Valley of the Kings

by Cecelia Holland

  Hapure gripped Sennahet by the arm and pushed him toward the door. They circled two men who stood screaming insults at one another. After each torrent of abuse, they slapped one another. With Hapure just behind him, Sennahet strode out to the street.

  He paused, drawing a deep breath. Hapure was shaking his head.

  “Three years he has been dead, and yet mention of his name starts a brawl.”

  The shouts and sounds of blows from the beerhouse were drawing the attention of people passing by in the street, and a small crowd was gathering near the door. Sennahet and Hapure walked away.

  Sennahet wiped his hand over his neck. The sun was high in the sky. Thebes baked in the furnace heat of noon. On the corner a line of people waited before a public scribe, cross-legged on his mat. Sennahet and Hapure separated to go around them. The crowd beyond was full of priests and harlots. Hapure caught up with Sennahet, who was still walking at top speed.

  “Akhenaten was a curse on Egypt,” Sennahet said. “Did I not have my own farm—a rich man’s daughter to marry me—then Akhenaten smote the gods.”

  “It was your brother’s farm, not yours.”

  “It would have been mine, when he died.” Sennahet clenched his fists. He went along with his head down; people swerved to avoid bumping into him. Abruptly he stopped and faced Hapure, his eyes burning with a new idea.

  “When they buried him, was there gold?”

  Hapure’s face grew long. He stepped back away from his uncle. “What do you mean?”

  “Could you find the tomb again?”

  “What are you saying? What sacrilege!”

  “We could be rich!” Sennahet cried.

  Hapure turned on his heel and walked away through the crowd. Sennahet swore at his disappearing back. The beer was making him bilious. The heat of the sun was attacking him. He stared after Hapure until he lost him in the swarm of hurrying people. Aimless, he walked away down the street. A man passed him on a donkey, another donkey pattering after on a lead line. Sennahet dodged out of the way of the led beast. He hunched his shoulders. Even the beasts thought him less than they.

  He tramped along past the stalls of the leatherworkers, the racks of pottery. The stink of the tanning vats reached his nostrils. A priest began to chant in the next street. He walked along, his head down, unwilling to go to the temple and beg for bread, unwilling to return to his hired room and face his landlord, and as he walked, he thought with envy of Pharaoh’s gold.

  10

  The Queen Regent had a waiting woman, whose name was Meryat. Although this girl was not of royal blood, Nefertiti loved her like a daughter. The girl cared for the Queen’s cats and took her messages about within the palace, and when Nefertiti was ill, which was often now, Meryat sat next to her with a fan and cooled her face.

  So she was there when the Vizier came to Nefertiti and said, “Radiant One, there is evil news from the south of the land of Egypt. The Nile is not coming to flood. The famine will not be broken this year.”

  Meryat made as if to go, but Nefertiti called to her and bade her stay. “All Egypt will know of this within three days, anyway.”

  The Vizier spoke ritual phrases of consolation and reassurance. They were in the Queen Regent’s enclosed garden. The openwork of the alabaster walls caught the breeze and kept the sun at bay; a boy sitting in the corner played on a flute. Meryat with her fan of heron feathers wafted the breeze toward the Queen.

  Nefertiti was pale as winding linen. Her eyes shone with fever.

  “Another year of the famine. It is I who shall be blamed—I and my God.”

  “My Queen,” the Vizier said. “I have sent for the diviners—”

  “More auguries! Last year they said that if I returned the court of Pharaoh to Thebes, the old gods would smile on Egypt again. Next they will say that I must give an ox and an oxload of gold to all soothsayers!”

  The Vizier was bowing up and down, murmuring, “Radiant One, Radiant One.” The braided tresses of his old-fashioned northern wig swung over his shoulders.

  “Meryat,” the Queen said fretfully. “Bring my slippers.”

  Meryat put the fan down and went to the foot of Nefertiti’s couch. The slippers were under the cushion. The Vizier talked of messages to be sent around Egypt, to explain the failure of the Nile. Meryat wished he would leave; the Queen was very pale. The maid knelt to put the royal slippers on Nefertiti’s narrow feet.

  “Enough,” said the Queen to the Vizier. “I will consider this later.” She rose from the couch, her hands to her temples. “Meryat, my pomander.”

  Meryat hurried across the room for the pomander, in the cedar chest below the window. While she knelt by the chest, the drapery over the door to the terrace billowed out on a gust of wind, and through the fluttering curtains the young Queen Ankhesenamun came into the room.

  “Mother, I need your advice.”

  Her voice was clear as the note of a tuned string. Her black, unpainted eyes were direct. Tall and slim, scorning ornaments, she looked more like a boy than a young woman; least of all, she looked the Great Wife of Pharaoh. On her left forearm was a leather bow guard. The tail of a lion hung from her belt. She loved to hunt. Meryat admired her and was afraid of her. The Vizier bowed deep to her.

  “Welcome, Favored of Isis.”

  Nefertiti had walked across the room to Meryat’s side. She took the pomander, a puff of spicy scent, and touched it to her nostrils.

  “My advice, daughter, is to shun my advice. Everything I do seems poisoned, everything I touch.”

  Ankhesenamun said calmly, “Is that a riddle? What has happened now, Mother?”

  “The Nile has not grown great—there will be no flood to nurture Egypt.”

  Ankhesenamun gave a visible start, as if she had been struck. She turned her head to stare at the old Vizier. “Well, then, perhaps we made a mistake, when we abandoned our God, the Aten.”

  The Vizier’s face toughened. He stood squarely on his wide-spaced feet. “We are suffering now for the evil-doing of the Atenists! The gods avenge themselves on us for degrading them, who kept us all these generations.”

  “Bah,” said Ankhesenamun, turning away.

  The Vizier thrust out his jaw. “The Beloved of Egypt does ill to speak of the faults of others, for how can the Nile swell, or any good come, when the Strong Bull of Egypt is a virgin King?”

  Meryat saw the quick bright color stain the cheeks of Ankhesenamun, but the young Queen said nothing; she kept her back to the Vizier. Nefertiti lowered her pomander.

  “You exceed yourself,” she said to the Vizier. “The King is a boy—you want miracles. Please. My head is throbbing. We shall discuss it all later, when we have time.” She turned to Ankhesenamun and reached out her hand sadly to her, reproachful.

  “My dear one, daughter, the grand audience begins in one quarter of an hour. You cannot sit beside Pharaoh dressed like a herdsman’s wife.”

  “I am not sitting with Pharaoh,” Ankhesenamun said.

  “Meryat, attend her. Let her be made beautiful.”

  “I will not sit down with Pharaoh!”

  As she spoke the last words, two men in gold-embroidered skirts strode into the room. They stepped to one side and with a flourish clapped their hands together. Two more men appeared, shaking sistra with both hands; the sistra were shaped like faces, with bells for their eyes and tongues, and their silvery ringing was like the purr of a cat. The smell of incense was rich in the air. Meryat dropped down on her knees and put her face to the ground between her hands.

  Preceded by children with flowers, Pharaoh entered the room. Meryat watched through the corner of one eye. It seemed to her that the air of the room was gilded by his presence. Tutankhamun was gorgeously dressed; not even the statues of the gods were adorned as he, the living god. Bracelets of gold clasped his arms, and the feathered crown towered on his
head. A collar of jewels hung around his neck and down over his bare chest; in the center of the ornament was a great Eye of Ra made of lapis lazuli and ivory.

  His wife and the Queen Regent had knelt to him. Pharaoh thrust out his chest and strutted up and down before them. He was fourteen, still narrowly built, still beardless. During the highest ceremonies, there hung a false beard with wires from his chin.

  “My audience begins in a few moments,” he said. “Are you ready? I insist that you sit beside me, my wife. There is gossip if you do not.”

  Nefertiti began to rise. “We have—”

  “Don’t stand! You cannot stand without my permission.”

  Ankhesenamun grunted a vulgar, humorous noise. She got supplely to her feet and stalked out of the room.

  “Go,” Tutankhamun said to her back. He waved his hand at Nefertiti and said in a lofty voice, “You may rise.”

  The Queen Regent was already standing. Meryat on her hands and knees crossed the painted floor to take up her place just behind Nefertiti.

  Tutankhamun spoke peevishly of his lessons. “All they do is recite homilies for me to copy down. I think I shall spend my mornings henceforth in the garden. I need no lessons. My fellow gods will instruct me.”

  “We shall find you a more engaging tutor,” Nefertiti said. “Now, Your Majesty, we have very bad news. The word has come from Edfu, at the head of the Nile. This year when Sothis the Great Star rises, the river will not flood, and the famine will not be broken.”

  Tutankhamun shrugged his shoulders. He looked down at the sacred Eye on his chest. “Isn’t this splendid? Horemheb gave it to me. I shall give him a thousand chariots. He has only asked for five hundred.”

  The Queen Regent’s voice sharpened. “Your Majesty, this is grave news. You must pay heed.”

  He swung around, his elbows jutting out. Heavy with gold, his skirt clanked when he moved. He said, “The Nile floods when I call it—I, Pharaoh. If it does not, then I must have some reason for holding it back. It is your task to find out. I am not interested in how grave the news is.”

  Meryat lifted her head. Nefertiti stood directly before her; the Queen’s fist was clenched at her side. Meryat heard the strain in her mistress’s voice.

  “Pharaoh, the audience will soon begin. But we shall speak later of this frivolous outburst.”

  “I want Ankhesenamun there.”

  “You will be courteous, or you will sit alone.”

  “Courteous,” he said, “I am Pharaoh. All of you are my servants. What claim have you on my courtesy?”

  The Queen’s hand relaxed. Her voice was calm again. “Do you want to sit alone at the audience?”

  The King shut his lips tight together. His large, expressive eyes, outlined in kohl, looked angrily at the Queen Regent. The silence grew taut between them. Finally the boy lowered his eyes. He put his fingers to the Sun’s Eye on his chest.

  “Why do you always treat me so badly? Why did Ankhesenamun go?”

  “You told her to go, my King.” Nefertiti put her hands together. “We shall go together to the Chamber of the Jubilation of Ra. Meryat, bring my fan.”

  Meryat went on hands and knees to fetch the heron-feather fan. The Queen spoke, and Pharaoh obediently went ahead of her out the door, Meryat put her feet under her. Nefertiti could always master Pharaoh; she knew what to say to him when it seemed that all others were baffled by him. Everything would yet be well. Raising the spread feathers in her hand, she pattered after her mistress into the audience hall.

  Sometimes at night the young Queen Ankhesenamun hunted lions in the desert. One evening, as she was leaving her chamber in the palace to join her companions in the stableyard, Nefertiti met her in the hallway.

  “Where are you going?” asked the Queen Regent.

  Ankhesenamun did not answer. Indeed, her clothes answered; she wore a short skirt of linen belted with leather, and high laced boots, and bow guards on her arms. She saw that her mother, Nefertiti, was unattended. Three of Ankhesenamun’s own women were waiting on their mistress, but with a motion of her hand the young Queen sent them away.

  “Do you wish to speak with me?” Ankhesenamun asked.

  Nefertiti inclined her head. “Yes.”

  “Come to my private room, then, if it please you.”

  “Thank you, daughter.”

  The two Queens returned down the hallway toward the younger woman’s quarters. Ankhesenamun shortened her stride so that her mother could keep up. The hallway was lit with oil lamps. The soft light was kind to Nefertiti’s face; she seemed young again, beautiful again.

  They went into Ankhesenamun’s bedchamber. There the light was brighter; Nefertiti again looked old and worn and sick.

  She sat down on the low couch at one end of the room, away from the window. A fine fringed shawl, thrown carelessly down on the couch, slid to the floor, and Nefertiti lifted it up and put it on her lap, stroking the soft fabric. Ankhesenamun watched her from the far side of the room. Even in her age and decline, Nefertiti was more beautiful than Ankhesenamun in her prime of youth.

  “What do you wish to say to me, Mother?” Ankhesenamun said.

  Nefertiti lifted her eyes from the fringed shawl. “You have a husband, my daughter. Why, then, do you go abroad at night to hunt lions and leave me without a grandchild?”

  “Bah,” Ankhesenamun said. She put her hands behind her on the cool marble chest and bounded smoothly up to sit on it. “You sound like Ay, the old Vizier. You cannot expect me to join my flesh with the flesh of a beardless, mindless whelp like Tutankhamun.”

  “It is your duty,” said Nefertiti.

  “I cannot do my duty, then. I will not endure him.”

  “Do not think of it as union of the flesh. It is a sacred act—a sacrament—”

  Ankhesenamun said roughly, “Do you think I do not know how sacred and how magnificent it is? I, the daughter of Pharaoh, who in Pharaoh’s bed made the circle complete?”

  Her mother faced her, eyes bright, and no longer calm. Nefertiti was canted stiffly forward. Her fists were buried in the shawl in her lap. She and Ankhesenamun stared at one another, the old rivalry broken open again. Ankhesenamun’s cheeks burned. She felt afresh how she had gloated when she took her mother’s place beside Pharaoh, and Nefertiti had been forced to bow to her.

  “You were not enough for him,” she said to her mother. “He needed a wife of royal breeding.”

  Nefertiti lifted her head. The black paint around her eyes made her lids gleam. Her teeth showed against her lip. Then she shook her head; she looked away and, raising her hand, shielded herself from Ankhesenamun.

  “No—we have hurt each other too much. You are my own child, and I your mother, and that should be how we treat each other.”

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Ankhesenamun was determined not to look away and show weakness. Yet her mother’s words moved her, and she had to struggle to keep still.

  Nefertiti spoke again, her eyes still averted. Now she was cool again, remote, and old. “It was different with each of us, of course. With you, he performed the sacrament. But with me—it was a union of the flesh.”

  “Mother—”

  “We were not gods to each other, Akhenaten and I,” Nefertiti said. “That was for the others—that was the false life. We put on those lives together with our gold clothing and our crowns. What we were to each other was true. Every moment.”

  She gripped her hands together. Her voice fell to a whisper.

  “Then he came to want to be the god, and for that, you are right, I was not enough.”

  Impulsively, Ankhesenamun slid down from the marble chest. She knelt beside her mother and took her hand. “I am sorry.”

  “Sorry!” Nefertiti wheeled toward her again. “I am sorry for you, child. Because you have no such love as I.”

  That reminded Ankh
esenamun of Pharaoh, her husband. She rose and paced away from her mother into the shadows, away from the lamp. She felt betrayed in her sympathy.

  “Give me a grandson,” Nefertiti said. “Give me a child of the lineage of Akhenaten, and I will teach him to be Pharaoh.”

  “Meanwhile, Tutankhamun is Pharaoh.”

  “Only give me another male of the blood.”

  “Of his blood? A child of his?”

  “Your father’s grandson!”

  Ankhesenamun kept her back to her mother. She would not be tricked again by sentiment. She paced along the room, passing a window; she turned her eyes longingly on the boundless night. The moon was rising. The desert cliff was sharply set against the black sky.

  “I am late. I must go.” She strode toward the door.

  “Wait,” Nefertiti said.

  At the door, Ankhesenamun turned her head; her gaze crossed her mother’s one more time. “I am sorry,” the daughter said to the mother. She went out and left Nefertiti there alone.

  Plague stalked Egypt like a lioness, taking victims at her will, and everywhere was famine. Still, when the temple of the Aten at Thebes was complete, Nefertiti chose to go herself to consecrate it.

  The temple stood on the east bank, close by the Temple of Amun. Thus the Aten challenged the dread god of fear in his very sanctuaries. The Temple of Amun was close and dark, buzzing with the flies that fed on the blood of sacrifices; the new Temple of Aten enclosed wide courtyards open to the sun. Amun was served only by men; the new temple was dedicated to women. On all faces of the columns of the temple were painted images of women, worshiping the Disk of the Sun, whose rays streamed down around them, each ray ending in a hand that caressed them with love.

  Amun kept his people miserable with fear. The Aten loved all people. This was the difference between them, and it was this difference that Nefertiti thought would save Egypt, even as famine and plague ate up the people, even as terror of things to come ate up their hearts.

  The Queen Regent was passing by along the Avenue of the Sphinxes that led to the temple. Above the massed heads and shoulders of the crowd in front of him, Sennahet could see the golden tassels swaying from the awning of her chair; he saw the high plumes of her fans, white as wool against the brilliant sky.