Читать книгу Out of the Black Land - Kerry Greenwood - Страница 21

Merope and I had slept, though we were not aware of having slipped into a doze until we were woken abruptly by a flurry of movement in the outer chamber, and voices crying, 'The Queen is in labour, send for the great Royal Nurse Tey, the Queen's midwife!' I heard my mother grunt as she rose from her saddle- strung bed.

'Quick,' I whispered to my new sister. 'Put on your sandals and we can follow in the confusion.'

'Why should we?'

'Because it's childbirth, and I've not been allowed to see it.'

'Nor me,' she agreed, tying strings rapidly.

We slipped into the outer chamber, where my mother was stripping off her robe and stepping into a decorated tub. Slaves sluiced her down with cool water and scrubbed her with handfuls of oatmeal mixed with laundryman's lye and then rinsed her. She then tied a clean cloth about her waist, another around her head, and raised her voice.

'I am coming!' she cried. 'Be silent, women. The Great Queen Tiye has already borne children. She knows what is happening. But she will not be assisted by a clamour like a marketplace on the day before a feast! The birthroom has been prepared; has anyone thought to carry the Queen thither?'

She stilled the babble of replies with a gesture.

'Good. We will go there now, and she who makes an outcry which upsets the Great Royal Lady will be beaten until she bleeds.'

This threat calmed the crowd nicely and Tey walked composedly out of our apartments and into the corridor. Merope and I followed.

The mammisi was prepared. It had bare walls, a bare floor, and a pallet made of clean linen on the floor. The birth chair had been scrubbed and repainted. Not for the Lady of the Two Lands the peasant delivery, squatting on bricks. The chair was bottomless and at an easy height for the attendant to catch the baby as it was delivered.

So far, so good. The Queen was standing with two women massaging her back. Her hair was dark red with sweat and she looked old. She greeted my mother with a smile which was a sketch of the one I had seen before.

'Lady,' she said.

'Where does it catch you?' asked Tey.

'My back, it always hurts my back,' replied the Queen, and Tey directed the women to massage lower down, in the flat space just above the buttocks. The Queen seemed to feel some relief. She was offered an infusion and drank it.

'Now what?' whispered Merope.

'We wait,' I replied.

Nothing happened all afternoon. The sun sank towards night and still nothing happened. I was carrying a scroll, one of the few which I owned myself. Ani had copied it for me. It was the tale of Ptah and the Destruction of Mankind. Merope and I sat down against the wall, out of everyone's way, and peered through the legs of the attendant women. Nothing still seemed to be happening, and we were getting bored, so I opened the scroll and began to read, telling Merope of the sins of humans which made Ptah the creator disgusted with his creation:

Humans blasphemed against the god, saying, 'His bones are like silver, his limbs are like gold, his hair is like lapis, in truth he is old and weak'. Then Ptah called to him the gods who were with him in the primeval ocean and took counsel with them...

'Who were the gods from the primeval ocean?' asked my sister.

'Shu who is air, Tefnut who is water, Nut who is sky, they were the first ones, in this story,' I replied.

The Queen groaned, and we strove to see, but a rush of attendants blocked our view. I consulted my text again:

The gods came and bowed before the majesty of Ptah who made the firstborn gods out of words, out of his lips and teeth, Lord of Speaking Creatures, Maker of Humans. They said before him, 'Speak to us, for we are listening'.

A woman stubbed her toe on us as she hurried to the door for more cloths and another infusion of the birth herbs, and did not even stop to notice who was sitting in that corner.

I continued the tale:

Ptah said to his gods, 'Tell me of humanity, what shall I do to these blasphemous ones? I have given them the world, and they say that I am old'.

The gods took counsel, and they replied to Ptah Creator, 'Lord, you must slay them, so that they shall know fear of the gods'.

'Who shall I send to slaughter men and women?' asked Ptah.

The Spreader of Terror rose, lioness-headed Sekmet who is out of Hathor the Goddess, and said, 'It shall be I'.

And Ptah agreed that it should be so.

'Who is telling a tale?' asked the labouring Queen. 'Bring them here.'

We were discovered, hauled out of our corner, and shoved into the middle of the room where we stood, heads hanging, before Tey's wrath. The Queen was sitting on the birth chair and laid a sweating hand on my mother's shoulder.

'Let her read on,' she ordered. 'Sit down, little scribe, and continue. I need something to distract my mind.'

'Lady, this is not a good story for one in your situation,' warned Tey, but the Queen merely said 'Read on.'

'Do as you are bid,' snapped Tey.

Greatly wondering I sat down, Merope at my side, and continued with the story of the destruction of the world.

Sekmet Destroyer went forth, and great was the slaughter amongst men and women. She struck fear into their hearts, and Ra said to Ptah, 'Behold them fleeing into the mountains in terror, and there terror waits for them'.

I stopped as the Queen groaned again. My mother wiped the Lady's forehead with a wet cloth and instructed me 'I don't know what you are doing here against my express orders, Mutnodjme, but now you will learn the way of birth, so pay attention. The pains come at intervals, getting closer and closer until they are almost simultaneous and then the child is born if the gods are kind. While the pain is upon her, she will not hear. When it has passed, she will listen again. This story may not last long enough; do you know any more?'

'Yes, Lady.'

'Good. Go on.'

The Queen was attending again, and I resumed the tale:

Great was the slaughter, great the mourning. Corpses littered the mountains and the living could not bury the dead, because there were too many.

Fearing that they would all be destroyed, Re said to Sekmet, 'Return, return in peace, Sekmet, you have slain enough'.

She replied, 'You gave me life and this power to kill. I am not glutted; I will not return but slay and slay until no one lives on the earth'.

I risked a look at the Queen. Her thighs were tensed, tendons shaking under immense strain. Her female parts were wet with escaping fluid. I felt elated, frightened and compelled. I could not look away from this body in such agony.

Tey slapped me over the ear and recalled me to myself. I began reading again:

Then Re spoke to the priestesses of the Lady, saying, 'Do thus and you shall be saved. As women pound barley for beer, they shall crush mandrakes from Elephantine in great number, and they shall make beer which is as red as blood and fill seven thousand vessels'.

And such of the women who lived pounded mandrakes instead of barley, and made seven thousand jars of beer as red as blood.

It was not a groan this time. It was closer to a scream. I waited out the contraction and continued:

Therefore came the Majesty of the South and the North, Re who is Amen and the Sun, Glorious in Might, sailing up the Nile in the barge which is called Glory of Amen-Re and he came to the fields of Suten-henen where the goddess waded in blood.

Another pain, another cry. A priestess from the temple of Isis laid an ankh, symbol of life, on the Queen's stomach, swollen so tight that I thought that the skin might split. Tey did not have to scowl at me, however, I resumed as soon as I could.

Then came the four, the good gods, and Tefnut filled this field with rain. Then the women poured out the seven thousand jars of beer made with mandrakes of Elephantine, and the water became as blood.

Sekmet the Spreader of Terror snuffed the air and smelt blood, and she dipped her muzzle and drank. And merry was her heart as she drank the blood, and she became drunk on this water, and fell asleep and knew not slaughter any more.

There was a shift in the room. Some spirit had come in. Tey was biting her lip, which she only did when she was seriously worried. I saw blood begin to drip from the Queen's genitals onto the floor. Bright red, drop by drop, it splashed on the clean marble and pooled. Tey cast a red cloth under the chair so that the Queen should not see the blood and be afraid, and urged, 'Lady, think, speak, listen,' and snarled sideways at me 'Talk, daughter! It's what you're good at!'

I stood up and spoke louder. Merope was huddled at my feet, overawed. I wished fiercely that I hadn't come, but it was too late to repent and time cannot be poured back once the jar of life has been broached.

'Come, come, oh most beautiful,' called Horus the Eye to the sleeping Sekmet as she lay in the field of blood. 'Come with me, most excellent lady, be my own love, for my heart is moved for you.'

And he was to her eyes as the fairest and most delightful of men, and as she woke she loved him. She took his hand and he led her north to a lake called Bubastis, where he said to her, 'Let us swim, dear one, and be clean'.

And she went in to the water, and came forth a beautiful woman and a cat, and Horus saidto her, 'We shall call this your benign avatar Basht, elegant and fair; and you, Lady, shall always have my heart.'

And they lay on the banks of the lake called Bubastis and had great joy. He imbued her with the perfumes of his body, and she was gladdened by his touch.

I glanced at Tey and she motioned me to go on.

And ever since the cat Basht has been worshipped at Bubastis, city of cats, and ever since the priestesses of Sekmet have made barley beer with mandrakes at the Festival of the Deliverance, and thus shall it always be.

The Queen gave a great, forceful shriek, half of agony and half of effort. Her legs flexed, her hands closed on the arms of the chair with force enough to crush the wood. The cry came again, and the child was born into my mother Tey's hands in a slippery flash followed by a fountain of blood.

I heard my sister Merope retch, but I was not sick. I was fascinated. As Tey cleared its mouth, the baby began to gasp and then to cry. Tey held it carefully close.

'Rejoice, Great Queen,' she said to the woman, as the attendants swathed her loins in red cloth, bound tight to stop the bleeding. 'You have given your Lord another son.'

'Smenkhare,' whispered Tiye. Then she collapsed, and we were thrown out.