Lord,' I grasped him by the arm. 'The slave Meryt said that I had been given one of the highest offices in the kingdom. She was, of course, wrong?'
'Nubians, they talk too much. Yes boy, I mean, my Lord, you are ranked higher than almost any, and I hope you live your first decan, for I do not know what will save you unless the Gods do.'
This was alarming and I forgot my grief for a little. Still holding him, I demanded 'Explain!'
'I don't know how to explain it,' he wailed, the paint on his cheeks cracking a little with the stress of unaccustomed facial expression. 'Did he know you before, Lord Ptah-hotep, know you...when he was a boy?'
'No, of course not. Yesterday I was swimming in the sacred lake and he just came and took me. I have never seen him before,' I replied.
'Whimsical, whimsical, that's the Divine Akhnamen. I wish that his brother had lived. But at least he has married; a wife will settle him down.' He spoke to himself, then remembered me.
'Now, don't be afraid, boy, my Lord. He won't hurt you, he's the gentlest creature alive, may Amen-Re shine sense upon him! He just doesn't think, you see, he's impulsive. But he keeps his friends, and he needs them. Be a friend to him and no courtier's malice can touch you.'
'Sell me the slave Meryt,' I requested. He patted me on the shoulder.
'Certainly,' he replied. 'Ten ingots of copper and she is yours.'
'Should all this be true, Lord, I will owe you the copper, and you will send her to my quarters as soon as you can. I feel,' I added, as we heard trumpets and the whole honour guard sprang to attention, 'that I will need someone to watch over me.'
I went to the feasting hall as the procession left the Audience Chamber and walked along the corridor painted with a fresco of tribute bearers. I was puzzled and apprehensive but my heart was still too sore to be either really joyful or really afraid.
I heard the swish of the ladies' draperies and their voices, as they were freed from ceremony to speak, pass my window and I slipped out into the passage and came along behind them.
I had never seen such splendour as that feasting hall on my first night in the palace of the Kings. The Kings and their Queens were seated on a raised platform at one end of the hall, with painted frescoes of antelopes behind them and a whole lion hunt on the opposite wall.
The tables were draped with white cloth and laden with all manner of food; bread and roasted fish and dried fish, roasted oxen, goat, roast quail and duck and goose; plums and melons and figs and grapes in black bunches, bursting with juice. There were three sorts of cheese and eleven different cakes, dates, pomegranates, and salads of lettuce and leeks.
I had never seen so much food in my life. In my father's house we were never hungry, we had bread, fish and beans every day and roasted meat occasionally. But this abundance was astonishing and I had to restrain my hand from creeping out and stealing a cinnamon cake. My nostrils twitched with the heavenly scent. Cinnamon and, I thought, honey.
The chamberlain, who may have been feeling guilty about his casual reception of me, took me by the hand and led me through the feast to the Kings.
Everywhere people were tearing apart roasted quail and crunching bones and demanding more wine. Servants flew about the huge room with pots and jugs. Musicians strummed and plucked valiantly, but could hardly be heard above the voices and the demands for more drink, at once!
I was deafened and shaken - it was like being inside a gigantic mouth - by the time I was kneeling at the feet of the young man with the strange misty gaze.
'Ptah-hotep,' he said vaguely. For a delirious moment I thought he might have forgotten me and I would be sent back to my own trade and my Kheperren. Then his eyes sharpened, as if I had come into focus.
'See, my Lady,' he addressed a woman of surpassing beauty, who put down her wine-cup politely and smiled at me. 'This is Ptah-hotep, my scribe.'
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.
