The Twelfth Transforming (57 page)

Tutankhaten’s fingers curled around it. Ay caught Nefertiti’s startled glance. “Is it true?” she whispered, and Ay hushed her with a quick frown.

“I will put it with my brother Osiris Thothmes’ bow, that she gave me,” Tutankhaten said, awed.

“You had better do it now,” Ay urged. “Not a single hair must fall to the ground. You will understand better when you are older.” The boy nodded and ran out, holding his clenched fist solemnly before him. Nefertiti swung to her father.

“Is it true? If it is, the gods will fail to recognize her!”

Ay did not miss the faintly malicious tone. “No one will ever know for certain,” he said heavily, “but I think so. She did not seek the cobra, but surely she could have called for help and did not.”

“I think I will attend the funeral,” Nefertiti finished, smiling as she ushered her father to the door.

Ay turned with her, wondering as he left whether in giving the lock of hair to Tutankhaten he was giving his own luck away. The hair of a suicide brought great good fortune to the one who owned it.

23

S
eventy days later Tiye was laid to rest in the tomb her son had prepared for her in the cliffs behind Akhetaten. It was the beginning of Athyr. The river ought to have begun to rise some weeks before, but the high banks remained arid. Tiye’s funeral proceeded under the gaze of every courtier in the city. Nefertiti, surrounded by her guards, sat under a canopy at a short distance from the crowd and watched her husband. His voice could be heard clearly over the murmur of Meryra. In between bouts of loud weeping he knelt in the sand, scooping it up in both hands and placing it on his head. At times he stood with his arms wrapped around Ankhesenpaaten, his face buried in her shoulder, his body shaking with sobs, and when he was not crying or anointing himself with sand, he was kissing and fondling her. She bore it with expressionless fortitude, her hands resting protectively on her swollen belly, her eyes carefully avoiding those of the gathering.

Near the end of the ceremony Akhenaten strode to the coffin and, laying his arm along the top, began talking to the corpse and laughing fondly. Smenkhara and Meritaten, seated side by side, held hands and looked at their laps. Ay and Horemheb exchanged glances. Pharaoh’s hysterical child’s voice multiplied against the rocks and went shrieking over the sand like the senseless babble of many demons.

There were no flowers to lay on the body when at last it was carried inside the dank tomb. One by one the family placed artificial sprays made of gold, silver, and jewels while Akhenaten leaned over the coffin and fingered the offerings, his head cocked on one side, whispering to himself, his eyes unnaturally bright.

Few waited to see the tomb sealed. Meryra and the priests were left to do the work alone while the courtiers scattered. Nefertiti took Tutankhaten back to the north palace without speaking to anyone. Smenkhara and Meritaten, surrounded by their hangers-on, retired to their private quarters. Akhenaten, still clinging to his daughter, was gently ushered into a litter and taken to his couch. Only Ay remained, sitting beneath his canopy, breathing harshly and watching the sign of the Disk being pressed into the clay that had been plastered over the knots in the tomb’s doors. When that was accomplished, he ordered himself carried to Tiye’s house and, together with a weeping Huya, walked slowly through the empty rooms. Piha, red-eyed and monosyllabic, was directing the slaves, who were sweeping and washing. Ay went to the cosmetics table and fingered the last flotsam of his sister’s life. An empty alabaster kohl pot, small blue beads scattered from some broken necklet, a copper mirror lying half out of its case with Tiye’s fingerprints still showing clearly on the polished metal. He lifted it and stared at his reflection before sighing and handing it to Huya as a gift. At last he went out into the blazing red evening to seek his wife’s unspoken comfort.

That same week Meritaten-ta-sherit, Akhenaten’s little princess by his daughter Meritaten, fell ill. Meritaten had her removed to her own quarters and sat over her, holding her hand and singing soothingly while the two-year-old cried and tossed. But it soon became obvious that Meritaten-ta-sherit was sick of the same virulent fever that had carried off Nefertiti’s three younger daughters. Smenkhara hovered about the sickroom uneasily, trying clumsily to comfort Meritaten but unable to evince any sympathy for the little girl who represented for him Pharaoh’s lecherous theft of his most precious prize. He was almost relieved when he was summoned to Pharaoh’s bedchamber.

Akhenaten was sprawled naked on his couch and, when Smenkhara bowed, held out a shaking hand. Smenkhara took it, swiftly scanning the yellow face, his spirits sinking as he saw that for once Pharaoh was lucid. Since Tiye’s funeral, Akhenaten’s days had been one fit of vomiting and weeping after another. His hard-pressed servants had done their best to keep him fed and bathed and had tried to close their ears to his babbling. Horemheb had come on Parennefer’s request but had been unable to calm him, and a terrified Ankhesenpaaten had tearfully refused to answer Akhenaten’s incoherent summons. He slept little, falling at odd times into a motionless slumber from which he would jerk awake an hour or two later, prayers already on his lips, his body at once restless. But on this evening he was quieter, his eyes bloodshot but calm. He pulled Smenkhara down beside him.

“Nefer-neferu-Aten, beloved,” he whispered, his arms going around the prince, his body already pressed convulsively against Smenkhara’s. “Kiss me. You walk across the room like a vision of my younger self. I see the power of the Disk pulsing in your loins and beaming from your mouth.”

“Do you know that your daughter’s daughter is dying, Pharaoh?” Smenkhara murmured against the thick lips. He stifled Akhenaten’s reply, grinding his mouth against his brother’s with a cruel, perverse pleasure, forcing the thin, shoulders back against the mattress with both remorseless hands. Akhenaten began to whimper, but Smenkhara knew from experience that this was an expression of lust, not a reaction to his words. “You do not care at the moment, do you, my god? Well, I do not care, either. Shall I kiss you again?” He looked directly into the puffed eyes, himself full of a fierce hatred, driven from his customary passive sullenness by Akhenaten’s transparent physical need of him. Akhenaten stared back eagerly, nodding faintly, his hands behind Smenkhara’s head, pulling him down. Smenkhara’s lips brushed the other’s, but before he could go further, the doors burst open, and Panhesy rushed in, falling on his knees beside the couch. He was trembling with excitement. Smenkhara pushed himself away from Akhenaten and sat up. “What is it?”

“Highness, Majesty, the nilometers are showing a small rise in the level of the river! Isis is crying!”

Smenkhara stared at him, a great gush of warmth spreading through his chest. “How small a rise?”

Panhesy indicated a height of about that of a finger.

Akhenaten had groped for Smenkhara’s waist and was clinging to him. “The curse is lifted, the god is appeased,” he said brokenly. “Later I will go to the temple and give thanks, but now… Smenkhara, where are you going? Stay with me, I beg!” But Smenkhara had torn himself free of his brother’s grip and was running out the door before he could be ordered to remain. He pelted along the corridors, aware of the smiling faces that sped by him in a blur, the arms raised in thanksgiving, the voices shouting, weeping happily, singing prayers. Behind him his Followers, sandal bearer, herald, and steward tumbled after. Rushing past the guards at the entrance to Meritaten’s apartments, he went to the doors of her chamber and burst within.

“Majesty, Isis is crying!” he yelled but came to an abrupt halt. Meritaten did not even look up. She sat with head hanging, both hands clasping the limp fingers of her daughter. Meritaten-ta-sherit was dead.

The preparations for yet another royal funeral went almost unnoticed as the city’s entire attention was riveted on the notched stone markers sunk at regular intervals along the banks of the river. The rhythms of the day and night ceased to have meaning. While Akhenaten’s daughter was bound and her coffins hastily prepared, crowds sat or lay beside the river under the shade of improvised shelters, occasionally breaking into song or dance but more often quietly tense, their eyes never straying far from the surface of the still fouled, stinking water. Peddlers displaying cheap baubles suitable for offerings of thanksgiving moved among them, doing a brisk trade. Wine sellers quickly cleared their stocks. The city became happily drunk, and the streets were full of weaving, laughing people. At night torches were lit. No one went home. In the palace, only Meritaten mourned quietly for her daughter. The courtiers threw large parties, the guests staggering from the ruins of one to the fresh wine and new musicians of another. Mutnodjme had an enormous raft hurriedly built, garlanded with white ribbons, and tethered to Horemheb’s water steps. She had also ordered that a marked board be nailed to one of the supports, and her dwarfs took turns clambering down to the water to call up the readings. At each new inch gained, a cheer went up, and the crowd packed on the gently rocking raft raised their cups to Isis, who had relented. All over Egypt, men stood gazing at the slowly filling banks in a stupefied wonder, like souls in the dark horror of the Duat suddenly finding themselves given a second chance at life. Egypt rose from death on the miraculous, silent swelling of the dark current.

Meritaten-ta-sherit’s funeral was almost forgotten in the tumult of rejoicing. Smenkhara stood with his arm around Meritaten as the rites were performed and the little coffin was carried so pitifully easily into the darkness. Pharaoh attended but sat in silence, nodding occasionally or rocking briefly, and no one knew whether he was truly aware of what was happening to his child.

At the end of Khoyak, when the Nile began to brim over and cover the thirsty fields, Ankhesenpaaten gave birth to a girl. The nobles crowding the bedchamber to witness for Egypt were still in a festive mood, and there was much joking and laughter as they sat on the floor gambling or playing board games while the little princess cried and strained. Her labor was almost as long as Meketaten’s had been, and when it was over, she was too weak to acknowledge Ay’s congratulations or Meritaten’s kiss. Akhenaten, though he had been notified that the birth was imminent, did not attend it, and Ankhesenpaaten’s servants were secretly relieved.

Pharaoh devoted himself, when he was not in the grip of his madness, to Smenkhara. He had turned the young man into an amulet, a lucky charm, clinging to him both emotionally and physically as his health deteriorated. He ordered the prince to move into a small suite of rooms adjacent to the royal apartments. Smenkhara complied, hoping that his brother would then feel safer and relinquish the stranglehold that was driving the prince mad, but Pharaoh only clung to him more tightly. Ankhesenpaaten was still too unwell to share the royal bed, even if Akhenaten had desired her. Like his father before him, he seemed to draw a kind of mysterious power from the young man’s body. Smenkhara nursed his shame, appearing with Pharaoh draped over him at the Window of Appearances when the king made his increasingly infrequent progresses to the temple but otherwise hiding in the half-light of his cramped quarters, snarling and striking out at anyone who approached him. Meritaten had come to him once, but he had cursed even her with such venom that she had retreated in tears. The fellahin might be scraping together what seed they had left, the trees might be flushing with a green that had not been seen in nearly three years, the shadufs might once more be pouring glittering wet life onto the withered royal lawns, but at the heart of Egypt there still lay a cankerous darkness.

Horemheb pushed past Smenkhara’s guards with a sharp word, slammed the heavy cedar doors closed behind him, and bowed perfunctorily at the prince’s back. Smenkhara was standing at the window with his arms folded, staring out past the roofed and pillared walkway at the sunlit private garden beyond. Although the room was warm, he was swathed in thick white linen that he was clutching tightly to himself. He gave no sign that he had heard someone enter. Horemheb waited for a moment and then said politely, “Highness.”

“Get out, Commander.”

Horemheb came up to him and bowed again. “Your forgiveness, Highness, but I cannot leave until I have obtained your seal on this document.”

Smenkhara’s eyes flicked to it and away again. “You will leave immediately and take it with you.”

Thoughtfully Horemheb’s eyes traveled the sulky, swollen mouth, the faint purple mark of a fading bruise on the tall neck, the tension of the fingers buried in the creased linen. He stepped forward, interposing himself between the prince and the window, and Smenkhara backed away.

“Pharaoh will not live forever,” he said gently. He would have continued, but Smenkhara’s face suddenly twisted into a grimace of spite.

“How dare you pity me!” he hissed. “Me, a prince of the blood and heir to the throne! I will make him have you disciplined, soldier!”

Horemheb was unmoved by the insult. “I do not pity you, Fledgling,” he responded dryly. “It is time to prepare for a new administration.”

“If you have come to rub yourself against me like a fawning cat, you can go and play with yourself.” He used a particularly obscene expression, but Horemheb refused to be drawn.

‘This is an order for the immediate mobilization of the army,” he said sharply, lifting the scroll. “I want you to give your official approval, Highness, if there is to be anything left of Egypt for you to rule.”

“I don’t give a damn for Egypt.”

“I know that. But you do want the Double Crown, and if you are clever, my cooperation.”

“Threats?” Smenkhara sneered. “Really, Commander, if I lift a finger, I can have you speared and tossed into the Nile.”

“I do not think you can, Prince,” Horemheb said softly. “In any event, it is to your advantage to gain my confidence. Your mother wanted the throne for you, and if you are to secure it, you need me.”

Color flamed in Smenkhara’s sun-starved cheeks. “Your impudence is unforgivable, Horemheb! I have secured it already!”