The Twelfth Transforming (16 page)

Amunhotep smiled as she straightened. “Mourning suits you, Sitamun. It matches the blue of your eyes.”

“My pharaoh, my dear brother,” she said, smiling back encouragingly, “by right I should have waited to give you your coronation gift, but I wanted you to have it in peace so that selfishly I might enjoy your pleasure. Will you walk to the canal with me?” Without waiting for an answer her arm slid through his, and they began to make their way to the forecourt. “The Aten temple is still a long way from dedication,” she went on, “and the princess’s own rises slowly also. Does the delay make you impatient?” He warmed to her, answering her questions easily, feeling her other hand cover his own. “And Princess Meritaten does well, I hear,” Sitamun continued as they began to cross the white dazzle above the water steps. The crowds always drifting about went down before them.

“She does. And she is already very beautiful. I think she will have Nefertiti’s foreign eyes.”

They had come to the edge of the private canal that separated the palace and river, and strolled under the shade of the date palms and sycamores that lined it. At the point where the water steps angled and finally ended, a small barge took the gentle swell, a blue and white damask sail folded neatly against its mast. It was made of cedar, and Amunhotep could smell the scent of the exotic wood. Its sides were inlaid with gold that gleamed dully under the trees. On the prow a giant, rayed sun had been overlaid in silver, and on the stern a silver Eye of Horus regarded them dispassionately. In the center of the deck a cabin had been built, its furnishings of Babylonian brocade, Nubian leather, and silk from Asia, its appointments all worked in blue and white, the imperial colors. Small folding chairs of cedar inlaid with ivory were scattered about the deck. A golden canopy was folded back against the front wall of the cabin. Slaves kilted and head-clothed in blue and white stood lining the rail, and as Amunhotep stepped forward, they knelt on the deck.

Sitamun waved one bejeweled arm. “This is my gift to you, Horus. I have caused the Aten to be emblazoned upon it. Accept it with my humble homage and love.”

Their servants set up a buzz of admiration behind them. Amunhotep’s grave gaze swiveled to his sister.

“I accept with amazement,” he said. “It is strongly built. A magnificent gift. The steward of your estates must be sweating in fear.”

All laughed dutifully at the timid joke, and Sitamun smiled into his eyes. “I am richer than any woman save our mother,” she said coolly. “Therefore I can give with munificence. The crew and slaves are yours also.”

Amunhotep turned and embraced her warmly. “We will take a little journey immediately,” he said. “The day is perfect.” At his nod slaves sprang to motion, running out the ramp and untying the sail. Pharaoh swayed into the cabin, with Sitamun following. The servants scrambled after them, spilling over the deck and settling under the awning. “Just to the great bend,” Amunhotep ordered, and the little craft left the steps and began to glide down the canal. Amunhotep lay back on the cushions. “Nothing is more pleasant than a day spent on the river,” he said dreamily. “If you look carefully, Sitamun, you can see the nests of birds almost hidden by the palm branches. I love to drift past the flocks of heron and ibis, such dazzling whiteness, such thin, delicate legs! Truly, life is a wondrous thing.”

Sitamun, reclining beside him, allowed her blue linen to flutter away from her legs in the warm wind that blew through the cabin. “Look, Amunhotep,” she said, pointing to the bank, “a crocodile.” They watched as the silent beast slid into the water. “They like to wait close to Thebes. Sometimes bodies end up in the Nile. How terrible, to die without being beautified, to have no place in the next world.”

“The fate of the body is not important,” Amunhotep said kindly. “By the Aten’s power we are born, and by that same power the ka survives.”

Oh, no
, Sitamun thought.
If I must listen to one more discourse on the power of the sun, I shall fall asleep
. But Pharaoh did not speak further, and when Sitamun glanced up, she found him staring at her.

“What will you do now that your royal husband is dead?” he asked, his voice high and quick, his bovine eyes moving over her body with an appraisal that was too obvious to be insulting.

Sitamun lifted the ringlets away from her breasts and began to play with her necklaces. “What can I do, Horus? I belong to the harem. I am a widow. But even if I could leave, I would not. I wish to serve you as faithfully as I served Osiris Amunhotep. I have been a princess, a consort of an heir, a queen. If my long experience of court life could be useful to you, I am yours to dispose of as you see fit.”

He nodded sagely. “You have been kind to me, Sitamun. Your advice in matters of rule would be useful, if mother cannot supply the answers, of course. Have the hangings dropped, and we will discuss it.”

Sitamun gave a short order, and a servant hurried to untie the heavy curtains. As they were enclosed in the warm darkness, it seemed to Sitamun that her brother’s eyes grew more feverishly bright. His languid, long-boned hands had begun to fidget, passing over his soft belly, stroking each other, plucking slowly at the ankle-length kilt he wore. “In this dimness your mouth melts into an undefinable age,” he murmured, his voice breaking. “I have a mind to make you a Great Royal Wife. Such beauty should not be wasted.”

Senses suddenly alert, Sitamun felt his palm move to her body, plucking at the ribbons that held her sheath in place, passing gently over her breasts. He lifted her wig, and her own hair tumbled over her shoulders. The sight of it seemed to fill him with sudden energy, and his thick, heart-shaped lips descended to enclose her own. For a moment her body rebelled, repulsed by his sheer ugliness, but she closed her eyes, summoning the courage and skill she had used time and again with her father, and found the task more pleasurable than she had imagined it would be.

Afterward he gently replaced her wig and called for the curtains to be raised. On the deck the servants still chattered and giggled, and water slapped against the golden sides of the craft. Amunhotep regarded his sister. “I enjoyed that,” he said. “You know more about making love than Nefertiti. Perhaps you could teach her.”

Incredulous, Sitamun struggled to keep her expression noncommittal, not knowing whether he joked or was indulging a fit of spite against his wife. She realized that neither was true, and that he was simply speaking his thoughts aloud. In that respect, Sitamun decided as she tied up her sheath and clapped her hands for something to quench her thirst, he was dangerous.

The news of Sitamun’s gift to her brother, their pleasure trip, and the time they had spent secluded from their staff went from mouth to greedy mouth at Malkatta, where the seventy days of mourning for the dead pharaoh had left the court eager to return to its normal affairs. Within two days Nefertiti was brooding over the rumors, and on the third night she confronted Amunhotep in his bedchamber. The air was chill, and two braziers smoked at either end of the capacious room. The doors to Amunhotep’s golden Aten shrine stood open, and the incense he had burned while he said his prayers still smoldered. He himself was sitting propped up on his couch, knees to chin, arms folded loosely across them, lost in the trance he so often entered after he had held his daily conversation with the god. His head was bare, and Nefertiti, approaching him swiftly, was struck yet again by its curious shape. She was too accustomed to it to feel distaste and found, rather, that the more she saw of her husband, the more drawn to him she was. She understood him no better now than she had when the marriage contract was sealed, but her need to protect his odd innocence had grown. Coming up to him, she lifted his limp hand and kissed it gently. He raised his head, blinking, and swung his legs over the edge of the couch.

“Horus, you look tired,” she said.

He nodded. “I dislike the dark hours, Nefertiti. I feel safe only under the heat of Ra, the light that reveals every hidden thing. Night is full of whispers unless I am able to sleep it away.”

Nefertiti clenched her fists under the cover of her sleeping robe. “And did you feel safe behind the curtains of the sumptuous barge Queen Sitamun gave you?”

“Oh, very. Sitamun is not a part of the darkness. She cannot hurt me.”

“Pharaoh, your father is dead. No one can hurt you now. But you can be used. Can you not see that Sitamun wishes to use you to become empress?”

He rose abruptly and began to wander about the room, and Nefertiti noticed that he stayed always within the border of light cast by the dozens of lamps in stands around the walls and flaring on every table.

“Sitamun has a right to become a reigning queen with you,” he said almost sulkily. “I love you, Nefertiti. You are beautiful, and you were good to me long before Mother had me released from the harem. But Sitamun is my own blood, my sister, my wife by right.”

“But a pharaoh has not been obliged to wed fully royal blood for hentis! The way of choosing an heir has changed!”

“That is not the point.” He picked up a green glass vase from Keftiu and absently began to trace the outline of the sea urchin etched onto it. “As the chief of a chosen and holy family I must keep that family united. Darkness hosts against it. We must lock arms. We must love each other strongly.”

He had sometimes spoken to her in this vein before, and she was terrified that she was beginning to understand fully his implications. She asked brusquely, “Is that why you made love to Sitamun behind the hangings of her barge?”

“My barge, Nefertiti.” He frowned over the vase and then, setting it down, came toward the couch, hands linked behind his back, short sleeping kilt sagging under his loose belly. “That is partly why. But she is also beautiful.”

“How is it, Pharaoh, that Sitamun’s beauty can excite you so, and yet my own has roused you so little?” She was aware of being on dangerous ground but was close to tears of jealousy. His periodic impotence was a secret she had kept more out of pride than loyalty. She had cast about in her mind many times for its cause, for when he did come to her full of desire, he was as passionate as any woman could wish.

He sat beside her, draping an arm across her shoulders. “Dear Nefertiti!” he said. “What is flesh but a vehicle for the ka? How can you care about Sitamun’s flesh when you and I share the communion of our kas? You are my wife, my cousin, my friend. It is enough.”

It is not enough if it means that my position as future empress is in jeopardy
, Nefertiti thought furiously. Turning to him, she began to kiss him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, but his lips remained cool and unresponsive, and finally she drew away. “Do not marry Sitamun, I beg you,” she whispered. “If you must have her, put her in your harem.”

“But I have already decided.” He spoke mildly. “She is to be queen, with you. She is my sister.” He emphasized his last words, and Nefertiti suddenly saw the truth of the issue she was confronting. “Your sister—and your father’s wife,” she said slowly, her heart pounding. “Of course. That is why she excites you. That is why you make no move to fill your own harem. Will you acquire all your father’s women, Amunhotep?”

For the first time she saw him angry. “Don’t say that!” he shouted, full lips drawn back trembling over his teeth, hands clasped together. “You are disrespectful!” Amazed, she saw his eyes fill with tears. “That man was not my father! Go away!” He jerked at her with his elbow, and she slid speechlessly to her feet. Bowing, she turned to leave, but he called to her, his shrill voice muffled, “Lower, Nefertiti! Bow to the ground! You know who my father is. All of you know. Put your face to the floor!”

She did as he commanded and then, rising, fled from the room. In her own bedchamber her body servant was lighting the lamps. “You should have done that by now!” she shrieked and, striding to the girl, slapped her twice with all the force she could muster. “And why is my sheet not turned down, my gown laid out?” The girl ran, and Nefertiti flung herself onto the couch. Bunching the sheet in both hands, her body rigid, she surrendered to her rage for fear she should have to face the darker thing beneath it.

The day of Amunhotep’s funeral dawned pearl-clear and cool, and Tiye shivered as she stood in her tiring room while Piha and her other slaves draped her in blue and the Keeper of the Royal Regalia waited in the anteroom with her crowns.
Today I will sacrifice to my husband
, she thought determinedly.
I shall look back down the years with gratitude
. She knew that the procession was al ready forming on the road that led behind the valley where every pharaoh had been buried since the time of Thothmes I, Egypt’s Restorer. The harem women would be milling about, gossiping and adjusting their robes. The foreign delegations, swathed in their barbaric costumes, would be anxiously watching the Overseer of Protocol and his scribes. The ministers and other courtiers were doubtless whiling away the time by gambling or picking at the sweetmeats their servants carried.

Kheruef appeared at her doors himself, wearing a floor-length kilt of mourning blue, his headcloth a strip of gold-shot blue linen. “It is time, Majesty. All is in order.”

“I do not want to wait while the women are sorted out.”

“They are ready, and Queen Sitamun is on her litter.”

The horde fell silent as Tiye stepped under the pylon that divided Malkatta from the environs of the dead and made her way to her litter. Although it galled her that tradition demanded that she be carried beside her daughter, she gave no sign of it, and greeting Sitamun politely, she reclined on the litter. Her husband’s coffin already waited far ahead, propped against the rocky wall of the tomb, guarded by a thousand priests from Karnak, who had accompanied it in the early hours and had watched it being dragged on the sledge by the red oxen of custom to its resting place. Beside it stood the four canopic jars of white alabaster topped by the heads of the sons of Horus. The temple dancers were also there, sitting silently under their canopy.

At Tiye’s signal the cortege began to straggle along the road as the sun gained strength. From far back in the procession, behind the family members and the army commanders, the harem women began to shriek, scooping earth out of the baskets they carried and sprinkling it on their glistening wigs. Following them were the kitchen slaves and overseers of the burial feast that would take place outside the tomb when the ceremony was concluded.