The Twelfth Transforming (19 page)

“Good. The older children will come, too. Smenkhara is walking now, did you know? He follows Meritaten’s nurse as she carries my little one about. There does not seem to be as much sickness in the nursery this year. Many fevers, but no sign of a plague.”

Sitamun answered her in a bored, lazy monotone, and the afternoon ended in silence as both women finally succumbed to the heat and fell asleep.

Nefertiti’s party began as the horns were blaring midnight. The darkness had not brought coolness, and while slaves spread mats on the verge of the lake in the guttering orange flames of the huge torches, the women ran to the water with shrieks and laughter. Tadukhipa, her long black hair bound decorously on top of her little head, stood quietly in the shallows while her servants drenched her, for she was afraid of water. Tia-Ha sat in the shallows, submerged to her chin, having her slave wash her hair and feed her sips of wine. Tiye, arriving late with her retinue, had her chair placed a little apart.

As the musicians began to play, the women left the water, dripping and panting, and flung themselves onto the mats to be served food and to have wreaths of flowers and blue beads draped over them. Nefertiti had spared no expense. Far out on the lake a pool of yellow light was growing as an enormous raft was poled toward the bank. When it came to a halt just out of a swimmer’s distance, the naked male slaves who had been guiding it stood up and began to dance, golden rattles in their hands, water lilies bound on their foreheads. Torchlight glimmered on the black water. The men completed their gyrations and dove into the darkness. Suddenly horns blared, and women dressed in shimmering silver fishnets rose from the water. Climbing gracefully onto the raft, they began to fling showers of gold dust into the air, where it hung in a yellow mist. Harem servants moved among the guests with wine jugs. Now little wooden boats painted gold appeared on the lake, carrying men with golden fishing rods. As they approached the women on the raft, they began to cast toward them, the thin lines of the rods cutting the night like spiders’ webs in the torchlight surrounding the women. The guests lounging on the bank shouted encouragement and applauded. One by one the fishnetted women were hooked, dragged with mock struggles to the edge of the raft, and pulled under the water, only to reappear seconds later in the boats.

“This was a good idea,” Sitamun said to Nefertiti. “Oh, look! There are the men placing stones on the fire for the Nubian walkers.”

Nefertiti motioned to a slave, and Sitamun’s cup was quietly refilled. “Do you like the wine, Majesty?” she enquired softly.

Sitamun nodded and drank. “It is magnificent. Where on earth did you find it?”

“It comes from your father’s estate in the Delta. An excellent vintage. Rames, his steward, had it shipped to me especially for tonight.”

“You have gone to much trouble.”

Nefertiti smiled gently, noting the flush the wine had brought to Sitamun’s cheeks, the slight, drunken hesitation in the words. “Nothing is too much trouble for my friends,” she said. “Besides, we all need some compensation for having to languish here through Shemu. This helps to pass the time.”

Her chief steward, Meryra, came and bowed. “The food is ready, Majesty.”

“Then serve us. I trust you are hungry, Empress.”

While Nefertiti picked at the food on her plate, Sitamun ate with relish. Out on the lake the fishermen had now drawn silver knives and, making a show of gutting the pliant female fish they had caught, danced to the clashing harmonies of pipe and drums.

“It will be some time before the stones are hot enough for the walkers,” Nefertiti said. “Come for another swim with me, Majesty.”

Sitamun looked to the lake, where many of the women had returned and were screaming with drunken mirth. Those still on the bank were occupied in eating and talking. The surface of the dark water riffled suddenly as a stray breeze stirred it. Sitamun, flushed and sweating, agreed. They shed their light robes and walked hand in hand to the lily-clogged bank, picking their way through revelers too intoxicated to reverence them. Twice Sitamun stumbled, but Nefertiti caught her elbow, guiding her. Once in the water, Sitamun revived.

“Let us swim out toward the raft,” Nefertiti called, pushing wet hair away from her face. “But stop when you leave your depth, Sitamun. You have had a lot of wine.”

Instant defiance curled Sitamun’s full mouth. “You only caution me because I am the better swimmer and will show you up!” she taunted. “Oh, how cool this is. Come!” She spun in the water and began to swim, cutting skillfully across the reflection of the torches. Nefertiti followed more slowly. As they moved farther away from the verge, the torchlight became fainter until they finally reached the blackness between the light on the bank and the torches illuminating the entertainment far out on the lake. Nefertiti slowed her stroke, stopped, and began to tread water. Sitamun swam on, but her own stroke had by now become feeble, her movements looser. Nefertiti watched her disappear into the band of darkness, turned quietly, and began to swim leisurely back to the shore.

I will not be the one to call a halt
, Sitamun thought, her arms flailing, her legs tiring.
I have bested Nefertiti in every other way, and if she thinks to prove her superiority in the water, she will lose again. My heart is pounding. I drank too much wine
. Taking a shuddering breath, she glanced over her shoulder but did not see Nefertiti’s silhouette against the flaring torches. Fighting for more air, Sitamun looked ahead. Nefertiti was not there, either. The raft had emptied, its torches burning low and beginning to gutter. In the little boats circling it, the women, fishnets artfully slit by the knives of the men, were gracefully dying. The men themselves were diving into the water one by one, and vigorous applause reached Sitamun’s ringing ears from the bank. She let her legs drift down through the water, and though her feet groped for the bottom, they could not find it. Panic stabbed her, but she quickly mastered it.
Very well
, she thought.
I will float here and get my breath and then paddle back. What game is Nefertiti playing? She must have seen that I would win, or simply run out of strength and turned back
. Gasping, one hand against her laboring heart, she began to tread water, looking around her.

She was in a circle of darkness bounded by torches that seemed infinitely far away. Black water lapped against her, much colder at this depth than the sun warmed shallows. Above her, the moon swayed in the night as she tried to focus on it. She closed her eyes as nausea gripped her stomach.
Too much wine
, she thought again.
I wonder what is below my feet, hidden in the cold slime, the darkness
. Cramp lanced her calf, and she drew in her knees, reaching to massage her leg. She again became aware of the distance between herself and the warm gaiety of the women, a vista of rippling black water that fed a chill into her veins. All at once she vomited, a stream of sour wine and undigested food, and immediately felt better but began to shiver.
I must get back
, she thought dully, digging at the cramp with stiff fingers as it attacked again.
Then I will have to take a hot bath and a massage, or I shall become ill
.

She turned toward the lights on the bank and was gathering her strength when a faint splash off to her right startled her. She saw a white disturbance on the surface of the lake, and in a moment its wake was slapping against her body. Panicking again, she arced forward but had done no more than lean into the water when she felt arms encircle her thighs. She screamed, kicking frantically, fingers scrabbling at the grip. Something pressed against the small of her back, and she realized it was a human head.

Shocked and suddenly sober, Sitamun began to fight, her cries lost in a burst of cheering from the bank where the fire walkers had begun their show. Her desperate hands found hair, and she pulled with all her might. The arms loosened, and she quickly raised her knee, aiming it at her attacker’s chin. But she had been enervated even before she and Nefertiti walked into the water, and her blow merely grazed a cold cheek. She felt her wrists encircled, forcing her fingers away from the floating tangle of hair, and as the head tore free, the surface of the lake was abruptly broken directly in front of her. She glimpsed an open, gasping mouth, two hollow eyes, a battered water lily entwined in the wet, matted hair. She dug both feet into the man’s stomach, pushing as hard as she could. The hands left her wrists, and for one moment she was free, but before she could gather herself to swim away, the fingers closed with a confident force around her neck. Sitamun felt herself being forced under the water. Now she fought with maniacal strength, nails raking the smooth skin, feet kicking out, lungs stretched and bursting, heart racing unevenly. Once she was able to break into the air and had time for one mouthful of the breeze that rustled like silk across her lips, but her spasm of frantic strength was over. The man knelt on her shoulders, his hands splayed on the top of her head, his own breath short but steady as he looked toward the lights along the verge. Sitamun’s last touch was as soft and light as a lover’s. Her fingers strayed downward along his thighs and came to rest trustingly beside his knees. He thrust the body deeper with both feet and quickly swam away.

Tia-Ha smothered a yawn. “A wonderful way to spend a hot summer night,” she said, “but if Your Majesty will dismiss me, I think I will seek my couch.” Tiye nodded, smiling, and the princess rose, stretching luxuriously. Her servants began to roll up her mat and gather her trinkets. The moon had shrunk to a brilliant point in the dry sky. The torches were smoking as they burned themselves out. The women were drifting back to their quarters, some with their arms around each other, some supported by their servants, others moving rapturously but unsteadily on their own. Tiye scanned the lake. At its edge sat Nefertiti, still deep in conversation with Tadukhipa. The raft bobbed, all but one of the torches that had been fastened to it extinguished. The boats had left much earlier. Then Tiye noticed something rising and falling with the lake’s small wash, lit faintly and intermittently from the shore. Tia-Ha had seen it, too. She turned to Tiye as Tiye came to her feet. “l cannot make it out,” she remarked. “I wonder if one of the entertainers dropped something into the water.”

“Kheruef,” Tiye said over her shoulder, “send a boat out and bring in whatever it is.”

Kheruef hurried away, and the two women walked to the place where Nefertiti and Tadukhipa had been hooking water lilies to make the frogs jump away. At Tiye’s approach they rose and bowed. “Majesty Aunt, why is that boat going out?” Nefertiti frowned. “My dancers have retired, and the raft will be recovered in the morning.”

Premonition swept over Tiye as she watched the boat cut across the lake, the pole rising and falling under the slave’s expert thrust, drawing nearer to the gently moving debris, and she could not answer. A shout came from the boat as one of the slaves reached over, drew back, and pulled his companion to the edge. The two of them lifted something shapeless and obviously heavy and began to return to the shore with the uncoordinated speed of distress.

“It is a body!” Tadukhipa whispered, eyes wide. “One of the dancers has drowned!”

Nefertiti shrugged and turned away, but Tiye, her knees suddenly weak, grasped her niece’s arm. Kheruef and two of his underlings waded out and helped to drag the boat onto the grass. Still Tiye could not move. Only when the men laid the body on its stomach and Kheruef began to run toward her did she force her legs to obey her.

“Stay with me,” Tia-Ha snapped at Tadukhipa, her eyes on Tiye’s white face. She sank to the mat, taking the little princess down with her. Tadukhipa’s hand stole into her own. Kheruef came up to Tiye and fell at her feet, his face ashen, his hands closing over his head in a gesture of terrified submission. Tiye walked past him, still holding Nefertiti.

The naked woman was sprawled like an ungainly animal, one knee bent, one arm curving to encircle the head with its ropes of dark, sopping hair. “Bring a torch,” Tiye said in a level voice. One of the male slaves raced to obey and reappeared with lights. “Kheruef. Kheruef! Get up, you old fool. Turn her over.” He left the ground, weeping, and with clumsy, trembling hands grasped a shoulder, the soft hill of a hip. Tiye released Nefertiti. The girl was staring, lower lip between her teeth, every muscle tense. The body rolled sluggishly, and then Sitamun gazed past them at the sky. Water dribbled from one corner of her parted mouth, and her hair lay across her throat like a ragged scarf. Tiye found herself in the grass smoothing the cold cheeks with both frantic, disbelieving hands. A babble of screams and excited, frightened talk broke out. “Bring Commander Ay,” Kheruef ordered tersely, “and then a physician. Notify Pharaoh, but not before Ay.”

Tiye lifted the unresisting head and cradled it in her arms. Nefertiti had begun to wail, her own arms outstretched.
Why is she making that foolish noise?
Tiye thought irritably.
Sitamun is asleep. She has floated on the water and fallen asleep
. “Sitamun,” she choked, mouth moving against the white forehead. Then warm hands lifted her, and Ay’s arms went around her. New torches flickered in the hands of the soldiers he had brought. She felt someone settle a cloak over her shoulders and suddenly came to herself. Ay was squatting beside Sitamun, his hands busy lifting, probing, his eyes sharp. A physician crouched beside him, exchanging low words with Ay she could not catch. Tia-Ha appeared be fore her, and wine slipped down her throat. Nefertiti had fallen silent, but Tiye saw her swallowing convulsively. Ay rose. “It is too late to do anything for her,” he said, and something in his voice made Tiye stare at him, sluggish senses alert. “She is dead.”

Out of the corner of her eye Tiye saw a look flash between Nefertiti and her steward Meryra, standing stolidly beside her. It happened so quickly that she wondered if she had imagined it but noticed that Ay had seen it, too, and watched him assimilate and interpret the signal in the second it took him to recover. He turned and barked orders at his men. “Gather all servants, slaves, and dancers who were here tonight. Majesty, may I question the women?”