This was true but not helpful. If I could not blame the little princess I could certainly blame the Royal One. And I did— vengefully and darkly—watching the fronded vegetation, the Nile blue and Nile white waves, the palm trees and the farmers, and a naked boy washing a horse in the river, all with a gaze Merope that said was ferocious enough to wither barley.

‘We must present a pleasant appearance,’ she whispered to me, burying her face in my neck. ‘They will suspect you of belonging to the goddess we cannot name; and they suspect me of being associated with the old king—as I was, and I miss him so much! And our lady the Widow-Queen is not, I fear, going to temper her opinions, and that may get us all killed as dead as poor Khons.’

‘All right, Merope; yes, you are correct,’ I said softly into her nut-brown hair. ‘We should talk to my sister. How long has she been a fanatic?’

‘Oh, years,’ said Merope. ‘I’ve got used to it, you know, it’s only now that you are back that it seems strange. Ask her to tell you about the children, it’s all she’s interested in; that and the cult of the Phoenix, of course. And you’ll be taken all around the temple.’

‘What about my father, Ay?’

‘Ah,’ Merope’s expression said it all. Clearly Ay was as mean as ever and must, I assumed, be the richest man in Egypt by now. ‘He is High Priest of the cult of Aten in Amarna,’ Merope told me.

‘Is he,’ I commented as tonelessly as I could. I had not seen Divine Father Ay for seven years, and on the whole, they had been happy. On the last occasion, he had given me a long, cold, appraising look, growled, ‘Too old for marriage now’ with a certain complacency, and had gone away to spend more time with his treasure. I could not think of anyone less-fitted for a religious office than my father. I diverted my thoughts by imagining short fat Father Ay in a priest’s leopard skin—the tail would certainly drag on the ground, and perhaps he would trip on it.

‘He has expressed his joy to the lord Akhnaten at seeing you, his daughter, again,’ said Nefertiti, who had been listening.

‘My father said that?’ I was instantly suspicious. The only reason that Father Ay could have for wanting to see me again was that he had some gold-producing scheme and he intended to use me in some way. I was never, unlike some maidens, under any false impression that my father cared for me.

‘Yes, I told him that if I could persuade you to come with me, sister, I could induct you into the worship of the Phoenix.’

‘For which privilege he is paid some fee?’ I hazarded. I was on safe ground, for Nefertiti may she live was nodding.

‘Certainly; for you are dedicated to the temple, and your father must be paid the equivalent of a dowry.’

‘I see,’ I relaxed. In the confusion of a new worship, at the head of a new cult, living in a new city, it was comforting that at least Father Ay had not changed. ‘Tell me about this dedication, lady and sister.’

‘Not here,’ said Nefertiti, shocked. ‘It is a mystery.’

In the temple of Isis, whence my thought instantly flashed, I recalled Duammerset, the Lady’s Singer, instructing a group of young women: If anyone tells you that they cannot explain their actions because it is a mystery, then you know