The Twelfth Transforming (7 page)

“I like to make you angry.” He grinned boyishly. “I feel better today than I have in months. Let us order out
Aten Gleams
and join the harem women on the river. I shall sit in the sun, and you can curse me and flick at the flies.”

Tiye did consult an oracle, but on her own behalf, not for the child in her womb. She stood before the seer in the little sphinx temple set high above the western cliffs, gifts in her hands, while the man bent over the water in the black Anubis cup. Watching his hesitancy, she found herself wishing for the first time that the Son of Hapu were still alive. While she had hated him as a rival in Pharaoh’s affections, a maker of policies that she had fought to oppose, he was matchless as an oracle. He had been an impartial arbiter of the mysteries, interpreting what the gods showed him with complete disregard for his personal safety. His visions had made him great. Tiye could see him now, in this same little sanctuary, a place made unquiet by the constant moaning of the desert winds, his handsome head inclined over the cup in complete concentration, his arrogant face hidden by the falling locks of the strange, long-ringleted female wig he always wore. When he straightened to give his pronouncements there was never admiration or subservience for her in his eyes.
Perhaps that was one reason I disliked him so
, she mused, restless and uncomfortable in the continuing stillness.
He could reduce me to the level of the lowest peasant with his glance, and it was worse because I knew he did not do so intentionally
.

The oracle covered the cup and turned, waving to his acolytes, and the boys sprang to roll up the mats that had shut out the sun. Light flooded the room, and Tiye blinked at the brilliant blue of the sky, the beige of the cliffs shimmering hot and vibrant. “Well?” she barked impatiently.

“Your Majesty has nothing to fear,” he said, eyes downcast. “The birth will be normal and your life long.”

“A normal birth can be hard and long or short and easy. What do you mean?”

“I mean that you will give birth without complication.”

“Is that all? What of the sex of the child? Did the gods show you?”

He shrugged, holding out his hands, fleshy palms up. “No, Divine One.”

Though she wanted to throw them at him, Tiye placed the gifts carefully at his feet. She left the temple without a word, her retinue behind her, striding out into the bird-clouded afternoon. Pausing only to gaze for a moment at the sphinx whose calm eyes looked out over the dusty houses of the dead and the brown expanse of the river far below, she stepped onto her litter for the long ride down the path that meandered to the valley floor.
The Son of Hapu would not have been so craven
, she brooded, blind to the invigorating, dry desert wind that lifted the silver-shot linen from her legs and whipped the ringlets of her wig to tangle in her cobra coronet.
He would have given me the color of the child’s eyes as well as its sex and told me how many counts would go by before it uttered its first cry. I have just sacrificed three gold circlets and an amethyst bracelet to a man who, whatever happens, cannot be proved wrong. I wonder if Amunhotep fares better when he calls the Amun oracle from Karnak and demands to know how much longer he will live
.

The queen’s unexpected pregnancy caused little stir in Thebes. In the streets the beggars ceased to importune passersby and sat in the shade of the buildings taking bets on whether Egypt would have a new prince or princess. There were many citizens ready to put money into their scabrous hands, but the majority of Thebans simply shrugged and forgot the matter. The royalty who inhabited the brown sprawl of buildings across the river were of no concern. Malkatta was simply another tomb like those surrounding it, a tomb for living but never glimpsed gods. Only Pharaoh’s ministers with their perfumed linens and painted faces directly touched the fortunes of the populace, moving among them like screeching vultures intent on plunder. It was impossible to evince any interest in the birth of a child most of them would never see, to a woman who represented nothing against which the Thebans could measure their own experiences.

In the palace, however, the subject was pounced upon, chewed, and spat out by the gossiping courtiers. The eyes of those who had turned speculatively toward a new king and a new administration were returned briefly to a pharaoh who had rallied with the promise of new life and a goddess who could yet surprise them. The court became sentimental. The worship of Mut, goddess mother of Khonsu and Amun’s consort, enjoyed a new vogue. Sculptors found themselves employment in carving coy representations of the infant Horus sucking at the breast of his mother, Isis, for rich patrons who wanted to share vicariously in their ruler’s return to youth. Jewelers sold hundreds of amulets to women who hoped that their own fertility might be stimulated.

Hearing the reports of these doings from her spies, who riddled the harem and the offices of administration, Tiye was disgusted though amused. Yet she could not deny her husband’s improving health, his new interest in affairs of state, or her own feeling of well-being. Optimism reigned. The air was full of the smell of the crops ripening rapidly toward the harvest and the luxuriant blooming of the flowers of summer, whose heady perfume hung night and day in the warm draughts of the palace. Only in the chill hours before dawn, when sleep ceased to be rest and became a drug, did Tiye’s earlier misgivings return, and she found herself waking suddenly, the baby restless in her. Then she would lie watching the pattern of red light and deep shadow the brazier cast on her ceiling, listening to the howl of the jackals out on the desert, the occasional frenetic braying of a donkey, and once the voice of an anonymous woman screaming and sobbing, the sound carried fitfully on the wind like the echo of another Egypt, dark and brimming with a mysterious sadness. In those moments, as slow-moving and borderless as eternity itself, the mood of cheerfulness prevailing at court seemed a flimsy, artificial thing, ready to be blown away in an instant. Firmly Tiye tried to battle the despair that would creep over her as she huddled beneath the blankets, but it had no discernible source and clung to her until she dropped once more into a sodden slumber.

Tiye gave birth to a boy on a hot, late afternoon. Her labor was short, the delivery easy. It was as though the fragrant explosion of fruitfulness of the Egyptian harvest had overflowed into the palace, sharing its abundance with her. At the child’s first lusty cry a murmur of approbation and relief filled the bedchamber, and Tiye, exhausted and satisfied, waited to be told the baby’s sex. From the back of the small crowd Ay pushed his way past her physician, whispering, “You have a boy. Well done,” and she felt his lips brush her wet cheeks. Feeling for his hand, she pulled him down onto the couch, clinging to him as one by one the privileged came to pay their respects. He sat impassively, watching the line of bodies bend and straighten, his hand curled around hers, though long before the last courtier had bowed himself out, she had fallen asleep.

After much fussy deliberation the oracles decreed that the royal son should bear the name Smenkhara. Pharaoh approved and came in person to tell Tiye so. He sat in the chair beside her couch, gingerly sucking on green figs and washing them down with wine. “It is fitting that this child, this symbol of a new beginning, should bear a name never held before by my house,” he said. “And, of course, highly appropriate that he should be dedicated to Ra, seeing that the sun is worshipped universally. I wonder what the next child will be called.” He glanced teasingly at her, picking out a fig seed from between gray teeth with one long, red nail.

“Horus, you amaze me!” She laughed, caught up in his enthusiasm, relieved of her fears, ready to believe the unbelievable. “Either the presence of Ishtar or your new son has given you back your youth.”

He smiled happily. “Both, I think. I have decided to move the court to Memphis next month for the worst of the summer, as I used to do. Leave the baby to the ministrations of the nurses, Tiye, and come with me.”

“Memphis.” She lay back and closed her eyes. “How I love it. You and I on cushions under the date palms, watching the bees and playing Dogs and Jackals. I wonder if the ambassadors will want to move also.”

“Give them all messages to carry to their little kings and get rid of them for a while. Dictate messages that will require much deliberation, so that they stay away for as long as possible.”

“What a truly wonderful idea.” Tiye, drowsy and content, did not open her eyes. “It has been years since we have indulged ourselves so shamelessly. But forgive me, Horus, I must sleep first.”

He heaved himself out of the chair and bent to kiss her cheek. “Heal quickly, Tiye, and we will go to Memphis and sit on the steps of the palace, looking out over that green forest under a kindlier Ra.”

She waited for him to mention their son’s presence in Memphis, but he only placed a hand on her forehead, a surprisingly gentle touch for such a large man, and then Piha opened the doors and he was gone. She listened to the warning calls of the herald as he paced the corridor, the sound growing fainter until it merged with the twitter of birds beyond the window, and smiled at the memory of his fingers, cool on her brow.
Oh, let it be
, she thought, for one moment suspending common sense, looking only into her heart and his and finding two breathless children intoxicated by the limitless power fate had placed in their hands, and by a love as yet untested by deceit or unchanged by familiarity.

The burst of vigor and excitement that had filled the court at Smenkhara’s birth soon faded, for it appeared that Pharaoh had garnered in the last harvest of his ruined body and his indomitable will. A month later he was again ravaged by fever, and an abscess on his gum broke, causing him unbearable anguish. Tiye did not see him at his own request for many days, though she called his physicians to her and listened to their veiled, polite reports. He was holding to life with all he had, lying on his couch in a dimness that became progressively suffocating as the season of Shemu drew slowly to a close in an intensifying heat.

The boy lay beside him through the long nights, still and silent while his lover tossed and muttered about people who had died before he was born and events that had already passed into history. Amunhotep would not let him go, although he lacked the strength to touch him. This Tiye surmised while she listened to the physicians, bitter because of the hopes she and her husband had shared, and guilty because his joy over his new son had caused him to live briefly and gloriously beyond his strength.

There was another source of guilt also, one she ruefully acknowledged. Each evening she would stand before her tall copper mirror when the sinking sun flushed the room red and tinged her skin an unearthly bronze, and would marvel at the new hold on life little Smenkhara had given her. She knew that she had never had her niece’s cold, unapproachable beauty, and not for many years had she cared. Her attraction lay in her vitality, her earthy, forthright sensuality. Carefully she inspected her body, short and unremarkable, the hips well-formed, the waist small but not unusually so, the breasts neither small nor large yet definitely beginning to lose their elasticity. Her neck was long and graceful. It was a thing to take pride in, but Tiye no longer took pride in a body that was useful, that gave her pleasure, but that could not compete with the pleasures of a quick, devious brain. Critically she surveyed her face.
Here
, she thought,
I show my age. My eyelids are too hooded. The lines that score my cheeks from inner eyes to chin could have been grooved by the vengeful sphinx I wear between my breasts. My mouth, that Amunhotep calls voluptuous and loves so much, is too big and, when I do not smile, turns down most unbecomingly. Yet
… She smiled at the image softly reflected back at her like melting gold.
I feel reborn while my pharaoh struggles to keep death at bay
. Her eyes slid from the mirror. “Take it away!” she barked at Piha. “Tell the musicians to come, and the male dancers. I am not weary enough for sleep.”

She had hoped for diversion but found none. The musicians played, the young men danced faultlessly, yet Tiye knew that nothing could distract her from the distance growing between her and her husband.

The month of Mesore passed, pitilessly hot. New Year’s Day approached, signaling the beginning of the month of Thoth, god of wisdom, when Amun left his sanctuary at Karnak and traveled in his golden barque to his southern temple at Luxor, which Amunhotep had been building for the last thirty years. It was customary for Pharaoh to accompany the god to Luxor and during the fourteen days of festival to assume Amun’s identity and beget another incarnation.

With the feast two weeks away Tiye summoned Ptahhotep and Surero.

“Surero, the Feast of Opet comes. You are Pharaoh’s steward, with him every day. Will he be able to travel to Luxor?”

Surero hesitated. “He sits by his couch and takes nourishment. Yesterday he walked a little in his garden.”

“That is not an answer. Ptahhotep, I know you spent a long time with him this morning. What do you think?” She did not trouble to hide her disdain. The high priest did not like her, she knew. He was a dour, practical man who jealously guarded the fortunes of his god, and all his life he had suspected the levity with which Amunhotep had regarded Amun behind the solemn rites and masks of tradition. A devout consort would have been able to change that, but Tiye recognized that he considered her a commoner, no matter how rich and influential her family, and a foreign commoner at that, and so did not expect her to understand the ties that bound Amun to Pharaoh. Worse, she had supported Pharaoh in his bid to raise Ra and his physical manifestation on earth, the Aten, to a position of greater prominence. Tiye had tried to explain to Ptahhotep that the policy would mean nothing to the majority of the Egyptian people, for the worshipers of Ra as the Visible Disk consisted only of a small cult of sophisticated priests and a few courtiers. It was intended, rather, as a shrewd political move, designed to promote a feeling of unity among the empire’s vassal states and subject nations. All men, whatever their allegiance, worshipped the sun. To promote the Aten would ensure warmer relations between Egypt and the independent foreign kings and make them more amenable to talk of trade and treaty. While the threat to Amun that Ptahhotep had so clearly dreaded had not come about, the general loosening of religious morals and the frivolous irreverence of a bored court had deepened his disapproval. More peasants than nobility came to Karnak now, and the offerings were correspondingly vulgar. She watched icily as the high priest drew himself up to answer her question.