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.
“You do me scant reverence by hurling insults in my sacred presence,” Pharaoh said dryly. “I agree with my uncle. It is too soon to think of any military operation. Such a move would reawaken the fears of the people. They are only now learning to trust the beginnings of the new prosperity we are bringing them. War would take it away from them.”
“I do not speak of war,” Horemheb objected thickly. “The capture of Gaza would be a small, swift foray. That would be the end of it.”
“Would it?” Tutankhamun met his eye shrewdly. “I know your desire. I am not prepared to let you fulfill it.”
With inner fury, Horemheb knew that the god was once again mouthing Ay’s words. “If Your Majesty will not listen to my advice, then at least consult some of your other ministers. They have voices.”
The implied criticism stung Tutankhamun. He leaned forward and flicked Horemheb across the cheek with his fly whisk. “Unless you wish to be relieved of your command, you would do well to remove yourself from my sight,” he said curtly. “I have never liked you. You are dismissed.” The silence was pregnant with the watchers’ glee. White with humiliation, Horemheb stood, bowed stiffly, and strode away, head high, the eyes of all burning into his back.
Horemheb spent the rest of the day out on the desert behind the palace, shouting and slashing at the horses as they dragged his chariot through the sand, but his anger had still not abated by nightfall, when he returned to his house. He had not eaten. Pharaoh’s casual slash with the fly whisk continued to burn like the vicious stripe of a whip, and Horemheb strode to and fro before Mutnodjme in their bedchamber, his fingers stroking the invisible mark on his cheek.
“My belly aches with them, Mutnodjme,” he said. “My patience is exhausted. Akhenaten, a prince on whom I bestowed my friendship, yet what was he? A criminal.
Smenkhara, a twisted depraved brat. Tutankhamun, a toy. He struck me. Me! I do not deserve such a reward for my loyalty.”
“You speak of gods,” Mutnodjme warned. She was sprawled across the couch on her stomach, naked, her face to the wind catcher.
“Gods,” Horemheb sneered. “There has been no god in Egypt since Amunhotep. That puppy hit me!”
“So you said.” She rolled languidly onto her back. “But I think it was your pride he struck, not your face. What does it matter? I do not understand this anger, Horemheb. Come and make love to me.”
“You are like all women. You think with your genitals,” he retorted. “Where is your sympathy?”
Mutnodjme sat up with a sigh, arranging the cushions behind her. “I am afraid for you,” she said. “Nothing pleases you anymore. You drink too much, you slap the servants, you shout at everyone. Why? Life is good.”
“Life is good? No, Mutnodjme, life is not good. There are thongs around my wrists. I am a prisoner. Did you hear me?” He stared at her a
nd then abruptly flung his cup across the room. It struck a fragile alabaster lamp before smashing into the wall. Pieces of pale stone skidded across the floor, and the oil dripped onto the couch. Mutnodjme did not flinch but regarded him steadily. He was breathing noisily, shoulders hunched, and all at once he came to the couch, falling across it and pulling her under him. “You are wrong,” he hissed into her mouth. “This still pleases me.” For a moment she endured his kiss, but then coolly she pushed him away and slid off the couch.
“That is not pleasure,” she said, “and I do not feel like playing violent games with you tonight, Horemheb. I am going to sleep on the roof. Call a concubine if you wish to hurt someone.” Picking up her sleeping gown with one slow gesture, she swayed out.
For a long time Horemheb lay spread-eagled on the couch as Mutnodjme had left him, his eyes open, his face pressed into the sheets, which smelled of her perfume and the cloying miasma of the spilled oil. He was afraid to think. Now and then brief gusts of hot air reached him from the unshuttered mouth of the wind catcher, making him break out anew in sweat. She would be sitting up there, sunk in cushions, drowsy but alert to every caress of the same breeze on her polished skin, her hooded eyes lazily reflecting starlight, her senses open to every movement of the night. Perhaps she was listening to music. Perhaps she had already sent for her nocturnal friends to help her pass the summer night in gambling or gossip, or for just one friend in whose arms the strange, hot poignancy of the darkness might be enhanced. He let himself imagine her with a man up there, the muffled laughter, the whispers, two naked shapes black against the shadow of the wind catcher’s funnel, but at last his mind resisted distraction and he found himself cold with those thoughts that must be examined.
Wearily he dragged himself to a sitting position. Tutankhamun’s lack of respect today was not simply the anger of a god toward a subject who had presumed, he thought. No. It is a pharaoh’s right to treat and dispose of his people in any way he chooses. That flick of the whisk was a symbol of his complete lack of regard for my station and my opinions. I can no longer believe that Pharaoh will ever turn his attention to me so that at last I might be allowed to return Egypt’s honor to her. Now I know that, unless I prevent it, I will go to my tomb in Memphis having accomplished nothing for myself or the country I love. Pharaoh will never make war. If he had been allowed to listen to me, I would have gradually gained his trust and cooperation, but the young man has been poisoned against me. The intensity of his thoughts brought him to his feet, and he wandered to the window, laying his arms along the sill and leaning out over the pale blur of the flower bed below.
I am not a violent man. No matter what Mutnodjme thinks, the necessary cruelties of war have nothing to do with a perverse desire to twist and break, a desire I do not possess, a desire no commander can afford to harbor. Then what do I want? I betrayed the empress for gold, and because I believed that my influence with her son would grow. I murdered Smenkhara to save Egypt from another agony. But killing him brought me no nearer to influence with the Horus Throne. What could? There is no royal blood in my veins that would ensure me the respect and attention of Pharaoh. Ah, but in Mutnodjme’s… Is that, then, what I really want? The Double Crown on my head? The chance to do with Egypt what I will? He groaned, rubbing his hot palms over his face. I do not want to kill again, yet surely Amun must look with disdain on the pitiful remnant of his divine family. I am more worthy to be his son than Tutankhamun, whose very blood is filthy with the sin of his parents.
Oh, how you can invent justifications, he mocked himself, smiling wanly into the darkness. What pious nonsense you can conjure! You want to be Pharaoh because you want it, without excuse. Supposing you kill Tutankhamun? It would be easier than last time. The gods have not punished you for what you did. And if I do kill him, will Ay make a bid for the throne? Probably, and I cannot kill both. Courtiers would accept one death but could not turn a blind eye to two. I cannot go on like this, waiting, waiting, wondering what will happen to Egypt when I am dead, Pharaoh gone. Wondering? Knowing. That is what eats at me. Knowing. It would be anarchy, poverty, and bloodshed. Let Tutankhamun have his Anniversary of Appearings next month at New Year. By then I will have devised some sort of a plan, but this time I can trust no one but myself.
Having cleared his mind, he was suddenly hungry, and calling for a servant, he ordered food and more wine. While he waited for it to be brought, he thought of Mutnodjme. Should he confide in her? It was not necessary. She would know.
The traditional presentation of gifts for that year’s New Year celebrations included not only an embassy from Nubia but also ambassadors from Alashia and Babylon, the first foreigners to come seeking renewed trading agreements since Akhenaten’s twelfth year of reign. Ay, who had sent tentative embassies to the rulers of those countries months earlier, was overjoyed. The Treasury was opened and gold spent liberally for the first time since Tutankhamun had inherited the confusion his predecessors had left.
Six weeks later, in the middle of Paophi, it was a lighthearted pharaoh who accepted his deputy’s invitation to a four-day lion hunt. Horemheb had performed the yearly prostration at his master’s feet with due humility. His artificial wreath had been of electrum, its flowers of lapis lazuli. His gift was a new bow ornamented with floral designs and bordered in gold, and an ivory throwing stick inlaid with silver clumps of papyrus. He had been careful not to appear too abject in his adoration. He organized the hunt himself: the invitations to all the ministers, the procuring of dozens of damask tents, the appropriation of chariots and horses from the stables of the Shock Troops, the provision of hordes of slaves to prepare the many baskets of food and serve the wine he had sent for from his Delta estates. Musicians were hired and dancers inspected. His only defeat was Mutnodjme, who refused to go.
“I hate living in tents,” she told him. “One ends up eating sand and waking in the morning with aching hips from those traveling couches. If you had invited Pharaoh on a boating journey, that would be different. I will go and visit my mother at Akhmin while the court sweats under thin tents and drinks gritty wine and pretends to enjoy it.”
“What will the queen say? She will be your guest.”
“No, my husband,” she responded lightly. “Ankhesenamun will be your guest. She knows me well. She will understand why I am not there and will doubtless be wishing she was not there either.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are gripping me too tightly,” she said, and he released her wrist with a murmured apology. “I mean only what I say. Ankhesenamun likes her comfort.” She looked at him oddly. “Do not hunt too recklessly, Horemheb. In spite of your foul temper I am rather fond of you.” She had left him quickly, as though she knew he wished to be spared a reply. It was quite true what she had said. Everyone knew of her aversion to both hunting and tenting and would not think it strange that she was not in the company. Nevertheless, Horemheb fretted. Her absence might be wrongly interpreted later.
On the day of departure the glittering company poured slowly out into the desert behind the western cliffs, stirring a red dust cloud as it went. Horemheb rode in his chariot beside Pharaoh’s own, in a position of honor, outwardly affable and smiling, inwardly tense with anticipation and fear. He had been unable to make a detailed plan and knew he must be prepared to seize whatever opportunity arose. Tutankhamun was in a buoyant mood, talking and laughing under the small canopy Nakht-Min held over him as he handled his chariot with instinctive skill. Ay followed in a litter, and for once he was disregarded. Behind them the court straggled in their own litters, and at the rear the royal bodyguards shepherded the empty chariots and chests of weapons for all those who wished to try their skill later. After a day’s easy ride the crowd reached the tents that had already mushroomed over the raked and smoothed sand, where the shrines had also been set up, the kitchens readied, and the bored and uncomfortable slaves waited squatting on the carpets rolling dice.
After the prayers for a safe and successful h
unt were said that evening, the gathering gave itself over to food and entertainment. The vibrations of drumbeats and the wail of pipes trembled over the desert. Dancers passed and repassed the twinkling fires as the guests wandered from tent to tent, cups in hand. At Pharaoh’s invitation Horemheb went to the royal tent to talk. Ay was absent. For several hours the young king and the morose commander spoke of the past, the present, Tutankhamun’s hopes for the future. Horemheb found himself almost liking the vain, impulsive young man but all the same felt no regret for what he had to do. It was too late for that.
He waited through two days of the hunt. He had loosened the pins holding one of the wheels of Tutankhamun’s chariot to its axle, knowing it would hold through the rigors of ordinary use, and he did not think Pharaoh would feel the tiny tremors of the loose wheel on the uneven surface of the desert. Only the stress of a fast chase would release it.
Horemheb was resigned to seeing the hunt finish without mishap, if necessary. For two days the men rolled easily along the sand near the rear of the cliffs, sighting nothing on the first day and on the second losing a lion that was glimpsed high in the rocks and then vanished.
But on the third morning a golden beast broke from the jumble of early shadows at the base of the cliffs and streaked across the sand. Tutankhamun had elected, as he often did, to drive himself. With a whoop he pointed and then sent his whip down hard on the flanks of the horses. The chariot sprang forward. Horemheb, his throat suddenly dry, spread his legs and leaned into his own chariot’s speed as he fled after Pharaoh. The rest of the hunters, some six or seven courtiers, followed more slowly, for the first kill by tradition must be Pharaoh’s. “Break, break,” Horemheb muttered between clenched teeth as his eyes narrowed against the warm wind and he felt his kilt flatten against his thighs. Guiding his horses to the right so that he and they should not be blinded by the sand flung up by Tutankhamun’s animals, he held his position.
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