The Twelfth Transforming (9 page)

A glimmer of light showed at the door, and with a start Tiye realized how dark it had become. Huya, Kheruef’s assistant in the harem, bowed his way in preceded by his torchbearer. “Speak,” she said absently.

“Majesty, I seek Kheruef. Two of Great Horus’ Babylonian wives are fighting. If they were Tehen-Aten, I could lay hands on them, but they are above my station. I fear they will harm each other.”

Tiye nodded at Kheruef. “I do not care if they murder each other, but perhaps you should go, Kheruef. Piha, bring light. I might as well walk a little by the lake before I sleep.” She had hoped for peace but did not find it. The roar of the feast dogged her, and when the guests began to spill, drunken and amorous, into the gardens beyond her wall, bringing the noise with them, she retreated to the refuge of her own apartments.

4

T
he Feast of Opet, which began on New Year’s Day, and Pharaoh’s third jubilee were celebrated with due ritual and solemnity. On the seventh day of the feast Amun left his sanctuary at Karnak, coming out into the sunlight to the frenzied shouts of the people, resting in his golden shrine and carried in the golden barque, his white-robed priests purifying the ground before him with milk and libations of wine which ran together and flowed pink between the flagstones. Quivering ostrich fans shaded the god from the glare of day, and as the we’eb priests sweated and groaned under their burden, staggering toward the Holy Barque that rocked against the temple water steps, other priests sang Amun’s praises. He was still mighty, benign, Egypt’s pride, the god who had led the great warrior Thothmes III into the wilderness outside the borders and had blessed him, causing him to make an empire, filling his hands with riches. Proud foreign princes abased themselves before his incarnation, Amunhotep, and the thousands who had gathered to watch him travel the two miles to his other home at Luxor stamped and shouted his praise.

As Amun was slowly lowered into his gold-sheathed boat, the slaves on the bank lifted the tow ropes, and in midstream the imperial flagship also took the strain. At a shouted command the barque began ponderously to cleave the water, the pennants of Amun on the four tall flagstaffs fronting the miniature temple rippling audibly in the wind, the sun glancing off the golden statue of Pharaoh with his oar, symbolically rowing the god to Luxor. The crowds lining the riverbank dispersed and began to push forward, running to keep up with the boat, throwing garlands in the hope that one might fall neatly around the neck of Amun-Ra in his ancient guise of a ram’s head, a pair of which reared, horns curved under golden chins, at prow and stern. Dozens of little skiffs circled in the water, full of excited Thebans calling for blessings, waving goose feathers or holding up goose heads so that the god, wombed in linen hangings from the profane uproar around him, might know the fervor of his worshipers.

Behind the god’s barge came smaller boats carrying his wife, Mut, and son, Khonsu. Many court women had taken ship to escort the fashionable goddess. The drums rolled continuously, the musicians played, and the temple chanters began to sing. The hawkers on the bank, standing behind their makeshift stalls, shook charms and amulets and screamed encouragement to the undecided and abuse at those who shook their heads impatiently and passed by. Food and drink merchants fared better, for many in the throng had traveled far to stand for hours in favored positions by the water and were parched and hungry.

The water steps at Luxor were crowded also, but with a dignified, silent throng of officials and senior priests. Pharaoh himself watched the jewel-laden boat labor closer from his shaded throne. He was clad today in a high priest’s leopard skin with the symbol of his own divinity, the leopard’s tail, falling between his thighs. If he was bored, he gave no sign of it, though Tiye, seated beside him and watching his face out of the corner of her eye, saw the muscles of his jaw tense with either a yawn or a spasm of pain. The Holy Barque grazed the steps and more we’eb priests rushed to lift the shrine. Once again the milk splashed pale on the stone, and the wine dribbled, rich and tantalizing, into the grass. Amunhotep lifted his feet, and his sandal bearer knelt to remove his footwear so that he would not contaminate the sanctuary with any impurities.

Inside the temple precincts, beyond the harmonious porch of over fifty papyrus columns that the Son of Hapu had designed to Pharaoh’s specifications and that led into the sanctuary, Amunhotep, ritually supported by Ptahhotep and Si-Mut, made the blood thanksgiving. He chanted the prayers with suitable decorum and later, stripped of all but the Double Crown and a loincloth, wove unsteadily the stately and mysterious dance ordained by centuries of tradition. Tiye watched, torn between anxiety lest he should collapse and admiration for his grim will power. It was with relief that she sat beside him to eat the feast in Amun’s presence, although the battering of the noise of the crowds gathered outside and the stench of hot blood robbed her of her appetite.

“I have done my duty for another year,” he said to her, still panting and sweating as he gulped his wine. “Tomorrow we begin the jubilee celebrations while Amun simply sits here.” He jerked an elbow behind them to the god who now occupied the throne that was vacant for most of the year. Amun’s golden feet were buried in flowers, food, and incense, and smoke wreathed about his faintly smiling face, the two plumes of his crown glinting in the light of the torches. “How I pity his harem! Poor little wives and dancers! They all die virgin.” It was no secret that Pharaoh could seldom be bothered with the god’s women, secreted away here and at Karnak. “I shall enjoy sitting beside you on the royal barge, dear Tiye, in the rosy splendor of the sunrise.”

She endured his teasing with pleasure. “And I shall enjoy watching you raise the djed-pillars in the jubilee hall.”

They grinned at each other. Tiye hated sunrises, and Amunhotep the undignified though largely symbolic task of hauling on the ropes.

It was not Tiye who waited in the darkness of Luxor’s sanctuary for the ritual bestowal of the royal seed by Pharaoh in the guise of the god. A bored Sitamun lay at the foot of the statue, unconcernedly eating slices of melon dipped in honey while her father struggled against the wave of sickness that had seized him in the antechamber and his physician fed him sips of the mandrake infusion he had hurriedly brewed.

In the summer dawn of the following morning, Amunhotep and Tiye were towed to Karnak in the barge
Aten Gleams
. The Feast of Opet was over, and the jubilee was beginning. Painted and heavy with jewels, they sat side by side unspeaking, he because his teeth were clamped against the shivering of the fever stirring again in his ravaged body, she still half-somnolent. The journey they were making symbolized every pharaoh’s movement toward incarnation and birth as god and was reenacted at each jubilee.
Which of my sons can be considered the incarnation of the god?
Tiye wondered hazily as Ra rimmed the horizon, shimmering, already mercilessly prepared to devour the land. “Please have no more jubilees,” she whispered aloud in Amunhotep’s ear so that the priests accompanying them could not hear. “I need my sleep. This is torture.” He grunted but did not reply. Suddenly she felt her hand enclosed in his, which was shaking and slippery with sweat.

Later, in the magnificent hall he had built for his first jubilee within the confines of Malkatta, his coronation was also reenacted. The goddesses of the south and north, Nekhbet and Buto, raised the white and red crowns over his head. Ptahhotep placed once again the flail, crook, and scimitar into his hands. The assembled courtiers and foreign embassies watched in proper awe as the deed to Egypt and all its subject nations was given to him. Yet Tiye could take no pleasure in the sight of the baby Smenkhara, borne in his basket by a discomfited priest. Amunhotep was clearly in distress. His labored breath rasped in the ears of all present. The dignitaries, their expressionless eyes following his every stumbling move, whispered among themselves. Like royal jackals, Tiye thought in a flush of protective fury. Like pale sempriests waiting eagerly to be handed a body to disembowel. She sat beside her lord, under the gilded baldachin with its frieze of sun-bearing uraei, its sphinxes, its bound and dying enemies of Egypt under her, her body tense with his suffering as hour by hour the speeches were made, the gifts brought by men who crawled to kiss Pharaoh’s feet and display their offerings with their assurances that he would live for ever and ever. If Pharaoh had not been so stubborn, young Amunhotep would be standing beside him, receiving the trinkets, smoothing the moments for him, she thought, her own head aching from the weight of the great horned disk of Hathor and the solid silver plumes that rose above the copper feathers of her crown. She felt the eyes of the assembly dart from Pharaoh to her, cold, speculating, assessing eyes, and more than one noble rose from Pharaoh’s feet to press fervently his lips to her own. The gesture was more than politeness. It was an acknowledgment of her position as ruler in Egypt, a promise of future loyalty to the link with the next administration.

Pharaoh did not leave his throne when toward the end of the ritual the time came for the djed-pillars to be raised. At his signal it was Ptahhotep on his behalf who strained on the ropes to raise the tall wooden spires with their three crosspieces into place. The company shouted “Stability!” and bent to do homage to the symbols of an unchanging way of life, but the voices lacked conviction, and the night wind gusting through the hall seemed to bring with it the threatening chill of the unknown.

After the strain of presiding at the two festivals Pharaoh took to his bed in the now-familiar grip of fevers and dental pain, and when Tiye received a letter from Memphis announcing that Amunhotep the younger would be returning within the month, she decided not to plan a formal welcome for him. She knew only too well that a great public ceremony for an heir could turn into a surge of hysterical acclamation on the part of a court grown weary of a Horus who would not die. She had arranged a small reception—herself, Ay, and Nefertiti—on the palace water steps when word was brought to her that her son’s barge would soon dock, but her greeting was delayed. For the prince first sailed directly to the crowded Theban quays and did not cross the river until he had first mounted his chariot and been driven slowly through the narrow, dung-filled streets of the city. Tiye listened, astounded and disturbed, to Horemheb’s report after she had at last risen from her chair to receive her son’s kiss and had sent him with Nefertiti to inspect the wing of the palace that had been reserved for him. Her equanimity had been further shaken by the sight of Mutnodjme coolly stepping from the boat behind Amunhotep, white ribbons on her youth lock fluttering, whip wound around one supple forearm, her earrings swinging.

“You should not have allowed it!” she shouted angrily at the young commander as he faced her in her audience chamber. “What demon possessed him, that he should parade himself before commoners like a whore and, worse, endanger his royal person?”

Horemheb opened his mouth to reply, the scar on his chin standing out livid against the dull flush of embarrassment on his face, but Ay smoothly interposed. “Majesty, it is rather difficult for a simple commander to gainsay a prince of the blood, particularly when no whisper of the prince’s determination to ride through Thebes had come to him until Amunhotep ordered the captain to steer to the eastern shore. He did not have time either to dissuade my nephew or to prevent him by more devious means. He is not at fault.”

“Of course he is at fault!” Tiye spat at her brother, but the face so like her own remained calm.

“Let him speak, Tiye.”

Tiye blew out her lips and nodded frostily at Horemheb. The young man spread his ringed hands.

“Majesty, it was either waste precious time trying to change His Highness’s mind, and I have known him long enough to appreciate that that task is beyond the power of any living creature, or spend the minutes deciding how best to deploy my soldiers around him so that he should have the greatest protection.”

“That I see. Go on.”

“I protected him as best I could. I called out the retainers stationed by the warehouses and commandeered what chariots there were. But the prince refused a guard. I drove him myself. He insisted on being seen as clearly as possible.”

“Was he recognized?” Ay asked quietly.

“Not until his herald strode ahead holding the white staff and calling his titles. But the people were strangely quiet. They fell back and averted their eyes, of course, but once he had passed, they did not cheer him.”

“I am not surprised. It is the first time in a hundred years that any member of royalty has been so foolhardy. He rode through all of Thebes?”

“Yes, every cubit.” Horemheb’s slim shoulders slumped, and Tiye realized that he was very tired. But her ire still simmered.

“I can see that discipline around my son has been culpably lax,” she said waspishly. “I understand your impotence, Horemheb, but did you not stop to remember that my son’s anger is not as important as your responsibility to me, your queen? And what of Mutnodjme? That was the last act of madness.”

Horemheb straightened and came closer to the throne. “Majesty, you do not appreciate how the prince has been occupying his time in Memphis. I allowed Mutnodjme to entertain him in the hope that his attention might be diverted from the people of On, who follow him everywhere. No one is less interested in matters of religion than your niece. The prince has enjoyed the antics of her dwarfs and her skill with the whip.”

“I have a good mind to let her use it on you. Do not smile. I warned you before you left that if your reports were not full and truthful, you would be punished. Why was all this information not included in the scrolls you sent me?”

“I tried to be plain, Majesty, but it was difficult. The prince had set up his own informers, and I believe that my letters to you were read regularly by him before being resealed. My seal does not have the authority of yours. Nor did I trust a message by word of mouth.”