“I am humbly sorry, Great One, but it is impossible,” he had said forthrightly.
“Do you mean impossible for you to try or impossible for Pharaoh to be swayed?” she had countered irritably.
“Impossible for Pharaoh to be swayed, Majesty. Perhaps if he is closer to the Delta, he may appreciate more fully the problems of his army.”
“Oh, so you intend to stay in favor so that you can defend Egypt’s soldiers, do you?” she had snapped sarcastically. “I am not yet senile, Horemheb.”
He had smiled at her with the gentle commiseration of years of friendly intimacy. “I worship you, my goddess, but your worry is like the fretting of a mother over the sex of an unborn child.”
He had refused to be drawn further, and eventually she had dismissed him in frustration. Now she gloomily watched Pharaoh and his family disembark, Smenkhara and Beketaten standing with her, arrayed sumptuously for the occasion. Tiye’s ill humor was slightly mollified by her son’s evident delight in seeing the children. He put a finger under Smenkhara’s chin, lifting the painted face to meet his own. “How handsome you are, my little brother!” he exclaimed jauntily. “And you, my sweet pretty flower. Come for a kiss.” He held out his arms, and Beketaten ran into them, showering him with wet kisses. “I have missed my daughter,” he went on. “How golden and rosy she grows!” He talked to her for a moment before surrendering her to her nurse. Meritaten was already at Smenkhara’s side, her hand stealing into his. Tiye noticed them edging away in the direction of the fountains and let them go. Akhenaten turned to her, waiting for the deep obeisance she haughtily refused. She inclined her head.
“I have missed you also, Tiye,” he said unexpectedly. “I wish you had been there to see the incense of dedication rise beside the cliffs.” He kissed her gently with more self-confidence and dignity than he had in months, and Tiye, nonplussed, felt her bristling defenses give way. Perhaps all will be well, she thought, looking over his shoulder to where Nefertiti stood waiting alone in a pool of reverence.
Tiye was still in a mood of optimism when later that day she went to his apartments with a scroll her scribe had just finished translating for her. Akhenaten was still lying on his couch after sleep, his face pasty and drawn, his eyes bloodshot. He greeted her wanly.
“Are you ill, Horus?” she enquired, watching as his body servant placed a wet, cool cloth on his forehead.
He nodded and then winced. “I have a terrible headache,” he whispered. “I can hardly bear to move. When I blink, it is like scimitars slashing into my head.” She almost relented, but he waved her closer. “What is the scroll?”
“It was received by the Scribe of Foreign Correspondence yesterday, and it worries me, Akhenaten. Aziru has become prince of the Amurru.”
“Why should that worry anyone? All the tribes of northern Syria are our vassals. It does not matter what little prince captains the Amurru so long as he does what Egypt tells him.”
“It matters in this case because Aziru is known to be in correspondence with Suppiluliumas. He has even visited the Khatti capital, Boghaz-keuoi, on several occasions. I fear a secret alliance between them that will undermine the security of our hold on Syria.”
“What would you have me do?” He cringed with pain, placing both palms against his temples and closing his eyes.
“Send to Aziru at once for reassurances of his loyalty, and for a hostage.”
“What does his scroll say?”
Tiye smiled contemptuously. “He worships and adores you, calls me the lady of your house, and pledges to Egypt his undying faithfulness and devotion.”
“What beautiful words! He is a son of the true Ma’at.”
“He is a liar and a scoundrel!” Tiye retorted hotly, and Akhenaten struggled to sit up, crying with pain.
“If he is not telling the truth, the Aten will punish him,” he managed. “Give the scroll to Tutu for a kindly reply.”
“But Akhenaten!”
“Help me, Mother. I am going to be sick.”
A servant rushed to the couch, kneeling and holding out a silver bowl. Another held Pharaoh’s head. Akhenaten rolled to his side and vomited. Instantly Tiye’s anger vanished. Snatching the wet cloth from the sheet where it had fallen, she wiped his face and helped to lower him onto the cushions. He pulled a blanket over himself with shaking hands, and Tiye saw that he was suddenly drowsy.
“l should not have disturbed you,” she said, bending to kiss his forehead. “I will return later to see if you are better.” Before she reached the door, he was asleep.
In the passage she confronted Parennefer, who had risen from his stool. “Bring Pharaoh’s physician at once,” she said. “Perhaps the sorcerers also.”
“Pharaoh is angry with his physician, Goddess,” he replied awkwardly. “His illness began while he was away, and he was told that he had been under the sun too often without protection. Pharaoh said that his father would not hurt him, and sent the man away.”
Annoyed, she could only answer, “If Pharaoh wishes to suffer, I suppose we must let him.”
Tiye unwillingly surrendered the scroll to Tutu, instructing him to reply firmly to Aziru even though Pharaoh did not wish it, but knowing that Tutu would do as Pharaoh wanted. She had given Akhenaten her interpretation of the situation in northern Syria and advised him as to what she believed was the proper course of action, and there was little more she could do. The setting and pursuing of foreign policy was Pharaoh’s prerogative alone. He was free to accept the advice of his Scribe of Foreign Correspondence and other ministers or to reject it and formulate his own relationships with vassals and allies, but his was the final word. Tiye was aware that any directive he issued to Tutu was binding, but she was annoyed that Tutu took such pleasure in seeing her overruled.
She returned to her son’s quarters in the evening, hoping to persuade him to take some nourishment, and was surprised to find him bathed, dressed, and sitting between the pillars of his reception hall with Nefertiti, looking out over the dusky garden. His lute lay at his feet, and a scribe sat cross-legged behind him, writing quickly as Akhenaten dictated a song. The words came high and fast, the long-fingered hands accentuating the rhythm of the poetry with slaps against his knees, the arms of the chair, each other. He was leaning forward, his muscles tense, rocking slightly to and fro. Every so often he snatched up the lute and plucked quickly, humming under his breath until the words began to flow again.
“Yes, I am better, Mother, I cannot stop now or the beautiful words will cease, do not approach me,” he shouted all in one breath, waving her away, a grimace of anxiety on his face. Nefertiti did not bother to acknowledge her presence at all. Tiye looked through the deepening shadows that clung to the pillars and saw Pharaoh’s retinue standing with heads lowered in the gloom, not daring to move or make a sound. Only the scribe was oblivious to the air of almost painful expectancy. He was breathing heavily, and his tongue was caught between his teeth with the effort of writing down the monotonous gush of half-formed words. Chilled and bored, Tiye left them.
14
The entire court at Malkatta was soon involved in turning the desolate and inhospitable land of Pharaoh’s vision into a place worthy to be the home of the Aten. Bek, Kenofer, Auta, and the other royal architects and craftsmen worked night and day on the slowly complicating plans for a city that would rise magically from nothing, a creation from chaos like the world itself. The cynical inhabitants of Thebes watched as day after day the Nile became increasingly choked with traffic: huge, ponderous barges creeping carefully past them laden with finely dressed ashlar from the Assuan quarries, rafts piled high with golden straw to be mixed with river mud, lateen-rigged boats bearing fortunes in precious cedar beams. Thousands of workmen and their overseers had to be moved into the hastily erected barracks to the north of the site. A whole village of peasants renowned for their skill in masonry was removed from its site west of Thebes and resettled at Pharaoh’s command. Occasionally the city dwellers, their ranks th
inned by Akhenaten’s compulsory draft, would cheer derisively as flotilla after flotilla jockeyed by, but before long they had either lost interest and gone back to their daily pursuits or sat with their beer and bread on the bank and kept silent, hoping the hours might be enlivened by the sight of a gilded and canopied pleasure craft bearing dignitaries downstream.
Akhenaten also ordered a halt to the work still going on at Karnak. Those who had labored for years on his and Nefertiti’s Aten temples were dispatched to begin their tasks again in the new city. The Amun priests waited fearfully for him to recruit their workmen also, but as usual he simply ignored them. Karnak adopted a policy of wary, deliberate inconspicuousness.
Malkatta began to hum like a great hive and, with the aid of perspiring ministers and harried officials, hauled itself from its easy, slipshod inefficiency to a level of clean organization. Pharaoh counted the days until the time when he could leave, and his time was spent hurrying from one office to another, demanding reports or endlessly discussing his vision for the most beautiful city ever built. Well-meaning and eager, he often obstructed the very ministers he sought to encourage into haste, for when he appeared, all work had to cease while the proper obeisances were performed and the correct stance maintained in his presence. Akhenaten was supremely happy, in spite of the headaches that felled him with increasing regularity and which he came to dread. They meant the loss of his frail dignity, for he always ended up vomiting with pain. The attacks were invariably followed by bursts of frenetic creative energy and religious fervor. The courtiers, ever anxious to please in ways they could understand, took to having their servants follow them about holding silver ewers into which they politely spat or, if full of wine, vomited. If the Aten caused such behavior in his blessed incarnation and holy self, then they wished to share the attention of the god.
With the shift in the government’s priorities came a realignment of power, and many ministers who had flourished under Amunhotep III found themselves dispensable. Pharaoh did not openly dismiss them, but the day-to-day orders that should have come to them went to their subordinates. Sensibly they retired without demur, and their places were taken by Akhenaten’s favorites.
With a sense of regret, Ay saw ever more clearly the wisdom of a shift in his personal allegiance. He liked his second-in-command, Ranefer. The young man understood horses and was respected by the charioteers, but he had been appointed to serve under Ay by Akhenaten when he had come with the prince from Memphis, and Ay anxiously watched Ranefer for any sign that he was about to be usurped. So far there had been no indication, however, that Ranefer would be made Master of the King’s Horse. But Ay believed that moment would eventually come unless he took his stand without equivocation. There was no longer any doubt that Pharaoh was in control of the kingdom. He was indisputably ruling now, not, like his father, through control of Egypt’s secular institutions, but with the power of the priest kings of ancient times.
Nefertiti’s star was also rising. In the year after the demarcation of the city she had given birth, to her chagrin, to another girl, but Akhenaten was delighted, naming her Ankhesenpaaten, Living Through the Aten. Wealth and beauty cast a magnetic aura around her into which the powerful were drawn. Tiye still commanded, would always command, the awed respect due to a goddess and empress, but she was a goddess of the old order, an empress no longer fully in control of an empire. While Ay had no wish to see her further humiliated, he deliberately set out to win the confidence of Akhenaten, a task that proved not to be difficult. Ay knew that Pharaoh had always liked him, and could both rest comfortably in his presence and seek his advice without the timidity that cursed him in his mother’s company. Tiye’s advice had all too often been condescending or, worse, an unintentionally acid demolition of his hesitant opinions. Learning from her example, Ay did not argue but discussed with an encouraging lift of the eyebrows, always deferring to Akhenaten if Pharaoh showed signs of being adamant.
The only sport Akhenaten truly enjoyed was handling his chariot, which he did very well, and as Master of the King’s Horse Ay spent much time standing behind Pharaoh’s thin, bowed spine and helmeted head as he shouted gaily at the animals, his frail wrists flexing skillfully with the pull of the reins. To Ay there was something endearing and pitiful about his nephew’s eager shedding of his self-consciousness. To his surprise, Ay found himself looking forward to the hours spent listening to Pharaoh’s high, tuneless singing, the creak of harness, and the whip of wind against his ears.
“In spite of the fact that you are building a new chapel to Min on the family estate at Akhmin, I think you are my friend, Uncle,” Akhenaten said to Ay one day as they dismounted, coated with dust, and walked stiffly to their litters. “It is more than the tie of blood, is it not?”
Ay smiled at the anxious, almost diffident question. “Of course I am your friend, Majesty,” he responded diplomatically.
“You like to be with me? Nefertiti tells me that you only spend your time with me so that you can make reports to my mother.” He caught Ay’s arm and brought them to a halt.
Ay looked directly into the sand-rimmed, distressed black eyes. “Akhenaten, you should know that the empress is my oldest friend as well as my dear sister,” he said carefully. “With her I share memories that belong to no one but the two of us. But I do not denigrate my pharaoh in anyone’s presence. Queen Nefertiti is too eager to protect you from all that might hurt you.”
To Ay’s astonishment and dismay, the large eyes suddenly filled with tears. “Sometimes, when I am told one thing by one person and something else by another, and the Aten does not tell me who speaks the truth, I begin to hurt.” The thick lips were quivering. “Sometimes I think that no one loves me at all.”
Ay felt Pharaoh’s body straining toward him and knew that if he opened his arms, Akhenaten would fall into them. He put his hands behind his back. It would not do for the waiting courtiers, out of earshot but watching them patiently, to see their king seeking such comfort.
“My god, my lord,” he said quietly, “you have the worship of an empire, the love of Ra himself, and surely the love of such unworthy mortals as myself and your mother.”
Akhenaten brushed the tears from his cheeks, biting his lip. “I love you also. I love my empress, but she is becoming sharp-tongued. Uncle, will you accept the honor of being my Fanbearer on the Right Hand?”
Ay stared at him, quickly assimilating his nephew’s words. The highest position in the land was being offered to him, not forced on him. The laughter of relief rose to his mouth, and he swallowed, kneeling on the hard-packed dirt of the parade ground and kissing Pharaoh’s dusty feet. “I do not deserve this,” he said, knowing that he spoke the truth, “yet I will serve you faithfully, O Spirit of the Aten.”
“Good. I shall let Ranefer take over as Master of the King’s Horse. You will come with me to my holy city?”
“Did you doubt it?”
“Yes. Nefertiti said you would stay here with Tiye and conspire against me.”
I must have a few harsh words with Nefertiti, Ay thought. Will she never learn discretion? “I can only deny this and try to prove to you with my deeds that the queen is wrong.”
Akhenaten touched him gently with one foot, and Ay rose. “I do not think I believe it anyway, Uncle,” Pharaoh said, sniffing and straightening. “Carry my fan and show all the whisperers that they are wrong to doubt your faithfulness.”
I am not yet sure myself that they are wrong, Ay thought, his gaze absently on his pharaoh’s lumpish thighs as he paced toward the litters. But you need me, Akhenaten.
He was still not sure when he sought audience with his sister the following day. Tiye dismissed the Scribe of Assemblage as Ay prostrated himself and watched the man’s bare feet pad past his face. Tiye’s own leather sandals with the gold-roped stays came close. Ay raised himself on his elbows, kissed her feet, and rose.
“The Scribe of Assemblage tells me that there are now four thousand troops on the building site,” she sa
id crossly. “What is Akhenaten thinking of? One thousand would be enough to keep order among the fellahin. Sebek-hotep must wake sweating in the night when he sees the rate at which gold is being drained from the Treasury. And you, Fanbearer on the Right Hand, you must be paid for your new position.”
Ay watched the wrinkled, large-veined hands, heavy with jewels, swiftly roll up the scroll and toss it onto the pile on the scribe’s desk. She was wearing a diaphanous pale-blue gown whose pleats floated out from under her brown, sagging breasts. Her wrinkled nipples were painted blue and glimmered with gold dust. The blue cloak she had cast onto the stool behind her was bordered with small hollow globules of gold, each containing a pellet that would tinkle as she walked. Her own red-brown hair frothed away from her high forehead, and a girlish coronet of blue enamel forget-me-nots encircled her brow. Hanging from it were spears of green enamel leaves that brushed against cheeks beginning to be pendulous with age. The clear blue eyes were set in a nest of fine wrinkles and pouches of weariness. For the first time, Ay thought that she had dressed without taste, the fresh youthfulness of her attire emphasizing, not hiding, her advancing years. Her voice, too, had the shrill querulousness of an impatient old nurse. With a sense of shock he saw in Tiye their mother, Tuyu, Handmaid and Royal Ornament, where before he had only seen in her the strength and arrogance of their father.
“As long as tribute and foreign bribes pour into the Treasury, it is bottomless,” he objected mildly. “It appears that Pharaoh believes he can keep the demons away from his city with the spears and scimitars of living men. It does not matter, Empress.”
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