The Twelfth Transforming

by Pauline Gedge

  He smiled happily. “Both, I think. I have decided to move the court to Memphis next month for the worst of the summer, as I used to do. Leave the baby to the ministrations of the nurses, Tiye, and come with me.”

  “Memphis.” She lay back and closed her eyes. “How I love it. You and I on cushions under the date palms, watching the bees and playing Dogs and Jackals. I wonder if the ambassadors will want to move also.”

  “Give them all messages to carry to their little kings and get rid of them for a while. Dictate messages that will require much deliberation, so that they stay away for as long as possible.”

  “What a truly wonderful idea.” Tiye, drowsy and content, did not open her eyes. “It has been years since we have indulged ourselves so shamelessly. But forgive me, Horus, I must sleep first.”

  He heaved himself out of the chair and bent to kiss her cheek. “Heal quickly, Tiye, and we will go to Memphis and sit on the steps of the palace, looking out over that green forest under a kindlier Ra.”

  She waited for him to mention their son’s presence in Memphis, but he only placed a hand on her forehead, a surprisingly gentle touch for such a large man, and then Piha opened the doors and he was gone. She listened to the warning calls of the herald as he paced the corridor, the sound growing fainter until it merged with the twitter of birds beyond the window, and smiled at the memory of his fingers, cool on her brow. Oh, let it be, she thought, for one moment suspending common sense, looking only into her heart and his and finding two breathless children intoxicated by the limitless power fate had placed in their hands, and by a love as yet untested by deceit or unchanged by familiarity.

  The burst of vigor and excitement that had filled the court at Smenkhara’s birth soon faded, for it appeared that Pharaoh had garnered in the last harvest of his ruined body and his indomitable will. A month later he was again ravaged by fever, and an abscess on his gum broke, causing him unbearable anguish. Tiye did not see him at his own request for many days, though she called his physicians to her and listened to their veiled, polite reports. He was holding to life with all he had, lying on his couch in a dimness that became progressively suffocating as the season of Shemu drew slowly to a close in an intensifying heat.

  The boy lay beside him through the long nights, still and silent while his lover tossed and muttered about people who had died before he was born and events that had already passed into history. Amunhotep would not let him go, although he lacked the strength to touch him. This Tiye surmised while she listened to the physicians, bitter because of the hopes she and her husband had shared, and guilty because his joy over his new son had caused him to live briefly and gloriously beyond his strength.

  There was another source of guilt also, one she ruefully acknowledged. Each evening she would stand before her tall copper mirror when the sinking sun flushed the room red and tinged her skin an unearthly bronze, and would marvel at the new hold on life little Smenkhara had given her. She knew that she had never had her niece’s cold, unapproachable beauty, and not for many years had she cared. Her attraction lay in her vitality, her earthy, forthright sensuality. Carefully she inspected her body, short and unremarkable, the hips well-formed, the waist small but not unusually so, the breasts neither small nor large yet definitely beginning to lose their elasticity. Her neck was long and graceful. It was a thing to take pride in, but Tiye no longer took pride in a body that was useful, that gave her pleasure, but that could not compete with the pleasures of a quick, devious brain. Critically she surveyed her face. Here, she thought, I show my age. My eyelids are too hooded. The lines that score my cheeks from inner eyes to chin could have been grooved by the vengeful sphinx I wear between my breasts. My mouth, that Amunhotep calls voluptuous and loves so much, is too big and, when I do not smile, turns down most unbecomingly. Yet… She smiled at the image softly reflected back at her like melting gold. I feel reborn while my pharaoh struggles to keep death at bay. Her eyes slid from the mirror. “Take it away!” she barked at Piha. “Tell the musicians to come, and the male dancers. I am not weary enough for sleep.”

  She had hoped for diversion but found none. The musicians played, the young men danced faultlessly, yet Tiye knew that nothing could distract her from the distance growing between her and her husband.

  The month of Mesore passed, pitilessly hot. New Year’s Day approached, signaling the beginning of the month of Thoth, god of wisdom, when Amun left his sanctuary at Karnak and traveled in his golden barque to his southern temple at Luxor, which Amunhotep had been building for the last thirty years. It was customary for Pharaoh to accompany the god to Luxor and during the fourteen days of festival to assume Amun’s identity and beget another incarnation.

  With the feast two weeks away Tiye summoned Ptahhotep and Surero.

  “Surero, the Feast of Opet comes. You are Pharaoh’s steward, with him every day. Will he be able to travel to Luxor?”

  Surero hesitated. “He sits by his couch and takes nourishment. Yesterday he walked a little in his garden.”

  “That is not an answer. Ptahhotep, I know you spent a long time with him this morning. What do you think?” She did not trouble to hide her disdain. The high priest did not like her, she knew. He was a dour, practical man who jealously guarded the fortunes of his god, and all his life he had suspected the levity with which Amunhotep had regarded Amun behind the solemn rites and masks of tradition. A devout consort would have been able to change that, but Tiye recognized that he considered her a commoner, no matter how rich and influential her family, and a foreign commoner at that, and so did not expect her to understand the ties that bound Amun to Pharaoh. Worse, she had supported Pharaoh in his bid to raise Ra and his physical manifestation on earth, the Aten, to a position of greater prominence. Tiye had tried to explain to Ptahhotep that the policy would mean nothing to the majority of the Egyptian people, for the worshipers of Ra as the Visible Disk consisted only of a small cult of sophisticated priests and a few courtiers. It was intended, rather, as a shrewd political move, designed to promote a feeling of unity among the empire’s vassal states and subject nations. All men, whatever their allegiance, worshipped the sun. To promote the Aten would ensure warmer relations between Egypt and the independent foreign kings and make them more amenable to talk of trade and treaty. While the threat to Amun that Ptahhotep had so clearly dreaded had not come about, the general loosening of religious morals and the frivolous irreverence of a bored court had deepened his disapproval. More peasants than nobility came to Karnak now, and the offerings were correspondingly vulgar. She watched icily as the high priest drew himself up to answer her question.

  “The Divine Incarnation was cheerful this morning, Majesty. He is talking of his jubilee.”

  He had taken her off guard. Tiye’s hands, lying along the arms of the throne, tightened over the huge sphinxes’ grinning mouths. “The plans for yet another celebration of his successful reign were discarded when my husband became ill some months ago. He has already blessed Egypt with two jubilees. That is surely enough.”

  Ptahhotep was obviously enjoying his queen’s surprise. “Pharaoh ordered me to find the correct rites that were gathered for his first jubilee and placed in the library,” he answered with solemn glee. “He wishes to celebrate it at the Feast of Opet.”

  If my brother Anen had lived, I would have known of this long ago, Tiye thought, annoyed. I would have been prepared. “Surero, is this true? Tell me honestly, will it tax his strength too far?”

  “He has set his heart on it, Majesty. He is sure that this time he will fully recover. He wishes to make a public show to his subjects, and his foreign dominions.”

  Ah, Tiye thought again. He is ahead of me. “Ptahhotep, you are dismissed,” she said shortly, and the man prostrated himself glumly and backed away. When he had gone, Tiye relaxed and sat back. “Does Amunhotep believe that his prolonged illness has made his royal brothers in other parts of the empire nervous, or perhaps greedy, Surero? Is that why he orders a jubilee?”
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br />   “I think so, Majesty. Matters of state are none of my affair, as I tend only to matters of the palace. Yet Pharaoh talks often of the need for continuing stability, the denial of weakness, so that his son may inherit a firm foundation.”

  “His infant son, I presume.”

  Surero looked uncomfortable. “I believe so, Divine Goddess.”

  “Very well. Do not allow the high priest to complicate the rites unnecessarily. I think Pharaoh overestimates his strength.” No wonder he will not allow me to see him, she thought, her mind racing under her words. Oh, wily Pharaoh! So it begins again!

  “Majesty, I have no authority over the high priest. Only Pharaoh and the oracle may order him.”

  “True, but you are perfectly able to make tactful suggestions to Ptahhotep. He would not like it noised about that he is deliberately weakening the health of his king. Refresh my memory, Surero. Is it not required for a jubilee that if there is a declared Horus-in-the-Nest, he must officiate with Pharaoh?”

  “Yes, it is so.”

  “Will Pharaoh take the air today?”

  “He will sit in the garden at the setting of Ra.”

  “Good. You are dismissed.”

  It does not matter, she told herself as she moved from audience hall to private reception rooms to the offices of her ministers, asking questions, making pronouncements, giving judgments, with Nefertiti and her pet monkey walking three paces behind her. Long before little Smenkhara reaches an age where his ambitions might have a coherent shape, Pharaoh will be dead, and Amunhotep will be king. Why am I so distressed? Let him have his jubilee, let him enjoy the game of manipulating the future. He knows as well as I that it will come to nothing. No, it is my own future that causes me pain. My baby is an unknown force. But my elder son is a pliable reed that bends to my breath.

  “Majesty Aunt, is it wise to send gold to the Assyrian Eriba-Adad, seeing that Assyria is threatened by Kadashman-Enlil with whom we have treaties of friendship? Will not the Babylonians become angry and threaten us in turn?”

  Tiye forced her mind into the present to answer Nefertiti’s question. The girl had been trying to pick her bewildered way through the maze of foreign policy, and Tiye did her best to honor that effort. “No, Highness. Without our gold, Assyria might be defeated, and the Babylonian kingdom would emerge dangerously powerful. If we sent soldiers to Eriba-Adad, then we would be fighting Kadashman-Enlil directly. This way Assyria can buy mercenaries and arms, and Babylonia will not be insulted by us. Do you see?” Without waiting for a reply she took Nefertiti’s arm, and they halted. “Here is Menna’s office. We have come to discuss the flooding of more land for Pharaoh next year and the payment to the Keftiu for the glass vases Surero ordered. I will leave this to you. Ordinarily I would not bother with such details but would leave them to Menna as Overseer of Crown Lands, and the Vizier of the North, but if you are to be consort, you must know all.”

  “But, Majesty, you have stewards who report to you daily on such transactions.”

  “True. Yet those men are continually bribed. That I do not mind, but it is important to be able to distinguish a totally corrupt transaction from an acceptably twisted one, and that you cannot do unless you have spent time yourself in direct conversation with the ministers. Let us go in. I will not speak.”

  After Nefertiti had acquitted herself with cool though bored efficiency, Tiye took her to bathe in her private lake. It was noon, and Ra stood at his zenith, pouring a blazing white light over the surface of the water. Both women lowered themselves gratefully into the lily-clogged greenness. For a while they floated and splashed while their servants waited on the grassy verge with towels and canopies ready and the monkey ran back and forth gibbering. Tiye swam, glorying in the silken flow of water over her shoulders and against her mouth, but Nefertiti lay on her back with eyes closed, rocking in Tiye’s small swell, her hands moving like copper fish just beneath the surface.

  Later they sat side by side under Tiye’s canopy, hair plastered to their backs, water beading on their brown skins and running down their spines.

  “It will be a good Feast of Opet this year,” Nefertiti said, delicately picking dried grass from her wet thigh. “In a little over two months the prince will be returning from Memphis.”

  “He seems fond of you,” Tiye replied. “You must be careful how you approach him, Nefertiti. His affection for you gives you great power over him. The marriage contracts are ready for Pharaoh’s seal.”

  The gray eyes, now paled to a soft dove color under the glare of the sun, squinted into Tiye’s own. “And I am ready to be to Amunhotep what you, Majesty Aunt, have been to the Mighty Bull.” She smiled with great sweetness, showing small white teeth, and began whistling at the monkey, who rushed forward and began to lick her damp arms.

  “Indeed!” Tiye retorted tartly. “Such a promise of selfless devotion does you credit. Your father will be delighted.” Nefertiti shot her a level look from beneath dark, feathered brows, and Tiye knew that she had been understood. “There is feasting tonight for the mayor of Nefrusi,” she went on. “He is to receive the Gold of Favors at my command. His city lies just within our border with Syria, and he has done good work in helping Horemheb to keep the border quiet. I want you to honor him in my place, Nefertiti, so that I may spend the evening with Pharaoh. Your father and Sitamun will share the dais with you.”

  Nefertiti merely nodded without comment. The monkey had fallen asleep, sprawled across her knees. “Is Horemheb to be recalled to Thebes when the prince returns?”

  “Why?” Tiye asked sharply.

  The girl shrugged. “It is just that he and the prince have become friends. Amunhotep might be lonely without him.”

  So you are not as sure of your power over my son as I had thought, Tiye mused, but you are clever enough to see it. Shall Horemheb come or not?

  “If I think there is a need to recall the commander with my son, I shall do so,” she said aloud. “Take my advice, Nefertiti. Never try to influence a man through his friends. Either he will misunderstand and become jealous, or you will fail to win their confidence and so earn their scorn. Men are not like women. It is always better to approach them directly.”

  Nefertiti flushed, biting her lip, and Tiye relented. “Amunhotep has great affection for you,” she finished gently. “You do not need Horemheb for a go-between.”

  She bade Nefertiti go and sleep and herself made her way to the nursery, where Smenkhara lay naked in his cot, guarded by two Followers of His Majesty, his tiny limbs loose on the sheet, his nostrils quivering as he slept. Tiye questioned the men and the wet nurse briefly, bent to kiss the fuzz of black hair beaded with the sweat of the afternoon, and went to her own couch. Sitamun must be watched closely, she thought drowsily as she turned on her side and prepared to slide into unconsciousness. She will make no move until Pharaoh is dead, but her claim upon the prince as a fully royal daughter is very strong. She is devious enough to resort to all the ancient laws of precedence if given the chance.

  Pharaoh was sitting beside his ornamental lake, throwing crumbs to a flock of raucous ducks, as Tiye walked across the garden later that day. The sun had already sunk behind the wall that sheltered the rear of the palace from the sand and cliffs of the western desert and the dead who crowded the land between. Shafts of red light lay across the lawns, still suffused with a heat that beat against her shins and splashed flame up her abdomen. Surero knelt at Pharaoh’s feet, while Apuia, his butler, was bending over his shoulder under the rhythmic swish of the ostrich fans. Tiye could see the glitter of water being poured into the cup Amunhotep held out to him.

  Several paces away the boy lay outstretched on his stomach, chin resting on both braceleted wrists, the smooth curve of his naked spine drenched in pink light. As Tiye came closer, she saw that he was watching the slow, arduous passage of a golden scarab beetle through the dense grass.

  Slaves and servants crowded behind Pharaoh’s chair. At her herald’s cry they turned and went down on t
heir faces. Amunhotep waved her forward, and Kheruef motioned for her own chair to be unfolded next to his. She smiled at Pharaoh and lowered herself under the canopy.

  “Yes, I am better, before you ask,” he said, flinging the last of the stale bread at the jostling birds and drinking his water. “See, I am not even sweating. Ra has sunk kindly into my bones today. Surero told me he thought you would appear. Do not try to dissuade me from my jubilee, Tiye. I will have it.”

  The boy had groped for a stick and was now teasing the scarab, pushing it from behind so that it stumbled and rolled onto its back.

  “I am glad to see you so well, my husband,” she responded. “I have no intention of trying to dissuade you from the jubilee. It will be a fine diplomatic move. I merely wish to remind you that you now have a legal heir who must be present at the rites.”

  He smiled at her politely. “Of course. He will be carried beside me in a basket.”

  “Amunhotep, the decree has been made. Let it stand. If you make Smenkhara your legal heir and you die in his infancy, there will be a long regency in Egypt, with all the problems that will entail.”

  He shrugged and then grinned at her wickedly. “Poor Tiye! So completely incapable of being a regent! My heart is heavy within me for your sake!”

  In spite of herself she laughed. “Then imagine that I, too, die before the baby reaches his majority.”

  “You?” He waved away the dish of sweetmeats Apuia proffered. “You feed on adulation and power. As long as there is something to manipulate, you will not die.”

  “Then consider that you will be giving Amunhotep yet another reason for hating you.”

  “Ah! Now we come to the point! But why should I care about the love or the hatred of any man? I am pharaoh. I am the god of Soleb, the god of Thebes, the god of the whole world. Even the other gods do me homage. That eunuch is no son of mine, let alone an embryonic god.”

  “I can see,” Tiye hissed at him in a low voice that only he could hear, “that with your returning health has come a returning fear. Very well. Do what you will. But the decree stands.”