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 the lion- wind blows, the poison-breath of the Eastern Snake. Soon it will be Mesoré, and the grapes will ripen and we will have the harvest festivals.'
'I don't understand your year,' she said plaintively. 'At home we had four seasons, but here there are only three.'
'That is because we are the gift of the river. The Nile is our mother. We have three seasons of four months each, made of three decans of ten days,' I instructed my foreign sister.
'Shemu, which is harvest, that's now; Akhet, which is flood; and Peret, which is sprouting, the time of plants. Every time has its festival and every day its god, and over all of them is Amen- Re, Lord of Lords.'
'It is well known that Gaia Mistress of Animals is the head of the gods!' objected the foreign princess.
'Not in Egypt. But we will ask the scribe about gods; Mother says that they are not fit subjects for humans.'
'That is not what your sister's husband thinks,' commented Merope, avoiding the use of honorifics in case someone was listening.
'I know.'
She might have been about to say something more, but Basht walked off her chest and onto mine, dipping her head to sniff delicately at my neck and settling down with her pin tipped feet folded under her richly-patterned body.
'We were meant to be friends,' concluded Merope. 'Basht is never wrong about people.'
'Of course not. She's the avatar of Basht the Lady, Goddess of love and motherhood.'
'She couldn't be just a cat, then?' asked Merope slyly.
'No more than a crocodile is not the avatar of Sobek or a hippopotamus of Set the Destroyer.'
'But the crocodile will still bite and the hippopotamus break boats,' she argued. 'Acting like animals, not gods.'
'It's a mystery,' I replied, thinking about it for the first time and taking refuge in the scribe Ani's invariable response to such questions.
'Egypt is a strange place,' concluded my new sister, and we drowsed into sleep.
For the first time I had met someone who asked more questions than I did, and I thought the Queen Tiye wise to put us together. It might even preserve my own mother's temper.
The Kriti princess was equally pleased, it seemed, with me as a companion. Though she refused to abandon her tunic, which covered her chest, for a proper knotted cloth, and would not have her head shaved to a sidelock, as we did for cleanliness and convenience, she adapted to life in her new country well. She had learned the language very quickly, though some words still eluded her, and some of the grammatical constructions which I had learned before I knew that I was learning them gave her trouble. She could not differentiate between the three levels of formal address, so spoke to all persons as though they were Pharaoh or a High Priest, which gave her a reputation for humility. And she asked me why my mother had commended her for lack of greed when she had asked for a solid gold bracelet.
'Because you did not ask for silver, the most precious metal in the Black Land,' I explained.
'In Kriti the most precious metal is gold,' she protested.
'Here gold is as sand,' I replied, beginning to laugh. After a moment she joined in. 'Whole shiploads of it come from Nubia in Upper Egypt every day. Whereas silver has to come from barbarian lands and is traded for three times its weight in gold.'
'Come, then you shall learn some Kritian, if I must learn Egyptian,' she said.
'Why should I do that?' I teased.
'Because it would be sweet to speak again in my own tongue, and I shall never see my home again,' she responded, and burst into tears.
I was shocked at my insensitivity. I would never be sent away from my country, never have to learn difficult words in another tongue to speak to my captors. I tried to imagine how much she must miss the green island and the sound of her own language, and thought how I would miss the land of the Nile, the speech of the women, the scent of dung fires which kept off mosquitoes, the taste of plum and melon. I imagined it so well that I made myself cry and hugged her close and she wept into my neck, strong sobs which hurt her slim body. When the tears had died down a little, we kissed, I mopped her face with a linen cloth and we began to learn Kritian as I re-drew the kohl around her strange brown eyes.
'Adelphemou,' she taught me as my first words, which means, my sister.
Ptah-hotep
The summons from the High Priest of Amen-Re came for dinner the next day, when I had settled my scribes into my office and instructed them in their duties. It was basic record keeping, really, as the master had said. Not difficult, but requiring steady attention and some skill. Few actual orders issued from the office of the Great Royal Scribe, but he acted as auditor for the whole of the nation, expected to uncover fraud and misreporting, to protect the common people from over-zealous officials and extortion, and to oversee the administration of the kingdom.
He was - I was - also responsible for receiving the Nomarch's accounts, the Chief Watcher's report on the state of lawlessness in Egypt, and for recording the Lord Akhnamen's thoughts and orders.
That seemed to be enough for one very youthful scribe whose previous heaviest responsibility had been as overseer of a class of ten boys.
And Pharaoh still had not sent for me. I wondered if he had forgotten me, and if I should ask for an audience with him. Perhaps he was leaving me for a decan to find out if I could avoid assassination for ten days.
That might prove to be harder than I thought.
Meryt had come to me at dawn, brow wrinkled.
'Lord, someone tried to get into my chamber last night.'
'There
