“Of course,” the general replied, meeting the commander’s eyes. “I know how to do my duty.”
Horemheb met with the Medjay in the afternoon. Mutnodjme, unaware of an alien presence on the estate, had taken her bodyguards and gone into the city, and the house was quiet. “I hope you have not been bored,” Horemheb offered, walking across the sun-dappled tiles and seating himself by the couch on which the man lay, his arms behind his head. The Medjay turned a brown, thin face to the Egyptian and smiled.
“Bored, no,” he said in guttural Egyptian. “But it has been a long time since I have slept on a mattress between sheets of real linen. I could not rest. I rolled in my cloak and slept on the floor.”
Horemheb was sorry to find himself liking the man. “We are now going to get into my boat,” he said, “and I will show you where to go tonight. How you get there later is up to you, but my barge will be waiting to bring you back again. I want you to kill a man, without rope or knife.”
The black eyes went on regarding him quietly. “Of course you do, but you have gone to much trouble,” he said. “Why not poison?”
“Because poison leaves traces, and the cause of death is then in no doubt. There will be suspicion toward me afterward, but toward others also. Do not strangle him.”
“Very well. You will pay me.”
“In gold, tomorrow. If there is a woman with him, kill her also.”
The man shrugged. “I am an admirer of women,” he replied. “Such a waste. More gold.”
“If you wish. It does not matter.” Horemheb struggled against a sudden fit of nausea, and with it came a reckless urge to order the assassin to murder them all, Tutankhaten, Ankhesenpaaten, sweep away the whole royal brood so that their blood might wash the country clean at last. But he quickly recognized the urge as one of panic’s faces and controlled himself.
“Does Pharaoh know what you have asked of me?” the Medjay enquired casually.
Horemheb shook his head. “No, and he never will. Come. I do not want to arrive back at the same time as my wife.”
He poled the man out into the current himself, standing off well away from any eye on the bank that might recognize him, and rowed them past the edge of the south city until they were level with Maru-Aten. Once there, he described the pavilion in the trees, the times of the guard changes, the arrangement of the rooms. As he spoke, he was uncomfortably aware of the man’s slowly narrowing gaze, the rapid conjecture taking place, but he knew that the Medjay were trained to give their allegiance only to their superior officers. Most of them knew nothing of Egypt but the border itself, and the idea of serving a god they would never see had no interest for them. Their independence was both a threat and a strength to Egypt, and every Egyptian commander knew it and respected their peculiar place in the ranks of the army. As Horemheb turned the skiff around, he asked the man to repeat what he had been told, and he did so without much trouble. There was nothing more to be done then but to return to the house and wait for nightfall.
Smenkhara went to his couch early that evening, lying awake for a while to listen to the wind in the trees that crowded against the pavilion walls. He had never shared Meritaten’s distaste for Maru-Aten, and the ownership of it filled him with a proprietary pleasure. He had grown to hate his brother but grudgingly recognized Maru-Aten as an achievement that transcended the pharaoh’s weakness. Akhenaten had loved the natural world with a passion and realized that love in the creation of the summer palace. For Smenkhara it had a quality of purity that he could no longer find within himself. He knew that his brother had corrupted both him and Meritaten, that they had already died with their youth, but here, where there was the scent of lotus and the murmur of clear water, he could still pretend that one day they would both be healed.
But tonight he did not sleep long. Soon he woke and lay frowning into the darkness, and although the warmth of the braziers made him drowsy and he dozed again, he drifted awake only an hour later, burdened with a sourceless anxiety. Shadows moved across the window. Birds called sleepily. His bodyguards stepped to and fro, black shapes of reassurance. As they had so often lately, his thoughts turned to his mother, the blue cold glitter of her eyes when he had irritated her, the feel of her arms around him on the few occasions when there had been tenderness between them. He fancied that he could smell the heavy musk of her perfume. She never really loved me, he thought, turning over and pulling the sheet across his shoulder. The only man who commanded her affection was my father. What was he like, the god whom people speak of with such awe? Smenkhara did not really care, for in the end they had all used and betrayed him, his father, his mother, his grotesque brother. Yet in the defenseless hours of darkness they often assumed more human proportions in his mind, catching him off guard and softening the wall of loneliness that protected him. He wished he had commanded Meritaten to sleep with him tonight. He would have liked the warmth of another body beside him. Listening to the sighs and mutters of his manservant, unconscious at the far end of the room, he almost called out but mentally shrugged and changed his mind. The man would not give him what he needed. Nor could Meritaten, or the pliant young men he occasionally coaxed to his bed. He slept again.
He did not wake when the soft-footed Medjay slipped through the window and crouched beside the couch. He was standing by the river in the shade of a date palm, watching himself loosely asleep at the foot of the palm in the heat of a summer afternoon, and though he could not see through the trees, he knew he was somewhere on the Malkatta estate. With a dawning relief he saw his sleeping self begin to smile, and the smile grew wider and tighter until the painted mouth strained and split. There was no blood, and he saw that his other self did not wake. A great sense of well-being expanded in him, and though he knew he was dreaming, he was able to recognize the good omen. Something he was afraid of would be explained by the god. I will make offerings to Amun in the morning, he said to his dream self. I must run and tell my mother.
He did not wake when the Medjay eased the pillow from under his head and gathered up a portion of the sheet. The man worked without haste. He hesitated once, with the handful of sheet poised over Smenkhara’s parted mouth and the young man’s warm breath on his fingers. It was not a moment of indecision, but rather, a summoning of his strength. The eyes flared open as he rammed the sheet into the mouth and pushed the pillow over the face. This was the most dangerous moment. The dying man’s smothered grunts might rouse the servants, or the flailing limbs make too much noise. The Medjay sat astride Smenkhara’s chest, imprisoning the jerking arms so that the nails could not draw blood. He did not like to kill this way; it took too long. He kept his weight on the pillow, his knees against the frenetic arms until the resistance grew weaker and finally ceased. He had just replaced the pillow under the lolling head and pulled the sheet out of the mouth when a sleepy voice asked, “Majesty, did you call me?” Quickly the Medjay drew the eyelids shut and slid down beside the couch, but the servant did not come. He sensed him sitting up, listening, but after a minute he lay down again with a sigh. Still the Medjay did not stir. The night was thinning. Ra was in the last House of his transforming.
At last he rose and, bending over Smenkhara’s body, inspected it carefully. The young man was dead. The Medjay stood loosely, considering, and only when he had made a firm decision did he slide through the window and give himself up to the shadows. He had killed a god, and he knew it. Even if the servant’s query had not confirmed his own suspicions, he would have thought twice about returning to the commander’s house. He glided out of Maru-Aten, away from the river and into the dark desert toward the sheltering cliffs.
Smenkhara’s death, while a shock to the courtiers, who had seen pharaohs succumb only at advanced ages or after recognizable illnesses, followed so closely upon other royal tragedies that the stir it caused was soon dissipated. But the more superstitious among the city dwellers whispered among one another darkly that the young man’s fate could not have been averted. The curse brought upon Egyp
t’s ruling family and its unhappy subjects by Osiris Akhenaten and his mother had yet to run its course, and the anger of the gods, once roused, was difficult to appease. Some supernatural agent had struck Pharaoh, for was it not significant that the royal physicians could find no mark on the king’s body, though the face was swollen and discolored? In homes and market places, the gossip was furtive and apprehensive.
Horemheb’s spies brought him news of the indifference of the court and the frightened conjecture of the city. The talk did not alarm him, for the fingers of accusation were pointed at the gods, not at living men. After a brief exchange with Nakht-Min, who had waited all night in the commander’s garden for a man who had not appeared, he realized that his second victim had run, but it did not matter. The Medjay would keep his own counsel. Horemheb did what was expected of him. He ordered Smenkhara’s manservant severely whipped and dismissed, and reprimanded the Followers who had heard and seen nothing. Neither his actions nor his words invited suspicion.
Only two people believed they knew the truth about Smenkhara’s death. Ay had stood beside Horemheb in the light of early dawn, looking down on Pharaoh’s sprawled corpse while Meritaten screamed and sobbed at its feet and the manservant lay prostrate and trembling before the crowd of courtiers and priests who thronged the room.
“You should have killed Tutankhaten, too,” he said to Horemheb in a low voice under cover of the noise and confusion. “Now if you want the crown, you will have to wait. Your judgment was impaired, Commander.”
“I have bloodied my hands for you also,” Horemheb replied softly. “You did not have the courage to do it yourself. Look at him!” He motioned toward the stiffening corpse. “He was worth nothing. Egypt is in crisis, and the gods give us that! We have suffered enough. Believe me, Ay, I am not a traitor. The crown will of course go to Tutankhaten as the legitimate heir.”
“You have no choice,” Ay responded, drawing Horemheb away from the couch. “Another royal death would point the finger of accusation directly at you. I would not be suspect. Am I not the uncle of both gods? If you had struck at them together, it would still have been seen as divine displeasure, given the present climate of superstitious awe in Akhetaten. Do you not fear the gods, Horemheb?”
“Yes, old friend, I fear them,” Horemheb said slowly, the ghost of a smile flitting across his mouth, “but it is Amun and Ra and Khonsu that I fear, not the febrile god of what is left of this insane dynasty. There has been no true pharaoh in Egypt since Osiris Amunhotep.” He leaned closer to Ay, and his voice dropped even further. “I see your new confidence. Tutankhaten loves and reveres you. Enjoy the rebirth of your power. If you use it for Egypt, you will be left in peace.”
Ay’s retort remained unspoken, for a silence fell as the doors were opened, and those present pulled their garments close to their bodies and looked away as the sempriests entered. The clinging stench of death moved with them wherever they went, and even those among them who were privileged to handle the bodies of gods were regarded as unclean. They filed into the room with heads lowered, and one by one the company slipped hurriedly away behind them. Pwah and the other Amun priests waited with censers to purify the room when they had taken Smenkhara away.
Only Meritaten disregarded their presence. Huddled by the couch, she clung to her husband’s feet with both hands, her face buried against them, while the men from the House of the Dead stood away awkwardly from her. Horemheb nodded at her attendants. Reverently they lifted her to her feet. “Servants of Ma’at,” Horemheb said suddenly to the sem-priests, “the god you are about to touch appears to be male, and thus you would beautify him with both arms lying at his sides. But this Horus was in fact female, lover of Osiris Akhenaten. Therefore he would wish to be laid in his coffin in the pose of a woman, with right arm extended but with the left folded across the breast, so that he may be recognized as a woman in the next world. Do you understand?”
The men nodded, not daring to defile the room with their breath. Ay glanced at Meritaten. Though she was no longer weeping, sobs continued to shake her, and her large gray eyes were fixed on Horemheb in horror. Before she could speak, he again nodded, and her women led her away.
“I do not think it is necessary to hold the corpse for five days before releasing it to the House of the Dead, do you?” Horemheb asked, turning to Ay. “Even though Smenkhara was more woman than man, I cannot imagine any lustful sem-priest wanting to defile him before he begins to rot.”
Ay barely managed to answer. “I must go immediately and cleanse myself,” he muttered, turning to the door. He did not know whether it was the taint of the sem-priests’ presence he frantically wished to purify himself of, or Horemheb’s inexplicable ferocity.
The court at Akhetaten was prepared to accept Smenkhara’s death at the hands of the gods and so did not urge that the matter be investigated further. However, Horemheb found himself threatened, not by the revelations of the assassin or by his general Nakht-Min, but by the agony of a queen. Accusations tumbled from Meritaten as though the words might ease her bereavement, yet the words themselves only made her feel it all the more keenly. She allowed no one to comfort her. Ay was denied admittance to her apartments. Ankhesenpaaten, still grieving for her daughter, would go to her sister and sit dumbly for hours while Meritaten drank and wept, calling down every curse she knew on Horemheb and his household.
Horemheb waited for the storm to abate, but Pakhons went by, the harvest began, and Meritaten became even more unstable. Her tears had stopped, but the recriminations went on, increasingly voiced in public. Horemheb saw the doubts in the eyes of those around him and realized that Meritaten must be silenced. Nothing could be proved against him, but the constant flow of the queen’s vicious words inevitably shook the confidence of those who were sympathetic to him. Above all, Tutankhaten, though he encountered Horemheb only on formal occasions, was beginning to look at the Supreme Commander of All the Forces of His Majesty with speculative eyes.
For weeks Horemheb hesitated to take any action against Meritaten, torn between pity for her and an instinct for his own preservation. He began to avoid most formal feasts which Tutankhaten attended but could not absent himself from them entirely for fear of drawing too much attention to his behavior. Therefore one evening toward the end of the period of mourning he was present when Tutankhaten and his entourage were dining in Akhenaten’s vast banqueting hall. The little heir sat on the dais with Ay at his side, his half sister An khesenpaaten on his left. She had given Tutankhaten a new pet, a gosling whose green fluff had only just been replaced by sleek white feathers.
“You will soon be the incarnation of Amun-Ra, the Great Cackler,” she had told him. “The goose is the symbol of your sacredness.” Tonight the goose held all their attention. The boy had had a thick gold collar made for it, and it squatted on the table between them, snatching the morsels of food they offered and hissing balefully at every servant who came near. It is good to hear them laughing, Ay thought. Malkatta used to be drunk with laughter. How sad and wary we have all become!
His glance strayed to Horemheb, toying with his food, his blue-ribboned head down while Mutnodjme whispered in his ear. Ay found his heart warming as he looked at his younger daughter. In spite of the life of indolent dissipation she led, time had dealt kindly with her, and at thirty-five she was still surrounded by the clusters of admiring young charioteers that had begun to bore her in her late twenties. Tonight the youth lock she still wore was braided, bound up against her skull and hung with silver bells. Her eye paint was silver, and the arm pushed loosely through her husband’s was heavy with silver amulets. She had mixed silver dust with her lip henna, so that her teeth seemed faintly yellow, her skin sallow, her eyes yellow-tinged. As with every fashion she affected, it bordered on the bizarre but somehow fascinated rather than repelled. The sight of her pausing in whatever flow of spicy words she was pouring at Horemheb to take the lobe of his ear between sharp teeth filled Ay with a sudden longing for the days of his vigorous yo
uth, now long past. What right does she have to remain untouched? he thought. Why have the gods spared her when the rest of us were led young and innocent into the dark passages of necessity to emerge maimed and sullied?
She sensed his stare and looked up, smiling, but he did not return the smile, for all at once a hush had fallen. Ay followed the eyes of the crowd to the rear of the hall. Meritaten was stepping out of the shadows where night seeped between the pillars. She swayed forward, leaving the support of the stone. A hot draught caught her white pleated linens and sent them billowing before her, and her black, uncombed hair whipped about her unpainted face. Her feet were bare. In one hand she clutched the queen’s cobra coronet, while the other held a goblet of wine. Uncertainly the assembly went down before her as she picked her way between tables with exaggerated care. When she reached the dais, she bowed to Tutankhaten, and the gesture took her forward. Collapsing onto a step, she sat rocking for a moment, the attendants who had followed her hesitating, their fearful eyes on Ay. Ankhesenpaaten snatched up the goose and cuddled it as if for protection. Tutankhaten leaned toward his uncle. “Shall I order a table brought for her, or have them take her away?” he whispered. “She looks as though she were going to be sick.” Ay hesitated. Meritaten placed the goblet on the step beside her and, taking the coronet in both hands, set it on her brow. The Followers looked to Horemheb, who began to rise, but his small movement brought Meritaten’s head around.
“You courtiers do not seem to care with what demon you dine,” she said thickly, rising. “All of you know what the Supreme Commander did. His presence here sours your wine and poisons your meat, yet you talk and laugh as though it does not matter. O King-to-be,” she addressed Tutankhaten without taking her eyes off Horemheb, “whose hands will curl invisible around your own when you lift the crook, flail, and scimitar? We have become an accursed people!” Her voice had risen, echoing against the dark ceiling, and as she spoke, she lifted her naked arms, the fists clenched.
The Twelfth Transforming Page 51
