Valley of the Kings (16 page)

Meryat stood. She gave the cup into Nefertiti's hand. The Queen Regent lifted it, and it wobbled in her grip; Meryat took the cup and the hand of the Queen and helped her to hold the wine and drink.

“I feel so weak,” Nefertiti said. She lay back again on the ivory headstand. “I know I shall die soon. Ankhesenamun! When I am dead, you must care for Meryat. Take her among your own women—let her be to you as she has been to me.”

Meryat put her hand over her face. These words filled her with pain and sorrow and gratitude for the Queen.

“Mother, Mother, you shall not die,” Ankhesenamun said. “Not if you truly wish to live.”

“I will die, and soon,” Nefertiti said. “I am failing, so weak, so tired, and yet I cannot sleep, and the most fearful thoughts come into my mind—where is Tutankhamun? Did I ask that he be sent for?”

“He has been called, Mother,” Ankhesenamun said. “But do not talk of dying. You will put yourself into such a cast of mind that the grave will seem more home to you than your own bed.”

Nefertiti shook her head from side to side. “That is your father in you—ever he believed that the mind ruled the body—dragged the flesh around itself like a garment, to wear as it willed.”

Ankhesenamun's smile was false and taut. She said, “Perhaps, then, he did not really die, but only put off his garment for another.”

“I loved him,” Nefertiti said. “Even when he became what I did not understand.” In a lower voice, she said, “I love him yet.”

“May I ask your advice, Mother?”

The Queen smiled, and her eyes opened a little. “Of course.”

“Someone—a soothsayer—it has been said that if we make sacrifice to Isis, the goddess will heal Egypt.” Ankhesenamun held her mother's hand. “Should we give heed to such talk?”

“It is an offense to the Aten.”

“But if we are wrong…” Ankhesenamun held her mother's hand to her cheek. “Every day I see more—how they suffer—the people cannot follow the Aten. What if we are wrong?”

“The Aten is God. No other is God. He alone is the truth. If Egypt must die to serve the Aten, then let Egypt die.”

“How they suffer,” Ankhesenamun said. She was biting on her lip.

“Think of the Aten,” Nefertiti said. “It is the Aten who matters, and not the people—they are only shadows of his will.” Her voice began to carry a fretful, whining edge. “But where is Tutankhamun?”

Ankhesenamun leaned forward, intense. “All this suffering began when the Aten and my father drove away the old gods.”

“How dare you say so?” Nefertiti cried. “He is God! He can do with us as he wishes.”

Ankhesenamun said nothing. She looked deep into her mother's face. Meryat dampened a cloth to bathe the sick Queen's face. Ankhesenamun took it from her and touched the cool linen to her mother's brow.

“We failed him,” Nefertiti said. “When Akhenaten died, we let that foul rat of Amun back into his nest.”

“Otherwise we could not keep power. Was that not the bargain?”

“It was then that the evil came upon us.”

Ankhesenamun held her mother's hand. “I will not argue with you now.”

Nefertiti's head rolled from side to side. “Where is Tutankhamun? Why is he not with me now?”

Ankhesenamun made herself busy with the damp cloth. Meryat turned away to fill the basin of water.

“Answer me! Why has he not come to me?”

“Mother—”

“Answer me!”

The Queen Regent started up from her couch. Ankhesenamun pushed her gently down. “Meryat! Bring her wine. Mother, please, be calm.”

“Where is he? Is he ill? Is the King ill? O Aten, my hope, let it not be.”

Meryat was at the chest pouring the wine. She glanced over her shoulder at the two Queens, surrounded by the fan girls like people in a frieze.

Ankhesenamun said, “Mother, lie still. Tutankhamun is well. He is healthy as the crocodiles. He has gone. He went to Istufti, to escape the plague.” Istufti was the King's great palace near Saïs, in the Delta.

Nefertiti lay still. Her face was white. At last she said, “He has fled? He has left me?” Her tongue slid over her lips. “I am so dry. Meryat, the wine.”

Meryat brought the chased cup. The Queen Regent drank deep of the wine. She lay back; Ankhesenamun put her hand behind her mother's neck to cushion her.

“He ran away,” Nefertiti said. “Where is the king in him? Hiding, like a rat, in the little finger of his soul.”

“Mother.”

“I shall not speak of him again.”

She did not. Thereafter they spoke of minor things, their clothes, their friends, and the wine. The night gathered outside the windows. Meryat had a meal brought for Ankhesenamun: duck's eggs and bread and honey. Untouched, it drew the flies into the corner by the balcony.

Nefertiti was failing. Meryat imagined the sickness as a bird that struggled to be free, that carried Nefertiti's soul in its golden beak. The Queen Regent's mind was unquiet, and she spoke as if this were her wedding day. Her face blotched with fever, her wide eyes glazed, she spoke with delight of the robe of embroidered linen that she considered herself to be wearing, and said that she heard music. Apprehensively she asked her women of her bridegroom, whom she had never seen.

“Is he ugly? I cannot bear ugliness—”

“Mother,” Ankhesenamun said and, putting her hands on Nefertiti's shoulders, tried to push her down again on the couch. “Calm yourself, you will exhaust yourself—”

“Sister.” Nefertiti resisted the pushing; one hand gripped Ankhesenamun's wrist. Her nails were broken. Her eyes were as wide open as they would go, so that a ring of white encircled her pupils. “Sister,” she said, “call for my father. I will stop the wedding.”

“Mother, please listen to me. Oh, she hears no word I say.”

“I have heard that he is ugly,” Nefertiti said. Meryat started forward with the wine; Ankhesenamun waved her back. The Queen Regent raised herself wobbling on her elbows.

“Is this what it means to be beautiful—to marry an ugly man? Bear ugly children?”

“Mother!”

Nefertiti sank back. She had worn herself out. Meryat crept nearer and helped Ankhesenamun care for her. Before dawn, Nefertiti died in her daughter's arms.

Meryat pressed her hands over her face. She longed with all her heart to return to an earlier day, before the troubles, when she had been a child and Nefertiti laughed and played whimsical games with her.

In the morning the red dust had drifted in under the Queen Regent's bed. Meryat swept it out again with a broom of rushes.

Some days after the death of Queen Nefertiti, Hapure left his village for the last time. He wandered along the edge of the dead Nile.

There, as if in extremity to be there was some comfort, clumps of people sat beside the river, their knees drawn up, and their eyes turned on the thread of murky water that lay in the bed of the Nile. No one spoke. No one took notice of the other people there. At the very lip of the water, green slime was growing, like the putrescence of death on Egypt. Hapure sat down at the rim of the water and covered his head with his garment and mourned.

It was not for Nefertiti that he wept, nor even the Nile that was slain in the battle of the gods for Egypt. He could not really say whom or what he mourned. He thought of Tutankhamun, but that was just a name: he had no Pharaoh in his heart.

“Hapure!”

The voice roused him; he lifted his head. A man crouched beside him. With a shudder, Hapure recoiled from the other man.

“Hapure! Look at me—it is Sennahet.”

Hapure's lips shaped the name. He looked into the face of the man beside him, and an old interest awoke in him. He said, “Sennahet. Are you alive, then?”

He looked around them. The bodies of the folk of Thebes were clotted here and there on the bank of the river. Clouds of flies buzzed over them. The sky was yellow with dust.

He began to shake violently, and his head snapped painfully on his neck. It was Sennahet shaking him.

“Hapure, heed me. I have a place in the palace now. I will bring you bread. I will save your life,” Sennahet whispered into his ear. “Only tell me where the gold is hidden!”

Hapure coughed and could not stop coughing; his throat was raw and swollen. He had no notion what gold Sennahet was speaking of. The only word that found his ears was the word
bread
, and he put out his hand. His body was torn with coughing. He held out his hand to Sennahet.

“Bread—” Between coughs he spoke the word. “Bread—”

“Only tell me where is the gold!”

“Bread—”

“Aiyyiih!”

The scream turned them both around. Hapure blinked. His eyelashes were coated with dust and he saw everything through a red haze.

Down the river someone was jumping and shouting.

The people near Hapure began to groan. One scrawny man stood up, his limbs like birds' limbs, bone swathed in horny skin. All along the riverbank, folk stirred, and a general whimper rose, as if now even to move hurt them. Hapure leaned forward to see what they had seen, what had brought them to this effort.

“Aiyyiih!”

Startled, Hapure scrambled to his knees. He rubbed his burning eyes. Beside him, Sennahet muttered an oath. They looked where all were looking. Egypt, dead save for its eyes, looked on the Nile.

There a little boat was sailing, drawn along by one with a rope. In the boat was the Goddess Isis.

Hapure filled his lungs. He put out his hand to Isis as he had to Sennahet. He saw the face of the goddess turn, her eyes shining with tears. Tears wet her cheeks. Bedecked with her sacred crown, with the lily and the spindle in her hands, all glistening with her golden robes, she sailed slowly down the Nile, turning her head from one side to the other. Her gaze of pity fell upon the people, and everyone cried out.

“It is Ankhesenamun,” Sennahet murmured, beside Hapure. “She has brought Isis into the world again.”

Hapure gave a glad cry. He stumbled down toward the river. In the green slime along the edge of the water he fell on hands and knees and worshiped the goddess.

“Isis, save us!” His voice was lost in the thousands of voices that took up the cry. “Isis, save us, save us…” He pressed his face to the barren mud, the stink of the dead river in his nostrils, and wept for joy.

Every day thereafter, Isis traveled on the Nile, and the people worshiped her. Then at last the dead one began to live again. The river swelled. The ripening waters rose and spread across the land of Egypt, and her people were restored to hope.

12

The Queen sat upon her throne and called the High Priest of Amun to her.

“The flood has come,” she said. “Now the crops will grow again, and if the gods are kind all Egypt will eat and grow strong. But we must have seed, and the people must be fed and cared for until they can plant and bring in the harvest.”

The priest stood erect before her, the privilege of his office. He wore no wig and no black kohl about his eyes, only a white cloth about his loins. Under his fingernails was the stale blood of sacrifices to his god, the god of fear, Amun, Lord of the City.

He said, “What you say is all true, my Queen.”

“Then you will help me from your secret stores.”

“Ah,” the priest said, “but what can we do? The times have stripped us of everything.”

“I see no starving priests,” the Queen said. She gripped the right arm of her throne and leaned over the priest, her will strong against him.

He said, “And I see the palace, all covered with gold.”

She looked awhile on him without saying anything. Her fingers gripped the arm of the throne. There were torches on the wall behind her, casting her shadow over him who stood before her. She yearned to crush him for his impudence. Yet she needed his help.

At last she said, “I had hoped to find you generous, recalling on whose goodwill your very life depends.”

“Yes, now you love mercy, Daughter of Akhenaten. But when your father set upon my god, then you hated mercy.”

She started up from her place. The priest flung out his hand to hold her.

“Destroy me if you wish! Every day I see the black scorch on the pillars of the temple where Pharaoh set fire to the house of my god. I will not relent, nor will I help you, until I see the walls of Pharaoh humiliated as well.”

He departed. The Queen sat rigid in her chair. Her blood was hot against the priest. She thought of sending forth her soldiers to take her vengeance. Slowly her hot temper cooled. Deep in thought, she sat there a long while, considering where else she might find the seed to plant the fields and the grain to keep the people alive until the crop ripened. In the end she called the priest back again.

“I shall make naked the walls of my palace,” she said, “if you will give of your secret hoardings.”

The priest bowed before her. “The will of the Queen is my command.”

A long look passed between them. Ankhesenamun was thinking in her heart that in time to come she would have some opportunity for vengeance. On the face of the priest, she read the same thought, that when the chance came he would strike at her again. So it was truce, not peace. She raised her hand to him.

“Go.”

Sennahet dreamed that the sun fell to earth and rolled into a hole in the earth and was covered up. This dream he took to refer to the secret burial of Pharaoh Akhenaten. He went into the desert west of Thebes, and there he came on a place that seemed like the place of his dream. He dug there.

Every day another place seemed to be significant, and he dug another hole in the desert. He did no work. Soon his absence from the palace was noticed. The overseer of laborers warned him to be more responsible.

Then Sennahet had another dream, and he went out into the desert and dug more holes in the ground, and found nothing. He stopped returning to the palace, except for food and water, which he took out in sufficient supply for two or three days. He slept in the desert. Every day he dug holes.

One day when he came to the royal pantry for bread the overseer of laborers caught him and drove him away from the palace with stones.

Sennahet's feet were sore; his belly was empty. He trudged off down the Avenue of the Sphinxes of the Jubilee until he came to the river. The sun struck him with its blades of heat and light. He could not return to the desert without food and water, and he had no money. Yet he longed with his complete soul to dig holes in the sand.

The savior flood had recently ebbed. All around Thebes, people worked in the fields. As the waters subsided, a long, silty island had appeared in the river above the Imperial Temple; on it men planted and hoed, and some tips of green already showed above the black surface of the land. Sennahet looked on all this with no interest. He thought only of digging up the dry sand of the desert.

He sat down on the ferry stage, at the edge of the bench where people waited to board the boat. Two or three people stood around the stage. Sennahet thrust out his hand.

“Have mercy on me… have mercy…”

Someone threw him a handful of figs.

He crossed the river and went along the broad street that ran from the Common City in the north to the City of the Gods where the temple stood. At one end of the avenue was the highest of the Golden Rays of the Sun, a pillar sixteen cubits in height, plated over with gold and silver alloy. Sphinxes and statues of Pharaoh lined the street. Sennahet, trudging in their shadow, felt no greater than a speck of dust. His throat was raw. He begged a drink of water from a vendor.

At the temple a scribe of the priesthood of Amun heard him without pity.

“A measure of wheat,” he said, “and half a measure of oil, and a small jar of beer, that is all we give. For that you must work a full day in the fields of the god.”

“Work in the field,” Sennahet said, angry. “But the Queen has ordered that all who are hungry should be fed from your stores! I was there—I heard her decree.”

“The fields are fertile again,” said the scribe. “Amun has restored Egypt. Can you plow?”

“I am no plowman,” Sennahet cried. “Once I had my own fields—before Akhenaten brought the curse on Egypt—”

“It is sin to speak of the Criminal,” said the scribe. He took a tablet from his workbox and a stylus from behind his ear. “In any case, all the fields around Thebes belong to the god, now. Your name?”

Sennahet shouted, “I had two plowmen in my fields, and I gave them each a full pot of beer, morning and evening!”

The scribe shrugged and stuck his stylus back behind his ear. He went away into the temple.

“All the beer they wished!” Sennahet shouted after him.

The scribe disappeared into the darkness and gloom of the temple. Sennahet raised his head; his temper was spent, and he felt short of breath. The giant columns around him were as thick around as three men. On the south-facing side was carved in low relief the image of the lotus, symbol of Upper Egypt. Sennahet put his hand into the rough stone. The tremendous columns around him enclosed him in silence and solitude. From beyond, outside, the murmurings of other people reached him, the sighs and laughter. The past several days seemed like a dream to him. He shut his eyes.

He went back along the Imperial Street. Rows of men marched like soldiers past him, carrying hoes and rakes on their shoulders. They chanted as they walked. Sennahet was going in the opposite direction, and they forced him off to the side of the road, almost under the paws of the sphinx there. The many voices of the workmen were raised in a farmer's song. He waited until they passed by before he went on.

Sennahet sat down on the side of the road. He stretched out his hand to beg. He sat there for three days. The dust and the bright sun and the biting flies tormented him. His soul shrank until he was aware only of the sun and the flies.

Chariots with wheels of gold whirled by him in the road. He put out his hand, and his voice began its weary plea. The nearest chariot rolled on by him, with the sun gleaming on its wheels.

He looked up. The Queen held the reins of the high-stepping horses.

Sennahet bleated. He saw his only hope there, rattling away behind two trotting horses. On cramped legs he hurried after her, crying out to her in a croak at each step. His strength lasted only a dozen strides. The chariot was just beyond his reach. He flung himself at the shining wheel.

“Hold!”

He lay in the dust, panting, and the Queen stood above him.

“Who is this man? Why does he try to take hold of me?”

“Lady Queen,” he cried, “it is I, your servant Sennahet.”

She looked frowning down at him; she did not recognize him. Beside her in the chariot was another woman, her waiting woman Meryat. This woman leaned down suddenly and stared into Sennahet's face.

“It is Sennahet,” she said to the Queen. “He whom you rescued from the lion.”

“Then what does he here?” the Queen asked.

Sennahet got up, his hands locked on her chariot wheel. “O Great One, save me. I am fallen very low, for no fault of my own.”

She recoiled from him. To Meryat she said, “See to him. Do what is necessary.” Grasping her whip, she turned back to her horses.

Meryat stepped down from the chariot, and the horses jumped forward, tearing the wheel from Sennahet's hands. He fell in the dust and skinned his knees. Meryat stood before him. Her nose was wrinkled in distaste, perhaps at the dust.

He said to her, “Why does she flee from me?”

“You should have stayed saved,” Meryat said. She beckoned to a chariot that waited nearby. “Come with me. We will return to the palace.”

Three months after the Nile came to its flood, when the threat of plague was gone, Pharaoh returned to Thebes.

No one came to greet him. The shrilling of the flutes of his own musicians were the only cheers. Tutankhamun's golden barge sailed past the colossal gates and pillars of the temple, where the black scars still showed of the Fire of the Aten. Beneath the gently waving ostrich fans, Tutankhamun sat with his eyes turned forward. His fanbearers and flute boys stood around him, sleek with scented oils. But no one cheered at this spectacle.

The desolate city passed by on either side. Tutankhamun seemed not to look. He wore a chest ornament of gold and carnelian; he wore sandals of gold, with the names of his enemies written on the soles. His great city Thebes surrounded him, yet no cheers rang across the water to meet him.

The wharves of the city were rotting away. A pall of gray smoke hung over the shabby buildings along the river. Nothing moved in the streets.

The oars of the King's barge rose dripping from the water and stroked forward. Tutankhamun stared forward, and without any effort he saw the turning panorama of Thebes as the barge swung toward the west bank.

At the edge of the Nile two gigantic seated images of Pharaoh greeted him. Looking between them, Tutankhamun saw the gold- and silver-plated walls of his palace. The sun blazed on them. The barge glided forward toward the mouth of the canal that led to the palace. Sitting motionless as the gigantic images, Tutankhamun was borne swiftly across the river and into the narrow waters.

As the blazing palace swept toward him, he saw that great patches of the precious metal adornment were missing. The report was true. She had peeled away the very walls of the palace to feed the rabble.

She was waiting on the wharf: Ankhesenamun. She was his niece, daughter of his elder brother Akhenaten, and for three years wife to her father, Akhenaten; she had mothered his daughter. Tutankhamun's fingers moved, stiff and heavy in their sacred rings. Strange feelings stirred in his breast. When he chose to speak to her, he would reproach her for what she had done, yet he would speak kindly to her, as well, because she was his wife.

His boatmen rowed the barge in to the quay. There the Queen stood, ajingle with her emblems and wearing her crown. Tutankhamun did not deign to look at her. He kept his gaze straight forward. The bearers approached him and lifted up his chair onto their shoulders. He moved forward to the ramp and down to the quay.

The Queen had knelt down. All her attendants had their faces in the dust. Tutankhamun signed that his bearers should stop. He hated to talk, to break the sacred silence around him, but he had not yet devised a way to make his wishes known without speech.

“Bid my royal wife attend me in my chambers.”

Before she could demean him with argument he was carried away into the palace.

Here his servants surrounded him. They knew his will without having to be told. They brought him his favorite cup and a dish of sweets and anointed him with oil in the scents he liked. They removed his sandals and massaged his feet. They did all this on their hands and knees, as neat and swift as cats.

Ankhesenamun did not come.

In the evening, when he could bear no more of her indifference, Tutankhamun went himself to her apartments. He found her in her robing room, with two low women undressing her.

“You must obey me,” he cried. He marched straight up to her. “I am Pharaoh!”

She pulled a robe over her own shoulders. She was lean and tall, taller than he; her elbows looked sharp.

“I will obey you,” she said, “when you give commands that honor you to give and me to receive.”

“And you took my gold—you robbed me.”

“The people were starving,” she said. “They needed seed for the fields.” She moved away from him, walking on her long feet across the painted floor. “You deserted them. Someone had to help them.”

“Them,” he said scornfully. “They are dross. I am Egypt. I must be protected. Without me there would be no world.”

As he spoke he saw himself as the whole world, bringing things into existence by looking at them, making men live by the beats of his heart.

Ankhesenamun was putting out the lamps set in recesses in the walls. The light flickered over her. Shadows formed under the high arch of her cheekbones. Her long throat was like a column of gold. Tutankhamun lifted his hands to his chest, where beat the drum of the god.

“You are my wife, Ankhesenamun.”

She wheeled. Her eyes widened; yet she was not looking at him, but beyond him, above him.

“We must make Egypt fertile,” he said. “We must show the land how to grow. Tonight I will come to you.”

“No,” she said.

He shouted at her, “You cannot deny me!”

“Tomorrow night.”

“You would rob my palace to buy seed, but you will not do with me the ritual necessary to make it grow?”