Free The Twelfth Transforming by Pauline Gedge Page A

why he orders a jubilee?”
    “I think so, Majesty. Matters of state are none of my affair, as I tend only to matters of the palace. Yet Pharaoh talks often of the need for continuing stability, the denial of weakness, so that his son may inherit a firm foundation.”
    “His infant son, I presume.”
    Surero looked uncomfortable. “I believe so, Divine Goddess.”
    “Very well. Do not allow the high priest to complicate the rites unnecessarily. I think Pharaoh overestimates his strength.” No wonder he will not allow me to see him , she thought, her mind racing under her words. Oh, wily Pharaoh! So it begins again!
    “Majesty, I have no authority over the high priest. Only Pharaoh and the oracle may order him.”
    “True, but you are perfectly able to make tactful suggestions to Ptahhotep. He would not like it noised about that he is deliberately weakening the health of his king. Refresh my memory, Surero. Is it not required for a jubilee that if there is a declared Horus-in-the-Nest, he must officiate with Pharaoh?”
    “Yes, it is so.”
    “Will Pharaoh take the air today?”
    “He will sit in the garden at the setting of Ra.”
    “Good. You are dismissed.”
    It does not matter , she told herself as she moved from audience hall to private reception rooms to the offices of her ministers, asking questions, making pronouncements, giving judgments, with Nefertiti and her pet monkey walking three paces behind her. Long before little Smenkhara reaches an age where his ambitions might have a coherent shape, Pharaoh will be dead, and Amunhotep will be king. Why am I so distressed? Let him have his jubilee, let him enjoy the game of manipulating the future. He knows as well as I that it will come to nothing. No, it is my own future that causes me pain. My baby is an unknown force. But my elder son is a pliable reed that bends to my breath .
    “Majesty Aunt, is it wise to send gold to the Assyrian Eriba-Adad, seeing that Assyria is threatened by Kadashman-Enlil with whom we have treaties of friendship? Will not the Babylonians become angry and threaten us in turn?”
    Tiye forced her mind into the present to answer Nefertiti’s question. The girl had been trying to pick her bewildered way through the maze of foreign policy, and Tiye did her best to honor that effort. “No, Highness. Without our gold, Assyria might be defeated, and the Babylonian kingdom would emerge dangerously powerful. If we sent soldiers to Eriba-Adad, then we would be fighting Kadashman-Enlil directly. This way Assyria can buy mercenaries and arms, and Babylonia will not be insulted by us. Do you see?” Without waiting for a reply she took Nefertiti’s arm, and they halted. “Here is Menna’s office. We have come to discuss the flooding of more land for Pharaoh next year and the payment to the Keftiu for the glass vases Surero ordered. I will leave this to you. Ordinarily I would not bother with such details but would leave them to Menna as Overseer of Crown Lands, and the Vizier of the North, but if you are to be consort, you must know all.”
    “But, Majesty, you have stewards who report to you daily on such transactions.”
    “True. Yet those men are continually bribed. That I do not mind, but it is important to be able to distinguish a totally corrupt transaction from an acceptably twisted one, and that you cannot do unless you have spent time yourself in direct conversation with the ministers. Let us go in. I will not speak.”
    After Nefertiti had acquitted herself with cool though bored efficiency, Tiye took her to bathe in her private lake. It was noon, and Ra stood at his zenith, pouring a blazing white light over the surface of the water. Both women lowered themselves gratefully into the lily-clogged greenness. For a while they floated and splashed while their servants waited on the grassy verge with towels and canopies ready and the monkey ran back and forth gibbering. Tiye swam, glorying in the silken flow of water over her