The Twelfth Transforming (46 page)

“I am not a child, Horemheb,” Akhenaten muttered tiredly. “Is Parennefer there? I want to sleep. Forgive me, Mother. I cannot talk anymore. Perhaps tomorrow…” He allowed his butler to help him to his feet and his servant supported him across the long room.

Tiye grasped Horemheb’s arm. “You did not warn me!” she muttered, shaken and furious.

“Your Majesty would not have believed,” he answered gently. “Now you must understand why I spoke as I did in your garden. I am perhaps your son’s only friend. Whether his fits are the hand of the god or intermittent madness I cannot say. I love the man I have known for so long. It is the ruler I wish to depose.” The moment had stripped them both of tact.

Tiye’s nails bit farther into his arm. “You know perfectly well that Pharaoh the man cannot be separated from Pharaoh the god!” she answered swiftly. “Don’t make me kill you, Horemheb! I need you!”

“I am aware of that, but Egypt needs me also.” He bent and kissed the hand curved like talons around his flesh. “Majesty, do what you can. I will wait.”

She let go of him, looking dispassionately at the marks she had made. “How long has he been like this, so unpredictable?”

“It has grown on him slowly. He never harms anyone, but we have all learned to be careful what we say in case our words trigger what you saw. I cannot go far from him. He trusts me, and I am able to comfort him.”

“Gods!” She laughed hurtfully. “He spoke the truth, then. You do not love him, any of you carrion. I will press for Nefertiti’s disgrace, but no amount of incense will purify me of the deed. Take Smenkhara under your wing, Commander. It is time he stopped flitting about like a gilded butterfly and applied himself to the manly arts.”

He nodded briefly and turned on his heel. Tiye stood still, listening to the monkeys snuffle and scratch, once more looking back down the years to the source of her growing guilt, the moment in the garden at Memphis when she had agreed to marry her son, while the haughty face of the Son of Hapu rose in her mind’s eye. Her cup was half-empty. She drained it quickly and went away.

19

T
iye tried once more to reason with Nefertiti, bringing all her powers of persuasion to bear on the sulky woman, desperate to avoid the necessity for blackening the queen’s name, but Nefertiti mouthed the same tired accusations of jealousy and spite that she had hurled at Tiye in Malkatta, and in the end Tiye gave up. Closeted with Huya, she laid out in minute detail the gossip that must spread in the harem, among Pharaoh’s personal servants and, with more colorful words, in the markets of the city. If she had been younger, she would have been able to insinuate herself between husband and wife swiftly, expertly, with her body, and would have felt a great deal cleaner than she did using less direct methods. But with Nefertiti lazily encouraging Pharaoh in his disastrous policies instead of trying to sway him, with Horemheb still loyal but increasingly restless, with Ay himself disillusioned, there was no time.

Huya did his work well. He knew that rumors could feed on nothing more than a dropped word, the lift of an eyebrow, a secret smile. He had a reputation for silent efficiency and was wise enough not to jeopardize it. His soft voice was forgotten in the wave of excited conjecture that swept first the palace and then the city as a whole. The monkey sculptures had been entertaining, but the queen in a new guise as adulteress provided infinite titillation. Was it not well known that the queen had begged Pharaoh to allow Thothmes to own an estate on the river when more worthy men had to be content with walled houses behind the palace? Did she not retire almost every day to Maru-Aten, there to sit for one sculpture after another?

While the gossip spread, the queen appeared to become even more publicly affectionate to her husband, clinging to him on the double litter, caressing him as they sat together at the feasting, but no one failed to note that the empress was now seen constantly in their company, a small, very straight, aloof woman always richly and formally garbed and always wearing the glittering disk, horns, and plumes of her divine position. There were those who, bowing in adoration before the pouting mouth, the piercing blue eyes, the inscrutable face slashed with lines of petulance, wondered at the coincidence of the rumors and the empress’s coming. But to most, Tiye was the shadow of older times, a reminder of a way of ruling that had disappeared more suddenly than they cared to remember.

As Nefertiti’s delivery drew near, it became a source of amusement to speculate on her unborn child’s paternity, and when at last she took to her couch, the buzz of gossip reached a fever pitch. Huya told Tiye that though he had not himself seen it, he believed that courtiers were placing bets on whether the baby would be another girl, and therefore presumably Pharaoh’s, or whether it might be a boy. That possibility had not occurred to Tiye. But now she found herself a victim of her own lies and innuendoes. She did not want to have to contend with the possibility of Nefertiti’s bearing a son. It was imperative that Akhenaten be persuaded to declare Smenkhara his heir, for she believed that if Nefertiti produced a boy, her own son by Osiris Amunhotep would probably be disinherited.
What irony that would be
, she mused grimly in the sleepless nights,
if the son of a mere sculptor should eventually receive the Double Crown. But I do not believe that Nefertiti has done more than dream romantically over her stone chipper. And can I blame her? The body of my poor son becomes less desirable as time goes by
.

But, confounding the rumors, Nefertiti gave birth to another girl, her sixth, and those courtiers who had allowed their imaginations free rein parted with much gold. Pharaoh was as touchingly delighted as he had been at Meritaten’s birth and named the child Sotpe-en-Ra, Chosen One of Ra. The gossip abated briefly, but Tiye, watching Pharaoh carefully, believed that it had done its work. She did not know what passed between the royal couple in the privacy of Akhenaten’s bedchamber, but Nefertiti on more than one occasion was seen in public with red, swollen eyes while her husband stood apart from her, his arm around the fragile, distorted body of little Meketaten.

Aziru was still at court, living in ambassadorial quarters in the palace, quietly watching the minute shift in the balance of power with wary eyes. The Khatti delegation had returned to Boghaz-keuoi without Pharaoh’s having made any attempt to come to terms with Suppiluliumas, a prince who was now as powerful as a pharaoh himself. Tiye was tempted at least to send warning letters to him, but decided that if she did not eventually get her way at court, such a move would only serve to further destroy Egypt’s crumbling image among the Asiatics.

The New Year began with a week-long paean of praise to the Aten. Songs composed by Akhenaten were sung daily throughout the city while the royal family attended rites four times a day in the temple. Pharaoh fasted and prayed. Tiye, standing by the hour in the sanctuary, defenseless as they all were against the merciless, blinding fire of the sun, thought of Ra in his guise as sphinx, a reclining god of watchfulness, whose benignity could at any time become a bloody vengefulness.
You should beware, my son
, she thought as she watched him lift his face to the sky, eyes closed.
Ra as the Visible Disk is indeed a god of gentleness and beauty, but how, on a day like this, can you remain oblivious to the god in his guise as destroyer? I know that the sun, like Hathor, can kill in his other aspects. It would have been wise not to invite his jealousy by elevating the Aten at the expense of his other manifestations
.

At the end of the first month of the New Year, the month of Thoth, Meketaten was brought to her couch. Huya woke Tiye in the early hours of a stale, close morning, lighting her lamp and bringing her cool water as she struggled to clear her head.

“Pharaoh sent a message to Your Majesty, inviting you to the birth if it is your wish,” he explained as Piha passed a cool cloth over her face and combed her hair. “He and the queen are already in attendance.”

“How long until dawn?” Tiye stood while Piha draped her in a thin cloak, and then sat to have her sandals put on.

“No more than two hours.”

“Where is Tadukhipa? Is she with the princess?”

“No. Pharaoh will not permit her in. He allows only the fully royal and the witnesses of tradition to be present.”

Tiye’s mouth tightened. “What else is a Mitanni princess but fully royal? Order her brought from the harem, Huya. I will have her admitted. If my escort waits, I am ready.”

She was led, not into the harem, where Meketaten had her apartment, but through the gate into the palace grounds. The darkness was thick and smothering. Tiye would have welcomed even the hottest breath of wind, but the trees stood motionless, clusters of blackness against an inky sky sprinkled with a few pale stars. The paving beneath her feet was warm, the grass brittle. Inside the palace the wind catchers provided air that was at least fresh, and the high ceilings gave an illusion of coolness. Tiye followed the escort until they came to Pharaoh’s own suite of rooms. The door to the bedchamber was ajar, and a thin haze of incense drifted out into the passage. Tiye dismissed the guard and entered.

Meketaten was lying propped up on pillows, a sennet board beside her. To one side of the couch Akhenaten sat, dressed in a pleated kilt and white scarf but little else. Nefertiti’s chair was also drawn up to the couch, and she held a playing cone in one hand. The midwife was busying herself at a table nearby. Tiye bowed, and as she approached, the girl lifted a pale, frightened face to her grandmother, the smile she attempted failing to hide the panic in the almond eyes. Tiye took the child’s cold hand and kissed her.

“I see you are passing the time pleasantly,” she said, glancing swiftly at an open Aten shrine that was pouring a choking smoke over the couch. “If you beat your mother at the sennet, I will give you a pair of golden earrings. What do you think of that?” The window was tightly draped, making the room stifling. Tiye looked for amulets, but there were none.
It would have been better
, she thought,
to have diverted the girl with Dogs and Jackals. The sennet is a magic game, portentous with predictions, charms, and curses. I hope Nefertiti has the good sense to let Meketaten win
. She bowed in front of Pharaoh. “My son, I wish to speak with you outside.”

Akhenaten nodded agreeably, beamed upon his daughter, and strode into the passage, Tiye following. “It is a great day,” he said. “Do you not agree?”

“Akhenaten, why are there no amulets around the couch, no priests to make spells? And do you think it wise to impede the princess’s breathing with so much incense that cannot find an outlet?”

“You say you are studying the Teaching, and yet you ask such foolish questions?” He stroked her head indulgently. “The Aten blesses without the allurements of charms or the songs of priests. I am the sole arbiter before the god. All prayers are addressed to me, and I take them to the god. Meketaten understands this.”

“Then at least lift the window hangings.”

He shrugged lightly. “Very well.”

“And I have sent for Tadukhipa. I beg you, Divine One, let her enter. The princess loves and trusts her and will be heartened by her presence.”

“But my little Kia is so softhearted,” he objected. “She will cry.”

“I do not think so, and even if she does, it will do Meketaten much good just to see her there. Please, Akhenaten.”

“Oh, very well. Have Apy put her on the scroll of witnesses.” A sharp cry interrupted them, and Tiye, glancing through the door, saw the sennet board slip to the floor and Nefertiti reach for the flailing hands.

“It will be a long labor,” she snapped, anger knifing through her for a second at the sight of Akhenaten’s impassive face as he watched his daughter toss. “I will go back to my house now, but send a message if she asks for me, and keep me informed of her progress. Here is Tadukhipa.”

The princess bowed timidly several times, her hesitant gaze slipping back and forth between Pharaoh and the empress until Akhenaten waved her within. Tiye watched as she went through the door, made her obeisance to the queen, and settled herself by the couch on a stool a servant had produced.

“Kia!” Meketaten exclaimed, the spasm already past. Tadukhipa took the small hand. “You will stay with me? I am sleepy now. Tell me another story of Mitanni while I close my eyes.”

Tadukhipa glanced at Nefertiti, who nodded. Tiye turned away. Men were beginning to straggle along the passage, eyes filmed with sleep, their servants yawning around them. They carried scrolls, board games, jugs of wine, cosmetic chests, anything necessary to help pass the time they would have to spend in the room waiting for the royal birth. One by one they knelt to kiss Akhenaten’s bare feet before disappearing inside. Tiye bowed to him briefly and left.

She went back to her couch, had the lamps extinguished, and tried to sleep but found she could only doze. Dawn came, and with it a hymn of praise to the Aten, sounding jaded and slightly off-key to Tiye’s tired ears. Movement began in the house: the pad of naked feet, the rattle of utensils, the murmur of morning prayers chanted under the breath of busy servants. It was too soon for any news, so Tiye bathed and was dressed, and went into the garden. Already the heat of the day was unbearable to an uncovered head. She sought shade, ate a little fruit, and had her scribe read to her from the Abydos Resurrection Plays, but she could not concentrate. Piha helped her into the lake, where she stood submerged to her chin, her canopy bearers stoically holding the shade over her head.

A servant came in the afternoon to report that labor was progressing slowly, the princess was in good spirits, and Pharaoh and the queen had gone to the temple for afternoon prayers. The man assured her that Princess Tadukhipa had remained with the little one. Tiye dismissed him perfunctorily. She spent the rest of the day lying on cushions under the sycamores, fanned by her sweating men, while Piha occasionally trickled water over her and brought her fresh linen.

At dusk, as she was preparing to move inside, she was surprised to see Smenkhara and Meritaten coming over the lawns surrounded by their servants. She had scarcely spoken to Akhenaten’s eldest daughter, and as she watched the thirteen-year-old glide gracefully toward her, she was struck by Meritaten’s likeness to her mother. It could have been Nefertiti herself, gray-eyed and lithe, who knelt in the half-light to kiss the empress’s feet.