The Twelfth Transforming (6 page)

Tiye woke suddenly in the late night, drenched in sweat. A shaded lamp hovered by her couch and Piha’s respectful hand touched her hair. “Kheruef waits without,” the servant whispered. “Horus has sent for you, Majesty.”

Groaning, Tiye swung her legs onto the floor, reaching automatically for the cup of cool water that was kept on the little bedside table. Piha held her gown while she slipped it on, and combed the sticky brown tresses. “I was dreaming of the moon on the water at Akhmin,” she murmured drowsily. “Ay was a boy, and my father stood in the boat with his throwing stick poised. Does such a dream have meaning, Piha?”

“I do not know, Majesty. Shall I wash you?”

“No, I am too tired. I drank too much wine, I think. Wait up for me, and raise the hangings on the windows. I can hardly breathe in here.”

Outside the door, Kheruef bowed without speaking, and the harem guards swung into formation behind and before her. In silence they walked the deserted corridors, crossed Tiye’s own private garden, and entered Pharaoh’s quarters through the connecting gate in the wall. As they approached the harem garden, Tiye, her feet soundless on the springing grass, became aware of a thousand soft murmurings rising and falling over the wall, and the plaintive trill of a single harp string bewitched the night. Glancing up at the roof of the building, she saw its even silhouette broken by vague humps and moving shadows, for the women had taken to the roof in the heat, lying on their cushions to catch the faintest breeze out of the north. Down where flower beds and lawns gave way to paved water steps and clusters of palms, the river was running swiftly, its passing a constant, soporific gurgle and slap in the backwaters where it darkly, slowly had begun to lick at its banks, and where frogs croaked harshly. The night air was humid but cooler than the day, and Tiye inhaled it deeply as she turned back into the palace, feeling the last vestiges of sleep drain away.

Within the dim labyrinth of Splendor of the Aten, Pharaoh’s private quarters, the scorching night breath of Ra still hung, fetid and merciless. Her escort halted and drew back. The guards opened the doors, the herald announced her, and she walked into Pharaoh’s bedchamber.

He was propped up with cushions, his mouth half-open, his eyes puffy and slitted against what little light came from the few alabaster lamps that glowed warmly around him. Flies buzzed and stumbled over his flabby, naked body, but he seemed not to notice them. A jar of wine, its broken seal lying crumbled beside it, stood next to his hand, and his cup lay on the floor, empty. Tiye came swiftly up to the couch and bowed.

“Horus, where is the bearer of the whisk?” she said, distressed, picking the instrument from among the sheets and plying it gently.

He smiled and rallied at the mild sting of the horsehair, and the flies rose in an angry cloud. “Shall I deny the flies of Egypt the right to feast off their god?” he said lightly, hoarsely. “They are as predatory and glutted as the rest of my citizens. Truly, my Tiye, I did not notice them. I sent the servants away hours ago. Even their tread annoyed me.”

“Shall I send for water and fresh linen, and perhaps some fruit?” She glanced about the room, but there was no sign of the boy.

“No. When you leave.” He spoke abruptly, sighing, his mind only half on her words, and she waited for him to tell her why he had sent for her. Presently he rolled over on the couch and buried his shaven skull among the pillows. “There is oil in a dish, somewhere on the table,” he said, his voice muffled. “Massage me, Tiye. I cannot bear the touch of a slave tonight.”

Obediently she pulled off her rings, shrugged out of the loose robe, and taking the dish, knelt on the sheets beside him. Pouring a little oil into her palm, she spread it over his wide back and began to work it into the yielding flesh, kneading and stroking, feeling the muscles tight with pain under her fingers. For a long time there was no sound but that of Pharaoh’s heavy breathing. The sweet, cloying scent of the oil rose in Tiye’s nostrils, bringing back to her visions of nights that the past had already embalmed, and, as if he had read her thoughts, he said, “No one else could ever do this the way you do, Tiye. Do you remember our first years together, when I would send for you every night and the oil would be waiting? Tonight my mind is full of that time. For a while I forgot, when your body ceased to surprise and I turned to others, but I have such a hunger for you again.”

His words puzzled her, but she was touched by them. Though her back was beginning to ache and her wrists to protest, she forced her hands to keep sliding up over the massive shoulders, down the straight spine, her eyes on the glistening warmth of him, the familiar, bold lines of his body. “The little princess did her best to please me,” he went on after a pause, and Tiye’s heartbeat quickened at the odd, deprecatory tone of his voice. “She danced most prettily in nothing but her jewels. She sang me the native songs of her country. She kissed and caressed me, but she went away carrying nothing inside her but a tale of my own impotence to spread abroad in the harem. I tried, but tonight I am like Osiris, maimed and dismembered. Her youth and innocence did not excite me. It caused me to break out in a sudden sweat of fear.” With a grunt he heaved himself over to face her, and in his dark eyes she read something she had never seen before, the vulnerability of a sacrificial beast pleading with her. For a second the knowledge of her own power over him rose like a hot tide of triumph, but it soon receded to leave her aching with sympathy.

“She has been raised as a royal child,” she replied softly. “She will know that there is a limit to the amount of gossip she may indulge in, in the harem, and she will abide within it. Would you like me to find the boy?”

His eyes lit with sardonic amusement. “No, I don’t think so. I have had enough of the bloom of youth for one day. Your hands have magic in them. I feel better.”

The words could have been a dismissal, but she knew they were not. He lay there waiting, begging silently to be redeemed, and she lowered herself upon him with a smile.

3

A
n air of callous expectancy hung over the palace in the months that followed, for in spite of Tiye’s reassuring words, it had not been long before every courtier knew that Amunhotep had been unable to consummate his marriage to the tiny Mitanni princess. This, more than any other sign, convinced them that their god had not long to live, for his sexual appetite was legendary. Yet, although his days were a torment of pain and fever, the foul decoctions of worried physicians, and the endless droning of magicians, he clung to life and found the strength to watch the gradual decay of his body with a cutting black humor. He did not send for Tadukhipa again, and she nursed what she saw as a personal failure in a dignified, shy silence. His boy, his wife, and his wife-daughter filled his nights. The river overflowed and once again gave life to the land, sinking into the parched soil, loosening and stirring the fertile ground. Disease also returned to the land, and in the harem, in the hovels of the poor in the city, and on the farms, women wailed as the coffins of the blind, the crippled, and those wasted with plagues were carried into the tombs.

Letters finally began to arrive from Memphis, and Tiye, sitting on her throne beside Pharaoh’s empty chair, chin in painted palm and eyes on her own gold-sandaled feet, listened carefully to the scrolls read aloud to her by her personal scribe. Her son’s missives were short, adulatory, and reassuring. He was well and hoped that his eternally beautiful mother was well also. He loved the cosmopolitan life of Memphis, particularly the variety of religious thought to be found there. He was carrying out his duties in the temple of Ptah with gravity and attention. Beneath the words, Tiye often fancied that she sensed a strange loneliness, a wistful desire to be back in the familiar surroundings of the harem but considered it natural that a young man, gaining his freedom for the first time in nineteen years, might sometimes yearn for the security of such a womb. Nor did she fail to note the fact that Amunhotep never asked about his father’s health. The one breath of human affection that rose from the stiff yellow papyrus, apart from that directed to Tiye herself and the occasional enquiry about Nefertiti, was for Horemheb. Eagerly Amunhotep described the young commander’s kindnesses toward him. Tiye found the protestations pathetic and alarming, for her son mentioned no other friends.

She turned from his letters to the more informal detailed scrolls that arrived regularly from Horemheb himself, describing vividly how the prince had settled into his new life. Horemheb did not equivocate and would describe how his royal friend delighted in being driven about the city in a golden chariot so that people would bow to him. Amunhotep had visited On twice, worshipping in the temples of Ra-Harakhti and the Aten and sitting with the priests of the sun, arguing religion with them long into the cool nights. The priests of Ptah were suppressing their irritation with him, for he carried out his duties in their own temple absently and was always ready to find fault with them. He had taken up the lute and was composing his own songs, which he sang for Horemheb and his concubines. His voice was light but true.

Tiye heard, sifted, pondered. She had the letters passed on to Ay, in his office in the palace grounds, where he supervised the care of Pharaoh’s horses and oversaw the Division of Splendor of the Aten. She had the letters Amunhotep sent to Nefertiti intercepted, and read them before they were re sealed and delivered to the girl, but learned little that was new. His words to his betrothed varied only slightly from his words to his mother, apart from allusions to several conversations concerning the worship of Amun and his place as protector of Thebes that he and Nefertiti had evidently had while he still lived in the harem.

Nefertiti had moved into a suite of rooms in the palace that adjoined Tiye’s own. She did not seem to mind that her own servants had been dismissed and her slaves sold. With those who now saw to her comfort she was a harsh mistress, obsessed with detail and brooking no mistakes, and no day passed without tears shed in the servants’ quarters. Her niece’s petulance did not concern Tiye, for it was Nefertiti’s ability to govern that interested her. But the girl was haughty and did not learn easily. Following her aunt from audience to formal reception to the warm winds of the military reviewing ground, her staff of women, fan bearers, and cosmeticians behind, she listened much and volunteered nothing. With her gleaming black hair, pale gray, almond-shaped eyes, dark satin skin, and sensual mouth, she knew she was without physical peer at court. Her whisk bearer also carried a small copper mirror into whose burnished depths Nefertiti would gaze at odd moments throughout the day in order to reassure herself, Tiye often thought with annoyance, that a wrinkle had not appeared since the last swift application of face paint.

Tiye had known her niece since she was born. Nefertiti’s mother, Ay’s first wife, had died giving birth to her, and Nefertiti had been raised lovingly but rather absentmindedly by Tey, Ay’s second wife and mother to Mutnodjme. Tey, a vague, nervous, but strikingly beautiful woman, preferred life on the family estates at Akhmin to the demanding task of disciplining two girls and entertaining for her powerful husband, though in her own way she loved them all. At Akhmin she designed jewelry, dictated long, rambling letters to her family, and flirted harmlessly with the male members of her staff. It was a pity, Tiye found herself thinking more than once as she walked beside Nefertiti’s pure, immobile profile, that neither she nor Mutnodjme had inherited their father’s strengths. But at least Nefertiti was diligent in dictating replies to her future husband’s letters, and when she spoke of him, which was not often, she used extravagant words of affection and longing.

On a day full of a lush new greenness, when buds everywhere in Pharaoh’s vast acres were bursting into flower, the women of the harem took to their boats and drifted, with much laughter and loud chatter, up and down the Nile in the windy sunshine. Tiye lay on her couch, longing to join them but submitting impatiently to the impersonal touch of her physician. She had reluctantly summoned him after several bouts of nausea and a dragging fatigue but now regretted it, chafing at the time being wasted. At last he completed his examination and drew back, smiling. “Your Majesty is not ill, but with child.”

Tiye sat up, blood draining from her face, hands clutching the sheet. “Pregnant? No! You must be mistaken. It is too late, I am too old! Tell me you have made a mistake!”

The man bowed, edging toward the door. “There is no mistake. I have attended Your Majesty at the birth of every royal child.”

“Get out!”

When the doors had closed behind him, she flung herself from the couch, overturning the ivory table, kicking at the shrine beside it. “I will not tolerate this, no!” she shouted at her cowering attendants. “I am too old! Too old…” She sat on a cushion on the floor, now limp and sullen, her breast still heaving, her limbs trembling. “I wonder,” she muttered acidly, “what Pharaoh will say.”

Amunhotep said nothing. He laughed until he had to cling to his swollen belly and tears streaked kohl down his cheeks, laughed at the irony of the news and from a secret, wholly masculine pride. “So there is yet life in my divine seed!” he chortled while Tiye looked down on him, unwillingly amused at his mirth. “And a spring fertility in that winter body of yours. The gods must also be laughing.” With a surge of new strength he swung himself from his couch, tossing the sheets aside and standing beside her. She had forgotten how much taller he was than she. She lifted her head to meet his still-streaming eyes. “Are you pleased, my Tiye?”

“No, I am not pleased at all.”

He cupped her face with his hands. “What a prolific pharaoh I am! We must consult the sphinx oracle immediately as to the future of the child.” All at once his features became cunning. “What if it is a boy? Healthy and vigorous? I might then have second thoughts about the succession.”

Tiye jerked her head from his touch. “I think the oracle ought not to be approached until the birth,” she snapped, “and any haggling over the succession can wait also.”