The Twelfth Transforming (42 page)

“Stand!” Akhenaten shrieked delightedly. “This cannot be my brother Smenkhara! So tall, so manly! Come, kiss your pharaoh.” Smenkhara stepped dutifully into the open arms, and as Akhenaten kissed him fervently on the mouth, Tiye saw the boy go red with embarrassment under the yellow paint on his cheeks. Pharaoh turned to Beketaten. Tenderly he stroked her hands. “My own princess,” he said. “You, too, have grown. You still have the sky-blue eyes of my empress. How beautiful you are!” Bending, he kissed her also, and Tiye caught her brother’s eye. Ay’s expression was stiffly unreadable. Tutankhaten stood unsteadily holding his nurse’s hand, his round black eyes on his father. Akhenaten lifted him, and the chubby arms went around his neck, one hand reaching for Pharaoh’s jasper earring. “So this is my son, the prince of my body. At last! Is he well, Tiye, is his health good? I have been thinking of betrothing him to one of his sisters. All of us, holding hands, an unbreakable circle! Let us continue on our way. It is time to receive the yearly tribute and then to feast together.”

His priest rushed forward and again began to sprinkle the ground as Pharaoh turned after handing Tutankhaten back to his nurse. Tiye bowed, relieved that Akhenaten had not thought to command Nefertiti and the princesses to greet her, but she did not fail to notice the intense, joyful glance Smenkhara had exchanged with Meritaten.
One thing at a time
, she thought as she regained the throne and watched the heavy royal palanquin being smoothly hoisted onto the shoulders of Pharaoh’s bearers. Smenkhara began to edge forward as Meritaten loitered behind, but at a sharp word from Tiye he sullenly fell into step with Beketaten.

On the slow walk to the palace, Tiye had ample time to observe both her son and his queen, and the sights of Akhetaten. Above the glinting gold backs of the chairs on the palanquin, the cone and the blue bag wig almost constantly drew together. She saw Akhenaten and Nefertiti kiss and gaze into each other’s eyes. She saw Nefertiti’s head droop becomingly and briefly onto her husband’s shoulder. The princesses walked, skipped, or danced beside the palanquin, often holding hands or draping braceleted arms around one another, ignoring the tumult around them. Tiye looked about her. The Royal Road was pleasingly broad, lined with soldiers who held back a roaring multitude. She would have liked her curtains untied so that her face might not be displayed to commoners, but evidently such considerations had no place here. The crush of people struggled to lie on the stone of the road as Pharaoh passed but rose and cheered her as she was carried by. The side streets that opened off the main thoroughfare were also choked with people. Glancing over their heads, Tiye saw pleasant squares with trees and the fronts of small houses, which, while no match for estates like Horemheb’s or Ay’s, were still spacious and contained courtyards filled with greenery behind their high, sheltering walls. Only once did she glimpse a jarring ugliness. One street that caught her eye led, unchecked by verdure or marketplace, past several walls and gates and straight out onto the desert. Where it disappeared into the sand there was a jumble of mud shanties and a litter of offal.

The city was a marvel of flags and graceful pylons, carefully tended trees, pillars that soared blue, red, yellow, and white into the hot sky. Every surface was painted or incised with pictures representing the glories of nature in brilliant colors, but Tiye did not fail to note that the largest of the walls and pylons were adorned with immense representations of the queen. Nefertiti stood or strode throughout Akhetaten, sometimes with flail raised, sometimes making offerings to the Aten with Meritaten a very tiny figure beside her knee, but always in a simple, male kilt and the cone crown that hid all trace of her femininity. On every corner there also stood shrines, small slabs of stone with scoops for incense and offerings. By the time the party approached the center of the city, a thin, faintly perfumed haze of incense had begun to envelop Tiye. Lightheaded from its odor and deafened by the tumult around her, she tried to grasp one dominant impression of Akhetaten and could not. Later, she knew, the city would reveal its secrets, but today its citizens had flowed into its center, obscuring its heart.

The Royal Road continued to run straight on toward the north. In the distance Tiye could see that the mighty palace on the left was joined to another building on the right by a walkway high above the road, to which ramps gave access on either side. At its midpoint there was a huge window from which one could look along the road in either direction, and the top of the walkway was roofed and pillared. Beneath, two small square portals and one large one in the center permitted the passage of chariots and those on foot.

When the cavalcade reached the arches, it halted. Soldiers rushed to form a cordon around Tiye and the children as she descended and followed Horemheb through a flagged pylon until she found herself ascending one of the ramps, with Pharaoh, Nefertiti, and the princesses just ahead. Below, the crowd was filling the road, their faces turned upward. Akhenaten reached the window and leaned out, one arm around Nefertiti’s shoulders. The princesses lounged against its carved lintels, waving to the people and giggling behind their painted palms.

“People of the Holy City!” Akhenaten shouted above the melee. “Today is blessed in the history of Egypt. Today the empress graces us with her august presence. Today also, as a mark yet again of my favor toward him, the noble Pentu receives the Gold of Favors from my hand. Pentu!” He waved gaily at the man who knelt reverently below with hands already extended to catch the shower of gold that would fall. “This is the third time, is it not?”

“It is indeed, Most Munificent One!”

“For your devotion to the Aten, for your sacrifices and prayers, I make you a Person of Gold!”

Nefertiti drew away as he lifted the heavy gold pectoral from his neck and shook off his gold bracelets and rings, tossing them jocularly out the window. A roar went up as Pentu bent this way and that, trying to catch them. Tiye found Ay at her elbow.

“This is the Window of Appearances,” he murmured in her ear. “Every day when Pharaoh crosses from the palace on his way to the temple, he pauses here to speak to his subjects and distribute gold to any who have earned it.”

“But this is a travesty!” Tiye whispered furiously. “His father only bestowed the Gold of Favors four times in his entire lifetime, and that only for superior devotion or bravery in battle! To debase the ceremony in this way is unbelievable!” Pharaoh was joking with Pentu as the man scrambled to retrieve the glittering hoard around him.

“I have received it myself but once,” Ay went on, his lips against her ear. “Pharaoh is prodigal now only with those whose loyalty he wishes to buy. I find it pitiful. When Horemheb received it, he remained standing and let his servants gather the gold. See how Pentu grovels!”

“He exposes himself to the common populace
every day
?” Tiye had to swallow her rage as with a last wave and smile the royal couple turned into the shadow of the walkway, and she flinched at the cheer that went up as she herself passed the window.

Akhenaten’s palace was a vision realized, a home fit for the sheltering of the lord of the entire earth. Malkatta was a polite, small reflection of this maze of lordly pylons, long pillared courts opening out into another court and another, trees forested around lakes and fountains, ramps leading to gardens and gardens to rooms whose very size caused the foot to pause in awe. The palace seemed alive with movement, for its walls were decorated with ducks swimming, bulls leaping, fish flicking through green water. The pavilion of the queen was fronted by palm frond columns inlaid with glittering glazed tiles. Between the formal terraced gardens and Pharaoh’s reception hall there were over forty columns, and twenty more lined the hall that led to the royal pair’s private apartments. “There is even a private temple here patterned exactly on the Great Temple across the road,” Horemheb told her as she tried to maintain a sense of both proportion and direction. “It is called Hat-Aten and is forbidden to all but the royal family. There has never been a palace like this in the history of the world.”

It seemed to Tiye that Pharaoh was deliberately taking the procession to the main hall in a roundabout way, flaunting his magical creation.
No wonder my son needed Amun’s fortune
, Tiye thought.
No wonder he took all he could from Malkatta. How depleted is the Treasury? I must ask Apy. That all this should have been done so quickly!
She was exhausted by the time the entourage entered the audience hall and climbed to the echoing dais. Here there were three thrones, and at last she could sit and rest her weary feet on the stool provided. The guests rose from their prone positions, and she felt their eyes on her enquiringly. She looked out over them inquisitively and was reassured. It was the day of tribute, and the hall was filled with costumes and tongues from all over the empire. She had expected a melancholy ritual but was astounded to see that even the Khatti had sent representatives.

But her relief vanished soon after the payment of tribute began. Many of the delegations made elaborate speeches and kissed Akhenaten’s feet repeatedly, but their hands were empty. They had come merely as observers, and Egypt could no longer compel them to bring the goods she had once demanded. Pharaoh beamed on them as they crawled to him, casting proud sidelong glances at her. He spoke to them kindly, condescendingly, while Nefertiti clasped him around the waist and occasionally kissed his cheek.

Tiye scanned the crowd more carefully and spotted Aziru, flamboyant in heavily tasseled brocade, leaning against a pillar surrounded by his ruffianly bodyguards. He caught her eye, bowed very low, and smiled at her slowly. Beside him was the Khatti ambassador, the same man who so long ago at Malkatta had set his feet impudently upon a dining table with his arms full of dancers. He was now fully mature, a man with swarthy features and the watchful eyes of a hawk. Pharaoh seemed like a caricature beside the two virile foreigners, plump, benign, and womanly. Tiye closed her eyes.
O Amunhotep Glorified
, she prayed to her dead husband.
Help me. Give me wisdom
.

The traditional vassals of Egypt, southern Syria and Nubia, presented the customary gifts of horses, chariots, and exotic animals, ivory tusks and weapons, precious stones, and gold bars. Her trading partners, independent nations who took no part in Egypt’s wars, brought slaves, vases, ostrich feathers, and other curiosities, mere symbols of the years of good trade that had existed. But as the day wore to a close, Tiye cringed in an agonized shame as she watched servants accept and catalogue such a small list of goods when in her husband’s day the hall at Malkatta, the passage, the forecourt, and the treasuries had been choked with tribute.

That night a feast was held in the same hall, now echoing with music and full of the loud laughter of the celebrants. Smenkhara was at last free to talk to Meritaten, and though Tiye would have liked to watch them seated knee to knee, their tables together among the children, she found herself trying to eat under Nefertiti’s frozen gaze. Akhenaten had placed Tiye in the position of honor on the dais, directly to his right, and Nefertiti at a table to herself behind him, where pharaohs usually seated secondary wives. Tiye herself had often been relegated to such a position at Malkatta when her husband was entertaining a new wife, and it had not concerned her, but Nefertiti was obviously nursing a wounded pride, and every time Tiye turned to her son, she caught her niece’s baleful glare out of the corner of her eye. The gray stare served to straighten Tiye’s spine, weary though she was.

The wine was flowing freely, and the noise rose as the night progressed. Throughout the feast courtiers detached themselves and approached the dais to do homage to the empress, welcoming her to Akhetaten, picking their way through the riotous groups of people, the discarded flowers and blue bead trinkets, the monkeys that leaped and gibbered from one to another with snatched morsels of food in their tiny hands. Pharaoh’s favorite pets squatted beside his plate and under his chair, occasionally shrieking at one another or pulling imperiously at his gown for pieces of fruit. Cats stalked arrogantly among them, disdaining enticements of roast beef, their carnelian studded collars gleaming in the lamplight.

Once the children had eaten, they left the dais and mingled with the guests, all but Smenkhara and Meritaten, who were whispering into each other’s ears and smiling happily. Tiye watched the ten-year-old Meketaten, a circlet of turquoise forget-me-nots on her forehead and the blue ribbons of her youth lock trailing down her back, pick her way to the lively group of harem women and stand hesitantly beside a woman whom Tiye did not at first recognize as Tadukhipa. When the older woman became aware of the girl’s presence, she took Meketaten’s hand and drew her down beside her, putting an arm around her. She said something that brought a faint smile to the girl’s wan face. Tiye turned to her son and found him also looking at his daughter.

“Meketaten is pale,” Tiye said. “Was there much fever here this summer?”

“The Aten protects his own,” Akhenaten replied shortly. “Meketaten is inviolable.”

18

T
iye spent one last night in the peace of Ay’s home before inspecting the house that had been built for her and grudgingly pronouncing it suitable. It lay to the north of the palace, with gardens that ran down to the river, but the grounds were divided from Pharaoh’s apartments only by a wall that contained a door. Worse, it was directly across the road from the Great Temple. Tiye had envisioned something more remote from the life of the city, a sanctuary to which she could retire at will, but the anxious pride with which Akhenaten led her from room to room silenced her objections. He had obviously seen to the furnishing and decorating himself and had tried to have the friezes and reliefs conform as closely as possible to the art she had loved at Malkatta. But in spite of his efforts Tiye knew when she stepped over the threshold that she could live here for years and never disperse the air of opulent, sinister magic that she was increasingly coming to realize imbued all the city.