Nefertiti wept as she had never wept before, and the girls clung to his neck, but when they saw the little boy they drew back, and stood ill at ease, watching him warily. Even after he had been cleaned up and his body clothed in a garment of linen, he resembled more than anything a wild animal. He ate voraciously, stared at them with hostility, and seemed prepared to bolt whenever anyone tried to approach him.
“Who is he?” said Nefertiti.
“A gift from Atun,” Akhenaten replied. “We have not been blessed with a boy child, and so he has sent us this gift.”
“But he is a wild animal, no tame creature,” she said. “He does not even know how to speak. I’m frightened to have him among us.”
“He shall learn and become human,” said her husband. “He is Tut . . . Tutankhatun . . . because it was Atun who sent him to us.”
The boy’s features, once revealed, were fine. He was very thin, his skin stretched taut across his ribs. The most alarming thing about him was his sharp teeth and long nails, as well as his preference for uncooked food. It fell to Nefertiti to care for him, to designate a servant to feed him, and to appoint a tutor to teach him how to speak.
Akhenaten looked into her small, delicate face, her wide, anxious eyes. “What happened to you on your journey?” she asked.
He countered with a question of his own: “What happened to my city? Why does it seem so grief-stricken, so despairing?”
“It is the war. Horemheb has gone to war!”
“What’s this? I did not authorize it! How did this happen?”
Feeling himself betrayed, he gave a cry of wrath. This, then, was why the city seemed fearful and tense, so full of women and old crones, the walls defended by so few guards. Ai came, trembling, and with him the chief guards, the high-ranking officers, and the men who saw to the preparation of matériel, horses, and weapons; Horemheb had assembled all he could command, and headed north. “How,” Akhenaten shouted at the assembled men, “could you follow his orders? How could you yield to him?”
“We were unable to stop him,” said Ai. “Emissaries came from the north to inform us that the Hittite tribes were approaching from their own borders. They had crossed the land of Canaan, and . . .”
“Then you were a party to these war games!” the Pharaoh interrupted, still more enraged. “What possessed you to believe those emissaries with their false messages? From the beginning Horemheb has been driving us toward a needless war. What made you so sure we were in danger?”
“My lord, he is our military commander, and he knows what needs to be done . . .”
“And I am your Pharaoh, and I too know what needs to be done. Begone, all of you—leave me.”
To a man, they were trembling; they had never imagined that he would grow so angry. Horemheb had taken all the men, matériel, and weapons that he could, had readied an army very quickly and without anyone’s blessing, and had left Akhetaten defenseless against the priests from the south, who might attack at any moment. Akhenaten had thought he could take the initiative and go after them, but now he feared that it might be they who would come to him and attack him right there in his own city. He must now gather more guards and soldiers. He no longer wished for revenge—he wished only to salvage his dream, newly threatened with annihilation.
That night the household was heavily perfumed with incense. Feeling the pressure mounting in his chest, all at once he craved the outside air, redolent with the smells of crops, of manure, of mud and of herbs that grew wild.
“My lord,” cried Nefertiti, “be gentle with me, or my ribs will break!”
Her body, too, was fragrant with scent, soft and pale and fragile. He was not making love to her so much as he was pouring into her all the rage, frustration, and hunger that seethed within him. He got out of bed and looked out over the city walls. There were more guards now, and hundreds of torches glowed. It was his wish that the city be kept lit all night long, that the constant illumination might give him a sense of security. Nefertiti rose and stood behind him. Sensing her naked body, he clung to it, seeking its warmth.
“You are shivering, my lord,” she said.
“I feel as if I had not yet returned home,” he replied. “That I am still lost in the wilderness.”
“Was it an arduous journey?”
“It was terrifying. I saw people of whom we know nothing. We rule over them, and compel them to worship us, to speak of us with reverence, without troubling to look at their faces. We belittle their struggles, the brief lives they live in the service of ridiculous things—those farmers who are so proficient at planting and reaping; the builders so skilled in measuring length and height; the quarrymen; the dye makers; the workmen; the painters, sculptors, and engravers . . . all the knowledge they have acquired has availed them nothing. For long years we have drained away their lives and demeaned them, for the sake of building our monstrous pyramids, while we leave behind us nothing useful! What is the point of burying in a pyramid a foolish king like me? During my travels I saw those mountainous installations, the huge temples, the obelisks, the monuments to kings and gods. Wasted lives, squandered efforts! Why do we do this to them? Why do we not leave them be, to plant and reap as they are accustomed to do, why are we not content with our portion of the yield and revenues? All those stones they cut from the mountains, leveling them—why did we not allow them the chance to build dams with the stones, to supply them with water and protect them from drowning in the floods? Or even to make them into walls for their mud-brick houses, which are always falling down? Why after all this do we beat them with whips and drive them into war?”
Taking pity on him, Nefertiti said, “They are slaves. They have no souls.”
“But what became clear to me during the flight from my enemies is that they do have souls, and names by which they are called, and destinies. Destinies,” he added bitterly, “of which we take no notice!”
“But at least,” she said, trying to ease his mind, “you’ve done none of this. You’ve built no pyramids or temples. And you haven’t sent anyone to war—that was done without your knowledge!”
“My father did such things,” he said, “and my grandfather before him. I feel as though I were carrying the weight of them all.”
It took many days for the Pharaoh to reunite properly with his city once more. He brought in members of the peasantry in greater numbers, and appointed them as guards. Then, when news was brought to him that Queen Tiye had died on the very night of his attendance upon her, that her palace had not been stormed, and that she had been buried in the family vault beside her husband, his ire was soothed, and he decided to leave Thebes to its fate—he would not go to war with it—and yet he feared that Thebes would come to him, and so he summoned the sons of all the distinguished houses and set them to guard the walls on a twenty-four-hour watch.
It was long months before Horemheb returned to stand before him. He wore his military garb, his broad chest encased in a shield of bronze, bearing traces of the blood of battle and dust from the road. The sun had colored his skin and his features had grown harsher. According to the Pharaoh’s source, he had left all his forces outside the gates and entered the city on foot, without his war chariot. He stood before his Pharaoh, out of breath.
“News of your defeat has reached me,” said Akhenaten.
Horemheb hung his head. Akhenaten detested war, and yet to be vanquished in war was always cruel, and even if fully expected it was not to be endured: his only option at such a moment was to order the execution of the commander who had disobeyed his orders from the outset, only to meet with defeat in the end.
Horemheb, though, was unsettled, the taste of desert salt still in his mouth, the residue of overheated blood still running in his veins. “Everyone has forsaken me,” he said. “You promised me support and assistance, and then you left me and disappeared. I needed you, needed your authority, so that I might assemble an army fit for fighting, so that the intransigent provincial leaders and tight-fisted tax collectors w
ould obey me. The outcome was that I went out only half-prepared, more like an adventurer than a military commander.”
“No one asked you to embark on such an adventure.”
“It was not for my own glory. I went to save the northern borders. The enemy was about to invade by way of the Valley of Turquoise. Had I not gone, they would have come all the way here.”
“Had you not gone, the war would have subsided. This way it will never end. Any time we assemble our forces we are bound to attack our enemies, and any time they regather their own strength they are bound to attack us. The conflict continues endlessly, pointlessly. There is no absolute victory, no decisive defeat. We could have looked for another way—not this.”
“I am a military leader, and my job is fighting, not conciliating enemies.”
“You are a military leader no longer. Leave your weapons and insignia. Henceforth you are no longer commander of Egypt’s armies.”
Horemheb stood stock-still, in stunned disbelief that the Pharaoh could dismiss him in this manner. He should have ordered his execution, or consigned him to a distant prison whose whereabouts no one knew—any other decision was foolhardy or mad. No one could guarantee the conduct of an old warrior or keep weapons long out of his hands, and a leader such as Horemheb must be either at the head of his soldiers or in the grave. But the Pharaoh was incapable of killing him, for not only had he been his friend and savior at his times of greatest need, but he had been Egypt’s war leader since the time of Akhenaten’s father, beside whom he had waged every war, and defeated all the primitive tribes that had opposed Egypt.
“It is best that you kill me, my lord,” Horemheb said calmly.
Akhenaten preferred not to understand the meaning of his words. “I am aware,” he said, ”that no Pharaoh besides me has ever done otherwise. But I could not, in my position, put to death an old friend.”
Still, Horemheb stood before him, as if inviting him to change his mind, but Akhenaten turned his back, so as not to confront his wrathful glare.
The Pharaoh’s men could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw Horemheb walk out of the palace alive. They stared as he passed through the city streets and made his way to his own palace. But they all knew that he would not spend the night in the city—not for one more day would he remain here.
That evening Nefertiti said sadly to her husband, “You’ve made us a new enemy. You should have put him to death.”
“What a gracious executioner you are,” he said, with an attempt at a smile. “I wanted only to prevent Horemheb from killing, not to become a killer myself.”
He was dreaming, as was his wont, thought Nefertiti, closing her eyes in sorrow. And when the alarm was raised, it was Ai, the minister, who brought the news to the Pharaoh as soon as he could. One of the guards on night duty had seen Horemheb leaving, with his treasures, his weapons, and his women, and no one had dared to prevent him—there had been no standing orders to stop him in any case. It was said that he was on his way to Thebes, that depraved city.
Akhenaten received the news grim-faced. It was he who had laid open the way for Horemheb to flee; he had not wanted a confrontation with him in this very place, within the precincts of the city itself. Ai, however, could not conceal his astonishment, or resist counseling the Pharaoh. “What remains of our army is still outside the city—we could pursue him, my lord, and cut off his access to the south.”
“There is no army,” replied Akhenaten quietly, “that would hunt down its own leader. More likely they would join forces with him. Take these soldiers, feed them, clothe them, and treat their wounds. Then dismiss half of them and set the rest to guard our city walls.”
Baffled, Ai withdrew. The Pharaoh was resolved to squander his own forces on every front and thus advance the strength of his adversaries. Nevertheless, Ai carried out his orders, and calm descended upon the city. Half the soldiers left, pleased with their lot. Those who remained behind grumbled, but they knew that their wages would be doubled, and that houses would be assigned to them to live in, as well as brides—all these amenities within the city, rather than in some narrow trench outside of it. It fell also to Ai to carry out still more bizarre orders: to prohibit, henceforth, the construction of any sort of temple, obelisk, or pyramid. Moreover, he was to assemble the artists and command them not to portray kings or gods on the city walls, but rather to depict farmers sowing seed, driving cattle, and gathering in the stalks of wheat each season; to represent blacksmiths, fishermen, and builders; to engrave pictures of singers, dancers, drummers, and all manner of entertainers—bringers of joy and delight. Above all they were to eschew the use of gold—the color of supernatural phenomena and miracles—as well as black—the color of grief and mourning; instead they were to take their colors from the verdure of the grasses, the blue of the sky, and the redness of the river when it brimmed with life and fertility.
Truly the strangest order of all, though, still awaited Ai, when he made his way to the palace on a certain morning and found the main hall filled with the city’s luminaries—all those who had embraced the Pharaoh’s new creed and followed him to this place. Nefertiti was seated beside Akhenaten on the throne—a thing that happened only on the most momentous occasions.
“I wish,” the Pharaoh announced, “to put an end to war between us and the Hittite tribes to the north.”
The crowd cheered wildly—they had been expecting this—that the harvest season should complete its course, after which the young farmers would be summoned, the revenues collected, the foundry furnaces ignited, and a vast army assembled, the likes of which Egypt had never seen, able to launch a ferocious and decisive battle against the barbarian tribes. The Pharaoh, however, was quiet for a long time, until the uproar subsided and all the mingled voices fell silent.
“I had nothing so complicated in mind,” he said. “If it were war that I wanted, I should have retained Horemheb—he is the most qualified, despite his recent defeat. What I was thinking of was to dispatch a delegation of high-ranking Egyptians to negotiate a truce between us and them.”
The babble in the hall turned to muted but angry protest, the faces of the people registering disappointment. “My lord,” said Ai, “divine Pharaoh, it has never been our custom to send a conciliatory delegation. These are primitive tribes, and they recognize no contract or treaty. The great Pharaoh, your father, first subdued them, until they capitulated—if we ask them to make peace, they will think us weak—indeed they already do. It is impossible that we should ask them to make peace when we have just been defeated—it would be the surrender of the vanquished!”
“I do not want war,” insisted the Pharaoh. “I dismissed Horemheb because he would talk of nothing else. We shall form a high-ranking delegation composed of noble Egyptians. They will go to the barbarian lands and speak in earnest of our desire for peace. We must make them understand that we are entirely sincere—we shall tell them about our new god, and once they become believers we will all be followers of one god, and from that day forward we shall not wage war.”
It was difficult to argue with him when he was so intent upon his convictions, so certain he was right. His advisors were all older than he was, and they knew the true character of these tribes, their long and bloody history. Nevertheless, the nobles came together in spite of themselves, and let the Pharaoh choose from among them who should be members of the delegation. He selected ten of them, and then one who could read and write fluent Hittite. He wished to have a treaty drawn up in two languages, which should not merely be written upon papyrus sheets, but also engraved upon tablets of solid granite.
The whole city turned out to bid farewell to the delegation of nobles as they boarded boats in which the river would carry them northward. Thereafter they would travel by horse and carriage, crossing the desert to the Valley of Turquoise, and from there to Canaan (thence to where the Hittites dwelt). They were laden with gifts of gold, bearing the symbols of the sun with outstretched hands, as well as palm fronds and ears of
grain, as an expression of the desire for peace. The Pharaoh saw them off, smiling radiantly; they gave back strained smiles of their own.
Was it possible that his taking this step might bring a period of peace and tranquility? That he might savor his life, far from violence and menace? He had long striven to transform this little city into a peaceful paradise, hidden away from the world’s hellfire. Such were Akhenaten’s thoughts as he sat quietly on the balcony overlooking the palace garden. From a distance came the sound of pure laughter such as had not been heard within the palace walls for a long time. It issued from a place where no outsider found admittance: the garden in which the palace residents took their rest and repose. He got up and moved toward the source of the laughter, then stood contemplating the scene before him: a fountain from which water bubbled and rose high, and his five daughters running about with no clothes on, nothing concealing their slight bodies. Among them the wild child ran naked as well. His complexion was somewhat darker than theirs, his body more muscular, maturing. The girls’ chests, with their small breasts, rose and fell, and the boy ran after them, with the beginnings of an erection. They converged, collapsed in a heap, and lay upon the grass. Droplets of water spangled the girls’ skin, refracting the colors of the sun’s rays. It was an atmosphere full of the pulse of sensual awareness, with shouting, merriment, and laughter, with teasing and touching. The youth had lost some part of his feral nature, allowing the girls to roll on top of him, and permitting his own hand to touch them lightly. Akhenaten felt no resentment or indignation, either toward the hand that brushed their breasts in passing or of their little rumps colliding with the boy’s body. The air was full, more with the irrepressible life that coursed through these little limbs than with anything sordid, and the spray of water washed away any base desires. He ought to go to them and put a stop to their play, but he didn’t dare: in such an atmosphere of openness, there upon the fresh grass and beneath this blazing sun, there was no trespass—that was possible only in secret rooms and in the chambers of temples and the Holy of Holies.
A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore Page 41