The Twelfth Transforming (55 page)

Whispers of rain in Rethennu circulated the palace, of huge crops ready to harvest there, of a bountiful yield in Babylon, while the Nile became poisonous with rotting fish and its steep brown banks thick with frogs. Talk began of the river itself being a plague, for those unfortunate enough to topple into it or children tempted to cool themselves in its stagnant oiliness immediately developed rashes, scabs, and blisters that led to fever and inevitable death.

But Akhetaten continued to cling to the last shreds of its once shining dream. In an Egypt whose suffering had long passed the boundary of human endurance, it was still blessed. Food was scarce but sufficient. The court sheltered behind the comfortable trappings of ritual and protocol. Akhenaten spent his days in the temple with Smenkhara, groaning and imploring pity from the blazing ferocity of the god, and his nights making love to the prince or Ankhesenpaaten. The child was pregnant, a fact that an oblivious court barely recognized and Akhenaten himself could take no joy in. The fertility of his sun family mocked him. Though the business of government had almost slowed to a halt as ministers and courtiers abandoned their duties, the routines of their servants remained unchanged. Pharaoh, his family, and the hundreds of nobles who inhabited the palace still required domestic care.

No underling was busier than Huya, who had been spending less time on his responsibilities in the harem than he should have, for the empress, increasingly frail, took up most of his energy. Although he generally left his duties to his assistant, today he had inspected the nurseries himself and now stood before Pharaoh, who was barely awake. Beside him Smenkhara still slept, breathing heavily and muttering. Akhenaten held a finger to his lips.

“Do not wake him,” he hissed. “He has not been asleep long. What do you want, Huya?”

Huya bent and spoke in a low voice. “Majesty, I think you had better come to the nursery. Nefertiti’s little daughters are very sick. I have sent your physicians to them.”

He could scarcely meet the frightened eyes peering into his own.

“All of them? Is it fever?”

“I am not sure. Certainly they are full of fever, but they seem to be bruised, also.”

Akhenaten was struggling to rise. “No more!” he whispered fiercely. “I cannot bear it. What have I done that these things should be visited on me? Even a god cannot suffer indefinitely.”

Huya tried to compose himself. “Majesty, may I suggest that you order their mother to come at once?”

Akhenaten was now standing, leaning against his night table, his eyes swollen from heat and lack of sleep, traces of kohl and henna smudging his body. “No,” he said. “I do not want to see her again. Order my body slaves to come and dress me.”

“Pharaoh,” Huya said gently, “they are dying.”

The grotesque figure slumped. One hand was pressed tightly against his eyes, as though trying to force back the pain. Akhenaten nodded once. Immediately Huya went out, sending the body slaves in as he went. He had already informed Tiye, but she had merely thinned her lips and looked away. While Pharaoh was being dressed, Huya ordered the King’s Own Herald to the north palace and returned to the nursery.

By the time Pharaoh arrived, the youngest, Sotpe-en-Ra, was already dead. “it was as though she was decomposing even before the breath left her,” a frightened physician whispered to Huya. “This is a most virulent plague. Do not let Pharaoh see the body.”

But Akhenaten did not ask to see her. The other two girls had been placed in an adjoining room, which he hesitantly entered. The odor of corruption hung in the unmoving air. No servants were tending the tossing, unconsciously crying princesses. The tiring women clustered by the door, their noses hidden in their linens, and the physicians and their assistants stood by helplessly. Nefer-neferu-Aten-ta-sherit began to plead for water, and after a moment Pharaoh himself picked up a cup and went to the couch. Swiftly one of the physicians moved forward to raise the lolling head, but the delirious girl thrashed the cup away and went on moaning. Large black weals had appeared on her neck, and Akhenaten, gingerly pulling down the sheet, saw them on her breasts also. He let the linen fall and stood there, hands hanging loosely at his sides, and retched.

Nefertiti swept into the nurseries two hours later, but by then all three princesses were dead. At the sudden flurry of whispers and movement by the door, Akhenaten turned and, seeing who it was, began to weep as he fell toward her. “Nefertiti,” he gasped, “I have missed you so, I am desolate, help me… ” But she pushed past him grim-faced. The attendants stared at her. She had been absent from the palace for so long that for many of them she had begun to acquire the aura of a myth, a tragic, lonely woman living out her days in solitude, but the vigorous queen striding into the room bore no resemblance to the pale creature of their imagination. Nefertiti snatched the sheet from Sotpe-en-Ra’s body. After staring down on it for a long time expressionlessly she went through the door into the other room, and those there saw her repeat the action twice. When she had finished, she stalked back to Pharaoh and dropped the stained linen at his feet. “You killed my children,” she said.

Akhenaten put out a hand. “I feel pain also,” he whimpered.

She struck it away. “You keep me from them for four years, and then you kill them!” She was white with grief and rage. “Every child dead in Egypt should be laid at your feet. Do you know what the people are calling you, Majesty? The criminal of Akhetaten, and your mother a whore. Between you, you have brought down the curse of the gods on this doomed country! Do you repent? No!” She clenched both fists and began to pound them together. “You pile evil upon evil. Meketaten, Meritaten, and now your brother in your bed! I demand to see Ankhesenpaaten!”

The company gaped at her, their eyes turning to Pharaoh in expectation of seeing the royal uraeus on his forehead spit flame at the blaspheming queen. But Akhenaten had wrapped his arms around himself and was crooning quietly, and as they watched, he slumped to the floor and began to rock himself back and forth. After one contemptuous glance Nefertiti strode out, her own attendants running after her.

Ankhesenpaaten, who was sitting in her room listening to her lute player sing, jumped up in shock as her mother appeared in the doorway, and with a glad cry rushed to meet her. Enfolding her daughter, Nefertiti covered the dark head with kisses. Ankhesenpaaten stepped away, eyes shining.

“Mother! Has he released you? Are you coming back to the palace? Look!” Hurrying to the table, she snatched up a scroll. “The Babylonian king, Burnaburiash, wrote to Pharaoh, calling me Lady of Thy House and promising to send me seal rings made of lapis lazuli! I am really a queen now!”

Nefertiti looked at the cobra rising from the thin gold circlet on her daughter’s brow. Her glance traveled down, to the soft swell beneath the transparent linen of the girl’s gown. She turned on her heel and left without a word.

During the ride back to the north palace, Nefertiti sat stiffly behind the closed curtains of the litter, so consumed with shock and rage that she was unaware of her surroundings. Not until she had been carried through the thick gate in the wall that separated her home from the south city and her bearers began to lift her up the long flight of steps leading to the palace entrance did she come to herself. For fear of weeping she had not trusted herself to speak to the men who carried her away from the royal palace, and she could still only wave them away once they had set her down before her door. With her retinue following she walked into the cool half-light of her hall and then, turning, found her voice.

“Leave me alone, all of you. Go to your quarters. I do not want to hear or see anyone for several hours.”

Within moments she was alone. She began to wander the vast, quiet rooms of the palace, arms tightly folded, her grief demanding movement, as though by pacing she could step away from the pain. Gradually her thoughts became calmer, and the anger that had kept her tears at bay began to fade. In the end she went into her hall and, casting herself on a chair, put her hands to her face and wept.

That night she was still sitting at the window of her darkened hall, drinking moodily and gazing out on her ruined terraces, lit feebly by the light of a waning moon, when her herald cleared his throat politely behind her. Still in the grip of bitterness and anger, she turned impatiently. “I had not realized it was so dark,” she said. “Have the lamps lit. What do you want?”

“Your father waits without, Majesty.”

Nefertiti’s feathered eyebrows rose. “It is amazing that he has remembered he even has a daughter,” she snapped sarcastically. “Show him in.” The man bowed and left, motioning the servants to light the lamps. They began to move quietly about the room with tapers. Nefertiti waited, half-turned on her chair, her cup on the sill. Presently Ay bowed and approached, holding a child by the hand.

“This is not a pleasure,” she said coldly as they came to a halt. “I have received no help from you, Fanbearer. You may expect no hospitality from me.”

“I ask none,” Ay wheezed. “You are right, Majesty, and I know it is no use getting down on my knees and begging forgiveness.”

“Even if you could get down.” Nefertiti smiled frostily. “You have aged terribly, Father.”

“I know. My breath is short, but my girth is not. Listen to me, Daughter. You could now move back into the palace if you wished. Akhenaten would not summon the courage to object. He is a broken man.”

“No, thank you. Not after what I have endured today.”

“That is what I thought. Then grant me a favor.” He pushed the boy forward. “Take Tutankhaten under your protection.”

Nefertiti turned her full attention to the prince, assessing him slowly. “Explain,” she ordered, but the cold tone had gone out of her voice, and she kept her eyes on Tutankhaten. “Prince, if you go into the passage, you will find my steward. He has a small store of honey secreted away, and if you order him, he will let you dip your finger in it.”

“Oh?” The boy smiled uncertainly. “That will be nice, but I really want to go home.”

Ay bent. “Highness, you cannot. I will send your toys and your servants tomorrow, and I will visit you often.” Tutankhaten sighed ostentatiously and went out. Nefertiti waved her father to a chair. “I do not think that Pharaoh has long to live,” he said breathily, “and Smenkhara will be a useless successor. He is weak, greedy, and ignorant. But he is not altogether a fool. If he thought Egypt was anxious to take the crown away from him and give it to his half brother, I have no doubt he would murder the boy.”

“Is Egypt anxious?”

“She is becoming so. Smenkhara resembles his brother more every day and makes no attempt to use his influence with Pharaoh in any productive way. Tutankhaten will be safe here. You guard yourself well.”

Nefertiti raised her cup and drank reflectively, her unwavering gaze on Ay’s face. “I see. And if the time should come when the Double Crown is placed on his head, who will be his empress, who his regent?”

“You can put the disk and plumes on your head if you wish. I will be regent.”

“Ah. And what will Horemheb do?”

“He will be making war in Syria.”

Nefertiti laughed abruptly and sat forward. “Does he know about this? Does Tiye?”

“I have discussed it with him. But Tiye is old, Nefertiti. After Beketaten’s death and the news of Tia-Ha’s passing, she began to draw into herself. She is often ill and wants to talk of nothing but the past. I will outlive her.”

“You speak of such things so callously, yet she has always been in your heart, your friend as well as your sister and goddess. I think it is your ambition that has outlasted hers. How strange.”

“I am offering you another chance at active rule, a return to power, this time as empress.”

“Providing I obey the regent-to-be.”

“Of course.”

A slow smile spread over Nefertiti’s still lovely features. “There are many unforeseen forks in this road you describe so glibly as wide and straight. And do not forget that assuredly I shall be present at your funeral, my father.” She relaxed again, folding back into the chair, her fingers curling around the cup. “I will keep the boy. He can entertain me. But what will Tiye say when you tell her I have her precious prince?”

Ay got to his feet with difficulty. “I do not think I will tell her. She has no more interest in her children. They have brought her nothing but grief. She will not miss him. No one will. All at the palace are wrapped in their own miseries.”

“So am I. You are dismissed, Fanbearer. Put liniment on that chest of yours. It might free your breathing.”

He bowed and went out into the night.

Tiye turned on her side and, pulling the cushions lower, lay gazing into the duskiness of her bedchamber. At the far side of the room Piha sat cross-legged on her sleeping mat, haloed in the light from the one lamp by her knee, her head bent over her sewing. Behind her the shadows caused by her small movements glided softly on the wall, and the tune she was humming under her breath was the only sound in the quiet room. Tiye, watching her, envied her contentment. In a while, Tiye knew, she would roll up the linen tidily and come to the couch to enquire if there was anything her mistress needed, but until then she remained wrapped in her task. The day had been uneventful but for the report that had come from the palace, telling Tiye that Pharaoh had been shut in his apartment now for four days, refusing food and drink, sitting on the floor of his bedchamber and often failing to recognize the worried servants around him. Tiye, still weak from the attack of fever, could summon no real concern for her son. She had done all she could for Egypt and for him and would no longer allow herself to care.

She had begun to doze when she heard a commotion in the passage outside and opened her eyes in time to see Piha lay aside her work and go to the door, already opening. Her brother stepped through, motioned Piha to wait in the corridor, and before Tiye had finished struggling to a sitting position, he was beside the couch. He did not bow. “Tiye…” he began, but seeing the extreme agitation in his face, she interrupted, “Bring the lamp and set it on this table.” She was fully awake now, watching him, alarmed, as he did as he was bid. His hands were shaking, and the flame quivered in his grip as he placed the lamp where she had indicated. She nodded for him to speak.