Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,99

still inside her, her arms locked around my neck, my mouth on her mouth. We were soaking wet, shuddering with release, dazed.

‘Don’t let go of me,’ I whispered, for I felt unreal.

‘Hold me close, for I am afraid,’ she replied. We did not move for some time until our bones began to complain. Then we separated, reluctantly, and lay side by side, still touching.

‘My lady,’ I said uncertainly, for I did not know how to address the avatar of Isis.

‘My lord,’ she whispered. There was a quaver in her voice.

‘I was inside you, I was you, did you feel…’ I began.

And she answered me, ‘I felt you. I was a man and a woman, I was the lady and the lord; such a thing has never happened to me before, I am very frightened and I love you.’

‘I am also afraid,’ I said very softly. ‘I am awed before the power of the gods and I love you.’

We slept the rest of the night without dreams. When I awoke she was lying with her head on my breast. She opened her eyes when she felt me looking at her. We were sensitive to each other. I had only heard of this happening in the case of twins. The night had twinned us.

‘You pleased me,’ she said, sounding bewildered, tracing patterns on my chest with the very tips of her fingers.

‘You pleased me,’ I told her, caressing her rounded shoulders and strong thighs.

‘It is a strange matter. My lord I do not know what to say to you…’ she began. I didn’t know either. I solved the problem by kissing her and putting back the black hair.

‘You are my lady, and I am your lord,’ I said, and that seemed to satisfy her, for she called to Meryt for bread and wine.

Thus the lady Mutnodjme became my lover indeed, just as palace gossip said she had always been, and I never argued with palace gossip.

But the night remained unaccountable. Something had come to us, even to Ptah-hotep the scribe and Mutnodjme the priestess, who had lain down together on a sacred night in an Egypt which had abandoned its ancestral gods.

Chapter Eighteen

Mutnodjme

That strange possession, that pouring into the human vessel of the spirit of the gods, had never happened to me before, though I recognised it from the description of a priestess of Isis who had lain down with Osiris-priest one night of Tybi and had risen forever changed.

It was so strong that it felt as though Ptah-hotep had been branded on my body. For days after that Isis and Osiris mating I could feel the phallus inside me, the hip bones butting the inside of my thighs, the sense that I was inside him and he was inside me. After much thought I concluded that it had been the gods, seeking a place where they could meet and mate, and my lover Ptah-hotep and I had been willing receptacles for their divine lust. I was honoured, though bruised.

The day of the sed festival dawned fresh and clear. I clothed myself in a long robe, hoping to escape the notice of the others, though I was wasting my effort. They all knew. Widow-Queen Tiye told me solemnly not to watch the worship of Aten from the window this morning, as it was patent that I was not ritually clean. I was not. But I felt exalted, raised high, pure. I wondered if my lord felt the same.

I could see him, standing by the King Akhnaten, outwardly collected and calm as he always was; inwardly worried about the festival, the organisation, the weather—would a sandstorm blow today of all days when everyone was required to be outside?

I came away from the window as ordered, but not before I knew that I had just seen into another human’s heart. I knew what Ptah-hotep was thinking. Not exactly as to this matter and that, but what he was worrying about.

This was new, and I did not know what to make of it.

Merope relayed the sight to me as I sat on the floor, nursing the mortally sick child of my sister Nefertiti, the little Princess Setepenre. As my dear Kritian talked, life gently left the little body and it slowly cooled. I had seen many babies die—some fathers do not even see a child under two years old, because in a bad season more than half of them will perish—but her little body was so light and her life had been so brief that