Amonhotep,
Son of Hapu
The moments pass. The crowd grows restless, then subsides. Inside the temple, the mysteries proceed. I know what they are, for I have been privileged to attend them many times since I entered the service of the Good God. Today he did not invite me, for today is perhaps too intimate a matter, involving the future of the House of Thebes itself. I do not mind: it permits me to stand here, just outside the temple door, and gauge the temper of the people as they await the re-emergence of the God.
The temper of the people is, as always, loyal, worshipful, awed, and adoring. They love Pharaoh, as they love the Great Wife Tiye; and today their love is about to find a new reward in another son to strengthen Pharaoh’s hand. At least Amon says it will be a son, and who doubts Amon? Certainly not I. I am in no position to do so.
Yet.
Though the day may come.
Something moves within the House of Thebes. I watch respectfully, I listen, I wait. Presently it will become clear to me, though I suspect already what it is. Pharaoh is displeased with Amon, and seeks a way to lessen his power. Amon also is displeased. Out of such displeasure, who knows what things may come for the land of Kemet?
I watch, I listen, I wait. This morning I saw the Priest Aanen, that creeping man, fling furiously away from his brother-in-law the Good God. This morning I saw the Good God for a second look profoundly worried, profoundly sad. Just now when he passed, I, who know him very well by now, saw behind the frozen smile and fixed, official aspect of his face something else, some trouble deeply hidden, deeply felt. Things appear to be nearing crisis. I watch, I listen, I wait
Such is the advantage of the scribe, and such is the advantage I am arranging for my young friend Kaires, who bounces beside me like a puppy, yet beneath his outward innocence carries the weapon of an extremely intelligent mind becoming daily more shrewd and skilled in the ways of Kemet. There is some mystery here too. He appeared suddenly from nowhere, suddenly was assigned, with no explanation to anyone, to work with me in the Palace of Malkata. At first I resented this, was cautious, withholding; then his natural charm won me over—and something else. I suspect he has sponsorship from somewhere very high. I suspect he is here because someone sees him as a potential future actor in the game we all play in the Palace. Much that they never dream goes on behind the golden spectacle that awes and delights the people. I suspect it will be well for me to be his friend. So I have become, and quite genuinely, too. The charm and innocence still predominate: the shrewd intelligence and carefully analytical mind, potentially ruthless, potentially hard, come now but cautiously and rarely to the surface. But they are there, if he ever needs them. And as the years spin out for the House of Thebes, he may.
I intend to be his friend on that day, as I am on this.
Today, however, we are concerned with today; and although he conceals it cleverly, thinking I do not notice after my uninformative conversation at breakfast, I can see that he, too, is still worrying the fact that all is not well in the House of Thebes. He does not know exactly why, but he is at work upon it. Soon it may come to him.
Indeed, soon it may come to us all, if what I suspect is true. Appointing the Crown Prince to be High Priest of Ptah was slap enough in the face of Amon. That act alone guarantees Amon much loss, for now many of Amon’s riches will be diverted by Pharaoh to Ptah at Memphis, and Ptah will grow great and powerful at Amon’s expense. It is no wonder Aanen and his fellows are frantic and aghast.
I suspect—and I think Pharaoh now suspects—that they may be vengeful too.
And yet what else could he and the Great Wife expect? Amon-Ra has grown so great in the last hundred years that he will not give up without a struggle. And he will enlist many other gods and goddesses too, for most of them hold their temples and their more modest wealth solely at his sufferance. Amon’s priests have worked out their web of alliances with the priests and priestesses of lesser gods as astutely as Tuthmose III (life, health, prosperity!) worked out the alliances that form the fabric of his great-grandson’s empire. Amon has great abundance: he permits some of it to spill over to Thoth, Sebek, Ra-Herakhty, Nek-hebet, Isis, the Mnevis Bull of Heliopolis, Bast, Sekhmet and the rest. Amon, in effect, has bought himself over the generations many friends.
It is not one god that Pharaoh and the Great Wife have challenged: it is all the gods, led by the greatest of them all. A formidable phalanx, to be brought low through the instrumentality of one small, six-year-old boy.
I do not underestimate the will of Pharaoh, however; and as I have come to know them both in the past ten years during which I have moved gradually into a position of high confidence in the Palace, I particularly do not underestimate Queen Tiye. Behind Pharaoh’s bland and pleasantly smiling face lies a strong determination to protect his power and his House; but behind Tiye’s lies that determination plus an even fiercer and greater: to protect the land of Kemet, which her family, like mine, has served so well. And of our two rulers, though it is treason to even think so and I would never breathe my thoughts to anyone save possibly, someday, young Kaires when he grows older and has need of the knowledge, it is the Great Wife who has the greater strength and the stronger character. The Good God rules Kemet, but the Great Wife rules him. This, after studying them both, do I sincerely believe.
They take a fearful gamble with their little High Priest of Ptah, and obviously they are aware of it, for he comes up the river from Memphis today heavily guarded by his own priests and a hundred soldiers. Yet he is accompanied by the priests of Amon, too, and guards cannot always be on guard. I do not know whether his parents intended him to arrive in time to conduct the ceremonies here—what an exquisite and unforgivable insult that would have been to Amon!—but I suspect it may have been so. If it was, it has already been thwarted: Amon himself, or one of his lieutenants—perhaps Hapi, god of the Nile—has already caused sufficient delay to prevent him from attending. What else may Amon have contrived?
“Amonhotep!” Kaires cries suddenly at my side, his hand anxious on my arm. “Who comes there?”
Instantly, for no reason I know, my heart jumps, my face sweats, something cold and freezing grasps my body. One of the gods speaks to me, I know not which: I know.
Quickly I spin in the direction he gestures, around us the crowd falls suddenly silent: a small boat crashes against the landing, a young soldier, pale, terrified, gasping for breath, staggers, against all the rules of Kemet, into the empty avenue before the temple. Harshly the guardsmen spring upon him, as quickly I shout, “Make way for Amonhotep the Scribe!” Stunned and obedient like the cattle they sometimes seem to be, the people move swiftly out of my way. Kaires racing behind me, I dash for the little group in the middle of the empty street in the pitiless blazing sun. The guardsmen, who know me, hesitate at my shouted command, then give way. The youth is shoved roughly toward me. Kaires and I support him on both sides a little farther along the now terribly empty and desolate way. A fearful silence falls on the crowd.
“Whisper!” I order in a fierce whisper of my own. “Tell me!”
And he does, and the world of Kemet changes forever in an instant’s dreadful time.
“Come with me!” I order, still whispering; and, Kaires still assisting—his face, I note with approval, as rigid and unrevealing as I am forcing my own to be—we take him rapidly to the door of the temple.
Tall priests, selected for their forbidding height from among Kemet’s normally small-boned population, glare down upon us. But I know one who stands taller than they.
“Bring me the Councilor Aye!” I command; and when they continue to hesitate, still glaring, I repeat in a vicious whisper, so savage that they actually blink and step back a pace, “Bring me Aye or I will have Pharaoh take your heads!”
And after a moment of what they consider necessary bravado—I memorize their faces and if I can do it I will have their heads after this dreadful day is over—they take us inside.
Even as they do, from upriver at Malkata there begins a great, sustained, joyful roar that races along the shores and over the water until it fills the world with overwhelming happy sound.
The Great Wife is apparently safely delivered of her son.
***