The Twelfth Transforming (71 page)

When the bodies of Tiye and Akhenaten were placed together in a hurriedly prepared tomb in the Valley in West-of-Thebes, all watching as the necropolis attendants knotted the rope across the entrance believed that they were witnessing the final burial of the past. Mud was smeared over the knots, the seal of the necropolis pressed into it, and the solemn warnings against violation and theft intoned. The small ceremony had been attended only by the royal couple and a handful of chosen courtiers. As they afterward made their way from the tombs to their waiting litters, they felt as though a burden had been lifted. The last impiety of a doomed administration had been redressed.

On the trip back to the palace Ankhesenamun stopped at the Son of Hapu’s funerary temple with offerings for the seer and earnest prayers for the recovery of her mother’s sight. Ay, watching the delicate royal fingers sift the incense grains onto the holder, thought grimly that the dead noble would feel a spiteful satisfaction in disregarding Ankhesenamun’s fervent prayers. He had been thwarted, and as a consequence his terrible prophecies had come true. He would not intercede with the gods for the wife of a prince he had ordered killed so long ago but would relish the full consequences of his royal master’s disobedience.

Yet those who had seen the interment of the empress and her son as a sign that all would now be well in Egypt found their hope waning when shortly afterward Ankhesenamun gave birth to a stillborn daughter. The courtiers observed her anguish with knowing smiles. “The royal blood is thin,” they whispered to one another. “Her mother gave Egypt only girls, and she is not fertile enough for sons. The gods have grown weary of this effeminate house.” Many eyes surreptitiously followed Horemheb’s comings and goings through the palace. The King’s Deputy was handsome, mature, and capable, a man of action among children and old men, but in the increasingly satisfying life of Malkatta politics were no more than a diversionary topic, soon superseded by less weighty matters.

Horemheb seemed to have resigned himself goodnaturedly to his subordinate position. When he was not discharging his duties as King’s Deputy, he could be found in the office of the Scribe of Assemblage or mingling with his officers and men in the barracks. Ay would have relieved Horemheb of his control over the Followers of His Majesty if he had dared, but he knew that as the gods were growing strong again, the arguments with which he had bested Horemheb had less authority with every passing year. Ay admitted to himself that he was afraid of the man. Although Egypt had in Tutankhamun a popular young pharaoh of whom everyone approved, a deep and irrevocable change had taken place since the days of Osiris Amunhotep’s magnificence, when Pharaoh was numinous with divinity, and behind the stiff formality of sheltering protocol the ruling god, no matter what his human weaknesses, was infallible. Since then, Egypt had suffered a pharaoh who had proven himself to be not only deluded but cosmically criminal, a man against whom the gods themselves had militated, whose painful fallibility had become apparent even to every poverty stricken peasant.

Without his traditional invulnerability, Pharaoh was no longer untouchable. Had not one of Egypt’s rulers already died by violent hands?
It is not
, Ay mused as he discharged his duties through each long day,
that Pharaoh is merely no longer divine. His divinity is now sunk beneath his flesh, and everyone is aware that the flesh will bleed at the touch of a knife. None knows that better than Horemheb. What precisely are his ambitions? Is it the Double Crown that shimmers in his fantasies, or simply the dream of an Egypt presiding once again over a mighty empire? If the empire, then he will be patient, and Tutankhamun has nothing to fear, but if the crown, then he is simply biding his time for an opportunity to strike, and unless he betrays his designs in some way, I will be helpless to prevent a tragedy
.

Later that year a scroll came for Ay from Akhetaten. He unrolled it and read absently, but was then transfixed by its contents. “She is dead,” it said. “I woke one morning to find her cold beside me. I have buried her in the cliffs. I leave the north palace, taking with me only that which is mine. Long life and happiness to you, Regent.” It was signed Thothmes, sculptor. Ay let the scroll fall onto his desk, and the small sound invoked a flood of memories. Nefertiti as a child, sitting naked at Tey’s feet in the garden on a hot summer’s day at Akhmin, her hands full of cheap beads, her startled dark eyes turned to him questioningly as he called her. He did not know why that insignificant scene had stayed so vividly in his mind. Nefertiti full of pouts and bad temper, trying to quarrel with Mutnodjme, who could never be bothered to be drawn. Nefertiti high above the heads of her worshipers, coldly beautiful in the sun crown, her red mouth faintly smiling. And now buried quietly, laid secretly in the darkness by a commoner. Ay knew that when he did mourn, it would be for the little girl in the garden.

He picked up the scroll and went to the queen’s quarters, waiting while her herald obtained permission for him to enter. Ankhesenamun greeted him cheerfully, draped loosely in a white wrap, her hair wet and disheveled. Her brown skin gleamed with fresh oil.

“Please sit, Grandfather,” she invited. “I am just out of my bath. Pharaoh says that I spend more time cleansing myself than a priest. He sent me new earrings this morning. Do you like them?” She held them out, and he nodded, forcing a smile. Her own laugh faded. “Do you bring me bad news?”

For answer he handed her the scroll, watching in silence as she scanned it. She set the papyrus aside and sat abruptly on the edge of the couch, drawing the wrap tightly around her with both hands. “I hate these apartments,” she said after a while. “I hated them the moment I stepped through the doors. They are dark and old and smell of past sins. Tutankhamun thinks I like them and is pleased, because the empress Tiye lived here, but I remember only that my mother slept on this couch and walked these floors.” Her voice trembled. “I do not sleep well.”

“Then for Set’s sake tell him! He adores you, Majesty. He will build a new wing for you!”

“It is not new apartments that I need,” she said bitterly. “I went to my father’s bed when I was eleven years old. I was innocent, Ay, I did not understand. Even the birth of my daughter did not lift the veil from my eyes. What my father did to me, to my sisters, was not against the law of Ma’at for a pharaoh, yet here at Malkatta I suddenly see clearly that it was more than dynastic necessity that impelled him. Knowing that darker thing, I find myself a jaded old woman whose sweet memories have all at once become nothing but lies.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Thothmes did not send us word until it was too late to go to her, to mourn, to stand with her! I do not understand!”

Ay made no move to comfort her, knowing that her pride would forbid it.

“I do,” he replied. “She was his, not ours. He wanted her to himself until the last. He could not bear the thought of the north palace full of courtiers invading its silence, and I think he was justified. I will ask Pharaoh to build a mortuary temple for her here.”

She lifted her chin. “It is not that. Malkatta is a lonely place, and lonelier now knowing she is gone.”

He placed an arm along her delicate shoulders. “Ankhesenamun, you are only seventeen years old, already a queen, beautiful and loved. The future is full of promise for all of us. Do not look back.”

She turned away. “I cannot help it,” she said coldly. “The past will not let me go.”

29

O
nce Tutankhamun gained his majority, Ay relinquished his position as regent, but the relationship with the young king that he had forged in Tutankhamun’s infancy remained so strong—Pharaoh consulting Ay on all matters and always taking his advice—that he effectively continued to hold the highest power in Egypt. The courtiers marveled at his longevity, acknowledging it as a mark of favor from the gods whom he had restored to prominence. Yet at the same time their resentment was stirred, for the only way to Pharaoh was through his uncle, and Ay refused to allow him to delegate any authority. Although the various ministers had been reinstated, they were denied independent action, so that while Malkatta had budded, it did not bloom.

Ankhesenamun conceived once more and gave birth to another stillborn girl. She bore her humiliation bravely, aided by the fact that none of Tutankhamun’s secondary wives or concubines had been able to conceive at all. But concern over a successor began to dominate the courtiers’ conversations. Egypt needed an heir, a promise that Ma’at would go on, that its so recent fragile reestablishment could be made increasingly secure. There were no promising royal princes springing up in the harem, no new generation of Horus-Fledglings on whom the eyes of anxious ministers could rest. Instead, those eyes found themselves drawn to Horemheb, who, still pacing behind Pharaoh as King’s Deputy, reminded everyone by his very holding of the office in the place of an heir that the future was a void.

Horemheb was well aware of the speculative glances that followed him. He was also aware that Ay feared him for reasons, Horemheb told himself, that so far had no validity. Egypt had been well served by Tutankhamun, although not in the way that Horemheb himself would have chosen, and he had been content to bow to Ay’s assessment of the country’s needs and their solution once he saw the process of recovery begin. He had been pleased at his appointment to the position of King’s Deputy—even when it became apparent that Ay had urged the appointment on Pharaoh in order to keep an eye on the commander—believing that as such he would have as great an access to Pharaoh as the regent. Because he believed that, given time, Tutankhamun would turn his attention to military matters as Mutnodjme had predicted, he was content.

But as the years passed and Egypt began to regain her strength, Pharaoh would still hear no words from his deputy but those of worship and protocol. Horemheb tried on several occasions to make representations to Tutankhamun on behalf of the army, but any serious suggestion of mobilization on his part had been rejected. With a growing anger, Horemheb began to realize that it was in fact Ay, not Pharaoh, who was consistently blocking any attempt to recover the empire. Ay was looking increasingly to the past, when Egypt had been strongly self-contained, a nation that traded with other nations but had no dreams of conquest, content to hold itself apart in pride from the rest of the world. The regent believed so firmly in the rightness of his own policies and the inadvisability of conquering any territory for many years to come—perhaps forever—that he persisted in binding his young and malleable nephew ever more closely to himself.

Horemheb found some consolation in the thought that by killing Smenkhara he had at least attained one objective, namely, the restoration of Amun and the return of the administration to Thebes. But his hope that a future generation of royal princes would turn its attention to the other desire that lay closest to Horemheb’s heart vanished when the queen gave birth to her second stillborn daughter. If there was no heir in the years to come, Tutankhamun would designate some young noble from among the ministers Ay had selected to govern, undoubtedly a man who shared the pacifism Pharaoh had learned from his uncle, and Egypt would remain forever in the position of inferiority to which she had sunk. The thought was insupportable, yet Horemheb was not quite ready to allow the alternative to take shape in his mind until he had made every effort to assure himself that Pharaoh would never agree to consider his advice.

He confronted Tutankhamun as Pharaoh was walking by the lake on a scorching Mesore evening, going to him over the tired grass. Nakht-Min stood beside the king, the downy white ostrich fan over his shoulder, and Ay shared the shelter of the canopy. Other members of the court elite were following, strolling arm in arm and talking quietly. “Fold the canopy away,” Tutankhamun ordered the servants. “Ra nears the horizon, so it is useless now. I shall bathe in a moment.” He turned a neutral, heavilykohled gaze on the deputy. “This is not the time to discuss matters of state policy, Horemheb. It is still too hot to have to think.”

Horemheb had made his prostration and now faced Pharaoh determinedly. “Then will Your Majesty grant me an audience tomorrow?”

Tutankhamun sighed and slid onto the chair that had been set behind him, waving his entourage down onto the grass. “No. Tomorrow Nakht-Min and I are going hunting, and then there is the preparation for the New Year’s celebration to discuss. Take your problems to my uncle.”

Horemheb settled himself cross-legged on the ground and looked at Ay. The sun was setting behind the regent, making his expression difficult to read. “I have done so, Immortal One,” he said frostily, “but we talk in circles, the regent and I. I am your deputy, and the commander of your loyal army. My request is small.”

“But pressing, I suppose. Well, make it quickly.”

Carefully but respectfully Horemheb scanned the handsome face. At nineteen, Tutankhamun had his mother’s sensual lips and pleasing nose, and her crisp manners of speech, but his father’s large, mild eyes, which seldom betrayed any depth of thought. He would have made a good courtier, pleasant to look at, with a sense of fashion, an ability to get along with everyone, and an adeptness at light conversation. Horemheb thought him immature and blamed Ay for denying him any responsibility.

“Majesty, I greatly desire your permission to take half a division north and recapture Gaza. As Your Majesty is aware, Egypt is ready once again to open herself to flourishing trade, and we cannot trade in any volume without Gaza. We must have it back.”

“Majesty,” Ay interrupted, “Horemheb knows full well that the Khatti might interpret an attack on Gaza as a prelude to an offensive on Egypt’s part. We are not yet ready for that.”

“I am addressing Horus, not you!” Horemheb said hotly. “Keep out of this, Ay! You think and speak like a drooling old fool.” As soon as the words had left his mouth, he regretted them.
I am becoming short-tempered
, he cursed himself angrily.
Is it the arrogance Mutnodjme accuses me of?
He saw a condescending smile split Ay’s jowly face. Tutankhamun glanced around briefly at the sudden silence that had fallen. The assembly was listening avidly, hoping for a scandal.