The Twelfth Transforming (15 page)

News of the seriousness of Pharaoh’s condition spread quickly, and the silence of expectation fell over Malkatta. Foreign embassies presented no credentials. Ministers with arms full of scrolls stood in the corridors outside their offices as though unwilling to enter. Bored courtiers strolled in the gardens, unwilling to gossip, faces turning occasionally to the intermittent sounds of Amunhotep’s painful dying. Tiye, eyes swollen and mind numbed from lack of sleep, passed from her quarters to the relative quiet of her gardens, bracing herself for more hours of lying in darkness listening, as the whole of Malkatta listened, to the macabre shrieks and laughter that came distorted and sinister through her windows. Once she ordered her own musicians to perform, but at their first wails she turned from them in disgust, their ghoulish melodies making her an accomplice in the orgy of Pharaoh’s dying. In the end she stopped trying to sleep, sitting rigid beside her couch while her scribe read to her at her feet.

But the summons came eventually, and Tiye knew that this time it would be the last. Her only emotion was one of relief. For years the court had gone about its daily business against a backdrop of tension and the expectancy of bad news from Pharaoh’s quarters. The ministers had become used to dealing with him through Tiye. For months at a time his place at the feasts was empty. When he did appear, the courtiers were shocked, sometimes resentful. Few could remember the time when Amunhotep’s voice and physical presence pervaded Malkatta’s precincts. For too long he had been an atmosphere brooding over them, an invisible god.
His death will bring more than grief
, Tiye mused as she sent her herald to wake her son and made her way quickly through the dream-heavy dimness of the palace.
There will be disbelief as well
. The noise in the royal apartment crescendoed to a burst of clamor as the doors were flung open for her. For a moment she halted and then turned to the Followers of His Majesty behind her. “Throw them all out.”

She waited, tight-lipped, while the soldiers dispersed the astonished crowd. The music trailed away, and the musicians fled past her, bowing hastily. The dancers and attendants followed, a stumbling, wild-eyed mob of sweat-slick bodies that veered past her, some falling to their knees as they recognized her, others backing out, until the soldiers had herded them all into the passage.

Tiye looked around in the new stillness. The floor was littered with empty wine jars, torn flower wreaths, dancers’ baubles, a discarded yellow cloak, and even a broken pot of kohl whose contents oozed, black and sticky, over the dusty blue tiling. The boy rose in one fluid movement from the corner where he had been squatting and came toward her warily, one hand clutched tightly around something that glinted through his curled fingers. He fell to the floor. Mutely she nodded at the soldier beside her, and he ordered the boy to rise.

“Show me,” Tiye barked.

The boy turned cold, impudent eyes upon her. “He gave it to me.” The small hand unfolded, and on the palm lay a gold ring surmounted by Pharaoh’s royal cartouche picked out in turquoise. The soldier deftly took it, and the boy glared at him furiously. “He gave it to me!”

Swift footfalls sounded in the passage, and Ay came striding in, with Horemheb a moment behind. Tiye nodded at their bows and turned to Horemheb. “Take this boy. Ship him to the Delta immediately and have him sworn into one of your border patrols. Put him under a captain who will see that he does not run away.”

“If he does, it will be the five wounds and a swift beheading,” Horemheb said grimly. The boy began to scream obscenities and flew at him, long nails reaching for Horemheb’s eyes and bare feet flailing, but the Follower in attendance intervened smoothly and, after fetching him a stunning blow to the temple, picked him up from the floor and vanished into the half-light beyond the door.

“Leave us also, Horemheb,” Tiye ordered quietly. She was trembling. He bowed immediately and left.

Only now did Tiye summon the courage to look down the long room, through the ominously silent shadows, to the massive couch beside which a stone lamp glowed. The physicians stood behind it, stooped and resigned. With Ay beside her she crossed the expanse of floor, and as they came up to Pharaoh, the door opened again and Amunhotep and Sitamun slipped inside. Tiye did not even glance at them as they stopped at the foot of the couch. Her eyes were on her unconscious husband, who tossed and muttered.

“Well?” she addressed the physicians.

“We have done all we can,” one of them said in the monotone of complete exhaustion, “and he refused to have the spells sung over him.”

“Very well. You can leave.”

They did not stop to pack the welter of herbs, amulets, and unguents that had spilled over the table, but left as quickly as good manners allowed, and Tiye could not blame them. The last weeks in attendance on Pharaoh must have been a nightmare they would never forget. Placing a hand on her husband’s drenched forehead, she murmured his name, but even in his unconscious state he felt the pain of her touch and pulled away. His entire face was swollen, his mouth rimed in dried foam, his closed eyes weeping yellowish tears that clotted on his lashes. Tiye withdrew her hand.

For a long time the four of them remained motionless in the tomblike silence of the room, and Tiye realized with despair that Pharaoh would die as he had lived, self-contained, apart, with an arrogant denial of everything beyond his control and a contempt for all who would offer to fulfill his needs. He did not recover consciousness. His restlessness grew more spasmodic, his muttered, disjointed sentences fainter and fewer. A servant approached Tiye on noiseless feet and spoke with eyes averted. “The high priest and his acolytes are without, Majesty. They bring prayers and incense for the passing of the god.”

“Let them come.”

The room filled slowly with silent white-robed men bearing long incense holders that glowed and smoked. Ptahhotep approached the couch and knelt, taking Pharaoh’s limp hand to kiss it while a low, tuneful singing began.
I wonder if he is aware of this
, Tiye thought.
I think he would prefer the loud riot I expelled, but he would understand my reasons for what I did. God you are, and god you will always be, Amunhotep
. She stole a glance at her son but could read nothing on his face. In the flickering light his jaw looked longer and narrower than ever, his nose sharper, his thick lips looser. Sitamun’s eyes darted from her father to the clustered priests, and Tiye thought she saw impatience in the long fingers linked together before her.

Gradually the room filled with throat-catching, sweet smoke that wisped into every corner, driving out the lingering odor of stale wine, perfume, and sweat. Pale light began to filter through the shutters. Somewhere beyond the lawns and flower beds the distant rattle of a tambourine sounded, and the faint ululation of a morning song, a servant on her way to her daily duties in kitchen or harem.

At that moment Tiye suddenly realized that she was gazing down on a body. Pharaoh had gone, but such was the spell he cast that for minutes she said and did nothing, waiting for the eyes to flick open and seek her own. “May the soles of your feet be firm, Osiris One,” she finally murmured. “May your name live forever. Raise the hangings, open the shutters,” she said to the servants. “Dawn comes.” They moved to obey her, and Sitamun fell stiffly to her knees. Tiye had supposed the girl would pay the body some mark of respect, but she prostrated herself before her brother, pressing her mouth fervently against his feet.

The light had strengthened as Ra fought urgently to be born. Without pause the priests began the Song of Praise that Pharaoh had not cared to hear for many years, their eyes going to the young man whose gaze had turned to the window. Sitamun rose and walked away. One by one the priests came to kneel and do homage to their new ruler, and when the hymn was over, they, too, left. Ay knelt swiftly to kiss the now divine feet, and Tiye did so last, hardly aware of her actions. Amunhotep took no notice of them but stared out into the garden, where dawn was over and the light was changing from pink to white.

“How very winsomely Ra completes his final transforming,” he said cheerfully.

“I will send out the heralds at once,” Ay said to Tiye, “and if you wish, I will instruct the Scribe of Foreign Correspondence to prepare dispatches to those kingdoms with whom we have relations. Your presence is not required for that.”

Tiye nodded. “Send for the sem-priests to take him away,” she said. “and for his servants to gather his goods.” Ay took her arm, but she gently shook him off. “I will go to Tia-Ha,” she said. “I am not grieving, Ay, not yet. I simply cannot believe that a god whose ka pervaded the whole of the empire for so long is gone. I will tell Kheruef.”

The door clicked softly, and she and Ay glanced toward it, startled. Amunhotep had left.

By the time Tiye entered her friend’s apartment, the shrieks of mourning had begun in the harem. The women were flocking to the garden, tearing their gowns as they went, rushing to grasp handfuls of earth to sift over their heads. Tia-Ha rose from her cosmetics table, still in her voluminous sleeping gown, and the familiar, comfortable disorder of the room melted Tiye. Her stiff limbs loosened and began to shake. Before Tia-Ha could kneel, Tiye reached for her hands, pulling her forward, and Tia-Ha’s arms went around her. “Bring warm wine and be quick,” she snapped at her slave. “Sit on my couch, Majesty. How cold you are!” Within moments she had placed a woolen cloak around Tiye’s shoulders and pushed warm wine into her unresisting hands. Tiye drank gratefully.

“It is the shock, Tia-Ha,” she said as the alcohol reached her stomach and spread warmth through her limbs. “For so long we have expected it. We ought to have been ready.”

“How can anyone be ready for the death of a Horus such as he? Cry if you wish, Majesty. My quarters are a good and private place. Listen to them! The harem women have had no such excitement since Princess Henut attacked the Babylonian. Amunhotep goes to the Holy Barque on a tide of delicious sorrow.”

Tiye smiled wanly. “He would laugh to hear you. But no, Tia-Ha, I will not cry. I think I have forgotten how. Pharaoh did not like tears. He regarded them as a weakness.”

“And for a queen, they are. You will have your hands full, organizing a new administration for your son and seeing to the comfort of the delegations that will arrive for the funeral.” She fell silent and sat cupping her goblet in both hands.

“You have fulfilled your duty as a Royal Wife with great devotion,” Tiye said to the lowered, tousled head. “Would you like me to arrange with my son to have you released from the harem, Tia-Ha? You could retire to your estates in the Delta. I care nothing for the other women, but you have been my cherished friend.”

“Retire?” Tia-Ha’s sultry eyes sparkled. “Oh, the lush delights of the Delta! The orchards, the odorous vineyards, the lusty young slaves pressing the grapes with such a panting, such a rippling of muscles. It would be an interesting retirement. But I think not. I would like to be free to come and go farther than the Theban markets, but my life has been spent here, and I would miss the gossip, the fights, the whiffs of power that come curling through those double doors. Thank you, Goddess, but no.”

Tiye nodded, relaxing under Tia-Ha’s lilting voice, and a healthy fatigue stole over her. She felt no guilt as she recognized relief pooling out from under her grief and tension. Egypt had been preparing itself for this day for a long time. “I think I will sleep now,” she said. “It was good to come to you, Tia-Ha.” Tiye rose, this time waiting for the other’s obeisance before leaving the harem. Pacing slowly to her own quarters, she ignored the tumultuous expressions of formal grief all around her.
We did well, you and I
, she thought as she swung her legs onto her couch and sleep rushed to claim her.
Life has been sweet
.

BOOK TWO

7

D
uring the seventy days of mourning for Pharaoh Amunhotep III, while his body was beautified under the hands of the sem-priests and his magnificent tomb was prepared, Malkatta filled with foreign dignitaries from every corner of the empire, all bearing words of condolence for Empress Tiye and assurance of everlasting brotherhood for her son. Amunhotep sat solemnly on a throne, but the royal regalia rested in the arms of their keeper on the dais steps, for the new pharaoh was not entitled to wear them until his coronation. He attended graciously to every smooth word and replied politely, yet those present had the impression that his thoughts were far away. When he was not in Pharaoh’s audience chamber, he could be found in the nursery, bent over little Meritaten’s cot, or sitting with his wife by the lake, saying little, listening to his scribe read to him from the ancient writings. Tiye waited for him to dismiss the sun priests, soothe the men of Amun, and visit his ministries, but he did not. She wondered if by continuing to behave like a prince he was defending himself against the possibility of even now losing the kingship.

Nefertiti had no such fears. She sent for the cobra coronet and spent an afternoon examining it while its keeper stood by in silence, anxious lest she should offend it by some precipitous act. But she did not dare to place it on her head. The girl passed long hours watching the construction of the palace Amunhotep had commissioned just outside the Karnak complex, although the architects and master craftsmen dreaded her coming, for she was never satisfied. To her husband she was as loving and thoughtful as ever, but to those watching, Nefertiti’s shows of extravagant affection rang hollow.

Some weeks before her father was to be dragged on the ritual sledges to his tomb, Sitamun sought out the new pharaoh, walking gracefully across his lawn, the transparent blue robes of mourning floating becomingly around her in the soft breeze. The river had reached its full height and was now receding, and the bare earth was already covered in thin, green shoots of new crops. Optimism was in the air, and the court was almost jubilant at the prospect of fresh intrigues, new commissions to be handed out, an untried face staring down on them from beneath the weight of the Double Crown. Sitamun had dressed carefully and wore four loops of gaily painted and gilded clay rings about her neck. Her wig was festooned with turquoise and lapis lazuli cornflowers, and a single huge jasper hung on her brown forehead. The ribbons holding the blue sheath under her painted breasts fluttered to her gold-sandaled feet, and around her shoulders she had draped a short red-bordered cloak. Bracelets tinkled on her arms, and her rings flashed as she greeted her brother, arms outstretched, head bent. Behind her, her retinue wafted like bright petals.