Aanen
He worries, my arrogant brother-in-law: something in the set of his shoulders, which only I can see as I stand behind the throne while we move slowly down the river past the screaming throngs, tells me so.
He worries, and so he should.…
He is not alone.
To tell you the truth, so do I.
It is no small task to challenge Pharaoh, not something to be undertaken lightly. Death, instant and cruel, may await us all—if he lets impulse rule where only the cold and careful mind can be of any help. He may do so, for he is spoiled beyond his twenty-two years, heir to all the hard-won empire of ancestors stronger than he. Hatshepsut, the Tuth-mosids, his grandfather, Amonhotep II (life, health, prosperity to them all!), have left him a mighty heritage. He presides over it with three wives, two harems, infinite wealth, endless gold, and a populace that obviously adores him. This sound coming from both banks of the river is hardly a human sound: it surpasses welcome, it transcends loyalty, it rises into realms of love and worship given only to the Good God, and to few Good Gods with the absolute fervor accorded him.
This little Pharaoh is supreme in all things, and above all in the love of Kemet. But he is not supreme over Amon, though he thinks he can be. But he cannot, and today he will find it out.
Our brief exchange this morning was typical of the way his attitude toward the temple of Amon and those who serve it has changed in these recent months. Always, now, there is contempt, scarcely hidden, in his voice when he speaks to me. Always now there is as much ignoring of my wishes as he dares, an attempt to exclude the priesthood of Amon-Ra from its rightful place and rightful honors.
Most insulting of all to me personally, there is an open dislike for his own brother-in-law, whom he seems no longer able to separate from the god he has evidently come to despise.
Well. He put me here and here I shall stay. And we shall see who is the stronger, the God Amon-Ra or the God Amonhotep III (life, health, prosperity!).
This morning he could not even separate the brother-in-law from the Priest of Amon, he has come to dislike me so much in both capacities. My blood gives me the right to see my sister; my office gives me the right to attend her accouchement. Minor priests of Amon are at her side: It was the grossest insult to prevent the attendance of the highest, next to Pharaoh himself. Yet neither as brother nor as priest would he let me in. Contempt was in his tone, contempt in his action. It was flagrant in all degrees, and I shall not forget it. Contempt for me I could possibly stand, but not contempt for the god I represent
When we return to the Palace from the ceremony, I shall again demand entrance, and this time in the presence of those he fawns upon, such as my high and mighty brother Aye, and that pompous little scribe who scuttles about listening and learning all the secrets he can, Amonhotep, Son of Hapu.
We shall see then what he does … unless, of course, by that time he has other things to think about.
I believe this will be the case: and I perceive as we near the landing at Karnak that he too considers it a likely possibility. His shoulders are rigid with tension. It cannot be the tension of ceremony, because the Good God is the child and prisoner of ceremony: he does little from one year’s end to the next but follow ceremony. He has been on public display from the age of one, thousands of ceremonies have come and gone. It is not ceremony that bothers him now: it is worry for his son. And it is not the son perhaps even now entering the ranks of the gods in my sister’s bed at Malkata. It is the son who has already entered, and who comes from Memphis, at his father’s wish, as High Priest of Ptah to assume command of Amon’s ceremony, and thus be his father’s pawn in the dangerous game he plays with Amon.
This would be sacrilege, outrageous, unthinkable, unforgivable—if it happens. But I do not think it will.
My brother-in-law thinks—or rather he did think, up to a few minutes ago: now he is so sure, and every second grows more worried—that his secret plans for my nephew have passed unnoticed by Amon. But Amon-Ra is king of the gods and all things are known to him.
A slight but not quite normal stirring in the palace at Memphis—the ordering up, quite casually, of chariots for a “hunting party” to take the little Prince for a few days along the boundaries of the Red Land—the gathering of supplies and provisions for an expedition much longer than that—and it occurred to our temple in Memphis that something we should know about was under way. A few judicious bribes were dispensed from Amon’s vast wealth, a little judicious torture was administered in two or three cases by our special corps of protectors of Amon, and soon we had the whole story.
The Crown Prince was to be secretly brought to Thebes, was to displace me and my fellow priests, and was to be given control—the High Priest of Ptah in Amon-Ra’s own temple!—of the ceremony of prayer and greeting for his new brother.
It would have been a direct insult that Amon could never forgive. It would have meant a constitutional crisis of such magnitude that one or the other must go down before it.
It could not be permitted to happen.
For all our sakes, the mad plan of my arrogant fool of a brother-in-law had to be thwarted.
When word reached me, brought by a courier who had ridden two of his three horses to death along the way in his frantic haste, I made up my mind at once. I went directly to the Good God. I was received with the usual undertone of scarcely veiled insolence. I was pleased to see that it vanished, very soon.
“Son of the Sun,” I said, after bowing almost to the ground and rattling off his titles according to the prescribed ritual, “I understand the Crown Prince comes from Memphis to attend his brother’s birth.”
I had the satisfaction of seeing a look of blank dismay touch that round, smug little face for a second. But I will give him credit: he has will power, and with it he mastered his expression almost instantly and returned it to its usual bland serenity.
“Oh?” he said. “Is this what you hear, Brother?”
“It is not true, then,” I said promptly, and though he concealed the struggle inside, I knew it was going on. He decided to be honest.
“Such is my desire,” he said calmly.
“And plans are well advanced for his journey?”
“Well advanced.”
“Would it be too much to ask,” I said, and I am afraid I could not keep a certain dryness from my tone, for contempt breeds contempt, “that Amon-Ra be permitted to do suitable honor to his noble brother Ptah by accompanying the Prince in suitable numbers on his journey?”
“It is kind of you to ask, Brother,” he said, “but it is not necessary.”
“Not necessary,” I agreed, not revealing that I knew the monstrous plan behind the journey, “but fitting to the order of things in Kemet—that order which has existed unchanged for thousands of years and will continue for thousands of thousands, into eternity. It is right that Amon-Ra pay respect to Ptah, it is right that priests of Amon as well as priests of Ptah accompany the Prince. To do otherwise would be to violate ma’at, the eternal order of things. The land of Kemet would be puzzled and dismayed were the order of things to be so disarranged that Amon could be deliberately ignored and egregiously offended.”
He hesitated, and for a second looked uncertain. My brother Aye stepped forward, and whatever his thoughts (and it is not the first time that I have suspected him of plotting secretly against Amon), his voice was grave and decisive as it always is, thereby lending a spurious air of deliberation and authority to one whose ambitions are no secret to me, his brother, however he attempts to dissemble.
“Majesty,” he said, “Son of the Sun: my brother the Priest of Amon speaks sense. It would be only fitting that Amon, too, accompany the Prince from Memphis. However,” he said, raising his hand a little at my instinctive movement of gratification, “since the Prince is High Priest of Ptah, it would seem right that for every priest of Amon there be two of Ptah; and that in any event there be no more than fifteen priests for such a journey. Otherwise it would become unwieldy and a slow public progress, instead of the speedy journey made necessary by Her Majesty’s imminent confinement.”
“They should come by water, then,” Pharaoh said. “Ramose”—the Vizier stepped forward, bowed low—“do you send word at once that the Crown Prince be accompanied as the Councilor Aye suggests, and that the company for safety’s sake be given also an escort of a hundred soldiers from the garrison at Memphis.”
Ramose bowed low again and withdrew. We three were left alone.
“Thus,” my brother-in-law said, staring at me with insolent eyes, “will my son be safe.”
“Thus will Amon be suitably honored, even as Ptah is honored,” I replied, staring back.
“Thus will the peace and order of Kemet be kept,” my brother Aye said quietly, “as it is the duty of all of us to do.”
This was a month ago, and in that month spies went to Memphis (my own, and Aye’s on Pharaoh’s service), plans were revised, supplies were increased; the agreed-upon number of priests and soldiers was assigned, two barges—Ptah Is Satisfied and Amon Is Gracious—were outfitted; and two weeks ago my nephew and his company set forth upon the river, heading south into the northward-flowing current.
And so now Pharaoh and I are arriving at the landing at Karnak, and no word has come from the High Priest of Ptah and his flotilla. Last night they were encamped within half a day’s journey, as my spies told me and Aye’s, I am sure, told him; but nothing has been heard today, though they were expected in the fourth quarter of morning, in time for the boy to accompany his father to the temple.
We had to leave without him: how sad.
I see in my brother-in-law’s carefully veiled eyes and tensely held posture as he steps ashore, smile fixed and eyes straight ahead while he takes back his crook and flail from Ramose and prepares to follow me into the temple, that his worry is now beginning to consume him.
My eyes do not meet his, I make no slightest gesture, no smallest sign of my own worry lest the venture go awry. I cannot afford to indicate by so much as the flicker of an eyelash any knowledge, any concern; and really, why should I?
I am supported by the right, after all. It is not I who tried to pick a quarrel with Amon-Ra.
***