The Twelfth Transforming (12 page)

“Majesty Mother! So you have returned! Was Djarukha beautiful? Is all well there?”

She took the outstretched hands, cold and moist to her touch, and then realized with a shock that he was wearing a priest’s pleated kilt slung low under his softly swelling belly, and that his full lips had been stained with henna like a girl’s. She stepped back, tossing her head at the scribe who hurriedly rolled up his scroll and scurried away.

“Djarukha was indeed beautiful, but I return with many questions for you, my son.” As always when she was with him she did not want to make polite conversation. She recoiled from the things she knew she must hear, yet the sincere, defenseless eyes precluded the empty chatter of the courtier.

“I have missed you, Majesty. The palace is not the same without the chance of meeting you around some corner or in the gardens.”

She smiled noncommittally. “Amunhotep, I met a strange soldier today, a guard from On if I am not mistaken. There are no religious ceremonies to bring him from the temple there. Any changes in palace servants should be discussed with Pharaoh or myself, or with the overseer in my absence. I presume this soldier is your man.”

“A contingent arrived a while ago, to guard the priests who are my friends,” he replied without embarrassment.

“Why do the priests need protection here, in a god’s own domain?”

He took her arm and drew her to the window. “Such a lovely day,” he said dreamily. “See the ducks fluffing their feathers and dipping their beaks into the lake. And the way the water cascades from the buckets of the gardeners like melted silver. My priests sometimes make the priests of Karnak angry, Mother, because we have been teaching the supremacy of Ra. They wanted their own guards beside them.”

Tiye felt her spine loosen in relief. She draped both braceleted arms over the sill. “So that is what you have been discussing, huddled together! The supremacy of Ra. Foolish one! The priests of Amun are not going to give such playing with words a second thought. It is commendable that you are seriously trying to continue your father’s policy of encouraging a universal religion in Egypt. It has worked rather well in dealing with foreigners. Amun’s servants are used to the politics of religion, and the great God himself is not threatened by such expediency.”

Amunhotep moved closer to her until his thin shoulder brushed hers. “Amun is of a new order,” he said quickly. “He has risen to great power in Egypt, but he is not the first power. When Thebes was nothing but a collection of mud huts and Amun only the Great Cackler, a nothing, a local deity chained to a village, the sun in his visible glory as Aten ruled all Egypt. The Aten must rule all Egypt again.” The childlike voice had acquired purpose and strength. Tiye did not dare turn her head for the confusion churning in her. “Where did you learn all this?” she managed.

“I know. I have known since I was born. But even if I had begun my life in error, the scrolls drawn up from ancient writings for Pharaoh’s first jubilee would have enlightened me. Ma’at has become perverted. I am delegated to restore it to its former fullness.”

“And of course the priests of Ra are most eager to see Ma’at restored.”

He did not hear, or pretended not to hear, the sarcasm in her voice. “Of course,” he pressed earnestly.

“Amunhotep,” she said, turning at last to face him, “your father is Ma’at, in his body, in his person, as pharaoh of the empire. Wherever he is, there is truth, the rightness of things, custom and tradition and law.”

“So you say.” His full lips suddenly twisted into the semblance of a smile, and anger flooded her for a moment.

“Don’t patronize me, Amunhotep! Be careful how you encourage the sun priests! You are the Horus-in-the Nest and will soon be the incarnation of Amun in Egypt. Karnak is as much your home as Malkatta, and the priests of On must realize this sooner or later. Pursue this religious hobby if you wish, but re member that when Pharaoh dies, the priests must go home!”

“You have not understood.” Suddenly he gripped her hands and, bending his head, began to kiss them with such fervor that she was taken aback. “But you will. Great Mother, Divine Woman, one day your eyes will be opened.” As quickly as the odd fit took him, it was gone. He placed her hands back on the sill, straightening her rings one by one and smiling sweetly at her. She was so dumbfounded that she could only stare at him, trying to gather her wits.

“Amunhotep, I want you to stay out of your father’s harem,” Tiye managed. “You are free; you can begin to acquire women of your own. You need no longer feel drawn to what was both home and prison for you. I have been told what happened between Henut and the Babylonian.”

He sighed. “Majesty, you do not yet understand why I prayed with the Babylonian, do you?”

There was a moment of strained silence. Behind them the monkeys squealed, their claws making little ticking noises against the smooth tile of the floor. The servants chatted among themselves, their eyes on the royal pair, waiting for a summons. The patches of sunlight had shifted position, and the cat, having abandoned the bruised lotus wreaths, lay supple and boneless in sleep.

Tiye shrugged, annoyed. “I understand only what I see, and that is all that can be expected,” she said. “I expect obedience from you as a prince, Amunhotep. Is Nefertiti not pleasing to you? Why have you not begun to buy concubines?”

“I do not want Tehen-Aten,” he replied, and although his long face remained calm, his shrill voice cracked with emotion. “When Pharaoh dies, I will take over his harem.”

“This is Sitamun’s doing!” Tiye felt her legs stiffen and her hands curl in upon themselves with rage. “The queen has been putting ideas into that innocent head of yours. I will not have it!”

“But she is my sister and of royal blood and mine by right.”

Tiye thrust her face close to his. “She is also strong and wily and will try to control you. Don’t you see? She wishes to be chief wife eventually, to supplant Nefertiti.”

“Your eyes are so blue, like a cold sky, like the goddess Nut when she opens her mouth to swallow Ra at evening,” he said gently. “I like them. I like Sitamun, too. She has put all her staff at my disposal. She worships me.”

“Nefertiti worships you also and is beautiful. Get Egypt a son on her, Amunhotep, and if you must have Sitamun when Pharaoh is gone, then take her simply as Royal Wife.”
Then see how adoring she is
, Tiye thought.

The young man’s gaze fell once more onto the slowly bronzing light filling the garden. He leaned out the window, and Tiye could not tell whether it was a flush of embarrassment spreading under his pale skin or the touch of the westering sun that turned his face dark pink. “A god does not beget children lightly.”

“But you are not yet a god. Let your body play, my son, and your mind lie fallow for a while. Send the priests away.”

He did not answer, and she pressed him no longer. Signaling to her herald, she departed.

Shortly afterward, hungry and unsettled after her odd conversation with her son, Tiye sat on the throne in the middle of her reception hall and told Ay what had passed between herself and the prince. “How many of these soldiers are now in the palace?” she asked him.

“A hundred, Majesty. But the priests outnumber them.”

“A hundred!” The headache that had begun in Tia-Ha’s airless apartment suddenly intensified, making her wince. “Well, we must hope that this foolishness will run its course, and that before long the prince will lose interest in matters that belong to childhood awe and not to the noon of maturity. I do not want to antagonize him or hurt his feelings by ordering them home. But those priests anger me. They are fawning on a boy who means well, using him. It goes beyond simple bribery.”

“A report from Memphis was waiting for me in my office. It seems that the prince has made a substantial gift to the temple of the sun. But he has also sent grain and honey to Karnak.”

Tiye relaxed. “Then he is simply trying his wings. Poor Horus-Fledgling! Tomorrow I will talk to Nefertiti, but now, dear Ay, I want to sit on the dais among the flowers and eat and watch the entertainments.”

“Pharaoh?” The question was soft, guarded.

“He is apparently no worse. I do not want to face him tonight. I will instruct Kheruef to send him Tia-Ha.”

“Horemheb tells me that Pharaoh has doubled the number of Followers of His Majesty around him.”

“So! Even now the Son of Hapu controls him!”

“He is not foolish. He is aware that the eyes of the courtiers are turning to Amunhotep, and he does not know his son. Besides, royal sons and fathers have murdered each other before now. Amunhotep himself dismissed all Followers appointed to guard him and now uses only the soldiers from On.”

“Has Amunhotep approached any of the army commanders apart from Horemheb?”

“No. He would be foolish to do so, this early. The army clings to what is, not what will be. He will have command of it soon enough.”

“Good.” She got up, reaching for his arm. “Eat with me tonight in Pharaoh’s place. Is little Smenkhara well guarded?”

“Certainly, though I do not think Amunhotep knows enough yet to smell a rival. Everything is under control, Tiye.”

Tiye was not so sure, but tonight she did not care. She felt as empty as a new corpse waiting to be beautified.

6

A
s day followed day, the courtiers grew accustomed to the presence of the Ra priests drifting quietly around them. Changes in religious fashion were frequent at court, and while the omnipotence of Amun, his consort, Mut, and their son, Khonsu, was taken for granted, the lesser deities, and sometimes foreign ones as well, enjoyed brief vogues before falling out of favor before new gods to be wooed and importuned.

It relieved Tiye to see that Amunhotep, having made his gesture of childish rebellion, was now accepting his place. He seldom went into the harem any longer, and when he did, it was merely to visit those of his father’s older women who had been kind to him. If his glance strayed to Tadukhipa or Pharaoh’s other young wives, he quickly allowed himself to be diverted to safer pursuits. He was politely loving to Tiye, and she often wondered if the imperceptible distance that had developed between them dated from their odd conversation, if indeed he had been trying to tell her something she had missed and that had put him on his guard. Often in the dark quiet hours before dawn when she would come awake suddenly and lie unable to fall asleep again, she would feel his soft mouth pressed against the backs of her hands with an urgency that, try as she might, she could not decipher.

Through the anxious months of harvest and the hot, dead days of the season of Shemu, Tiye saw the administration settle into a rhythm of government that differed little from the current that had flowed under her since the days of her youth. Pharaoh lingered in the twilight world of the chronic invalid, no longer emerging to feast or enjoy his garden, dealing only halfheartedly with the few official documents that could not be sealed by his wife, and returning tiredly to his boy, his sorcerers, and his naked dancers. He was drinking steadily, with the determination of the fatalist to muffle all but the present, and on her more and more infrequent visits Tiye almost always found him bloated, feverish, and lazily incoherent.

She herself was spending much of her time in the Office of Foreign Correspondence, wrestling with matters of diplomacy, for Eriba-Adad, king of Assyria, had died, and both the Khatti and Mitanni were eyeing the Assyrians with feral greed and Egypt with wary flattery. She and Ay spent long hours discussing the letters she dictated to Suppiluliumas and Tushratta, blending veiled threats with bribery and allusions to Egypt’s military supremacy, a pursuit Tiye had always enjoyed. She also made her annual state pilgrimage upriver to Soleb in Nubia, beyond the second cataract, and stood arrayed in the disk and double plumes, cobra, and horns of her divinity in the temple her husband had built for her there. Her own colossal image stared coldly back at her through the thin blue fog of incense, and her priests lay supine around her like a flock of wingless white birds.

The journey south had always delighted her, and until now the solemn yearly repetition of ritual had not blunted the pleasure she took in watching her superiority confirmed. But this year the listlessness of yet another blistering summer smothered her every nerve in fatigue, and she returned uninspired to Malkatta to endure the remainder of the season.

One welcome break in its tedium was an announcement from the princess’s herald that Nefertiti was pregnant. Amunhotep received the formal congratulations of the court and the delighted bows of his family with grace, and Nefertiti preened before her excited women and spent much time fingering the little gifts showered on her by the inhabitants of the harem. Pharaoh lent her the services of his personal magician so that the spells of protection could be prepared properly, and Tiye gave her a lucky amulet she herself had worn while carrying Amunhotep.

But the excitement soon paled for Tiye, and she withdrew from the happy furor. It was too hot to remain in a state of delight. Sometimes she sent for Smenkhara and his cooing nurses, smiling at him as he lazily batted at her necklaces. But she was not a woman who gloried in her motherhood and instead found herself speculating on him as a grown man, a prince of Egypt. Would he become a threat to his brother, Amunhotep? Perhaps Nefertiti’s child would be female, a suitable wife for him if no royal son appeared. But if her child was male, Smenkhara would stay a prince forever.

Yet whether pacing the halls of Malkatta, sitting on her throne to hear the dispatches and reports, or presiding over the endless feasting where below her on the floor of the banqueting chamber a dozen strange languages filled the air, Tiye was increasingly coming to view the country, the empire, even herself, poised on the brink between a judgment and its results, as though Anubis had lowered all hearts onto the holy scales in the dark hall where the spirits of the dead were scrutinized. She could discern no outward reason for this recurring impression, but with the experience of twenty years of active rule she did not dismiss it.