‘And you are nephew of Isithia, the lady of the fly whisk which she can wield so expertly.’
I caught his look of cynical amusement and wondered if he had been one of my aunt’s clients as well as the reason for me being included in the Kap. He moved closer to me, away from Colonel Perra. ‘Mahu the Baboon,’ he whispered. ‘A young man who knows his way around the palace, who can creep through the trees like a shadow.’
I stiffened and recalled Horemheb’s words. Hotep tapped me again on the face. ‘Do you have anything to say, Mahu?’
‘He who spits in the sky,’ I quoted the proverb, ‘will find spittle on his head.’
Hotep grinned. ‘So you have nothing to say?’
‘Except that I am honoured by your presence, Your Excellency, and that you have deigned to take notice of me.’
The smile disappeared. ‘Oh Mahu, Mahu, don’t worry, I have taken close notice of you.’
He moved on to Sobeck standing beside me. This time his voice was louder. Sobeck had grown into a handsome young man with a boyish smile and a lazy charm; a superb athlete, his hard, golden-skinned body often attracted the attention of the girls, as well as Maya’s who pined for him like some lovelorn maid.
‘Sobeck.’ Hotep, I am sure, intended me to hear. ‘Do you know the story about Babylon, Sobeck?’
‘Which story?’ my comrade replied.
‘About the Royal Harem. When the King dies he is buried in a deep pit. Those who have served him follow him there taking poison, being wafted to the Far Horizon by the music of blind harpists who will also accompany him into the West.’
Hotep glanced quickly at me. I stared ahead. Colonel Perra had gone back further up the line to talk to Horemheb.
‘You’ve heard the proverb, Sobeck,’ Hotep continued. ‘If you wish to keep the friendship of any household you enter, as either a visitor, a brother or a friend, whatever you do, never approach the women.’ He tapped Sobeck on the chest. ‘Remember what I said.’
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
Once we were dismissed I took Sobeck aside.
‘He was warning you,’ I accused.
‘No, he was threatening,’ Sobeck laughed, ‘and I think he was doing the same to you.’
‘You should be careful,’ I advised, grabbing him by the shoulder. Sobeck glanced at my hand but I didn’t take it away. ‘There’s a spy amongst us.’
‘How do you know that, Mahu?’ Sobeck fluttered his eyelids. ‘What have they found out about you?’ He tapped me playfully on the cheek and walked away.
I now regarded my companions with unease. Sobeck made no attempt to hide his love affairs but Hotep had been hinting at something more than mere dalliance with a kitchen girl. I was different. I thought no one knew about my meeting with the Veiled One. Then I recalled squatting in that glade. How did the Veiled One know I was there? Were he and his escort so keen-eyed? Or had he been warned that he was under observation? The morning I was taken to the Silent Pavilion everything had been prepared, as if he’d been waiting for me.
Hotep’s arrival brought other changes, a quickening of pace like that of a drumbeat. The children of Kap had always taken part in the festivals. The Departure of Osiris, the Festival of Intoxication, Opet, the Feast of the Valley and the Festival of Beautiful Meeting. We had always associated these great days with food: loaves of bread, round, triangular or conical, enriched with eggs, butter and milk, and sweetened with coriander and cinnamon. After the bread came succulent water melons, sliced pomegranates and luscious bunches of grapes, with fresh gazelle or sweet hare meat, accompanied by the finest wines, either the Irep Neffer, the very good wine, or the Irep Maa, the genuine wine. We’d eat and drink till our bellies bloated, sampling these wines laced with honey, spices, myrrh and pistachio resin. Gorging ourselves on this plunder from the royal kitchens, we’d sit out in the courtyard, the night lit by aromatic jars or pottery bowls full of oil, their floating linen wicks glowing brightly against the dark. The only time we’d pause was to repeat the lines taught us by Weni:
We would all sing this, swaying on our feet but, of course, the Divine One was a distant figure, glimpsed on his royal barge, The Dazzling Power of Aten. He’d be adorned in his Coat of Jubilees and Robes of Rejoicing, brilliantly coloured as if a thousand butterflies and gorgeous flowers had clustered together. A distant figure, he and the Great Lady Tiye would sit on their thrones under ornate canopies, adorned with heavy jewelled pectorals, gold armlets and bracelets. They were always surrounded by fan-bearers, protected from the sun and the wind by gloriously thick pink-dyed ostrich plumes drenched in perfume. We’d glimpse his crown, blue, white and red as well as that of the Great Wife Lady Tiye’s, a solar disc between the Horns of Hathor, with tall feathers, a spitting uraeus — a dazzling image of swiftly passing colour and glory.
We regarded this magnificence as we would the beauty of the stars, always there but very distant. Hotep changed all that. He wanted to impress upon us that not only were we part of such glory, we had been born to serve it. He took us on well-conducted tours of the great Malkata Palace, be it the Magnificent One’s funeral temple or the splendid harbour he had built for Lady Tiye’s barge at Biket-Abu. We were taken through the well cultivated wall gardens and into the palace proper, a residence of vivid colour with painted tiled floors which depicted the People of the Nine Bows, the enemies of Egypt, captives under the imperial sandal. The walls and pillars of the palace were festooned with green spirals, golden bull heads, leaping red-and-white calves, and luscious paintings of the rich papyrus groves of the Nile with its flowing water and brilliantly plumed birds.
We were allowed to gawp at private chambers where beds, their frames inlaid with ebony, silver and gold, glinted in the polished light of the gleaming black or dark brown wood. Hotep encouraged us to sit on cross-legged stools with leather-cushioned seats, their feet carved in the form of panther, leopard or lion’s claws. We’d stroke brilliant blue and silver cushions full of feathers, silken and soft to the skin, and study wall hangings with fringes of thick colours, or handle vessels of silver and gold, faience and alabaster, moulded in the shape of exotic animals or beautiful women. The words Ankh and Sa, Life and Happiness, were everywhere. Above doorways or windows the guardian vulture Nekhbet spread gloriously coloured wings. We visited tiled bathrooms and toilets, sunrooms and a well-stocked library, the Per Medjet, the House of Books. Of course, everywhere were scenes depicting the Magnificent One crushing his foes, riding like the God of War against his enemies. He was a rampant Sphinx under whose cruel claws tattooed Libyans, earringed Nubians, Syrians in their flowing robes or the sheshnu, the Desert Wanderers and Sand Dwellers, trembled in fear. Hotep was a clever man. Every week he’d take us around the palaces to view the glory and drink in the power of Egypt. For this we had to live — and for this we might even have to die.
We also prepared to enter the House of War. Colonel Perra was a brute of a taskmaster. Our studies were over and a harsher training began. The service of Montu the God of War was, in the words of Colonel Perra, to be our constant food, our constant wish, the very breath of life. He paraded us dressed only in our loincloths during the noonday heat and always began with a quotation from a famous work called The Satire of Trades.