The Twelfth Transforming (34 page)

During the following year, the eighth of Akhenaten’s reign and the fourth since he had decreed the building of his city, Aziru marched against Sumer and took it with much bloodshed. His letters to Egypt remained full of protestations of loyalty, and the difficulties he was having evading Suppiluliumas. Ever the gambler, he sent similar letters to the Khatti prince himself against the day when, as he believed, Egypt and the Khatti would fight. He wrote to the defeated and harried Ribbadi, offering his asylum, and Ribbadi, his good judgment failing him, fled to the Amurru with little but his family and a few household possessions. Akhenaten did not hear from him again. Aziru once more began convoluted negotiations with Suppiluliumas.

In Malkatta day-long processions of slaves laden with boxes and chests began to move between palace and river, for after four years of construction Pharaoh’s city was finally ready for occupation. He had named it Akhetaten, Horizon of the Aten. Barges slipped downstream, bright with torches at night, bearing the last possessions of the men who wandered through the empty rooms of their apartments and houses before ordering their servants to seal the doors. In the Office of Foreign Correspondence, chaos reigned as scribes covered the floor knee to knee, rapidly transcribing the more important missives from clay tablets to lighter and more portable papyrus scrolls that could be taken to Tutu’s new headquarters at Akhetaten while the tablets themselves were carried into storage. The daily dispatches were often lost amid the disorderly pile of older correspondence. Pharaoh, who was overwrought with excitement and anticipation, retreated to his unfinished Karnak temple, where he was soothed by the worship of his priests and the incense mingling with the prayers of Meryra, while Nefertiti snapped at the servants struggling to pack her thousands of gowns, her jewels and sandals and heavy wigs.

The only place in the palace that was free from all activity was the nursery, where Smenkhara and Beketaten, taking advantage of their tutor’s frequent absences and their mother’s self-imposed seclusion, went to play with Nefertiti’s three daughters.

“I will dictate a letter to you every day, telling you what lessons I am doing and how many fish I have caught and when I shoot my first lion,” Smenkhara promised Meritaten as they sprawled on mats together, waiting for the fitful draughts blowing down the wind catcher from the roof. “And you must tell me in return what Pharaoh’s new palace is like, and whether the hunting is good in the hills there, and what new women are bought for the harem. Meketaten, you are lying on my foot. Go and play with my sister.”

“But I want to go swimming, and Beketaten only wants to tease the monkeys,” the girl replied sullenly. “Don’t kick me, Smenkhara! I can lie here and listen to you if I want to.”

Meritaten sat up. “You!” she called to one of the slaves standing by the door. “Take these two down to the lake. Where is Ankhesenpaaten?”

“She is being washed before she sleeps, Highness,” the woman said, bowing, as Meketaten jumped up, and Beketaten, across the room, began to wail with indignation.

“I don’t want to swim. I’ll tell Mother!”

“Tell her, then,” Smenkhara said rudely. The slave bowed again and waited while the princesses came to her, Meketaten skipping, Beketaten pushing the monkeys out the window and onto the flower bed with angry reluctance. “Send someone to us with beer,” Smenkhara ordered as they went out. “And hurry. It is hot, and we are thirsty.” The door closed.

“I will ask my father every day to send for you,” Meritaten said in a low voice, her eyes on the remaining servants fanning themselves in a cluster at the farther end of the nursery. “I will throw tantrums and scream and make myself sick until he listens.”

Smenkhara wound her youth lock around his fingers and pulled her face close. “Pharaohs do not listen to eight-year-old girls, particularly your father. He is too frightened of the empress to send for me. Besides, he does not like me. He cannot afford to.”

“Why not?” Meritaten jerked her hair from his grasp. “My mother is pregnant again and says that this time she will have a prince, and he will marry me, and I will be queen one day.”

“Yes, you will, but only when I become pharaoh and marry you. That is why my brother the king does not like me. At least, so my mother says.”

A servant approached and soundlessly knelt, placing a tray with beer and cups before them. Smenkhara emptied his cup in one draught. “I am sick of lying about in here. Put on your kilt, and we will sail on the river. You can watch me fish.”

Meritaten obediently set down her cup, clapped her hands for her kilt, and waited while her slave wound it around her waist. Smenkhara watched with interest until her sandals were put on and the kohl retouched around her eyes, and he grabbed the ribbons of her youth lock and nonchalantly began to tow her toward the door.

Tiye stepped from her litter and, ordering her retinue to wait by the gate with a wave of her hand, walked toward her brother’s house. The garden where she had sat so often through the years, drinking wine and laughing with him, watching his baboons scratch themselves and lumber from one patch of shade to another or listening to the hum of chatter and the babble of music, was empty and still in the oppressive heat of midafternoon. The sheltered stone quay where his barge used to rock was empty also, the water steps a painful dance of white light, the river at their foot oily and sluggish.
I always feel at home here
, Tiye thought as she came to the raised yellow- and blue-painted pillars of the shaded portico.
There are so many good memories. My father with his hooked nose and white waving hair, smiling quietly as my mother held forth on some nugget of harem gossip in her deep voice, her bracelets sliding up her brown arms and her fingers stabbing the air. Anen cross-legged on the grass, his priestly linens folded neatly in his lap, his head down as he listened, not really taking in the words. Ay himself venturing a comment or correction, always gracious, always the knowing courtier, and in the early days Tey as well, beautiful and flushed, interspersing the conversation with unfinished phrases, disconnected words, spoken flotsam drifting occasionally to her tongue from the confused river of her private thoughts. Osiris Amunhotep never came here, nor Sitamun
, Tiye thought as a single servant rose from a stool by the open doors and prostrated himself on the warm stone.
Strange that I do not place Ay’s first wife here, though she must have been, or the children Nefertiti and Mutnodjme. How gently the years fall away as I wait
. A tiny movement at her feet brought her back to the present, and she bade the man rise.

“Tell my niece that I am here, and bring chairs for us,” she said. She turned her back on the doors while he hurried within, allowing herself to indulge in a moment of pure nostalgia, and when she swung back to the house with a sigh, it was to find Mutnodjme bowing at her back.

The young woman’s youth lock was unbraided, falling in a crinkled black rope to her naked knees. She was without paint, her face pale, her eyes seeming smaller under the habitually swollen lids. She had hurriedly cast a transparent white cloak around her shoulders but otherwise was undressed. Her servant unfolded stools, served water from the barrel cooling by the wall, and then at a word from Tiye disappeared into the dim interior of the house. Mutnodjme smiled faintly and collapsed onto her stool as Tiye settled comfortably beside her.

“You have been supervising your father’s move,” Tiye said, and Mutnodjme nodded.

“Everything has gone, and I am exhausted, Majesty Aunt. I slept longer than usual today. Forgive me for not being up to greet you. As soon as I receive word that Father is settled and I have forgotten nothing, I, too, go north to rejoin my husband.”

“Are you happy with Horemheb?”

The question startled Mutnodjme. She raised her feathered eyebrows and grinned slowly at her aunt. “Yes, I am. He makes few demands on me apart from the ones I like, and he has taught me the boundaries across which I may not venture, while keeping my respect. He is becoming quite an influential courtier, you know.”

“I know,” Tiye replied shortly. “Were you able to replace your dwarfs?”

“Horemheb tells me in his latest letter that two new ones are waiting for me at Akhetaten. They cost him a fortune.”

“He will quickly make another.” Tiye eyed the languid, relaxed slump of the angular shoulders under the filmy linen, the long legs crossed at the ankles, the brown nipples showing where the cloak parted and fell to the ground. “Do you think you will like Pharaoh’s city?”

Mutnodjme shrugged. “It is a marvel to behold, a toy of great beauty, one vast temple. I am happy wherever my friends are. It is certain that my husband has been given an estate for us, the like of which I have never seen. Pharaoh has spared no expense to assure the contentment of his courtiers. Therefore I will like living at Akhetaten.”

“I hear that Tey has decided to move from Akhmin.”

Mutnodjme laughed, lifted her chin, and upended her cup. Water trickled down her neck and across her navel and began to pool between her thighs. “My mother is trying once again to be a dutiful wife. It does not suit her. Even though Father has built a very secluded estate for her across the river from the city, she will become anxious and sillier than ever until the call of Akhmin is too strong to be denied. Then she will steal away.”

“Ay loves her.”

“And she him. That is not the point, Majesty Aunt. She only feels safe at Akhmin.”

I understand
, Tiye thought with a sudden spurt of sympathy for Ay’s lovely, disheveled wife. “Mutnodjme, I did not come here today just to gossip. I have a task for you,” she said abruptly. “It is not a divine command. You may refuse it if you wish.”

Mutnodjme began to smile. “You want me to be your spy in Akhetaten, don’t you, Goddess?”

Tiye smiled back wryly. She had not realized the degree of perceptiveness hidden beneath her niece’s air of lazy detachment. “Yes, I do. I will pay you very well. You stand apart from the struggles for power. You care about nothing, and that is why you will be able to report exactly what you see and feel.”

“Horemheb would not like it.” Mutnodjme’s voice was sharp. “And it is not true that I care about nothing.” Her eyes had cleared, and she was watching Tiye intently. “I care about my husband. I will not put him in danger or subject him to the risk of disfavor.”

“Yet your infidelities are the talk of every bored courtier.”

“Pah! To while away an endless afternoon with a handsome body, what is that? I would kill for Horemheb.”

Tiye hid her surprise. “Spy for me, and you would be protecting him in the long run. It is only a matter of time before those surrounding my son see the necessity of making him understand what the truth really is. Horemheb surely cannot believe either in the supremacy of the Aten or the policy of abject appeasement Akhenaten is following with regard to the empire. Pharaoh needs real friends, Mutnodjme, people who will resist him for his own good.”

“Horemheb only moved to Akhetaten because Pharaoh promised him the Nubian gold monopoly the Amun priests hold at present,” Mutnodjme replied, “and perhaps because he has some influence already. He likes your husband, Empress, whether he believes him right or wrong. He does not understand him, but he is prepared to be loyal.”

“Horemheb used to be loyal to me!”

“He still is, but we must live, and besides, nothing could have been gained by his remaining either at an empty Malkatta or patrolling on the border, though my father wanted to send him back there.” She got up and, sliding to the water barrel, drew another draught. Tiye shook her head at the proffered cup, and Mutnodjme leaned against a pillar and drank. “Do you swear, Majesty Aunt, that you are pursuing no plots that involve my husband?”

“Of course I so swear! Horemheb is the best young commander Egypt has, and I know his larger and more important loyalty is to the country itself.”

“What will you pay me?”

Tiye smiled inwardly. “One hundred new slaves every year, from the country of your choice. One quarter of my profits from Alashian trade. And my permission to dike and flood an extra one hundred acres of my private estates at Djarukha, for your own cultivation.”

Mutnodjme nodded. “Agreed. But I will report to you only what I wish, not necessarily what you ask, and I dictate no scrolls to be held against me later.”

“I have thought of that. I will give you my tongueless slave. Speak your reports to him, and he will come to me and transcribe them in front of me. I will read and then burn them.”

“Majesty, you know that I am lazy and refuse to hurry breathless from one audience to another, or hang about outside closed doors in the hope of catching some item of news. Besides, I am not sure that I can trust you.”

“Then, have me spied upon.” They laughed together. Mutnodjme eased down the pillar until she was squatting at its base. “I do not want reports on royal policies from you,” Tiye went on after a moment. “I want the smell of the air, the tones of men’s voices. You need not send to me regularly, either. I am sure that Ay will keep me informed, too.”

“Majesty, Pharaoh has built a great house for you there,” Mutnodjme said quietly. “Why will you stay here in the twilight? Is it because of my disagreeable half sister?”

“I am goddess,” Tiye replied coolly and rose. Mutnodjme bowed perfunctorily. “May your name live forever,” Tiye finished and, stepping out into the glare of the late afternoon, made her way to the gate, where her servants dozed. The garden no longer breathed sweetly of the past, but as she bent her head to shield her face from the sun, she realized that the pain she carried under her breast was not the sadness of a vanished mood. It was the sudden envy she felt toward Mutnodjme. She glanced back. The portico was empty, the stools still drawn close together, a patch of water evaporating on the stone, and Mutnodjme’s cup lay forgotten on the grass where she had tossed it.

On the night before Pharaoh was due to leave Malkatta, Tiye could not sleep. She had wandered about her apartments during the day, unable to settle to anything, expecting that Akhenaten would send for her. She had called her dancers to perform, Tia-Ha to amuse her, and Piha to massage her, but her thoughts remained on the man who was both son and husband, child and lover. She refused to believe that he could go without a word to her, even though it had been months since he had wanted to spend any private time with her. He had issued no directives regarding the disposition of the old palace, left none of his own staff to provide a link to his empress. It was as if with his departure the whole huge magnificent edifice that had held the heart of Egypt for years would disappear, leaving nothing but lizards and jerboas to crouch in the foundations. Proudly Tiye had refused to approach him. If he wished to sail away without a word, as though she were already dead, then so be it. She told herself that she longed for the kind of peaceful retirement her own aunt, Queen Mutemwiya, had enjoyed in the seclusion of a sumptuous apartment in the harem. She would fight no more battles.