The Twelfth Transforming (35 page)

She had ordered her physician to prepare a sleeping draught, but Ra sailed the Duat through House after House, and she still lay tense, listening to the faint notes of Karnak’s horns drifting across the river, her naked body sticky and restless under the linen sheet. Twice she roused Piha to bring her water, but its warmth nauseated her. She was so certain that sleep had eluded her that she could not believe she was waking to the dark form bending over her until it hesitantly touched her cheek. She cried out and sat up, and Akhenaten took a step away from the couch.

“I sent Piha to the servants’ quarters,” he whispered unnecessarily. “I wish to speak to you alone, Tiye.”

The use of her name was a good omen, but she whispered back, “Does Nefertiti know you are here, Majesty?” She could not tell, in the dim light, whether it was a flush of embarrassment or simply the play of shadow on his thin neck as he craned down at her. “Or were you ashamed to bid me farewell in public?”

“Why, no,” he said in a louder voice, his expression puzzled. “I supposed we would say farewell on the water steps in the morning. I could not sleep.”

Relenting, Tiye patted the couch by her knees. “Neither could I. Amunhotep, it is still not too late to change your mind. Leave your city to the owls and jackals and stay here!”

“Do not call me that!” He scowled briefly, his pendulous lower lip jutting. “It is not too late for you to change your mind either, my mother. I have prepared a magnificent house for you in Akhetaten, full of pleasure gardens and other delights, as befits an empress. Please come.” Under the band of the plain white linen sleeping cap, his high forehead was furrowed. Tiye laid hot fingers gently on his bare thigh.

“There is no reason for me to leave my home,” she said. “You have made it obvious that you no longer need me, either as empress or as wife. I did wrong to break the law with you, Akhenaten. My judgment was impaired. I look for nothing now but peace.”

“I do not understand.” He picked up her hand and began to knead it. “The Aten has made us one forever. The joining of our bodies was needful. I told you.”

“But it is not needful any longer.” The words were spoken half as statement, half as question. “Let me go, Akhenaten.”

He glanced at her sharply, distress in his face. “Does that mean you do not love me? Have I offended you?” Anxiety drove the light voice even higher. “The Aten would be angry if I offended you, Tiye.”

She felt herself being unwillingly drawn once again into the maze of strong, conflicting emotions that had lain dormant in her, waiting to entangle her thoughts and direct her body whenever her son was near. Tonight she firmly denied them. “Go back to your couch,” she said harshly, taking her hand away. “Yesterday you were ill. My physician told me so. You need to sleep so that you may sail tomorrow.”

“How can I leave Malkatta knowing that I have disappointed you?”

Oh gods
, Tiye thought wearily. “You have not disappointed me, my son. Are you not the incarnation of Ra, the Spirit of the Aten Disk? How can a god disappoint?” She spoke soothingly, but he was not mollified.

“You make me feel like a child!” he burst out, coming suddenly to his feet and beginning to sway from one to the other. “I know you do not mean what you say! You try to calm me, but you really just want me to go away!”

“You are my pharaoh,” she said deliberately. “You have Nefertiti, surely the most beautiful woman who ever walked the earth. You have such power, such wealth! What more is there? Why do you make these outbursts in my presence?”

He stopped swaying and stiffened. “Because I do not have from you the adoration I have from everyone else. You know me too well.”

It was a moment of great clarity she had not expected from him, and it astonished and disarmed her. “But the knowing is with love. Do not worry. You will still be pharaoh at Akhetaten, and I will still be your mother here in Malkatta.”

“Will you miss me?” His hands were pressed together between his soft thighs. “Will you miss me enough not to plot against me and do me harm?”

“So Nefertiti wishes me to come to Akhetaten so that she can keep an eye on me!” Relieved, Tiye laughed. “I am flattered. Yet for your own peace of mind, you must remember that she speaks from jealousy. I only want to be left alone.”

He began to fidget again, and puzzled, she saw that she had somehow insulted him; even so, she pressed forward. “I have done my utmost to see you seated firmly on the Horus Throne, and I have no desire now to face the prospect of Nefertiti’s sour complaints. Your lack of trust in me, Amunhotep, does you no credit. I have tried to be both wife and mother to you, and I have failed. I miss your father! Please leave my chamber.”

For answer he came back to the couch and pushed her down. He was trembling. “I am my father, and you are my wife!” he cried out. “You love me, you know you do! Tell me, Tiye!”

“I do not want to hear it tonight,” she said forcefully. “I am not easily biddable, like little Kia or one of your concubines. You have ignored me both in and out of bed for too long. Take your hands from my shoulders or I shall call for my guards.”

“If you will not come, then give me your love to carry with me,” he said, his voice muffled in the pillow beside her ear. “Once more, dear Tiye, to ensure my good fortune.”

“I am not an amulet or a spell!” She struggled under his weight, knowing that she could easily throw him off, but she was suddenly weakened by the truth of her own words.
It has been so long, too long
, said the insidious voice in her head. She felt the familiar touch of his skin against her body, and her knees loosened, her thighs opened. Angry in spite of it, she tried to rise on her elbows, but as her face tilted, Amunhotep’s mouth closed over hers, tasting of cloves and perfumed wine, the flavor she had come to associate with his father. A vision of his full, lined face was there, so real that she felt a quick wrenching in her stomach before she pulled away. Instantly her son drew back also.

“You do still love me!” He smiled happily. “I knew you did.”

“I love you as my son, my god,” Tiye managed, her voice thick, her limbs heavy. He lowered his head and kissed her again, more gently this time, with the soft, exploratory hesitancy she remembered so well. Her body, still vital, knew only that it had been hungry, but her thoughts recoiled even as her arms went round his neck, his movements recalling the days at Memphis, the first joy of their marriage, reminding her of the months when he had ignored her. She had forgotten the sensation of his strange, misshapen belly, his flabby thighs and boyish genitals, but the repulsion that had always hovered in her mind was still not as powerful as her physical response to him.
He is going away
, she thought dimly, listening to her own muttered words of love and encouragement,
and then it will not matter anymore
.

“That was good,” he said later as she lay beside him, head turned away, the sheet bunched in one stiff hand. “It was like being born all over again, like watching myself expelled from my own womb.” He stood and fastened his kilt. “At Akhetaten I will live in hope that one day you will come sailing to the wharf. Once more your body has blessed my endeavors, Tiye. The god will call you to my city.”

Tiye shuddered and did not turn to see him leave. “Dawn comes, and I want to sleep” was all that she was able to reply.

When he had gone, she pushed the pillows to the floor and set a headrest under her neck. The ivory was cool, spreading comfort down her spine. Reaching under the couch, she drew out the Declaration of Innocence that had so offended Kheruef and placed it on her stomach, one hand over it protectively. She wanted to sleep. Her eyes burned, and her mouth was dry. But the realization that had come to her several hours earlier now returned. I
am not a woman to him, as Nefertiti is
, she thought.
I am an amulet, a lucky charm to keep evil at bay, something to be lifted from a chest now and then and strapped to his arm, only to be dropped back with his other trinkets when the moment of anxiety is gone
. The humiliation of it made her squeeze her eyes shut and groan softly.
You are getting old, Empress
, she told herself.
This savage blow to your pride has not even provoked anger in you, or a desire for revenge. Nothing but shame, and wonder. But perhaps it is only that he wished to reassure himself that his hold on me was as strong as ever, that my loyalty was not suspect. If I had been prepared, if I had sent him away immediately, he would have sailed to Akhetaten in doubt and misery. It is better this way. Let him feel safe, my innocent son. Let tomorrow be glorious for him
.

In the end she fell deeply, soddenly asleep, dragging herself to consciousness with difficulty when the music of pipe and lute penetrated her dreams. As she opened her eyes, Piha was raising the shades, and her musicians, their duty done, were bowing and retiring. Already the day was breathless with heat, the sky glimpsed through the window an azure blue tinged with bronze. The Declaration of Innocence was still in her hand. She pressed it to her cheek and then dropped it beneath the couch.

The remains of the court of Malkatta—Tiye’s retinue, the few courtiers who chose to stay, and the older harem women—gathered on the water steps a scant two hours later to watch Pharaoh’s departure. Tiye sat on her throne under the thin shade of a canopy, the horned disk and plumes bearing down on her sweat-slicked brow like the weight of the empire itself. From steps to river the canal was choked with craft of every description, all flying bright pennants, all crowded with laughing, jostling people. Those standing behind Tiye were silent, and it was slowly borne in upon her that more than a few paces of grass and hot stone separated her and her attendants from the excited hundreds her eyes scanned painfully. She had glimpsed the crest of an invisible wave many times since Osiris Amunhotep had died, a distant pale line of warning and melancholy, the rising tide of time itself, and now it rose around her. She turned on the throne. Everywhere there were faces touched lightly or scored heavily with approaching age, bodies loosened and folded, eyes filmed, limbs that would move heavily, and some with pain. It did not matter that those bodies held kas that would always be buoyant with the exuberance of youth. Between spirit and its yearning was aging flesh, and only the eyes around her could still show the soul undistorted. Tiye found herself gazing at Tia-Ha, a short, fat woman with too much paint on her cheeks, bowing and smiling with the girlish gestures of a coquette. Quickly she looked away only to meet Nefertiti’s level regard. Tall and slim, her wig netted in golden spirals that coiled around the ringlets to her waist and then went whirling past the smooth hips to the knees, the woman was staring at her.
And she is a woman
, Tiye reflected with dismay.
Twenty-eight years old. How has it happened?
Nefertiti’s new pregnancy was showing, and she seemed to symbolize all that Tiye knew she had lost forever. In the triumph of the moment Nefertiti smiled at her aunt before she vanished into the gloom of the curtained cabin.

Akhenaten stepped forward, the Double Crown gleaming, the pharaonic beard of woven gold and lapis lazuli sparkling. Fresh incense billowed upward, and the Aten priests began the prayers of worship and safe voyage. Akhenaten took Tiye’s hands as she rose.

“You know that I have vowed never to return to Thebes,” he said quietly. “If you wish to see me again, you must come to Akhetaten. A new age begins for our beloved Egypt, O my mother, and ten thousand hentis from now, when the worship of the Aten has spread throughout the world, men will have forgotten that Thebes and its god ever existed. But they will remember that you gave birth to me, and they will speak your name with reverence.”

She stroked his cheek once, delicately. “Your head pains you again today.”

He began to nod, squinting against the agony the small movement caused. “Yes. Once more the god’s hand is on me, but I will be able to sleep when Thebes is out of my sight.”

There was nothing more to say. Tiye sat back on her throne as Akhenaten went to slit the throat of the bull already trussed and waiting quietly on the portable altar, and the wine and purifying milk were poured over the water steps. Bowls of blood were passed among the people thronging before the palace and those already standing in the barges, but there was none of the frantic rush to anoint that had been characteristic of thanksgivings in previous days. Akhenaten’s court had learned sobriety.

At last Pharaoh raised a bloody hand and walked up the ramp, disappearing into the cabin. Pasi, his captain, shouted, and the ropes were untied. The oars hit the water with a splash, and
Kha-em-Ma’at
pulled away from Malkatta.

Tiye did not remain, but signaling to Huya and her women, she made her way into the palace, through the giant reception hall, now cool and empty, through Pharaoh’s private audience hall and throne room, to the garden beyond. Here she mounted the steps set against the outside wall of the palace and stood at last on the roof. Beyond the line of palms waving stiffly, the hundreds of barges were jostling for position behind the royal boat, which had already turned north. Oars dipped and gleamed with water. Banners and flags rippled. The islands that dotted the Nile between Thebes and Malkatta gained definition as one by one the boats separated, and water began to glitter between them. Today there was no haze. The pylons and towers of Karnak stood out knife-sharp against the blue sky, and around it the horizon of the mighty city spread to right and left seemingly without end.

“There are thousands of people lining the quays and standing in the water,” Tiye said presently to Huya. “They are even on the roofs. Yet I cannot hear them.”

“That is because they are silent, Majesty,” Huya replied dryly. “It is not a day for rejoicing. I can glimpse no Amun priests at the Karnak water steps either.”

“It is a sight they do not wish to behold.” Tiye shaded her eyes with one hand. The uneven brown mass of city dwellers was curiously still as well as quiet, and gradually a sense of their hostility stole over Tiye, a premonition of resentment and latent, directionless violence.