The Twelfth Transforming (40 page)

“Princess Tiye, what is so interesting about the ceiling?” Pharaoh had enquired.

“Nothing at all, Divine Horus,” she had replied, caught off guard. “I was not even thinking about the ceiling.”

“I see. And what do little girls think about when they are gazing to the heavens with their mouths open?” His men had laughed.

Tiye flushed.
Stand your ground with him
, her father had instructed her in the days when she was being prepared to become a Royal Wife.
Do not be docile. You are not beautiful enough for that. You must display your character if you want to capture him
.

“I was wondering, Mighty Bull, why Your Majesty would want to build a palace here when you have a perfectly good one on the east bank. You are putting your women, your ministers, and all the foreign delegations to a great deal of trouble.”

“So I am, and enjoying every moment of it. Kheruef!” The Keeper of the Harem Door bustled over and bowed. Amunhotep pointed into Tiye’s face. “This one tonight, but you had better muzzle her. Yuya, I do not know what education you provided for her, but it must have been cheap. She is impudent.”

Yet when the palace was sufficiently finished for occupation, it was Tiye who had moved into the empress’s sumptuous apartments. She smiled now, hearing his voice again, feeling her own shyness and determination. If the gods willed it, Smenkhara would move back when his time of incarnation came, and perhaps Meritaten would have her chests unpacked where Tiye herself had stood as a small, defiant girl. The thought of Malkatta empty and slowly crumbling as the years went by was too painful to contemplate. Long before the day of departure came, she had drained each room dry of its memories, and she set her sandaled feet upon the barge’s ramp without a backward glance.

She traveled alone, Smenkhara and Beketaten in the barge behind her and Tutankhaten with his nursery attendants farther back still. Behind the royal boats dozens of craft bearing servants and household effects strung out on the fast-flowing current. To either side were the barges of the military, carrying Tiye’s bodyguards. The day was cool and bright. A sweet wind blew from the north, keeping the sails drawing and the oars flashing, and it riffled the short green crops and stirred among the fresh leaves of winter. The music and chatter of the harem women watching from the roof of their quarters soon died away to be replaced by the gurgle and slap of water against the hull and the rhythmic cry of the man who set the leisurely beat of the oarsmen. Tiye, seated comfortably on the deck under an awning, glanced to the east bank and then called Huya.

“Why are there crowds on the Theban docks? Is it a god’s day? I cannot hear them shouting.”

“It is no god’s day, unless they celebrate a district deity,” Huya replied. “They gather to watch you go, Majesty.”

Tiye looked at them thoughtfully. The air was hazed with winter humidity, and her barge was favoring the west bank, so that she could not pick out individual faces, but the sullenness of the Thebans was unmistakable. A few small, weather-beaten craft were tethered to the docks, but most of the many wharves were empty, and one or two, Tiye noticed, were already rotting, leaning lazily toward the water. It had been a long time since she had ventured beyond Malkatta’s sheltering walls. “Drop the cabin hangings,” she ordered. “I will move within. They have no right to stare at a goddess.”

But she had no sooner reclined on the cushions spread in the golden dimness than she heard a shouted challenge, and her barge came to a halt. She waited. Presently the captain spoke to her through the curtain.

“Majesty, it is a boat from Karnak. The high priest begs to see you.”

“Let him come aboard.”
I refuse to carry the guilt of Thebes’s fate with me
, she thought resignedly as she heard the scuffles and sounds of Maya being bowed aboard.
The city will simply have to bide its time
.

A shadow fell across the hanging. “You may raise the curtain and kneel outside,” she called. “Why did you not come to Malkatta, Maya? I am not pleased.”

The curtain lifted, and the high priest’s pale, distressed face met her gaze. “Empress, Majesty, we at Karnak could not believe that you would really desert us. If you go, then where is a divinity who will champion us? Amun surely sleeps!”

“Perhaps he needs the rest,” Tiye snapped but then cursed herself for her levity. “Maya,” she said gently, “Pharaoh needs me. You do not understand the complexity of the situation. All you see at present is an empty temple and a poverty-stricken Thebes. I order you to be patient and tend Amun lovingly. I do not withdraw my patronage with my presence. That is all.” He bowed his head and let the curtain fall. She heard him cross into the temple barge, and then her captain’s crisp order and the rocking of the cabin. But for many miles she brooded over the high priest’s stricken face and the angry misery of the thousands she was leaving to a gloomy fate.

Yet she took pleasure in the sight of her beloved Egypt drifting by in the euphoric bliss of another winter. Sometimes oars were needed, but more often the current alone carried them forward swiftly, and they needed only the control of the helmsman. At night they tied up in empty bays. Torches were lit, carpets laid, and she and the children ate to the loud music of frogs crouched in mud and the far coughing of hippopotamuses in the marshes. The nights were cool. Tiye slept well in the little cabin, surrounded by Followers, piled with blankets yet breathing the crisp, unscented air. Her physician cautioned her against bathing in the winter river, so each morning she sat on deck swathed in woolen cloaks, eating her first meal of the day and watching Smenkhara gasp and splash in the shallows before he joined her. “This is how life should be,” she murmured occasionally, but smiled at herself even as she said the words. By the time her barge came in sight of the first cluster of palm trees at the foot of the cliffs that almost met the river, she was longing for the luxuries Akhetaten could provide.

Beside the river, in the shade of the trees, was a small customs house with several quays sunk into the Nile mud where river traffic coming up from the south disgorged its goods. The house was not as large as the one that marked the northern extremity of the city but was nonetheless important, for here the trade from Nubia—gold, slaves, ostrich feathers, hides, ivory, and ebony—was unloaded, tallied, and stored temporarily. Here, too, were barracks for the soldiers who patrolled the southern cliffs and the narrow neck of the Nile. Tiye did not expect to be challenged, for she was flying the blue and white imperial flag, but as she glided past the stiff palms and the busy, crowded wharf, a skiff put out from the shore. A man wearing the blue helmet of a charioteer was balancing in the prow, and on both forearms, a silver commander’s band glittered. It was Horemheb. At a word from Tiye, the oarsmen shipped and then sat panting. The skiff bumped alongside, and sailors ran to assist the commander over the side. He came straight to her and fell on his knees.

“Rise, Commander,” she said coolly. “I trust you have something important to say to me. I am tired of water and discomfort.” He got to his feet and followed her in under the shade of the awning. “Sit.”

“It is an unhoped-for pleasure to see you again, Goddess,” he said. “You must believe that though my wife journeyed to Malkatta under her own advisement, I would have come myself if I had found a suitable pretext.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Tiye said smoothly, her eyes rapidly taking in the brown, bare chest that had broadened in the years since she had seen him last, the face that had matured into a handsome decisiveness, the pleasing, masculine line of linen-covered hips and long legs. His presence, a hand’s touch away, the faint scent of male sweat and mandrake perfume on him, reminded her forcibly of how long she had been surrounded by women and old men. For one delirious second she wished twenty years removed from her life. “But I am surprised you needed an excuse to visit me. Is Akhetaten a city of cowards and self-seekers only?”

He paused before replying. At a faint movement of her head Huya offered wine and withdrew out of earshot. Horemheb said, “You were right, and I was wrong, Divine One. Accept my apology.”

“Oh, but you were not wrong, dear Horemheb,” Tiye responded lightly. “Did you not obtain the gold monopoly from Nubia for your loyalty to my son?”

He flushed. “I deserved that. But, Majesty, I am still loyal to Pharaoh. My motive for coming to Akhetaten was not greed alone.”

Tiye relented. “I know, Commander. Neither is my motive a greedy one. I will not plot against my son or intrigue to further Smenkhara’s career. I am here because I, like you, recognize the threat to Egypt’s security and want to help Pharaoh face it.”

“He is beside himself with excitement over your arrival. The day after tomorrow is the customary day for the receiving of foreign tribute, and at the same time he will honor you. I wanted to greet you first, though, and escort you to Ay’s house. It is on the west bank, opposite the palace, and as quiet as you could wish. Tey has prepared an apartment for you until you approve the estate Pharaoh has built for you. Tomorrow you will be officially welcomed.”

“Where is Ay?”

Horemheb looked away. “Pharaoh demanded his presence at dawn this morning, and I have not seen him since.”

A hundred questions leaped to Tiye’s tongue, but she bit them back. It was better to answer them with her own observations as time went on. “Very well. Have your helmsman come aboard and take the tiller. Your skiff can be tied behind. Then come back to me and tell me what I am seeing as we pass the south end of the city.”

After carrying out Tiye’s orders Horemheb came to stand respectfully be hind her as she leaned on the rail and looked for the first time on Akhenaten’s dream city. “Alabaster quarries have been dug in the cliffs behind the customs house,” he said as they swung out into midstream, “but you cannot see them from here. There are the glass and faience workshops. Not a pretty sight, and fortunately they stretch back into the desert instead of straggling along the riverbank. Ah! Here comes the first estate. It is Panhesy’s, and next to it, Ranefer’s. My home is the fifth along, beside that of Thothmes the sculptor, who ought not to be living among ministers but is a favorite of the queen.”

Horemheb’s inflection made Tiye glance at him sharply, but he kept his eyes and his pointing finger on the bank. Tiye filed away the scrap of information and turned her attention back to the unfolding wonder of Akhetaten. She had become accustomed over the years to the filth and squalor of a Thebes growing ever more dingy and dilapidated, and now the sheer beauty of her son’s city took her breath away. The nobles’ estates Horemheb was pointing out to her could hardly be seen through the luxuriant forests of palms and groves of fruit trees that surrounded them. Here and there she caught a glimpse of still lake water through the profusion of green. Water steps of whitest marble ran down into the blue depths of the Nile at regular intervals, and against them, white, gilded craft rocked, dainty barges with masts from Lebanon and the Aten Disk emblazoned in glittering electrum on their sides. For perhaps two miles one house succeeded another, all fronted by artificial lakes, all buried in greenery and riotous with flowers. Then buildings ceased, but the greenery continued, lawns, orchards, and clumps of flowers. Little paths wound through it, leading occasionally to a compact paved square containing a stela and an altar. She felt the craft veer, and Horemheb cleared his throat. “See the little island?” he said. “Pharaoh had it planted with shrubs and flowers. You can make out the bridge that links it to the bank where Maru-Aten, the summer palace, is built. I cannot describe the palace to you, Majesty, but you will doubtless see it for yourself before long. It is the queen’s favorite retreat. There is a royal temple there as well, two lakes fronted by pleasure buildings, decorated pavements, every delight for which Egypt is famous. We must begin to tack to the west now, but as you can see even from this distance, the gardens and treed walkways continue into the city itself.”

As the barge began to move gradually away from the small island, Tiye turned her attention to the west bank. Here the only trees were the usual palms growing along the lines of the irrigation canals, and the rest of the ground was thick with crops. “No one but Ay lives on the west bank?” she asked.

“No one. Pharaoh refused permission to all but Ay. He wishes his subjects to be as close to the temple and palace as possible. When it rises here, the river floods only the west bank, so while we quickly had fertile fields to harvest for the city, it was a costly enterprise to build the dam and dig the canals necessary to protect the fanbearer’s home from the fury of the flooding. Ay is grateful, though, because Tey has shown no inclination to slip back to Akhmin.” He smiled, and Tiye laughed back at him. “There are the water steps. Now turn around if you will, Goddess. There is the center of Akhetaten.”

Tiye had expected the same lopsided jumble of three-storied, flat-topped houses that made up the bulk of Thebes, but no houses were to be seen. The bank of the river was thick with palms and sycamores, and behind them, row upon row of tall white pillars rising from above a wall and marching away out of sight. She thought she glimpsed a wide road running toward Maru-Aten. Horemheb saw her puzzlement. “That is the Great Palace and harem,” he explained. “Farther in and across from the Royal Road is the temple. Beyond that are the ministers’ offices and the homes of lesser nobles. And out on the desert beyond
that
, of course, are the hovels of the poor and the homes of foreigners. I have no doubt that Pharaoh will show you his city himself.”

Tiye had time for no more than a cursory glance at the east bank before the barge bumped Ay’s water steps. In front of the house and filling a forecourt entirely shaded by the trees surrounding it, Ay’s servants were already prostrating themselves on the pink stone. The ramp was run out, but before she disembarked, Tiye asked Horemheb to see to the housing of her goods and servants. He bowed. “I will return tonight,” he said. “Ay is having a small feast for you. A family affair. Mutnodjme will come, too, of course. Pharaoh does not want to greet you himself until he can do it with proper formality. Welcome to the Horizon of the Aten, Most Beautiful One.” She acknowledged his obeisance and descended the ramp.