I sank down on the floor, cross legged, to write out the appointments for the names he had given me. But before I began, I wrote a draft on my Tashery vineyard for one hundred jars of the best vintage to be sent every year to Ammemmes, Master of Scribes in the Residence of the Pharaoh at Thebes in the 28th year of the reign of Amenhotep III and the first of his co-regent Akhnamen, Lords of the Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, Shining in Thebes, Enduring in Kingship, Establishers of Laws, Lords of Strength and Mighty of Valour, may they live.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mutnodjme
We opened the basket and it was full of treasures. Nefertiti exclaimed as we spread out cloth worth half a Nome - finest gauze, the sort which we call 'woven air', which takes a skilled spinner and weaver half a season to make and for which barbarian kings pay their weight in silver.
My mother doubled and redoubled a length and found that even folded ten times it would still go through a finger ring. It was beyond price.
Under it were well-made lengths of printed material, a handful of silver bracelets and jewellery made by some Theban craftsman, delicate beaten gold and small bright stones. There were also several heavy arm-rings.
In the midst of this a nurse was announced and came in pushing a reluctant miserable child before her. This, it appeared, was my new companion.
She had hair the same silvery brown as sycamore bark and eyes like good beer. She was dressed in a tunic of strange fashion, covering her shoulders instead of knotting around the waist. Her skin was milk white, like the Great Queen Tiye.
'This is the Lady Merope the Klepht, Princess of Kriti in the Islanded Sea, Royal Wife of Amenhotep may he live. On the orders of Queen Tiye, Favourite of the Two Lands, she is to be the companion of your daughter the lady Mutnodjme,' said the nurse, gesturing to a slave who was carrying a clothes-case and a basket to set them down. The basket yowled and something struggled within it, almost tipping it over.
'Please send my thanks to the Great Royal Lady and convey our understanding of her condescension,' said Tey.
The Lady Merope looked into my face with her strange brown eyes. I put out my hand and she took it. Her palm was damp with sweat. I could see that she was lonely and frightened and her loneliness matched my own. I smiled. So did she.
'Where is Kriti?' I asked. 'And why are you a Royal Wife?'
'I was sent as wife to the Pharaoh to seal a treaty, I mean, to the Lord Amenhotep may he live to ensure peace between Kriti and the Black Land,' she corrected herself hastily.
I was shocked. Egyptian princesses are never sent to another country, for in them resides the succession. Merope was continuing, 'And I will lie with the King when I am old enough, that is after my woman-blood begins. But now all I do is teach a slave how to speak the language of my home and learn Egyptian and wait. The lady the Queen Tiye may she live sent me here because she told me that you were in need of a companion. Is that true?'
'Yes,' I answered, suddenly made aware of how much I needed someone to talk to, preferably someone with something interesting to say in reply. 'And we are to have a scribe to teach us.'
'I have yet to learn to write,' said Merope. 'At home we do not use writing for anything important, only for lists.' 'Lists?'
'Of tribute to the temple and palace,' she explained. I knew about this.
'We do that here, as well, but there are many other things written down, the wisdom of our ancestors. "If you do not write it down, the words of wise ones will be lost."' I quoted Ani, my father's scribe.
'We do not need to write it down. We remember. Bards can recount the story of a man dead a hundred years,' returned Merope with spirit.
'Here we know what words were said a thousand years ago,' I boasted. Tey my mother broke up the promising argument.
'Lady Merope, choose a gift to celebrate your arrival,' she said, gesturing at the array of treasure on the floor.
Merope smiled shyly, lifted aside the cloths, and pounced on the jewellery. She laid it out gently: pectoral and counterweight, elaborate earrings and chiming bracelets such as temple-dancers wear, and solid gold arm-rings.
'I like these,' she said, and my mother gave her an armband of thick gold, inlaid with little ibises for Thoth.
'Thoth is the protector of scribes, little daughter, and that should be worn while you are being instructed. I am glad that you are not greedy of gain, daughter Merope. Now my daughter will show you where to sleep and we will all lie down. And be quiet. The wind has given me a headache.'
Nefertiti had gone to lie down with her husband, my mother had lain down on her saddle-strung bed in the coolest corner, and I took Merope and the vociferous basket into the next room, where there were no windows and the air came up coldly from the staircase down to the cellars.
'This is Basht,' she said, undoing the basket. A striped cat shot out swearing, landed in a remote corner, glared wildly around to make sure that there was no threat in her immediate surroundings, then sat down to make an elaborate toilet, licking every ruffled hair into place deliberately and slowly. She was anxious to make perfectly sure that we didn't think that we had disturbed her at all by stuffing her into a nasty smelly basket and dragging her halfway across the palace without her leave.
'She is very beautiful,' I commented. Our own animals had been left at our house, and the palace cats had not seemed interested in our apartments.
'She is a gift from the King may he live. She sleeps on my mat, when she feels like it.'
'You have seen the King?' I asked.
'Yes, they brought me to him when I came, and he patted my cheek and told me to try to learn Egyptian, and gave me Basht to be company for me. He is a nice man and I will not mind in the least when I can lie with him, even if he is old. He has kind eyes.'
'I know,' I agreed, remembering that shaft of understanding and fellow-feeling he had sent me at the coronation.
Basht finished her wash, stood up, yawned, and walked over to Merope, indicating that it was time for a rest. Merope had a sleeping mat of clean reeds, and we unrolled it and lay down, still too new in our acquaintance to sleep.
'Are you a wife of the Pharaoh, too?' asked Merope, settling her neck on a headrest and pulling out an errant strand of hair as it caught and pulled.
'No, I am just a daughter of Divine Father Aye and the Great Royal Nurse Tey. My half-sister is Nefertiti the Divine Spouse of Akhnamen may he live.'
'Oh,' she murmured. 'Not King Amenhotep, then.'
'No.' There was something pointed about the way she made no further comment, but it was too soon to talk about that dangerous subject. I did not know if I could trust her yet, this barbarian princess. What was always a safe subject?
Tell me of the island of Kriti,' I urged.
'It's a fertile and green place, an island ruled by Minos the King, a nation of sea farers. Our ships go all over the Islanded Sea, as far as the river Oceanos extends, half across the world.'
'Is it a peaceful place?' I had heard that barbarians spent all their time fighting.
'Certainly,' she seemed offended. 'I don't know why Egyptians always think that their ways are superior to all others!'
'Divine Amenhotep says: Go around the world, speak to all peoples, and you will not find one who will change his country's customs for another's. And he is right. I beg your pardon, sister, but don't be so touchy. I wish only to know.'
'I'm sorry, I've been so lonely and everyone thinks I'm a savage. But that is what the men of my island would say about Egypt, I expect. Is it always this hot here?'
'No, this is Ephipi, the hottest month. That's when