Prince Menkheperre wastes no time in escorting me my new companion Wesemkhet out of the princess's apartment and down the pillared hall towards the stables where his chariot is waiting. I'm not really sure how adept I am going to be riding in a chariot, especially in all this finery. I had suggested to Wesemkhet I might ride in a litter, but I discovered it's much too far for that. I didn't know that women in Ancient Egypt were even allowed to ride in chariots, but there you go. Today I Learned.
Though the prince was warm and conversational during our meal, he has returned from his preparations distant and preoccupied. I suppose the gravity of the situation hit him full in the face once he left. I mean it's not every day a goddess makes herself known and demands the heir to the throne to travel into the future via a magical mirror with the soul-stealing stranger who turned up out of nowhere.
The prince strides ahead, clad in a short kilt that I can practically see through, with the mirror strapped to his thigh in a leather case, a pair of jewelled daggers on his belt, and his torso and upper arms wrapped in a gold-embossed leather harness. He hits tasteful and sexy in the hottest possible way.
I know I should be looking at the palace and memorising everything, but he looks so incredibly good I can't help but drink in the sight of him. He makes an abrupt turn into a shadowy opening between a pair of pillars and into a torchlit corridor of plain reddish stone. It's clearly not meant for us since several servants holding baskets of folded linens flatten themselves against the walls to let us pass, their heads bowed and their bewilderment tangible.
After a minute or so of traversing the corridor, we turn a corner, take several steps down to another turning and then several more steps down into a sun-soaked herb garden teeming with butterflies and bees. As I step back into the heat of the sun after the cool of the stone corridor, a gust of wind fills the air with the rich scent of roasting meat.
We follow the central path through the herb garden to another opening set in the far wall of the courtyard into the claustrophobic, dim, smoky heat of an enormous, rectangular torchlit space. Apart from a large gap just under the ceiling that allows the smoke and heat to escape, there is almost no natural light at all.
Everywhere I look, dozens of ripe, sweating servants, naked from the waist up, attend tasks in no obviously organised way: a flabby man wearing a blood-spattered kilt pulls the entrails from the carcasses of various birds and tosses them into a stone trough where they are sorted by a child of maybe eight or nine years, their hands bloody from separating out the intestines, livers, hearts, and god know what else into separate bowls.
Not too far from them, a woman with a baby bound against her chest grinds grain in a circular millstone by hand, next to her, a young woman harvests dates from bunches, and beside her, a girl of perhaps ten plucks leaves from a massive basket of herbs. Nearby, a toothless, old man pounds entire bulbs of garlic into paste in bowl-shaped stone set into the ground. Beside him, an old woman with shrivelled breasts that hang to her waist stirs the contents of three ceramic pots set atop one of many mudbrick ovens dotted around the room. Straight ahead of us, a young man slaps dough into loaves for baking, but not on a table, on the floor.
At the far end of the room, goats stand in a pen, where children no older than five squat beside them, milking them. Everywhere, chickens wander around, pecking for bugs or snatching scraps. Unlike most kitchens where the smells are usually tantalising, the stink of body odour, fresh goat shit, a dozen bulbs of pounded garlic, and a steaming trough of hot blood from newly slaughtered creatures totally obliterates the scent of roasting meat at the other end of the long room.
Some of the servants sing as they work, others shout for someone to fetch an ingredient, a knife, or more fuel for the mudbrick ovens. The whole operation feels insane and crazy yet somehow, it's effective, given at the other end of the long room, trays are being laden and carried out another door like a YO! Sushi conveyor belt. It's exactly the kind of disorganised chaos that would provoke an epic Hell's Kitchen fit from Gordon Ramsey.
YOU ARE READING
Hathor's Mirror
RomanceNerys Whitaker has it all - a cushy column at History Lives!, a gorgeous flat in a Grade II listed building in a leafy part of London, and a relationship that's lasted more than a year. But in just one day, she loses her job to AI, finds an eviction...
