The old man sitting next along shot me a look as penetrating as a spear, then smiled and I smiled back. It was impossible not to smile when Amenhotep the King may he live for a hundred years smiled. But the Lord Akhnamen was my master and he was touching my bowed head with his staff.
'Rise, Ptah-hotep, you are Great Royal Scribe,' he said quietly, and the whole hall fell silent. The silence began amongst the great nobles, and spread with surprising speed through the feasting ladies to the door slaves. No one glared, but they all stared, some with curiosity, some with a determination to make sure that I did not keep my position while there was poison in the world. I could read them all. Meryt the Nubian had been right.
I was now required to stand and reply, and I did so. I was, for some reason, no longer afraid.
'Life! Health! Strength to the Pharaoh Akhnamen!' I cried, and the whole hall screamed the salutation, mostly with their mouths full.
'Life! Health! Strength!'
I hoped that it would be so for me, too. But I would not have given high odds on my surviving until the next month.
CHAPTER THREE
Mutnodjme
The problem with my mother Tey and myself was that we were too much alike.
She was sharp, intelligent, determined and curious, and so was I, though she called me insolent, too clever for my own good, stubborn and a spy. All her own attributes, and she didn't like them in me.
Therefore she was all for sending me away, to my father Ay's estates near Memphis. I think she was worried about what I might say, given the extremely delicate nature of my sister's marriage. But Nefertiti would not allow this. Tey's opposition faded away. Nefertiti always got what she wanted. She would persist and persist, never forgetting and never losing her temper, and eventually it became easier to allow her whatever she wanted; rather than to continue, churlishly, to oppose her will. My sister was gentle, but she was neither stupid or anyone's dupe.
And she was determined to love her husband.
Marriages being dynastic or family matters, it was rare for the parties to have known each other before the woman came to live in her new husband's house. Women had lovers, of course, and men had favourites, and we had no bans on youth enjoying itself.
After marriage, naturally, women and men were expected to be devoted to each other because the family was the unit established by the Gods for the comfort and protection of children and the feeding and clothing of the members. Husbands cared for wives, wives for husbands. Did not Hathor the Goddess of Beauty and Music go every year to Edfu to spend two weeks with her husband Horus in feasting and lovemaking? The world was designed for pleasure, and pleasure extended beyond the death of the body. In the Field of Reeds, the dead feasted every day on the offerings which were made in their tombs.
Despite my mother's misgivings, therefore, I went with my sister Nefertiti when she went to lie for the first time with her husband the Divine Akhnamen.
She dismissed the other women at the door, thinking that her husband might be shy, and took only me with her, to undress her before she lay down in Pharaoh's bed. We entered his apartments to the music of sistra and women's voices, and the most beautiful woman sat down on a saddle-strung chair next to the bed on which the strange young man was lying.
He had retired early from the marriage feast, saying that he felt fevered, and there was an unhealthy slick of sweat on his face and his torso.
By rights, Nefertiti should have been in her own apartments, which were certainly grand enough, and he should have come to her. But it was her nature to understand fear, and she knew that he was afraid.
'Is it you?' he asked, reaching out a languid hand, which she took in both of her own.
'It is I,' she said gently. 'Your wife.'
He twitched a little at that.
'Is it your will that I should stay with you tonight?' she asked, stroking the hand, which was long-fingered and elegant, unlike the rest of him.
'It is,' he whispered.
At her signal, I loosed the heavy pectoral and lifted it off my sister's shoulders. I laid away all her jewellery, the rings and bracelets and the heavy gem-encrusted girdle. I loosed her sandals so that she could step out of them and laved her face and hands with cool water in which jasmine blossoms had been steeped. On impulse, I lifted King Akhnamen's soft hands and sluiced and dried them, and then laid the wet cloth across his brow. His strange almond-shaped eyes considered me with some interest.
'Who are you, dark lady?' he asked, and I stifled a laugh.
'I am Mutnodjme, lord, sister of your wife,' I replied. He twitched again. That word definitely worried him. 'Sister of Nefertiti, Lord. We are here to serve you,' I added.
Naked, I could see that his body was like a child's, not the bold genitalia which I had seen on the men bathing in the river. I glanced at my sister and could see no expression on her face but gentle concern.
I helped her lie down on the bed next to the Pharaoh, adjusted the neck rest so that they lay together like statues, then took myself to the threshold, where I would lie for the rest of the night, as was my duty as attendant on the Great Royal Wife.
The sky was black. Little glints of moonlight sparked off the gold leaf of the great bed, which had leopard's heads at one end and leopard's tails at the other. A fine curtain hung from the uprights to exclude mosquitoes. I could only see them as shadows.
They had not moved to touch each other. Finally, his hand shifted and lay heavily on her thigh, and she bared her body. There was no doubt that she was willing to mate with him. She lay over him, her mouth finding his mouth, rubbing her soft cheek across his face, her hands moving to cup and stroke, seeking a phallus.
Evidently these caresses had no effect, because after perhaps half of an hour I heard her say softly,' Are you not pleased with your handmaiden, lord?' and I heard the Pharaoh begin to sob and scream.
Words tumbled from him, but I could not understand them. He was speaking in some hieratic dialect, some priestly tongue. Nefertiti turned on one elbow and gathered him into her arms, so that his face rested on her peerless breasts, and she soothed him as she had soothed me when I skinned my knees.
'There, my lord, my love, there,' she said in her honey-voice.
'It is the will of the God,' he said, finally, into her shoulder.
'Which God, my lord?' asked my sister. 'Tell me, and I will have sacrifices made tomorrow, temples built. Which God requires your potency?'
'There is only one God,' he said flatly.
Nefertiti said nothing in reply; for it was absurd, only one God? Everyone knew 'the Ennead' - the Nine of Thebes: Isis, sister-wife of Osiris; Nut the Sky, Geb the Earth, and Shu the Air their father, who comes between the mating of sky and earth and makes Day; Amen-Re who is the Sun; Set the Adversary; Anubis, God of the dead; and Thoth, God of Learning. Then of course comes Horus the Avenger, child of Isis. There are also the Twelve Gods of the Night and the Twelve Gods of the Day, and the countless other little Gods of house and village all up and down the Nile - who is himself a God, Hapi. One God? Which one?
I leaned back against the door, which was uncomfortably studded with copper nails, and listened in scorn.
'Aten,' whispered Akhnamen. 'My father and I believe that there is one God, only one, who rules all the Heavens.'
'But, my Lord,' protested my sister. 'What of Hathor and Horus? What of the others whom our fathers worshipped?'
'They are nothing,' he said fiercely, this King who lay on my sister's breast. 'They are delusions, fantasies of men who did not know the truth. There is only one. Unknowable, invisible, uncreated.'