Return to Thebes (9 page)
Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Mythology & Folk Tales, #Historical Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #fairy tales
Nefertiti
“Fair of Face, Joyous with the Double Plume, Mistress of Happiness, Endowed with Favor, at hearing whose voice one rejoices, Lady of Grace, Great of Love, whose disposition cheers the Lord of the Two Lands.”
So did he have me described on the boundary stelae that ring the city and still carry these endearments, undisturbed.
Nefertiti, which means “A Beautiful Woman Has Come”—so was I named by my mother on her deathbed, in the hour of my birth.
And what is the object of all these brave and flowery words now, as faithful Anser-Wossett works diligently to hide my sorrow with lotions and ointments, sweet perfume and pretty things? What of the “Mistress of Happiness” now, when it is another’s voice at which the Lord of the Two Lands rejoices, and another’s disposition that cheers him in his lonely life? What remains for her who was “Great of Love” when love is denied and sent away to an empty and distant place?
For three years I have lived in the North Palace, nevermore seeing the Lord of the Two Lands save only on those rare occasions when we happen to meet unexpectedly while passing to or from worshiping the Aten. We do not speak, our glances hardly cross. I am afraid I cannot keep some lingering entreaty out of mine when they do: in return I receive nothing but a frozen stare. Whether this truly represents his feelings or whether he looks thus to avoid showing more genuine emotion, I do not know and probably will never know. I like to think it is because he dares not look at me naturally for fear of what his eyes would show. But that may be pretending to myself. It may all be as dead as my heart so often feels.
Beside him always is my cousin Smenkhkara, performing the weak pretext of government that Akhenaten no longer favors with his attention. But though he is still diligent about his visits to Memphis and Thebes, Smenkhkara is growing a little indolent as he grows more secure in his brother’s affection. He is tending to become increasingly like his father, a lover of luxury, indulging himself—and being indulged—in fine food, fine wines, fine jewelry. Another year or two and he will no doubt begin to grow a bit fat, the golden perfection will soften and bloat: give him five years and he will waddle. But I do not expect even that to turn my husband from his obsession, so closely have their lives become entwined.
Nor do I expect it to have any effect on my selfish and hateful daughter Merytaten, who lords it over the Southern Palace as though she were the Chief Wife, or possibly even the Great Wife herself. Nothing suits her better than to have things stay exactly as they are, for she exercises my rights, my privileges, my honors with none of the responsibility—and none of the concern for Kemet—that always marked my conduct when I was at her father’s side. She was always ambitious, always grasping, always shrewish, even as a child. Now she has it all, and makes sure that I know it. Possibly this is because I used to punish her from time to time, used to impose a stern and evenhanded discipline upon all the girls but particularly upon her and Ankhesenpaaten, who has many of the same characteristics but has learned under my tutelage to modify them to more subtle and more skillful ways. I do not know: I know only that she is hurtful to me and encourages both her father and her uncle-husband to continue in their foolish and fateful lives.
Thereby she invites upon herself the retribution that may fall upon them. I hope she will be happy with her bargain, if that time comes.
I suspect that my mother-in-law intends that it come fast, else she would not have called us together in family council tonight. She is looking much aged, tired and worn; the plump-faced girl who sits smugly beside smug Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) in the colossal statues that still guard the deserted temple of Amon at Luxor now walks the earth a wrinkled old woman while he lies beneath it a shriveled mummy. But the indomitable character that made the Great Wife Pharaoh in all but name of the Two Lands for so many years remains indomitable still; and now I fear that she has decided at last to turn irrevocably against her sons. I do not know what she contemplates: I do not know yet how I shall respond to it. Many things in me cry out for vengeance: many cry equally for forbearance and compassion. Smenkhkara is an amiable fool who may have to be sacrificed, but Akhenaten is another matter. His life has been so hard, beginning so brightly, turning so sad. Many and grievous are the crimes he has committed against
ma’at
,
but many and grievous have been the compulsions driving him to it. And he did create out of his own heart and mind—the only Pharaoh in our two thousand years of history who ever dared defy the pattern—the decision to raise the Aten to be the Sole and Only God, a beacon to light Kemet’s way from centuries of superstition and darkness toward a new and glorious freedom … which Kemet does not want, and which I am afraid the Great Wife, my father and the others have finally decided can never be.
But the Aten still lives in my heart, as love still lives there; which is one of the reasons I approach with such great apprehension our conference tonight and what may flow from it. In my house the Aten lives, as it does in his; and I am raising the children, particularly Tut and Ankhesenpaaten who may eventually reach the throne, to know the Aten’s truth and loving kindness. I am determined that neither the Aten nor his principal prophet will be forgotten. Perhaps Amon and the others must be restored someday, but modestly—modestly. I intend to make certain that the Aten never loses the dominant position to which Akhenaten has raised him, for the Aten is bright and shining and good. The old darkness of Amon must never return to dominate the Two Lands with fear as it used to do. This I shall always try to prevent, and I believe Tut and Ankhesenpaaten will help me should they be called, as I am afraid they soon might be, to the Double Crown.
It is for this reason that I ordered three years ago, shortly after he put me aside, my own temple to the Aten to be built within the confines of the enormous one he built just east of Karnak soon after he became Co-Regent fifteen years ago. This temple I commanded to consist of nothing but glorification of me and our daughters (in a happy unity we do not, of course, possess) worshiping the Aten and being strengthened by him. I did this as an act of homage to the Aten, so that it would be understood that I was still loyal to the Sole God no matter what might happen to my husband; and also as an act of defiance toward my husband, so that he would know that he could not break my spirit or my loyalty to the god, whatever he might do to me. I did not try to have it built here in Akhet-Aten, for he could have prevented me here and probably would have done so. By ordering it built at Karnak I secured the assistance and support of the Great Wife. She confirmed my orders, and he did not dare countermand them. In any event, I doubt that he even noticed, or if he did, remained uncaring, because he has never returned to Thebes since the day of his father’s entombment. Perhaps he even pretends to himself that my temple does not exist, since he has never seen it and apparently never intends to. But there it stands within the confines of his, lovely in colors and brightness—a temple to the Aten and
a temple to me
,
whom he can never destroy for all his unfairness that hurts me so bitterly in my heart.
Tonight we have an issue on its face small, by implication and timing great: the depiction of the coronation durbar in the tombs of Huy and Meryra. Those two gentlemen, properly cowed, slink fearfully about their business, caught between the conflicting commands of Pharaoh that the scene be portrayed exactly as it was in all its pathetic sparseness and more than fraternal indignity, and the demands of the Great Wife and myself that the honor of the Dynasty be maintained for all time by depicting it as it should have been: myself and all six girls, alive and well and happy at the side of Akhenaten, receiving the fulsome tributes of our allies and vassals, blessed through eternity in the rays of the Aten.
I believe it may be the Great Wife’s intention that we should present our demands (I doubt if I shall attend that session, but she wants my consent) to the two Kings as a united family; and that then, if Akhenaten and Smenkhkara refuse to comply, move swiftly to take some action we will have agreed upon here before they are confronted. What action does she have in mind? It is this that frightens me. I sense an end of patience in the air—perhaps even an end of love, as duty to Kemet persuades both the Great Wife and my father that they must put aside personal feelings and move at last to challenge Akhenaten’s unhappy rule.
In this I do not know where I shall stand or what I shall do. I may not know until the moment actually comes. I cannot conceive of turning against him irrevocably myself; love ingrained in me since childhood—ingrained, ironically, by the very ones who may now wish to put love aside forever—would seem to make it impossible. Yet I agree with them: the Two Lands cannot go on like this. Somehow there must be a stop.
Anser-Wossett puts the final touches, for the many-thousandth time, to the changeless perfection of my face and hands me the mirror. Together, as always, we survey what her handiwork has accomplished with the gifts of the gods I received at birth. My eyes meet hers in the mirror and we exchange smiles: in my own, I am afraid, but a ghost of the delighted satisfaction with which I performed this little ritual in happier times.
As our eyes meet, there comes a sudden disturbance in the courtyard, a hurrying down the corridors, the distant sounds of arrival. My eyes widen and, despite my firmest attempts, grow frightened. Instinctively she places a reassuring hand upon my shoulder, a familiarity she has never dared before in all our years together: but these are not usual times. I place my hand upon hers, exert a grateful pressure in return. I hand the mirror to her carefully, rise slowly to my feet, turn with a careful dignity toward the door, take a deep breath and lift my head to its proudest height upon my long, graceful neck.
“Do not be afraid, Majesty,” she says hurriedly at my back. “The gods will not desert you this night.”
“I pray not,” I say over my shoulder as I leave the room, “for I need their strengthening now as I never have before.”
***
Tiye
My daughter-in-law greets us gravely at the entrance to her rooms in the North Palace. No outward sign of nervousness or apprehension touches that perfect face. Yet it is she, I know, whom we must convince before this night is over. I may have to give the word, but without her support the attempt can fail and accomplish nothing but more confusion and uncertainty for the Two Lands. We have had enough of these.
***
Amonhotep,
Son of Hapu
I have watched this family many, many times, and never have I seen its principal members so stern and troubled as they are tonight.
We come now, I believe, to the beginning of the end of the rule of Nefer-Kheperu-Ra Akhenaten, that strange boy we all regard with such sadness because there was a time when we all regarded him with love.
I shall soon be sixty-five years of age, Aye and I having marched the years together and having, in some degree, together been responsible for the creation of the complex character that has brought such disaster on the Two Lands. I wonder now if we could have done it any differently, produced some different end: I do not think so. I think it all came originally from his illness. I think it was all decreed by the gods.
I think, perhaps, it was decreed by Amon, though I have tried valiantly for fifteen years now to convince myself, as Akhenaten would have us convince ourselves, that Amon is no more and only the kindly Aten shines over all. Perhaps my lack of success in sustaining this conviction is that I know Amon has not left us. He is hiding in a secret corridor off Horemheb’s tomb in Sakkara, awaiting only the proper day to reappear. Now the day approaches, I think. I know in my own heart, as I know in the expressions of the faces I see before me, that it is almost here.
The Great Wife is older, too, beginning to shrivel and wrinkle as the years march on. Her face, ravaged by time and worry for her sons and for the Two Lands, carries only a trace of its girlish beauty and self-satisfaction; long gone are the days when she and Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!) ruled contented over a contented and unthreatened kingdom. Now all that is gone, save for one thing: alone of them all, she still holds the undivided and unshaken love of the people of Kemet. They respect Aye, they admire, and secretly, perhaps, fear a little, Horemheb; they are deeply fond of Sitamon, they look with anticipation and approval on youthful Tut, they pity and still retain some lingering affection for Nefertiti; but only Queen Tiye do they still simply and unreservedly adore. To them she represents “the great days,” as they have already come to call them, looking backward with a wistful regret. To them she still remains their Queen—and their Pharaoh, too, in a profound emotional sense that neither Akhenaten nor his too amiable and slow witted brother can ever match.
Therefore if she has finally decided, as I think she has, that the time has come when they must go for the good of Kemet, the people, though momentarily shocked and perhaps even horrified (though little feeling remains for either Pharaoh), will speedily embrace whatever happens if it is felt that she approves it. Particularly is this true if one adds to it the fact that this will be a mother’s terrible judgment on her sons.
“If the Great Wife,
their mother
,
feels that way,” the whisper will run, “then who are we to question?”
And no one will. All will unite in unanimous joy that relief has come at last to the Two Lands.
Yet it is not an easy thing for this to happen; it is no light matter. It is tragedy such as Kemet has rarely seen and can hardly remember. Its burden weighs upon us like a thousand stones as we take our seats in Nefertiti’s throne room facing the Great Wife, who by our instinctive courtesy and deferral occupies the dais. She is dressed in her full golden garments and wears her distinctive delicate and beautifully worked golden crown, set with carnelian, turquoise and lapis lazuli.
Aye is frowning and stern, Horemheb is grim and, as always, wary; Queen Tiye herself is sad, tense but determined. Only Nefertiti, as always, remains outwardly calm and unemotional, though we all know the tensions that must be swirling inside. It is perhaps in hopes of releasing these at once so that Nefertiti can join in what may have to be done that Queen Tiye begins so bluntly.
“The time has come,” she says, and though her voice quivers she continues without flinching, “when for the good of the Two Lands Nefer-Kheperu-Ra and Ankh-Kheperu-Ra must be removed from the throne.”
There is terrible silence for a moment. Then Aye speaks, a heavy emotion dragging on his voice, but he too saying what he must:
“Sister, I agree with you.”
We look then to Horemheb, who for a second makes some show of hesitating. Then he bows gravely to the Great Wife and says firmly:
“And I, Your Majesty.”
They look then to me, wanting to unite all of us before we demand of Nefertiti her compliance and support. And so I too bow and say simply:
“It is for the good of the Two Lands.”
Then we turn together to the Chief Wife, who has listened in silence, only the widening of her beautiful eyes and the dead white paleness beneath her make-up (which now looks suddenly garish and obvious, something we have never seen with her before) disclosing her emotion. But what emotion? We wait for her to say.
A long moment passes. The silence grows more terrible still. At last she speaks, very slowly, very carefully, as if seeking time against a judgment she dreads but cannot contradict.
“Why does Your Majesty say this?” she inquires finally; and with a sudden impatience, not unkind but not yielding either, Queen Tiye says:
“Niece, you know as well as I.”
Again the terrible silence, and again the very slow, very careful response, while we all stare fascinated, not wishing to watch her bitter struggle but unable to keep our eyes away.
“What will be Your Majesty’s excuse?”
“The excuse of the paintings in the tombs, Niece,” the Great Wife says. “You know that, too.”
“He will be given a chance to agree about the paintings?” Nefertiti inquires, and we can see she is clinging to some last hope, inspired by a lifelong love.
“He will be given the chance,” Queen Tiye says grimly, “but you know as well as we what his answer will be.”
“Perhaps not,” Nefertiti says with a sudden beseeching eagerness that we all know springs from hope, not reality. “Perhaps he will agree, and then—”
“Then there will be more misrule,” Horemheb says with a sudden bitterness. She turns on him like a lioness.
“You relish this! You wish him dead! You hate him as you always have!”
For a moment he does not reply. Then he looks her squarely in the eyes and replies softly:
“Do I, ‘Little Sister’? Does ‘Big Brother’ hate ‘Little Brother’? It was not so when we were playing together in the happy days at Malkata.”
“‘The happy days at Malkata,’” she repeats, very low. “‘The happy days at Malkata!’ I wish the gods had never let us leave Malkata!”
“They did not take us from Malkata,” Aye remarks quietly. “
He
did. There was nothing but sand where we sit tonight before he brought us here. That you know also, Daughter.”
“But he will be given the chance,” she repeats, not replying to her father, seeming to speak from some inner world. “And if he says no, as you all expect—”
“And you expect,” Aye says gently, but again she ignores him.
“—then what will become of him?” she concludes. And suddenly, frightening us all, her voice rises almost to a shriek. “
What will happen to my husband?
”
“We shall try,” Queen Tiye replies, and her voice again trembles but she does not flinch from the import of her words, “not to hurt him. We shall try not to hurt either of them. But if they continue as they are—and we have all decided, Niece, that this is the final test—
then they must go.
There is no other way.”
“You will not strike down Pharaoh!” she cries. “You dare not strike down Pharaoh! The people would never allow it!”
“No,” Aye agrees, “they would not—not even this Pharaoh, with all his sad misrule—if they knew in time. But who is to tell them, Daughter? Horemheb’s troops surround your palace. They have orders to let no one go out who is not approved by the Great Wife or by me. No one will arouse the people.”
Again there is a silence as she stares at him with unbelieving eyes, the lovely face no longer serene but shadowed with a terrible fear and dismay.
“I am a prisoner, then,” she says in a broken, pathetic voice. “I am a prisoner, then, and cannot even go to him.”
“You are a prisoner for a little time only,” Horemheb says; and adds, his tone more gentle than his words, “And besides, Sister: what makes you think he would
want
you to go to him?”
To this she replies with a sudden sharp, strangled cry, wordless but filled with pain—because it is true, and she knows it as well as we. She begins to weep, a racking, painful, awful sound; and on her throne Queen Tiye begins to weep in sympathy. But her expression does not yield, and presently Nefertiti rises and half walks—finally half crawls—to the foot of the dais. There she raises her hands in supplication.
“Can it not be done,” she asks between her sobs, “can it not be done—in—in such a way—that it will not—not—hurt him? Can he not be given a warning? Can there not be one more chance?”
“What warning?” Horemheb asks sharply. “What chance? He deserves nothing from the Two Lands, or from us who are their guardians!”
“The gods did not make you their guardians!” she cries with a sudden savage bitterness, turning on him through her tears. “
He
is their guardian! He alone!”
“And Smenkhkara,” Horemheb answers softly. “Do not ever forget Smenkhkara.”
Instantly her expression changes: inspiration flashes across the now ravaged face with its make-up straggling, its hair at last disheveled, disturbed as we have never seen it. She turns back to the Great Wife, again raises her hands in supplication. I think all of us know instinctively what is coming now. Her voice is suddenly cold, clear and steady.
“Smenkhkara!” she says, with a softness as still and serpentine as Horemheb’s own. “
Smenkhkara!
Would not that be warning enough, Majesty? Would not
that
bring him to his senses?”
For several moments no one speaks. We are figures frozen in a frieze, captured in our moment of revelation, devastated and enthralled as she is by the prospect she—and Horemheb (perhaps inadvertently—who ever knows, with Horemheb?)—have opened before us.
At last, because no one else seems able, I clear my throat and venture to break the silence.
“It would save a direct attack upon Pharaoh,” I say cautiously.
Aye agrees, face grim.
“It would have that advantage.”
“I do not think it will succeed,” Horemheb says at last. “But if the Great Wife agrees, I am willing to try it.”
We all look at Queen Tiye. Her tears have stopped, she is staring far away into some distance place—Malkata, I think, in the old days, with little boys running and laughing through the corridors. Almost she does not breathe, so intensely and so tragically is she thinking. Almost do we not breathe either, waiting upon her word. The silence lengthens … lengthens … until at last she utters a great sigh and returns to us.
“Let us see what they say a half hour from now,” she says, her voice firm, a decision of some kind obviously reached. “Then we will know better what to do.”
“You do agree with me!” Nefertiti cries with a rising excitement “You will try what I suggest! Oh, Majesty, Majesty! Tell me you will do as I suggest!”
Queen Tiye stares down upon her still prostrate figure with a look both wondering and compassionate. Gently she rises, steps forward, reaches down and brushes a fallen strand of hair from the Chief Wife’s sweat-drenched forehead.
“Do not worry, Niece,” she says gently. “I shall try to be fair to all. Though the gods help me”—and suddenly she gives us a wild look, almost as though we were not there, swept away again into the world of our terrible decisions, twice as terrible for her, their mother—“though the gods help me,
I do not know how
!”
“Good!” Nefertiti cries, leaping to her feet like a girl, wildly excited and happy, while the old Queen gropes blindly for her brother’s arm and with his help blindly descends from the throne. “Oh, thank you, Majesty, thank you!”
And she rushes to the door, flings it open, forgetting—probably for the first time in her entire life—how she will appear to the servants—and claps her hands furiously.
From all sides they come running.
Two minutes later we are in the chariots on our way across the still busy nighttime city—past the brightly lighted shops and bazaars where buyers and shopkeepers haggle over bread and meat and vegetables, past the shrilly whistling hawkers of candy and fine linens, the donkey carts pushing through with their loads of straw, the casually strolling soldiers, hand in hand, who know nothing of the terrible drama our hurried passage represents as we race by, scattering them momentarily before they close placidly behind us—on our way to the South Palace to see the two Kings.
Behind us in the doorway Nefertiti stands watching, a strange mixture of triumph, terror and sorrow on her face. Tears are once more running unheeded down her cheeks.
In the savage light of the torches she looks like an avenging goddess—ecstatic, but shaken to the heart in her moment of victory.
She is still a very beautiful woman.
***