The Egyptian Royals Collection (28 page)

And before the Elder was even cold in his tomb, Akhenaten and Nefertiti knelt before the altar that had once been Amun’s, and Panahesi anointed them Pharaoh and Queen of all Egypt. I sat in the first row in lapis and gold, and while choirs of boys raised their sweet voices to the sun, all across Thebes Pharaoh’s army defaced images of our greatest gods.

That night, Nefertiti called a meeting. We sat in a circle around my bed, keeping our voices low. I had a new room in Thebes. Princess Meritaten had my old room next to Pharaoh. I let my father into my chamber, expecting him to be outraged, but a deadly calm had settled over him.

“Say something,” Nefertiti commanded.

“What is it that you want me to say?” my father asked quietly. “You called this meeting.”

“Because I wanted your advice.”

“What do you need my advice for? You don’t take it.”

“What am I supposed to do?” she demanded.

“Save Amun!” he lashed out. His eyes were blazing in the firelight. “Save
something
. What will be left of Egypt when he is through with it?”

“You think I don’t know this?” Her voice broke a little. “He is building a city and he wants it in the
desert
.”

“In the desert?”

“Between Memphis and Thebes.”

“No one can build there. It’s desolation—”

“That’s what I told him! But Panahesi has convinced him it is Aten’s will.” Her voice rose hysterically. “You gave him the job of High Priest of Aten and now
Akhenaten
thinks that Panahesi is the mouthpiece of the god.”

“Better the mouthpiece of the god than treasurer. In the end, it will not be Akhenaten who decides the next Pharaoh of Egypt. If death should strike your husband, it will be the people and their advisers who choose. Panahesi may control the temple, but I control its gold, and gold will win more hearts than a god no one can see.”

“But Akhenaten wants to choose the site by the end of Aythyr. And he wants to take Kiya!”

My father glanced at her. So here was the real crisis. Not that the city would be in the midst of desert, but that Akhenaten would take Kiya to help choose where it should be.

Nefertiti’s panic rose. “What will I do?”

“Let him.”

“Let Akhenaten take Kiya to choose our site?”

“There is nothing you can do.”

“I am Queen of Egypt,” she reminded.

“Yes, and one of two hundred other women that Akhenaten inherited from his father’s harem.”

“Akhenaten will have nothing to do with
them
. They were his father’s women.”

“So anything his father ever touched is tainted now? Including this city?”

Nefertiti sat silent.

“How will he find workers to build Amarna?” he asked her.

“The army.”

“And how will we defend our foreign territories when they are invaded by Hittites?”

“Hittites! Hittites! Who cares about the Hittites? Let them take Rhodes or Lakisa or Babylon. What do we want with them?”

“Goods,” I interrupted, and everyone looked at me. “We get pottery from Rhodes, caravans of gold from Nubia, and every year a thousand baskets of glass arrive on Babylonian ships.”

Nefertiti narrowed her eyes. “How do
you
know?”

“I listen.”

She stood up and directed her words at our father. “Send messages in Akhenaten’s name and threaten the Hittites with war.”

“And if they still invade our territories?” he asked.

“Then we’ll tax the temples and send them the gold to raise an army!” she retorted. “Akhenaten has already sworn that our army will build the city of Amarna. He thinks it will write our name in eternity. There’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“And you?” my father asked shrewdly. “Do you think it will write your name in eternity?”

She paused over the brazier, the rage gone from her face. “It could.”

“Has Akhenaten met with Maya?” my father asked.

“Maya said it will take six years. They will build a main road and the palace first. Akhenaten wants to move by Tybi.”

“So
soon
?” my father demanded.

“Yes. We’ll set up tents so we can watch the progress and be there for every phase.”

We both stared at her. “You?” I asked, brutally frank. “You, who like all the comforts of the palace?”

“And what about the old?” my father asked her. “What will they do when it begins to grow cold during Inundation?”

“Then they can stay behind and come when the palace is finished.”

“Good. And so shall I.”

Nefertiti stared. “You
have
to come. You’re treasurer.”

“And will there be a treasury? A secure-enough holding to keep safe all that gold?”

Nefertiti bridled. “Akhenaten won’t like your staying behind at the treasury,” she warned. “And not just you, but his mother.”

My father stood up. “Then he’ll simply have to learn to accept it,” he said and stormed from the chamber.

Chapter Sixteen

Peret, Season of Growing

THE ROYAL BARGES
were readied for the journey south. Panahesi and Kiya were given their own boat, the
Dazzling Aten
, in which to sail. I stood on the quay and asked my sister how Akhenaten would know the right spot for the building.

“Obviously, it will be near the Nile,” she snapped. “Between Memphis and Thebes on land upon which no other Pharaoh has built.”

She was angry with me because I’d refused to go, and my father hadn’t made me.

As the barges set sail, the king’s pennants with images of Aten whipped back and forth in the wind. Hundreds of soldiers and workers were going. They’d be left in the desert to begin building Amarna. I waved at Nefertiti from the quay and she stared back, refusing to raise her hand to me. When the barges slipped over the horizon, I went into the gardens, wondering about seeds. Gardens for the new city would have to be started …

A palace worker watched me from the shade beneath a sycamore. “May I help you, my lady?” The old man came over, his kilt stained with soil. His nails were full of earth. A true gardener. “You are the Sister of the King’s Chief Wife,” he said. “The one the women go to for remedies.”

I glanced at in him surprise. “How did you—”

“I have seen the herbs you grow in pots,” he admitted. “They are all medicinal.”

I nodded. “Yes. Once in a while women come to me for help.”

He smiled, as if he knew that it was more than once in a while; that sometimes different women came six and seven times a day for the plants that Ipu procured for me in the markets. My pots weren’t big enough to fit all the herbs I would’ve like to have planted, but she found the rest among the busy vendors on the quay. I looked across the royal gardens and sighed. There would be no green in the wide stretch of desert between Thebes and Memphis. And who knew how long it would be before markets sprang up that would sell raspberry leaf or acacia? I looked down at the goldenrods and moringa. In Amarna, there would be only weeds and tamarisk plants for company. “May I take some cuttings with me when I go?”

“To the new city of Amarna, my lady?”

I stood back, to get a better look at this servant. “You hear a lot in these gardens.”

The old man shrugged. “The general likes to walk here at times and we talk together.”

“General Nakhtmin?” I asked quickly.

“Yes. He comes from the barracks, my lady.” He turned his eyes south, and I followed his gaze to a row of squat buildings. “He likes to sit here beneath the acacias.”

“Why? What does he do?”

“Sometimes I think he is looking.” The old servant fixed his sharp eyes on mine, as if he knew something he wasn’t saying. “But not so much lately. The general has been very busy lately.”

Busy shutting down the temples of Amun
, I thought, and wondered if that’s what the gardener meant. I studied his face, but a lifetime of practice had made it unreadable. “What is your name?” I asked the old man.

“Ahmose.”

“And do you know where the general is now?”

Ahmose smiled widely at me. “I believe the general is with his soldiers, my lady. They are standing outside the palace leading in the petitioners.”

“But Pharaoh is gone.”

“The petitioners are seeing the great vizier Ay. Would my lady like me to take her to see them?”

I thought for a moment, imagining Nefertiti’s response if she knew I’d been to see the general. “Yes, take me to see them.”

“And the cuttings?” he asked.

“You can leave them with Ipu, my body servant.”

The gardener put down his tools and led the way to the gates of Malkata. We approached a large arch at the end of the garden, and when we emerged it looked like the bird market back in Akhmim. Every variety of petitioner had come to ask a favor of the new Pharaoh. There were women with children, old men on donkeys, a boy playing grab-me with his sister, weaving in and out of the sun-wearied crowds.

I stood back in surprise. “Is it always like this?”

The gardener patted the dirt off his kilt. “More often than not. Of course,” he added, “there are more petitioners now that the Elder has passed.” We crossed the busy courtyard and saw that there were people as far as the eye could see, including wealthy women with gold bracelets that made music on their arms and poor women in simple rags who muttered unkindly at children as they scampered around them. Ahmose led us to a shady corner beneath the palace roof where the misbehaving sons of noblewomen were wrestling each other into the dirt. They paid no heed to us. One boy rolled over my sandal, smearing it with dust.

Ahmose cried out, “Your dress, my lady!”

I laughed. “I don’t mind.”

The gardener stared, but I wasn’t Nefertiti. I shook off the dirt and studied the courtyard. “Why are the wealthy in one line and the poor in another?”

“The poor want simple things,” Ahmose explained. “A new well, a better dam. But the wealthy are asking to keep their positions at court.”

“Unfortunately, Pharaoh will still dismiss most of them,” someone said in my ear.

I turned, and the general was standing behind me. “And why would he dismiss them?” I asked earnestly.

“Because all of these men once worked for his father.”

“And he can’t abide anything that was once his father’s,” I reasoned. “Not even his father’s capital.”

“Amarna.” Nakhtmin watched me intently. “The viziers say he wants the new palace built within the year.”

“Yes.” I bit my lip so I wouldn’t say anything against the ambitions of my family, then stepped closer. “And what is the news from the temples?” I asked quietly.

“The temples of Amun all across Egypt have been sealed.”

I tried to imagine it: temples that had stood since the time of Hatshepsut boarded up and their holy waters left to dry. What would become of all the statues to Amun and the priests who’d once paid obeisance to them? How would the god know we still wanted his guidance? I closed my eyes and sent a silent prayer to the god who had watched over us for two thousand years. “And the temples of Isis? And Hathor?” I asked him.

“Destroyed.”

I covered my mouth. “Were many killed?”

“Not by me,” he said firmly as a soldier came toward us.

“General,” he called, and when he saw me his eyes lit up with surprise. He executed a hasty bow. “Lady Mutnodjmet, your father is in the Audience Chamber. If you are looking for him—”

“I am not looking for him.”

The soldier passed Nakhtmin a curious look.

“What did you need?” Nakhtmin asked the soldier.

“There is a woman who claims to be a cousin of the Elder’s, but she’s wearing neither gold nor silver and has no cartouche to identify herself. I placed her in line with the others, but she says she belongs—”

“Place her with the nobility. If she is lying, she will pay the price when her petition is revoked. Warn her of that before you move her.”

The soldier bowed. “Thank you, General. My lady.”

He left, and I noticed that Ahmose the gardener was gone.

“Shall I take you back to the palace?” Nakhtmin asked. “A hot, dirty courtyard full of petitioners is no place for the Sister of the King’s Chief Wife.”

I raised my brows. “Then what is my place?”

He took my arm and we walked together in the shade of the gardens. “With me.” We stopped beneath the acacias. “You are tired of being handmaiden to your sister. Otherwise, you would be with her now. Choosing the site for Amarna.”

“There can be no future for us, General—”

“Nakhtmin,” he corrected me, taking my hands, and I let him.

“We’re going to the desert soon,” I warned. “We’ll be living in tents.”

He pulled me toward him. “I have lived in tents and barracks since I was twelve years old.”

“But there will not be the freedom we have here.”

“What?” He laughed. “Do you think I just want to meet you for secret trysts?”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want to marry you,” he said simply.

I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth of his skin against mine. In the gardens, there was no one to see us. “She will never let me go,” I warned him.

“I am one of the highest-ranking generals in Pharaoh’s army. My ancestors were viziers, and before that they were scribes. I am no common mercenary. Every Pharaoh has married his sisters and daughters to generals in the army as a way of protecting the royal family.”

“Not this Pharaoh,” I said, thinking of Akhenaten’s fear of the army. “This royal family is not like any other.”

“Then you don’t belong with them.” His lips brushed against mine, and far behind us the hundreds of petitioners disappeared.

We didn’t leave the gardens until the sun had nearly set, setting the sky ablaze in violet and red. When I was late returning to my chamber, Ipu was in a state.

“I nearly sent the guards after you, my lady!”

I grinned, tossing my linen cloak onto the bed. “Oh, there was no need for that.” I met her glance.

“My
lady
. You weren’t with the general?”

I stifled a giggle. “Yes.” Then I lost my enthusiasm, realizing what this would mean.

Ipu whispered, “What of Pharaoh?”

“Nefertiti will have to convince him,” I said.

Ipu found a fresh robe in one the baskets and draped it over my shoulders, watching me with concern.

“I’m fifteen already!”

Ipu kept watching. She sat down on the edge of a gold and ebony chair, folding her hands in front of her. “I am thinking this will not go well, my lady.”

I felt some of the color drain from my face, remembering Nakhtmin’s strong arms around me. “I can’t be her handmaiden
forever!
” I exclaimed. “She has a husband and a family and a hundred doting servants! She has endless noblewomen waiting for her appearance so they can run off and copy her robes, her hair, her latest earrings. What does she need
me
for?”

“She will always need you.”

“But it isn’t what I want! I don’t
need
this!” I flung my arm to encompass the heavy woven tapestries and bright ivory lamps. “No.” I shook my head. “She will have to accept it. She will have to convince him.”

Ipu’s face tightened. “Be careful. Think of the general’s position.”

“We will wait until the move is complete. Then I will tell her.”

“And if he is dismissed?”

If he was dismissed, then I would know where I stood in my family.

When Nefertiti returned to Thebes, she was furious. She paced my chamber, kicking at a stray piece of coal from the brazier and enjoying the dark streak it left along the floor. It was Akhenaten’s time with Kiya and he had not come back early, as he usually did.

“He wants to build her a palace,” she seethed.

“So then you will let him,” my father replied. He steadied her with his sharp blue eyes.

“A palace!” She turned. “An entire palace?”

“Let him build her a palace,” my father said. “Who says it has to be in the city?”

Nefertiti’s eyes grew wide. “It could be to the north. It could be outside the city even.”