The Twelfth Transforming (63 page)

Nefertiti turned and looked out the window. Far below, on the dock where her barge was tied, the torches flared orange, their reflections broken into shards against the rippling surface of the Nile. “And what of Horemheb?” she asked softly. “He is the one you fear, is he not? You are afraid that he will dominate Smenkhara, and then perhaps the little prince, and one day you will wake to find him regent, a man who all his life has relied on his great ambition to realize his fortune. Do you think if he tastes real power, he will be satisfied with a regent’s place behind the throne?”

Ay now sat entirely in darkness, and the only indication that she had been heard was the quickened pace of his breathing. After a while he said, “Horemheb loves Egypt. He has always felt that he owes his country a debt. I do not yet know to what lengths he would go to pay it. Certainly his childlike faith in a pharaoh’s omnipotence has been shaken.”

“Are you not afraid to be so frank with me?” Nefertiti pushed the rings aside and swung her legs over the edge of the couch. She felt her knee brush her father’s. “I am a queen. I have ruled, and my daughter Meritaten has not. What if I should go to Horemheb and offer him marriage? He could easily divorce Mutnodjme, or make her second wife. I have the people’s sympathy. I am the poor queen banished by a heartless husband. Together we could depose and exile Smenkhara.” She did not know why she was so certain that Ay was smiling into the darkness.

“My dear Nefertiti,” he answered, an edge of humor to his voice that con firmed her impression. “I admire your tenacity. I pity you because your life has been full of suffering, and I love you because you were once my little girl, running through the gardens at Akhmin, but I do not really trust you. Do you think I would be speaking so openly to you tonight if I believed Horemheb would even listen to you?” He unexpectedly groped for her hand, and startled, Nefertiti responded to his touch. His fingers were dry and very warm. “Forgive me for what I am about to tell you, Majesty, if you can. Horemheb and I, and Smenkhara, too, have known of your plot to bring a Khatti prince to Akhetaten ever since your ambassador was intercepted at the border by May. To Horemheb you are a traitor.”

Nefertiti went cold with shock. Tearing her hand from Ay’s, she sprang to her feet, and ran to the door. “Lights!” she screamed, and servants hurried in with the lamps that had already been lit and stood in the passage, placing them around the room before bowing themselves out again. Now she could see Ay, half-turned on his chair, looking at her with his face twisted in concern and apology. “You knew and you did not tell me!” she shouted at him, rigid with pain. “You let me go on suffering, you let me believe, hope—even today I still hoped…” She swallowed. “I would never have presumed you to have so much cruelty in you.”

“By then it was too late to halt your plot,” he said. “It was simpler to have Prince Zennanza waylaid and killed in such a way that Suppiluliumas would believe the Apiru responsible. Now you see why Horemheb will have nothing to do with you.”

“So my request was answered.” She could feel tears of humiliation begin, already pricking agonizingly against her sore lids. “Suppiluliumas sent him. Prince Zennanza.” She walked to the couch and sank down, arranging her linens over her knees with small, formal gestures, not looking at Ay. “By all means, take Tutankhaten away,” she finished in a low voice. “Then there will be no need for me ever to speak to you again.”

He rose and bowed. “I defended you before Horemheb,” he said. “In spite of everything, I am your father, and you have my loyalty. But, Nefertiti, it is time for you to accept the lot life has cast for you, and be at peace. I will send for Tutankhaten in the morning.” He waited, and when she did not acknowledge either his bow or his words, he turned away, and the door closed quietly behind him.

It was almost midnight by the time Ay walked wearily up his water steps and, escorted by his bodyguards, made his way through the rustling dark garden and into his house. He had been quite safe in revealing his thoughts to Nefertiti tonight, he knew. She had no resources left with which to insinuate herself into the good graces of anyone influential at court, and it was certain that Horemheb would have nothing whatever to do with her.
He does not trust me anymore either
, Ay thought as he dismissed his men, entered his bedchamber, and brusquely ordered his body servants to undress him.
Our opinions on how to restore this country to order have always differed, but now the divergence between us is growing rapidly and may develop into complete rivalry. I hope not. At the moment he is confused and unsure of how he wishes to proceed, but whatever happens, I must not allow him to gain an ascendancy over Tutankhaten. I must remain actively at court, waiting upon Smenkhara, keeping Tutankhaten visible, trying to contain Horemheb’s impatience
.

He stood with his head back and his eyes half-closed, surrendering to the soothing, respectful touch of the men who came and went with perfumed water, soft fresh linen, quivering fans. His bedside lamp was lit, the others extinguished. His staff bowed a good-night. He lay in the hot room, tired but unable to rest, thinking of the murder of the foreign prince that he had sanctioned. Smenkhara had already forgotten about it, and Horemheb had regarded it as a military necessity.
We could have simply captured him and sent him home to his father
, he thought.
Suppiluliumas might have regarded such a move as a weakness, but it might have prevented a further deterioration in the relations between our two countries
.

He was beginning to doze when he sensed the opening of the door and, propping himself on an elbow, saw his wife come into the lamplight. Tey was clutching a saffron cloak under her chin. She was barefoot, and her gray hair was pushed back haphazardly from her high forehead. In the gentle light the wrinkles of her face were invisible.

“It is so late I thought you would be asleep.” He smiled, patting the couch.

Tey sat, pursing her lips. “I heard you come in,” she answered. “I was waiting up for you.” Characteristically she did not ask him where he had been. She had never pried into his mind or his actions, and her very indifference had kept him close to her. “I wanted you to know immediately that a message came from the palace after you left. Ankhesenpaaten’s little baby has died.”

Ay sighed. “Poor princess. Her doll has been taken away from her. I must go to her in the morning.”

“Kia has taken her to her apartments for a while. Akhenaten’s holy sun family is stricken one by one. The curse seems to linger.”

“Perhaps.” He knew by the tone of her voice, the way she was chewing her lip, that there was more. “Go on, beloved.”

“Ay, I am going home to Akhmin tomorrow. The servants can pack up my belongings and bring them later. You have done all you can to make me happy here, but I can no longer bear the feeling of doom that hangs over the city. Akhetaten is finished. The dream has ended.”

He did not smile at her choice of words. The city was indeed a dream, but the dreamer was dead. “Would you stay if I begged you?”

“No.” She took his hand. “Much has changed between us, Ay. The love can never change, but there is a difference between the kind of marriage we once had, you and me apart and yet joined, and what our marriage has become. I am an Egyptian wife, not a barbarian’s chattel, a concubine to be used. You bring me your body, but it has been a long time since I knew your thoughts. You are no longer as recognizable to me as you once were. Since Tiye died, you have shut yourself up. I am lonely in a way I have never been before, and the work I have done here is no good. At Akhmin I will work, I will get dirty again, I will be content.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth, desolate yet knowing that she spoke the truth. “I have to stay. I am needed. I am sorry,” he whispered. “I should have asked for your help, Tey.”

“But you did not, and besides, I do not think I could have given you any. My presence alone has not been enough to make you content. So I bid you farewell, my husband. Come to Akhmin as you used to in the old days, unexpectedly, because you wanted to.”

“I will indeed visit you, Tey,” he said huskily, “and will, of course, see to your every need.”

She leaned across and kissed him lightly, but he was too proud to pull her down beside him. Long after she had gone, the fragrance of her perfume lingered on his skin, on the sheet where she had sat, and he did not forbid the flood of memories that washed over him with cruel force, leaving a homesickness he knew would not blunt with time.

26

I
n the weeks that followed Smenkhara’s coronation Ay found his thoughts turning often to Tey’s last words to him. The dream of Akhetaten was not quite over. The characters who peopled it clung to its shreds as though they were afraid that waking would cause them to vanish. Outside the city, Egypt tottered and grappled with the lingering aftermath of the famine, the lack of officials to run efficiently an administration that had virtually disappeared, the rise of crimes of looting and violence, but inside Akhetaten, all was still orderly and pleasant.

“What is it that holds them to Akhetaten like dying men sitting before an empty granary?” Ay asked Horemheb once in an outburst of frustration. The two men had come to an uneasy, unspoken truce when it became evident that both were going to be powerless under the new regime.

Horemheb had shrugged phlegmatically. “The fear of what is beyond,” he had answered. “Only Akhetaten has not changed. Everyone in the city is afraid to travel, to see what has happened to Egypt, what Thebes has now become.” He smiled grimly at Ay. “Smenkhara knows he is not capable of ruling, yet he is terrified to delegate the needed authority to others. He knows he is not worthy to be pharaoh, and that makes him even more afraid and angry. Have you taken a clear look at our pharaoh, Fanbearer?” Ay shook his head. “Then I suggest you do so. When you have decided that something must be done, come to my house.”

Ay decided to ignore the challenge in the commander’s eyes. He hoped he would never be forced into a partnership of necessity with Horemheb. He was afraid of being made privy to designs that might require him to abrogate his belief in the untouchability of a pharaoh’s person. But the need for such a compromise was remote, for he was spending an increasing amount of time with Tutankhaten. The prince had dutifully and indifferently moved into the palace, where he was largely ignored by Smenkhara. To many of the courtiers he was an embarrassment, a reminder of the brief madness that had overtaken Egypt’s royalty and which was best forgotten, but to some the sacred blood in his veins made him worth wooing. The times were uncertain, and perhaps the little prince might become pharaoh. Ay himself would listen as the boy recited his studies, watch him at his prayers and in his chariot, play board games with him, and tell him stories of his mother. The prince had taken to wearing the lock of his mother’s red-brown hair around his neck, safe in a tiny gold chest, and Ay often had to wonder whether Tutankhaten was as guileless as he appeared. Perhaps he knew that he needed the powerful spell of that luck, always with him. Ay deliberately cultivated his trust and was happy to see him enjoying Ankhesenpaaten’s company. The orphaned boy and the friendless princess liked each other. Ay knew that the possibilities were there, waiting for a ruthless hand to manipulate them.

Smenkhara and Meritaten showed no signs of producing an heir. Though they were inseparable, sleeping, eating, and playing together, engaged in a constant round of pleasures, they were like two flighty children to whom the realm of adult responsibilities was unknown. Yet there was about them an air of melancholy, a darkness pressing on the fringes of their days and nights that must be held at bay at any cost. Their laughter was shrill and forced, their infrequent silences charged with fear. Smenkhara’s cheerfulness could turn at any time into sullen rages, and Meritaten’s to tears.

Although no longer a fanbearer except in name, Ay was often summoned by his nephew to give advice, and while it was never taken, he nevertheless missed no opportunity to remind his nephew of what was expected of him. The problem immediately facing the country, and one causing Ay the greatest concern, was that of the supply of gold. The Treasury was disgracefully and dangerously empty, yet monuments had to be paid for, the peasants kept marginally alive if they were to go on producing food and working at building projects, and foreign dignitaries housed and entertained. Embassies began to return to a city that was still ethereally beautiful, a court that still strove to be the most sumptuous in the world, and to a young pharaoh and his queen who played the part of arrogant godhead. But they came without tribute and left without treaties, for Egypt had nothing left with which to bargain. Horemheb fought to keep the Nubian gold routes open, but wealth from that source alone would not fill the Treasury. Increasingly the caravans that used to disgorge a profusion of exotic and costly things over the country were going on to Babylon and the Khatti, and the ships that had once crossed the Great Green Sea, fearful of pirates and knowing that Egypt would no longer protect them, took their cargoes elsewhere. Nor could Pharaoh call upon temple treasuries, for his brother had impoverished them all.

Forced to find an expedient way to meet the country’s debts, Smenkhara began to sell abroad grain from the granaries, which were once again filling. None of his young friends who were now members of the new administration attempted to remonstrate with him over this rash move for fear of losing the favors he showered on them, and it was finally Ay who requested audience a few days before the beginning of Khoyak. Akhet, the season of flooding, was almost over, and the weather had cooled. Men looked to Peret and the sowing with lighter hearts.

Smenkhara greeted his uncle’s obeisance with obvious relief. When Ay entered, he had been pacing desultorily around the echoing reception hall, pecking at the sweetmeats set on tables here and there and flicking at the insects that filled the moist air while his attendants trailed after him. He stood still while Ay kissed his hennaed feet and then mounted the steps of the throne. Flinging himself down, he indicated the ebony stool below. Ay sat, and with barely audible sighs the attendants sank onto cushions on the floor.