“But, no,” he replied. “I have become thinner in the service of my king.” He turned to Ankhesenamun with a silencing gesture. “Nefertiti, I am sorry that your daughter could not come today. You were expecting her, but she is not well.”
The wide mouth turned down. Nefertiti seemed to be listening, her head on one side, and then she smiled coldly. “You are senile, Regent. Ankhesenpaaten, is your health not good?”
“You are blind, aren’t you?” Ay said softly before the girl could answer. “Oh, Nefertiti, such pride! If we had known…”
“If you had known,” she sneered, her voice thin, “I would have had to endure everyone’s pity. Poor Nefertiti, once so powerful, now an aging, blind traitor who cannot take one step without assistance. Let us fling her a little sympathy, though surely the gods do not expect it of us. After all, she sinned and she is being punished!” One hand flitted briefly over her pale face. “No, I am not completely blind. I can distinguish between light and darkness.”
The words hung over them. With a cry, Ankhesenamun left her chair and embraced her mother. Nefertiti’s arms closed around her.
“You must leave here at once!” Pharaoh exclaimed. “At Malkatta you can have apartments and servants, and my own physicians will attend you. Come with us, Nefertiti.”
Her fingers were exploring Ankhesenamun’s face. “Malkatta?” she replied quietly. “No, Majesty, it is too late for that. I will not endure the silent laughter of the court behind my back day after day. Here I am still queen. My husband is gone, all my children but one dead, no son of mine sits on the Horus Throne. But at last some measure of peace has come to me. Would you destroy it in order to show your mercy?”
Stung at the condemnation in her voice, Tutankhamun said hotly, “We are not obliged to show you mercy! We listen to the entreaties of our queen!”
Nefertiti set Ankhesenamun gently away from her and nodded. “My husband made me holy,” she said. “The city of Akhetaten is a song of praise to the Aten, and to me. It is mine. I will never leave.”
“I cannot guarantee your safety once the Mazoi go,” Ay reminded her anxiously.
She shrugged. “I have soldiers of my own. Four of my daughters lie here in the rock, Father. I will not desert them.”
“Your duty lies with Ankhesenamun, the survivor!”
“Ankhesenamun? Your father would weep to hear the name of that god. As for my duty, Ay, I have done it.”
She had allowed the memories to warp, to change shape to fit her own long ambitions and disguise her old frustrations. Here in the north palace, Ay thought, her dreams had taken on a kind of reality. It was a shrine to her, a sanctuary of adoration, and the man sitting quietly beside her with such composure had at last given her the love for which she had always yearned. In her new fulfillment she no longer inspired pity.
For a while they sat on together, talking of innocuous things while Meryra, directed by Thothmes’ unobtrusive gestures, served them delicacies. There was no trace of fussy possession in his attitude, no flaunting of ownership. Ay was convinced by the time they rose to leave that Thothmes’ love for Nefertiti was honest, unselfish, and steady. He and she prostrated themselves to Tutankhamun and walked with him into the late afternoon sunshine, Nefertiti’s hand resting on Thothmes’ guiding elbow. At the last moment, as Pharaoh was stepping into his litter, the queen turned back to embrace her mother.
“I will have incense burned before the Son of Hapu for you every day,” she said, weeping, “and I will send you many letters.”
Nefertiti turned blank gray eyes in the direction of her face. “Give Egypt a son, Ankhesenamun, and do not meddle in things that do not concern you. I love you.”
Still sobbing, Ankhesenamun got onto her litter. The last glimpse she had of her mother was of Nefertiti’s immobile face, the white linen pressed against her stately body by the wind, and the flash of sunlight on her rings as she reached for Thothmes’ hand.
Two days later, in the cool of early morning, Pharaoh and Ankhesenamun sat on the deck of Kha-em-Ma’at and were poled away from the palace water steps for the last time. The queen, watching the central city slide past, tried to pretend they were merely on a boating party and in the evening would return home. But the illusion was hard to maintain, for Akhetaten had shut them out. The green palms ranking along the bank rustled in the fresh breeze, the vine-hung white walls gleamed in the new sunlight, and flashes of bright color showed through the lush wetness of many trees, yet an atmosphere of incipient decay already hung over the empty homes and deserted gardens. Behind the sealed doors and boarded windows, many rooms were left as they were, the chairs still waiting to be used, the tables laden with vases of wilting flowers, the shuttered bedchambers still dim with rumpled couches and lamps still warm from the night. There had been both a sudden panic to leave a ghost-haunted, ill-omened place and an uncertainty about the future. Perhaps Pharaoh would not settle at Thebes and would return. Perhaps he would become homesick for the city’s beauty and greenness; perhaps the Aten’s eclipse would be brief after all and in his maturity Pharaoh would return to his father’s god. Regret lingered in the gardens and imbued the quiet streets with nostalgia.
As the royal barge slid past Horemheb’s estate, Ankhesenamun gave a cry and turned to her husband. “Tutankhamun, look! What is happening?”
Naked brown children were leaping into the river from Horemheb’s white water steps with shrieks of delight. A woman knelt by his ornamental pool, scouring a pile of coarse linen. Two goats were tethered to the pillars of his entrance hall. The homeless had begun to converge on the city even before all its occupants had left.
Pharaoh watched, fascinated. “I suppose I should order them thrown out,” he said. “But today I will be magnanimous. There is no point, in any case. I do not think that we will ever return, and as yet we cannot afford to pay soldiers to police an empty city. The glass and faïence factories are still working. I suppose those peasants want work in them.”
Ankhesenamun rose and went to the rail. The ethereal pleasure palace of Maru-Aten was passing, and she thought she caught a glimpse of the shady pavilion beyond the trees. Then it was gone. Into the past. The southern customs house was almost abreast, and the end of the long sweep of high cliffs that had sheltered Akhetaten. Ankhesenamun looked back. The city was a silent mirage of white, green, and gold, dancing on the warm haze, held tenuously to the present only by the umbilical cord of glittering barges strung out behind. Ankhesenamun did not look away until the cliffs and the bending river removed it protectively from her sight.
The flotilla beat its way slowly back to Thebes, bearing with it the bodies of Akhenaten and Tiye, whom Ay had arranged to inter at Thebes. The travelers had begun in good spirits, whiling away the long hours on the river with parties held on deck under the sheltering canopies, but before long the presence of the two imperial coffins and the anxiety about what awaited them at Thebes had sobered the court. Sleep became fitful and troubled. The more impressionable women among the courtiers began to see unfavorable omens, and many felt burdened by a sense of foreboding. It would have been better, they whispered among themselves, to have left the accursed one and his mother-wife to the hot silence of the cliffs. Surely they were bringing with them a taint that would infect Malkatta. It was unlucky to disturb the dead.
Long before Pharaoh’s barge nudged the Malkatta water steps, the river banks began to be thick with people who lay reverently beneath the palms and then rose to cheer him, and when his captain gave the order that swung the flotilla toward the west, the whole of Thebes could be seen filling the east bank, screaming and jostling in delirious relief. The barges turned into the canal. It had been dredged, the huge lake scoured and filled, the water steps repaired. Flags of blue and white rippled on the wooden flagstaffs before the imposing facade of the palace. As Tutankhamun and his retinue stepped from the ramp, priests in flowing white linen sent clouds of incense pouring to the heavens, and the paving was already sticky with milk and wine. By
the portable altar a garlanded bull waited patiently for the slash of Pharaoh’s knife.
It was more than a homecoming. It was a return to sanity, to the immutable ways of Ma’at, and the ceremonies moved forward with a lighthearted gaiety. The courtiers flooded through the refurbished palace, laughing and singing. Delicious odors wafted from the kitchens. In the harem, the new women mingled with the old, their apartments a jumble of belongings through which their servants picked their way while the women themselves spilled into the harem gardens and rushed to the lake. The tumultuous welcome of the Thebans could be heard fitfully for hours, a rumble of sound coming across the Nile. Incense columned thickly above Karnak. The feast Tutankhamun presided over that night went on until dawn, a noisy, music-filled expression of joy and thanksgiving. Pharaoh retired to his apartments just after midnight, falling onto Amunhotep’s wide couch and into his dreams almost simultaneously, and when he awoke as Ra tipped the horizon, Maya and his acolytes began the Song of Praise outside the door. “Hail Living Incarnation, rising as Ra in the east! Hail, Divinely Immortal Source of Egypt’s Health.”
Later in the day Tutankhamun stood in full panoply in Amun’s dark sanctuary. Before him the god towered, a figure fashioned by Tutankhamun’s own artists and clothed in his own gold. Dishes of choicest delicacies were set at his feet, and flowers hung from his neck. Mildly he smiled at his obedient son while the priests held the censers and Maya, resplendent in the priestly leopard skin, bowed reverently before him. “The sun of him who knows Thee not goes down, O Amun!” the temple singers chanted in the forecourt. “The temple of him who assailed Thee is in darkness!” There was no mistaking the gloating triumph in the words. Tutankhamun listened soberly. He had no other father now but Amun.
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 dynasti
c 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
Once 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.
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