The Twelfth Transforming (49 page)

For answer he kissed her, rage stiffening his mouth and blinding him to all but the surge of hurt and betrayal he felt. She struggled against him and, freeing herself, exclaimed, “Don’t! You have bruised me!” He pushed her away. Gingerly she felt her lips. “If you do that again, you can be executed,” she said. “I ordered my soldiers to keep you away from me. Do not come to me again.”

“How calm you are!” he sneered. “I did not realize what ambitions you hid beneath that winning smile. I hope the glory of being omnipotent will compensate you for your father’s flabby touch. But perhaps you enjoyed it. Queen of Egypt! Queen either way, as your father’s wife, or later as mine, if all had gone well. In my innocence I misjudged you, Majesty.” He threw as much scorn and sarcasm into the last word as he could.

Meritaten flinched, head down, and as he rose and turned to leave, she screamed, “Smenkhara!” He turned back contemptuously, but seeing her face, he knelt and flung wide his arms. She fell into them, and for a long time they held each other fiercely, rocking back and forth until her tears ceased. Then they sat hand in hand, not looking at each other.

“Egypt would bless me for killing him,” Smenkhara whispered, and she squeezed his hand, shaking her head.

“He is my father, and I love him,” she replied. “You had better go. The Aten tells him things. The god might tell him about you and me, here today. Good-bye, Smenkhara.” She fumbled for the coronet and set it on her brow. The cobra’s crystal eyes glittered dangerously at him. He bowed to it respectfully and fled.

Passing that same evening behind the banqueting hall with a slave who was carrying a jar of sealed wine for the empress, Huya saw the prince slip through the back entrance into a passage that allowed kitchen slaves to take food to Pharaoh’s private rooms. Once having delivered the wine safely into his mistress’s presence, he retraced his steps, calling several of Tiye’s guards to him on the way, and found Smenkhara standing in the shadows just out of sight of the guards at Pharaoh’s door. He bowed.

“I am happy to have found you, Highness,” he said smoothly. “Your mother wishes you to wait upon her in her quarters.”

Smenkhara sighed. “Very well. But she will be feasting for hours yet. I will come later.”

“Your pardon, Prince, but she will not want to be kept waiting. I have asked these Followers to escort you to her apartments.”

A resigned understanding spread over Smenkhara’s face. “You are a meddlesome old woman, Huya. Here. Take it.” He drew a small scimitar from his belt and tossed it to the steward. Huya caught it impassively, and it disappeared into the voluminous folds of his linen.

“I suggest that Your Highness pass the time with these men in discussing the current state of defense in Akhetaten,” he said. “The empress will be with you presently.”

Huya needed no more than a few tactful words with Tiye as she left the hall and wearily made her way to her own sanctum. Once her wig and jewels had been removed and she had been draped in her sleeping robe, she ordered Smenkhara’s admittance and Piha and her women out. Her son entered and bowed and then stood sheepishly with his hands behind his back. Tiye looked at him resignedly. “It is a good thing Huya has sharp eyes, or you would be dead by now,” she snapped. “Such behavior is incredibly childish. Why is it that you have never been able to see beyond the moment?”

“You told me I could have Meritaten!” he flashed back at her. “You said I was to be patient! I have been as patient as anyone could wish, and what use was it? I left my future in your hands, where it crumbled away.”

“I did not tell you that you could have Meritaten,” she reminded him coldly. “I said that one day you would probably be pharaoh and as such could then marry her. Think, Smenkhara! Your uncle and Horemheb and myself are daily singing your praises to Pharaoh. Time will smile on you yet. Then you will have the princess, and everything else you desire.”

He clenched his fists and glared at her mutinously. “I don’t want to wait!” he shouted. “I don’t want to listen to you anymore when you prate of patience! I have lost her, and it is your fault!”

Tiye stepped forward and, taking him by the shoulders, shook him violently. “Well then, see if you can get close enough to Pharaoh to kill him!” she shouted back. “You are a whining, spoiled brat, and your royal father would turn his back on you if he could hear you now. I do not talk to you for the sake of hearing my own voice. I am sick of you. Egypt deserves better than a sulky child who cannot wait to be thrown a sweetmeat. Go, and see how quickly Pharaoh’s guards can slit open your belly, and good riddance to you!”

He shrugged her off. “I hate you because you are always right,” he spat back. “You are right, and you are cold. Does my pain mean nothing to you?”

“Of course it means something to me.” She turned from him exhausted and slumped onto the couch. “But you will not have achieved manhood until you are able to hide every hurt, master every disappointment, and continue to walk the path that was chosen. The gods do not trust a slave.”

“You should have been a priest.” His lip curled. “Dismiss me.”

“Go, you fool.”

She did not wait until the doors closed behind him but with a sigh lowered her aching body directly onto the couch and felt her muscles slowly loosen. The blow had been hers, too. The news of Akhenaten’s decision to marry his daughter had come as a bitter shock, but she, unlike Smenkhara, understood that, in the long run, it meant nothing. Of far greater importance was the naming of an heir, and Tiye knew that she must concentrate her waning powers on that task and no other.

Meritaten quickly accommodated herself to the cobra coronet and the new responsibilities and privileges that went with it. More mature than the young man she loved, she buried her feelings for him deep under the pleasure she was learning to take in ruling. Now it was father and daughter who kissed and caressed, clung to each other and whispered into each other’s ears while standing in the chariot or sitting under the canopy of the double palanquin. Meritaten stood beside him at the Window of Appearances, a slighter, more youthful version of Nefertiti, smiling and waving at the city crowds while Akhenaten made his pronouncements, expressed his love for his people, and showered the Gold of Favors onto whatever minister had recently praised him. The possession of Meritaten seemed to bring to him a precarious peace. His health improved, and in the temple he publicly thanked the Aten for a returning zest.

No such change was apparent in Meritaten. Outwardly she remained a beautiful, cheerful girl, attentive to her father-husband, imperious to her staff, and gracious to the members of the court, and only her closest servants knew that she babbled in her sleep and often woke weeping. Tiye was told by a spy that the deposed queen in the northern palace had laughed hysterically at the news that she had been supplanted by her daughter, and had given thanks that the empress was not having everything her own way. Tiye kept that precious piece of gossip to herself. She looked upon the situation as temporary. Like so many others, she believed that eventually Akhenaten would relent and release the queen, relegating Meritaten to the place in the harem that her sister Meketaten had suffered.

Yet one day as she was crossing the Royal Road on her litter, being carried to her sunshade in the temple with Beketaten beside her, she heard the thud of hammer on stone. Her bearers slowed, and impatiently she lifted the curtains to shout at them to hurry, only to see that they and the escorting soldiers were trying to force their way through a large press of city dwellers. White stone dust rose over them in a choking cloud. Beketaten sneezed and covered her mouth daintily, but Tiye was too curious to care about the discomfort.

“Captain, turn this rabble away so that I can see what is happening,” she ordered and, letting the curtain fall, waited in the privacy of her daughter’s company, listening to the shouts and blows of the soldiers. By the time Huya raised the litter’s curtains, the road was clear. The dust hung like pale mist, and through it the stonemasons could be seen, oblivious of her presence, their great hammers rising and falling, their naked backs white with dust that clung to their sweat. Beside them several men were working more delicately with chisels and small hammers, pausing now and then to cough. With a wave Tiye stopped her herald from ordering them all onto their faces. “Go and ask the overseer what they are doing,” she commanded. She watched as her spotlessly clad servant picked his way unwillingly through the stone chips, a corner of his kilt held against his face. The overseer bowed profoundly several times, words were exchanged, and the herald minced back and knelt before her. “Pharaoh issued a directive this morning,” he explained, “that every image of Queen Nefertiti in Akhetaten is to be removed, and her name is to be effaced from every inscription. When this has been carried out, Queen Meritaten’s name and titles are to be incised in their place.”

Tiye stared at him. “Very well. Move on.” She leaned back onto her cushions as the litter was lifted, oblivious to the jolt as her bearers started forward.

Beketaten pouted. “Lucky Meritaten,” she said. “Do you think that one day Pharaoh may marry me and put my face all over Akhetaten?”

“Don’t be stupid!” Tiye snapped, not really listening. This was not only a mark of great favor to his daughter, she thought swiftly, but a final humiliation for Nefertiti, an attempt not only to express a savage grudge against her but also, in effect, to take away her life. A name had magic! If a name survived death, the gods would grant its bearer life in the next world.
Pharaoh must realize that he cannot obliterate every appearance of her name
, Tiye thought.
It has been sunk into stone too many times in too many different places. It is the act of a disappointed child, or a cowardly and dangerous man
.

“I do not want to say my prayers today,” Beketaten complained. “Ankhesenpaaten has a new cat and a whole box of toy crocodiles that she wants to show me. The crocodiles snap their jaws when you pull them along.”

“How very pleasant,” Tiye murmured absently. A new and horrifying possibility had occurred to her. What if, behind the impenetrable wall separating the north palace from the life of the city, Nefertiti was already dead? With the sound of the mighty hammers still ringing in her ears, Tiye suddenly believed that in the name of his god her son would be capable of anything.

She could hardly bear the slow passing of the hours until her brother and Horemheb could be summoned, and it was full night before they made their obeisances to her in the privacy of her garden. Once they were all settled, she voiced her fear.

Immediately Horemheb shook his head vigorously. “No. The queen lives.”

“So you have been in correspondence with her, perhaps have even seen her,” Tiye said sharply. “You have just made a tactical error, Commander.”

“And your spies are doing a bad job, Empress,” he responded. “She summoned me secretly.”

“For what purpose? You must be willing to tell me, or you would not have revealed yourself like this.”

“She wanted assurances of my loyalty to her. She asked my opinion of the possibility of a successful palace revolt.”

Startled and angry, Tiye looked at Ay’s face, a pale, unfocused circle in the half-light of the distant torches. “Did you know about this?”

“No, Tiye,” he said calmly. “But I expected it.”

“I suppose I did also. What would her aim be, Horemheb? The Double Crown for Smenkhara? For little Tutankhaten, though that is unlikely? Supreme power for herself, or perhaps even for you? That woman’s nearsighted stupidity has no bounds!”

Horemheb laughed mirthlessly. “Power for her august self, through me. She does not like either of your sons by Osiris Amunhotep, Majesty, and would probably wish to eliminate them both. She would marry either me or Tutankhaten.”

The idea was so preposterous that Tiye was tempted to laugh. “Did you dissuade her?”

“As best I could, using the arguments we aired together many weeks ago. I think she is beginning to see the results of her husband’s disastrous policies, but she will never cooperate with you or her father. She has much time in which to brood. She is a bitter woman.”

“And it is her own fault. Palace revolt, indeed! The time for change will not come until Pharaoh dies. I have become convinced of that. Any new administration concerned with returning Egypt to her former strength will need the trust and cooperation of the Amun priests.”

“I know.” Horemheb’s voice was even. “I have pondered the whole matter most carefully and have come to the same conclusion.”

They talked a little more, without enthusiasm, and then separated. Tiye sat on in the fragrant darkness.
I am angry because I should have planned and executed a revolt myself
, she thought.
Nefertiti does not have the courage to bring it to a successful conclusion. It is that weakness that gives Horemheb pause in allying himself with her. But I cannot harm my son. There are too many memories
.

The weeks that followed were dreary for Tiye. Resigned to the knowledge that her influence in all important spheres of government had shrunk to the level of unheeded suggestions, she brooded on past mistakes and her present impotence. It was not in her nature, she knew, to give herself up entirely to defeat, but she came close to despair when she opened her eyes each morning on hours that lay waiting to be filled by whatever she could devise. Sometimes she visited Tey, but her sister-in-law’s self-absorption and lack of concern for events outside the boundaries she had erected for herself made her poor company. Tiye dictated many letters to her old friend Tia-Ha, whose scrolls full of vivid descriptions of life on her drowsy estate in the Delta arrived regularly, and tried to close her mind to the large concerns of Egypt about which she could do nothing, but her frustration could not be allayed.

One of the events that only served to sharpen Tiye’s discouragement was Aziru’s departure from Akhetaten. Pharaoh gave him a magnificent farewell feast at which dancers, singers, acrobats, and trained animals entertained hour after hour while one succulent steaming course followed another, accompanied by the best vintage wines. Akhenaten had invited Aziru to sit on the dais on his left hand, a singular honor. Meritaten, resplendent in yellow linen and heavy with gold, sat on his right, and Tiye was relegated to a position behind him, where she listened to the conversation between the foreigner and her son with increasing dismay.
Aziru ought not to have been allowed the privilege of a seat on the dais
, Tiye thought,
but should have been placed with the other ambassadors on the floor of the hall, from where Pharaoh appears aloof and powerful in his jewels and the regal luster of the Double Crown. He should have been subjected to a coolly dignified audience at which Pharaoh could press for the renewal of the treaty between them and hint at retribution if Aziru indulged in any further warmongering
. But for most of the night Akhenaten merely fawned upon his new queen, described with relish his building projects, and expounded on the Aten’s wish that all men might live in universal peace. Tiye had been praying that the subject would not come up, but Meritaten herself had precipitated it. “I trust you have enjoyed the peace of your stay in Egypt,” she said politely. “The prospect of a return to a part of the empire stricken with famine and war must be difficult.”