Tutankhaten’s hand had stolen into his queen’s. “Is that all, Uncle?”
“No, Horus.” Ay mentally took a deep breath. “I would like you to consider changing your name.”
Silence greeted his words, followed by murmurs of outrage. A name was a sacred and magic thing, a protection for the bearer, with power to conjure the help of the god whose own name was woven into it. No child was named without lengthy consultations with oracles and much prayer, a process that was doubly complicated for a pharaoh, an incarnation of the god himself. Tutankhaten’s hennaed lips were parted in shock.
“Why do you suggest this?” he managed.
“Because no matter how Your Majesty is seen to honor Amun, the people will hear in your name the name of the Disk, with all the bitter memories it brings. They will not forget, and hence they will not trust you.”
“I do not care about the trust of cattle, of slaves!” the boy retorted. “You have been very sacrilegious in your description of my father. He gave me my name. It is a holy name!”
Ay anticipated his fear, but by now he also knew his little nephew well. Tutankhaten would ponder his advice and, better still, would ask Ankhesenpaaten for her opinion. Ay already respected the young queen’s judgment. He knelt in apology. “Forgive an old man who loves you,” he said.
“Majesty, I beg leave to answer the fanbearer’s proposals with arguments of my own!” Horemheb began, but by now Tutankhaten was stirring impatiently on the throne, and his gold-sandaled foot was beginning to swing.
“Not now, Commander,” he said. “I am bored with all this talk, and I want to swim. Some other time. You are all dismissed.”
“Father is right,” Mutnodjme said to Horemheb that night as they sat beside the small ornamental pool in their garden. The light was fading, and as dusk fell, the fragrance of the flowers intensified. Moths began to flutter in and out of the lamp glow that spilled out between the entrance pillars. The still water of the pool was broken occasionally by the flick and swirl of goldfish that rose to snap at the hovering mosquitoes. Horemheb watched the ripples on the surface that reflected the red and purple of the sunset. “He is not necessarily making a bid for complete power. He has enough control of Pharaoh now. Tutankhaten is a child, with a child’s hostility toward you, but that will fade as he grows. Once Egypt stands upright again, his thoughts will turn to war, and Amun will smile on you once more.”
He glanced sharply at her, stung by the sarcasm in her voice. She was wrapped in a white woolen cloak, but as the evening had not yet turned chilly, the garment hung loosely from her shoulders and fell away from her naked belly. One foot was tucked up under her brown thigh. “He must at least let me march on Gaza,” he replied. “Egypt has held it since the days of mighty Thothmes III, and it is our most important seaport.”
“He will, when we have something to trade.” She sipped her wine, running her tongue around the rim of the cup. “It is not so bad, Commander, to lose the gold monopoly. We may have to sell a few dozen slaves, though the gods know who can afford to buy any these days, and perhaps close one of our houses. I still have the land deeded to me at Djarukha by the empress. Her old trading connections are in chaos, but if all goes well, that situation will soon be remedied.” A burst of laughter came wafting over the wall that separated their private garden from the lawns of Horemheb’s concubines, followed by the excited squealing of Mutnodjme’s two dwarfs.
“The empress would not be so craven,” Horemheb said bitterly. “She would have found a way to strengthen Egypt internally and make war.”
“I think not. You admired her very much, didn’t you, although you betrayed her? I often believe you were a little in love with her yourself.”
Horemheb managed a grin. “I was born too soon, Mutnodjme, or too late, I don’t know which. I would have made a glorious incarnation.”
“Unfortunately your blood lacks the fire of the divine,” she retorted.
“Perhaps. But as you are the half sister of a woman who was once a queen, yours contains a little of that rare glow.”
They fell silent. The light on the pool faded to a dusky blue, and the shadows of the garden began to blur and emerge into full night. Mutnodjme drained her cup and dropped it into the grass.
“Meritaten’s suicide was a terrible thing,” she said quietly after a while, “and people will not forget. Be circumspect, my husband, and wait.”
He did not answer, nor did he look at her. A constraint grew between them, until Horemheb stood abruptly and shouted for his litter bearers. “I am going to gamble with Nahkt-Min,” he said and went away.
28
During the following week Ay contained his impatience, knowing that the suggestions he had made to Pharaoh were being discussed with Ankhesenpaaten. On the eighth day he was summoned to hear Tutankhaten’s decision. Pharaoh, as Ay surmised he would, agreed to every proposal he had made.
Tutankhaten made him regent, thus giving him a legitimate power that in all his life as courtier, advisor, and royal confidant he had never before held. The position also gave him new vigor. Time could not return to him the stamina of his youth, but he learned to husband his resources and within the confines of his age ruled with wisdom and experience. At his request Pharaoh appointed Horemheb as King’s Deputy, an honorary post that would last only until the queen produced an heir but that kept the commander actively at court. Nakht-Min was given the title of Fanbearer on the Right Hand.
Three years were to pass before Malkatta was considered fit for occupation, and in that time Ay worked to bring all his strategies to fruition. Under his careful rule, Egypt began to struggle to her feet. Without compunction he took gold and land that had once belonged to Amun and the other gods and returned it. Maya became a familiar sight at court through his frequent conferences with Pharaoh and the regent. It soon became clear that there were not enough priests left in Egypt to staff the refurbished temples. Ay spoke to the Aten’s men, particularly those who had once served Amun but who had defected under Akhenaten, coercing no one but making it clear that there was to be no return to the years of heresy and no priest who wished to live in comfort should believe otherwise.
Maya’s new men traveled the nomes, inducting priests from local families and training them in their native villages. Holy dancers were appointed from the palace and their expenses met from Pharaoh’s private coffers, which were also used to refashion images of the gods and rehabilitate their sanctuaries. Heralds went into every village, publicly proclaiming the rescinding of Akhenaten’s proscription against all gods but the Aten. Aten shrines began to be defaced, and Ay watched anxiously lest a spirit of violent reaction should lead to bloodshed across the country, but though crude epithets calling Akhenaten a criminal and curse bringer continued to appear on public buildings for many months, the people’s indignation soon died.
In a further effort to strengthen his link to Egypt’s past, Pharaoh began to emphasize his relationship to Amunhotep III. Ay had already suggested to him that he set his architects and masons to work to finish Amunhotep III’s temple at Soleb and inscribe their names together prominently there. On the lions sculpted for the temple he referred to him as his father. Tutankhaten also took upon himself the completion of Amun’s southern home in Luxor, a project that had absorbed so much of Amunhotep’s interest that it had come to be associated more closely with the dead pharaoh than with Amun himself. Ay had proposed, as tactfully as possible, that Tutankhaten affirm his kinship with Amunhotep III, not wanting to belittle the boy’s memories of his father, and if Tutankhaten was hurt, he did not show it. Cheerfully he pored over the plans his craftsmen placed before him, taking a delight in every detail and making many suggestions himself.
With Pharaoh’s permission, Ay imposed crushing taxes on the peasants in order to repair Malkatta, build new docks at Thebes, and start renovations in the city. He issued an edict commanding that every noble’s crops be assessed at harvest and a portion of grain from their holdings be deposited in the v
illage granaries adjacent to each estate. The wealthy courtiers grumbled, but knew that the end result of such harsh policies would be their ultimate enrichment once the economy was stable.
Despite the stream of ministers to his office every day, Ay was lonely. He dictated voluminous letters to Tey at Akhmin and read her rambling replies many times over. He grew to hate the nights at Akhetaten. Though Pharaoh had begun to host great feasts like those that had awed foreign embassies in Malkatta’s days of glory, their gaiety could not dam the dark current of past miseries that waited to flood the many quiet corners of the palace when the guests had departed. Ay slept lightly and often woke at odd hours. While he occasionally summoned his scribe and lay listening to stories, he more often left his quarters and wandered the passages of the palace, sometimes meeting other courtiers disturbed by dreams of blood and sadness.
Ay knew that the curse would linger for as long as the city remained occupied. The deformed young pharaoh from whose mind Akhetaten had sprung cast a stronger spell of madness over it now than he had in life. Ay sometimes caught himself holding his breath as he stood under torchlight in some little-used corner of the palace, waiting in fear for some terrible outburst that never came. Tiye would call to him in the night, and Akhenaten’s dead children sobbed in the shadows. The soldiers who guarded the tombs in the cliffs behind the city were already being paid twice their normal salary. Tiye never liked this place, Ay thought to himself time and again. Long before the foundations of Akhetaten were laid, she said that the site was unlucky, the cliffs jealously guarding its virginity.
But such fancies did not reach Tutankhaten. He was becoming a handsome young man with a cheerful disposition, and although he occasionally betrayed flashes of Tiye’s bad temper, those who watched him covertly for any sign of instability saw only a pharaoh who disliked being still, who laughed loudly, who hunted with vigor, and who went to his couch late and reluctantly. He reminded Ay of Thothmes, Tiye’s first son, who had blazed so brightly at court. The queen, too, was blooming. Tutankhaten, though still only fourteen in his third year of rule, had precociously consummated his marriage and had already begun to organize his harem, retiring many of his father’s older women and taking the younger ones for himself. Ankhesenpaaten was pregnant, at seventeen reflecting the new spirit of recovery that was slowly infecting the whole court.
Four days before Pharaoh took his final leave of Akhetaten, he sat in full regalia before Maya and a packed hall, the Double Crown on his brow and the crook, flail, and scimitar in his hands, and solemnly dictated the changing of his name. His name had meant Living Image of the Aten, but as he pressed his seal against the scroll he became Tutankhamun, Living Image of Amun. Ankhesenpaaten followed his example, obviously distressed as she heard herself for the first time called Ankhesenamun, Living Through Amun. To her it was a betrayal of her father and the god she had been raised to worship. She sat white and silent as the people roared their approval, her hands protectively caressing her swollen womb, but she knew by now how to keep her sorrow to herself.
On the following day Tutankhamun, Ankhesenamun, and Ay were carried along the Royal Road to the north palace, surrounded by the noise and chaos of the impending move. Carts already piled with household possessions choked the alleys. Domestic animals fluttered and dodged before the royal cavalcade, pursued by frantic naked children. Out of sight, behind the palace’s high wall and the gardens that ran down to the river, the shouts and curses of the barge captains could be clearly heard. The river was choked with craft of all sizes, and every available dock was full. Ay knew that the stretch of water that flowed past the secluded estates of the nobles was not much clearer, and that today Horemheb himself was abroad in the city with the local Mazoi, trying to prevent outbreaks of violence in the congested streets and offering protection to the wealthy. Only the precincts of the Aten temple were quiet, the empty forecourt lying burning under Ra’s noon fury. The few priests, including Meryra, who had elected to stay were hidden in the sanctuary. Dust hung golden in the air. Clouds of flies hovered everywhere over the deluge of refuse and offal scoured from the emptying homes. Already the pretty Aten shrines that adorned every street corner were bare and soiled, the incense hollows blackened and cold. Dogs panted under the shade they afforded, and sand drifted over the small paved areas before them where the dancers used to sway. Ay, a square of perfumed linen held to his nose, was glad that the queen’s litter curtains remained closed. Akhetaten resembled a city threatened by an invading army, its citizens frantic to escape.
The double gates set into the wall that separated the north palace from the rest of the city were closed, but Nefertiti’s guards swung them open before the heralds reached them, and the litters passed through. Ay braced himself for the effort his litter bearers must make to mount the long stair and, as the climb began, sat watching the terraces unfold. The grass glistened with water. The flowers massed, rank upon rank of color, and the trees clustered on each terrace draped leaves over the tops of the ones on the level below. There was no dust here, no cacophony, only the gentle tinkle of falling water in the fountains and the gust of flower fragrance carried on the breezes.
The litters were set down, the paving stone hurriedly dampened with milk and wine to receive Pharaoh’s holy feet, and the three stepped out. Far below them the Nile ran blue and silver, swirling where it met the pilings of Nefertiti’s wharves. Her golden barge flashed as it rocked in the swell of a craft passing swiftly from the north customs house. Ankhesenamun sighed. “Nothing has changed here,” she said, her voice wistful.
“I thought I had forgotten it,” Pharaoh replied, “but it all comes back to me now. There is the tree I used to climb, and from there I could swing down all the terraces. It was a stiff climb back up, though.” His servants waited while he admired the view, the gardens, the long prospect of the river. Ay did not know whether he was giving his queen a moment to collect herself or was insensitively prolonging her anguish, but at last he turned to the steward Meryra’s prostrate form by the open entrance. “Get up and lead us to your mistress,” he ordered.
Meryra rose and bowed several times. “It is a great honor, Mighty Bull,” he said gravely, and they followed him into the welcome coolness of Nefertiti’s little kingdom.
The public hall was filled with statues. As Meryra glided ahead, Ay looked about incredulously. Nefertiti gazed at them solemnly as they went, her face formed from the dark oiliness of ebony, the streaked shine of marble, the warmth of sandstone. Some of the works were busts, some merely heads, but the majority were full-size likenesses. Some were very formal, the head wigged and crowned with the cobra or the masculine lines of the sun crown, the stiff body covered in pleated linen to the sandaled feet, the arms rigid at the stone sides. But many were soft and flowing with the curves and arrested movements of life. The artistic genius Akhenaten had clumsily tried to foster had found its flowering here, in one man’s hidden tribute to the woman he adored. Every piece portrayed Nefertiti in the fullness of her character. Thothmes had no illusions about her. Together with her sensuality and beauty, the hall breathed her arrogance, her pettiness, her strange defenselessness. This is my daughter, Ay thought, dazed. One statue caused them all to pause. Nefertiti, in white limestone, the heaviness of middle age in her thighs and sagging breasts and belly, was bending to one side. In her outstretched hand she held a lotus. She was smiling slightly. Her eyes were closed, and her nostrils flared toward the open bloom. Her own hair fell straight to her shoulders, and she wore a thin circlet that held an ankh above her forehead. Ankhs were strung around her neck and fingers. The whole piece was languorous with the worship of life.
“Gods!” Tutankhamun exclaimed with disgust. “Sculptors are far from being anything more than the servants of better men, but this one is no more than a slave. He would starve before he found a patron.” Ay pulled his gaze from the statue and walked on.
The passages leading to the private reception hall were also graced with carvings of Nefertiti, a
nd it seemed that Thothmes was a painter as well, for the walls of the hall itself were brilliant with immense likenesses of her. Here he had kept to traditional modes of expression, but Ay noticed that the flesh had been painted red, the color used for portraying males, and the hair blue, for the lapis lazuli of the gods.
Meryra had led them to where a few chairs were pulled close together at a low table containing refreshments and flowers. As they approached, Nefertiti and the sculptor rose from their seats. Thothmes whispered in Nefertiti’s ear, and immediately she knelt and prostrated herself, rising with his help to stand unsmiling with hands clasped before her. She was simply dressed in a soft white sheath that fell from the onyx jewels at her throat in many pleats to the floor. More onyx studded her belt. On each arm she wore thick bracelets. Her wig, too, was simple, a straight black fall of hair to her shoulders, fringed and surmounted by a gold circlet made up of tiny disks. She looked, Ay thought, as though she had stepped out of another age. Her face was heavily painted, but the paint could not obscure the delicate nest of lines around her eyes or the faint grooves in her cheeks. Thothmes was also painted, wigged, and ribboned, but beneath the formality of his attire Ay saw a lean, graceful man with a deep, generous gaze. Ankhesenamun smiled at her mother, but Nefertiti seemed not to notice her. Nor would she meet her father’s eye as her glance swept them. Without invitation, Tutankhamun took a chair and said, “It is good to see you again, Nefertiti.”
The others sat, Ankhesenamun looking down at her distorted lap, hurt and disappointed.
“Your Majesty has grown a great deal since I saw you last,” Nefertiti said, “and you, Father, you are fatter!”
Ay looked at her curiously, for he had, in fact, lost weight since assuming the responsibilities of regent. Her old fire was gone, the restless body strangely calm, her movements studied. At Ay’s glance, Thothmes leaned toward Nefertiti with a small proprietary gesture. Ay took Ankhesenamun’s hand.
The Twelfth Transforming Page 54
