Return to Thebes (31 page)

Aye
(life, health, prosperity!)

He came to me yesterday morning, plaster scarcely twelve hours dry on Pharaoh’s tomb. He spoke without preliminary, almost without greeting save a perfunctory “Good morning, Father”—not using my titles, not honoring my age and dignities, consumed by the force of his own obsession and his certainty that he needs but state it with suitable impatience for it all to come about at once as he desires.

Well: this did not impress the Co-Regent Aye, though I let him think it did. I played for time, successfully, I think; and today he will find out that things are not as he so arrogantly assumes them to be.

“Father,” he said (he did not even bow: in his mind he was my superior already, I suppose), “I come to you on the business of Kemet.”

“What else, my son?” I asked mildly, because it was obvious he was under great tension and I thought mildness best. “There has been nothing before either of us but the business of Kemet, for many years. What aspect of it concerns you now?”

“The marriage of Her Majesty to the new Living Horus.”

“Oh? I did not know she had selected a new Living Horus.”

“It would not matter if she had,” he said contemptuously. “The choice rests with you and me, in any event.”

“Does it, my son?” I inquired dryly. “Does Her Majesty know this?”

“She will soon enough. What can she, a helpless girl, do about it? She will take whom we give her, and he will be the King.”

“I believe,” I said slowly, “that she had the Prince Zannanza in mind, did she not? Strange that he should have died so tragically en route, thereby bringing us further troubles with Suppiluliumas.”

“Suppiluliumas is a bag of wind,” he said harshly. “I shall drive him out of Palestine in a month’s time, have no doubt of that. He had no right to send Zannanza. No foreigner should wear the Double Crown. It was right that Zannanza should die.”

“His father does not seem to think so,” I remarked. “Nor, I believe, does Her Majesty.”

“She is a helpless girl,” he repeated in the same harsh tone. “What can she do about it? She will take whom we give her to be the Living Horus.”

“You have someone in mind for this honor, Horemheb?”

I gave him a bland look, under which he fidgeted. But he was not, of course, to be deterred.

“Certainly,” he said. “Myself.”

Though my granddaughter and I had expected this ever since Tutankhamon’s murder, the sheer effrontery of it took my breath away. Here it was at last, as blunt and direct and insistent as we had assumed it would be. Yet still, now that it had come, it was overwhelming.

But not overwhelming in the way he had hoped, my shrewd, ambitious son; because, after giving him stare for stare, I said quietly, “I should have to consult Her Majesty most carefully on that.”

“You will not consult Her Majesty on it for one second!” he snapped. “I, the General Horemheb, who have at my back the army of the Two Lands, the priesthood of Amon, and the people of Kemet, tell you this is how it will be!”

“You have some of the army—”

“Ramesses has secured all but a few garrisons for me!”

“—and you may have the priesthood of Amon—”

“Nefer’s age makes him timid. I have them.”

“—but you do not have the people of the Two Lands. They hate and fear you, my poor Horemheb. They will never accept you as King.”

“The people of Kemet,” he grated with a furious anger, for here I had apparently touched him straight on the quick—I had not realized until that moment that Horemheb, too, feels the need of love and suffers for the lack of it—“will learn to love whoever wears the Double Crown as they have learned many times in the past. If they do not learn of their own will, they will be made to learn. Why do you think
their
disapproval would make me hesitate, Father?”

“I have never had to look at it that way myself,” I said with a thoughtful air I knew would infuriate him further, but I did not care at that moment, I was beginning to become angry myself, “because the people have always loved me. I have never had to force them. And I think they give me, still, a strength you would be hard put to challenge.”

He looked at me for a long moment before he spoke. When he did he was very quiet, very calm, very firm. I knew then that words would no longer stop Horemheb, and that now only the shrewdest measures could prevent him from working his will upon us all.

“I shall have her, Father,” he said, “and I shall have the Double Crown. Now: will it be with your approval and support, or will Aye, too, go the way of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamon, your simple Amonemhet and Zannanza?”

“You are proud of such a catalogue?” I asked with a terrible bitterness, thinking him at that moment a monster: but his answer was not the answer of a monster, and almost persuaded me to give way.

“No, Father,” he said quietly. “I am not proud of the things I have been driven to do for the sake of Kemet. But for the sake of Kemet I have done them; and for the sake of Kemet I will do whatever else is necessary. So concede me my motive, if you will.”

“What are you?” I half whispered at last.

“I am he who loves the Two Lands,” he said simply.

“There is not one you name,” I said, “save Zannanza, who did not truly love the Two Lands. How could such horrors come from love?”

“I do not know, Father,” he said, still quietly. “But they have.” Abruptly his face changed, his voice changed. His patience, I could see, had run out. “Now,” he said harshly, “let us have no more parley. I would have you send for Her Majesty, Father—
at once
—so that we can conclude this business and be married tomorrow at the temple of Karnak. At which time Amon will crown me Living Horus, King and Pharaoh of Kemet, as the gods have ordained from my earliest youth, when a seer once said to me: ‘You will come to great power.’”

“I did not know of this seer!” I said in a last attempt to hold him off.

“I told no one,” he said with a bitterly humorless little smile, “else I should never have lived to see the prophecy come true. Now send for my cousin, Father. We must settle this with no more talking.”

Again our eyes held; until finally I said with a little nod and a weary sigh, “Very well. I shall go and talk to her.”

“Call her here! At once!”

“My son,” I said quietly, “all will be as you wish. But I must be allowed to speak to her privately first, to explain why this must be, to persuade her to accept it willingly and gracefully. Surely you do not wish to see hatred forever in the eyes of your wife when she looks at you! Surely even Horemheb needs at least a little love!”

Which, as I had shrewdly calculated, was the thing that did it. His face contorted with pain, his eyes actually filled for a moment with tears. He is driven, my son, driven: differently, but as surely, as his cousin Akhenaten.

He rubbed a hand savagely over his eyes. The pain was still in them as he said:

“Very well, Father. Go to her. Say it is only my great love for the Two Lands, and the need that all become calm and orderly again as soon as possible, that compels this. But tell her it must be. And I will send word at once to Karnak—in your name—telling them to make all ready for noon tomorrow, as we are agreed.”

“I shall give you my seal upon it,” I said and, taking a piece of papyrus hurriedly from my table, I wrote:

“To Nefer:

“Prepare all at once for the marriage tomorrow of Her Majesty Ankhesenamon, Queen and Lord of the Two Lands, to the new Living Horus, whom she will reveal to the world at that time, so that all may rejoice in his glory, and
ma’at
and order may come again to the kingdom.”

And hurriedly stamped it with my seal and gave it him; and he went away, believing all would be as he said. And I went at once to the palace of Sitamon, stopping only to bring Amonhotep, Son of Hapu, along from the small adjoining house he now occupies as steward of her estates; and in Sitamon’s private chamber, conferred with her, with him and with my granddaughter, who carries the blood of Ra and with it the legitimate right to the Double Crown.…

Now we are again at Karnak, and again the multitudes stretch out before us. Akhenaten began this practice of speaking directly to the people and allowing them to be witness to great events; Tutankhamon continued it; it seems good to me, too. Changes in the Great House come from within the Great House, but as I near the end of my life, and as I realize that the people’s love is really all that is left to me, I have come to perceive that it can sometimes be of genuine assistance.

Her Majesty and I are gambling all that it will be, today.

Again the drums beat, the trumpets blare, the banners fly. All is pomp, bustle, excitement. Neb-Kheperu-Ra is in the afterworld: it is time to move on. The people are eager and excited, filled with shouts and cries and sudden explosions of impatient anticipation as they wait to learn who their new Living Horus will be. There is an uneasy, uncertain note in much of this: many fear Horemheb.

He sits beside me, face impassive, revealing nothing to the crowd. Only we in the Family, who know him so well, can see the grim little lines of satisfaction at the corners of his mouth. He will be a fierce Living Horus, my clever son. Somewhere far back, I think, he decided that he will never receive love and so he will not deign to give it. The brief tears of yesterday were only a moment’s weakness. My son is himself again. In him Kemet will have a stern father and a hard and ruthless taskmaster. The people sense this and are afraid.

Nefer dodders forward (we have previously, of course, been inside the temple to offer our dutiful sacrifices to Amon), makes a few last ritual signs, chants a last blessing upon the Queen, dodders back to his seat.

Pale, tense but perfectly composed, as icily calm and very nearly as beautiful as her mother used to be, Ankhesenamon comes forward. Her voice trembles a little at first, then steadies. Clear and determined, it rings out across the crowd:

“Good people of Kemet! I, Ankhesenamon, Queen and Lord of the Two Lands, only existing bearer of the blood of Ra, sole remaining daughter of Nefer-Kheperu-Ra Akhenaten and Nefer-neferu-aten Nefertiti”—beside me I can sense Horemheb grow tense, for this reference is not necessary, stirring as it does old ghosts and old pains, unless she has some purpose he cannot yet fathom—“have called you together this day to receive a new Living Horus to wear the Double Crown and sit beside me as I conduct my rule of our beloved Two Lands.

“Such a one must be wise in the ways of men and of government. Such a one must be shrewd in counsel, sound in advice, fierce in war, kind in peace. Such a one must be a worthy successor to Amonhotep III, Akhenaten, Smenkhkara, Tutankhamon”—and again Horemheb tenses—“life, health, prosperity to them all! Such a one must be pleasing to the gods, to great Amon, to great Aten”—again he stirs uneasily—“and to them all. Such a one must be pleasing also to me, who am the sole surviving daughter of Nefer-Kheperu-Ra Akhenaten and Nefer-neferu-aten Nefertiti, sole existing bearer of the blood of Ra, sole bearer of the legitimate right to the Double Crown.…”

She pauses, takes a deep breath. We can see through her transparent skirt that her legs are trembling, but it does not affect her voice. Daughter of my daughter she is, and proud would be Nefertiti could she hear her now.

“Such a one,” she says, and her voice rises slightly, “I have already beside me in the House of Thebes. He has served us long and faithfully and well for many years. The highest posts of government have been his, the highest honors have rightfully come his way. I have known him all my life and never found him wanting. Valiant in war”—I can sense Horemheb begin to relax a little—“gracious in peace, magnanimous and wise in all things, it pleases me to marry him and thus create him Living Horus to sit beside and help me as I rule.

“My people of Kemet, hail your new Pharaoh! Hail Aye, Living Horus, Great Bull, Lord of the Two Lands, King and Pharaoh of our dearly beloved Kingdom of Kemet! May he have life, health and prosperity forever and ever, for millions and millions of years!”

The world explodes in a roar of sound. I am conscious of a strangled cry beside me, of Horemheb half starting from his seat, of Nakht-Min at his side reaching up and pulling him down again, an instinctive movement that could cost him his life but will not if Ankhesenamon and I can prevent it, and we will. I am conscious of a strange, moaning sound, like unto the insane, coming from Horemheb’s lips, drowned out, thank the gods, by the ecstatic roaring of the people. Then I rise and leave him and go forward to stand beside my granddaughter and the world seems to crack wide with sound, so much do they love me and so relieved are they that she has not chosen Horemheb.

When the sound dies at last she cries firmly:

“Nefer! Do you marry us in the rites of Amon! Now!”

We turn to look at him, and for a moment poor old Nefer appears absolutely paralyzed as he stares desperately first at us, then at Horemheb, then back at us. From the corner of my eye, for I would not deign to give him open look, I too steal a glance at Horemheb. He is deathly pale, completely immobilized. There is nothing, after all, that he can do, away from his troops and in front of this multitude. My granddaughter and I have gambled, and we have won.

“
Nefer!
”
She cries again sharply and, like a child’s toy suddenly yanked by a piece of string, he jerks hastily forward and takes up his position in front of us. Four of his priests automatically attend him, two on each side. In a shaky voice—so low that Her Majesty orders “Louder!” and he obeys enough to reach the front ranks, so that we have sufficient witnesses—he begins the ceremonies.

Ten minutes later I am the Living Horus, Aye, thirteenth King and Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty to rule over the land of Kemet.…

Now we parade triumphantly through Thebes and everywhere we are greeted with wildest adoration. Ankhesenamon smiles proudly and waves: each wave produces a new surge of loyalty and love. Now and again she turns and smiles at me: the crowd’s response grows even louder. We congratulate one another that we have done the right thing. My granddaughter has served the kingdom well with her eager acceptance of my idea—and I have received at last my deserved reward for more than fifty years of selfless service to the Double Crown.