Casting the Gods Adrift Read Free Page B

angry,’ said Ibrim, one hand closed round the golden talisman, the other against his forehead. ‘He’s scared.’
    Of course I told him he was a fool and said what did he know, and that he was too young to understand. But I knew he was probably right. Ibrim always is about things like that.
    Things soon righted themselves, for Father did not have to stay. We never had to suffer his terrible moods for long. He was always so soon gone again, south, upriver into Nubia and beyond, collecting more rare animals, trapping gorgeous birds. We stayed behind in el-Amarna this time, instead of going back to our old house. We did not miss our nagging, crabbed aunts. And we were happy.
    Do you think that’s strange? Do you think we should have been wondering and fretting about the number of gods in Heaven? Are you mad? We were boys. Little boys.
    Ibrim learned the seven-stringed harp and the hand lyre, and then he discovered the Syrian lyre. It was taller than he was, and had
eight
strings. But he took mastery of it like a man taking mastery of a syrup tree, and soon he could fetch music out of it sweeter than syrup.
    Me, I studied in the royal workshops. I was quick to learn – hungry to learn. Around me, everything was being made – the city sprawling outwards from the five palaces, the temples of Aten, the statues, the vases, the paintings were all new. There was a continuous noise of building, and the air was full of stonedust. A feeling of new opportunities existed here. Not like the feeling you get at Memphis, where the greatest achievements – the pyramids, the sphinxes, the colossal statues – were all made hundreds of years ago by people long dead; or at the Great Temple of Amun in Karnak.
    Perhaps because of the dramatic way we had met the pharaoh, he seemed to take a particular interest in Ibrim and me. We were allowed to play inside the palaces, so long as we did not enter the women’s quarters, andhe even let us see the green room, where all the walls are painted to resemble the reed marshes, with birds flying upwards, and a pool painted on the floor. It was breathtaking.
    The third oldest of the princesses, Ankhesenpa-aten, was an artist, too, and she would sometimes come to the workshop to see things being made. I was the youngest person there, so I suppose she found it easiest to talk to me.
    â€˜I like to paint,’ she told me, looking at me with her almond-shaped eyes, lids painted the same colour as the green room. ‘Mix me some paints, won’t you?’ And she set the ivory palette down in front of me. She could have asked me to cut out my heart and lay it on the palette. I would have done it without a murmur. She was the most beautiful creature I ever saw (apart from Queen Nefertiti herself).
    But I was better at painting than Ankhesenpa-aten. That was where our friendship began – with me teaching her how to use the little palm-fibre brush. We used tosit together on one of the cushioned window seats of the palace and talk about pigments and kohl, and which animal’s hair could be used for brushes, and whether there were any paintings in the West Country, the country on the other side of Death.
    Consequently, I saw everything in their palace – the golden beds, the sunken baths and lavatories, the alabaster vases, the banqueting tables. We gorged on sweet figs, dates and pomegranates, and I told Ankhesenpa-aten my secrets and she told me hers. I think I must have told her even more than I told Ibrim (though I never spoke of Father and his rages). She tended to help herself to the things I had made, but I was more pleased than annoyed; it was a kind of praise. I thought I would be happy for ever.
    From time to time, Father arrived with a shipment of monkeys and cats and birds – and the whole royal family would gather to gaze out of the palace windows, the little princesses (there were six) pointing and squealing and the great queen laughing, and