The Egyptian Royals Collection (4 page)

There was a moment between them, then Ranofer took her hand and they both stood up.

“Where are you going?” I cried, but Nefertiti didn’t answer, so I called after my tutor. “What about our lesson?”

“Later.” He grinned, but it was only my sister he really had eyes for.

Word arrived that the queen would pay a visit to our villa in Akhmim. In our family shrine, this was what Nefertiti had been secretly praying for, laying down bowls of our best honeyed wine at the feet of Amun and promising all sorts of wild things if he would only send the queen to our city. Now that Amun seemed to have granted her request, Nefertiti was unbearable in her excitement. While my sister preened, my mother rushed around the house, snapping at slaves and servants alike.

“Mutny, make sure the towels are clean. Nefertiti, the bowls please. Make sure the servants have washed them.
All
of them.”

Our servants dusted the fringed wall hangings while my mother arranged our best inlaid chairs around the Audience Chamber, which would be the first room the queen would enter. Queen Tiye was my father’s sister; she was a hard woman and would not approve of sloppy housekeeping. The tiles in the kitchen were scrubbed to gleaming, even though the queen would go nowhere near them, and the lotus pool was stocked with orange fish. Even Nefertiti did some work, actually inspecting the bowls instead of pretending she had. In six days, Amunhotep the Younger would be crowned at Karnak and made coregent with his father. Even I knew what this visit meant. The queen had not come all the way to Akhmim for over six years. The only reason to visit now would be for a marriage.

“Mutny, go help your sister get dressed,” my mother said.

In our room, Nefertiti stood in front of the mirror. She pushed her dark hair from her face, imagining herself with the crown of Egypt. “This is it,” she whispered. “I will be the greatest queen Egypt has ever known.”

I scoffed. “No queen will ever be greater than our aunt.”

She whirled around. “There was Hatshepsut. And our aunt doesn’t wear the pschent crown.”

“Only a Pharaoh can wear it.”

“So while she commands the army and meets with foreign leaders, what does she get?
Nothing
. It is her husband who reaps the glory. When I am queen, it will be my name that lives in eternity.”

I knew better than to argue with Nefertiti when she was like this. I mixed the kohl and handed it to her in a jar, then watched her apply it. She rimmed her eyes and darkened her brows, and the paint made her look older than her fifteen years.

“Do you really think you will become Chief Wife?” I asked.

“Who would our aunt rather see give birth to an heir? A commoner”—she wrinkled her nose—“or her niece?”

I was a commoner, but it wasn’t me she was slighting. It was Panahesi’s daughter, Kiya, who was the child of a noblewoman, whereas Nefertiti was the granddaughter of a queen.

“Can you find my linen dress and gold belt?” she said.

I narrowed my eyes. “Just because you’re about to make a marriage doesn’t make me your slave.”

She smiled widely.
“Please
, Mutny. You know I can’t do this without you.” She watched in the mirror while I rummaged through her chests, looking for the gown she wore only to festivals. I pulled out her golden belt and she protested, “The one with onyx, not turquoise.”

“Don’t you have servants for this?” I demanded.

She ignored me and held out her hand for the belt. Personally, I liked the turquoise better. There was a knock on the door, and then my mother’s servant appeared, her face bright with excitement.

“Your mother says to be quick!” the girl cried. “The caravan has been spotted.”

Nefertiti looked at me. “Think of it, Mutny. You will be sister to the Queen of Egypt!”

“If
she likes you,” I said flatly.

“Of course she will.” She glanced in the mirror at her own reflection, her small honeyed shoulders and rich black hair. “I’ll be charming and sweet, and when we’ve moved into the palace, just think of all the things we can do!”

“We do plenty of things here,” I protested. “What’s wrong with Akhmim?”

She took the brush and finished her hair. “Don’t you want to see Karnak and Memphis and be a part of the palace?”

“Father’s part of the palace. He says it makes him tired, so much talk of politics.”

“Well, that’s Father. He gets to go to the palace every day. What do we ever get to do here?” she complained. “Nothing but wait for a prince to die so that we can go out and see the world.”

I sucked in my breath.
“Nefertiti!”

She laughed merrily. Then my mother appeared in the doorway, breathless. She had put on her good jewels and heavy new bangles I’d never seen before. “Are you ready?”

Nefertiti stood up. Her dress was sheer, and I felt a wave of pure envy at the way the material tightened across her thighs and emphasized the slenderness of her waist.

“Wait.” My mother put her hand in the air. “We must have a necklace. Mutny, go and fetch the gold collar.”

I gasped.
“Your
collar?”

“Of course. Now hurry! The guard will let you into the treasury.”

I was shocked that my mother would let Nefertiti wear the collar my father had given her on their wedding day. I had underestimated how important my aunt’s visit was to her, then. To us all. I hurried to the treasury in the back of the house, and the sentry looked up at me with a smile. I was taller than him by a head. I blushed.

“My mother wants the collar for my sister.”

“The gold collar?”

“What other collar is there?”

He snapped his head back.
“Well
. Must be for something very important. I hear the queen is arriving today.”

I placed my hands on my hips so that he knew that I was waiting.

“All right, all right.” He descended into the underground chamber and reappeared with my mother’s treasure, which would be mine someday. “So your sister must be getting married,” he said.

I held out my hand. “The collar.”

“She would make a fine queen.”

“So everybody says.”

He smiled like he knew my thoughts on the matter, the prying old donkey, then he held out the collar and I snatched it. I ran back to my room and held up the heavy jewel like a prize. Nefertiti looked to my mother.

“Are you sure?” She looked at the gold, and her eyes reflected its light.

My mother nodded. She fastened it around my sister’s neck, then we both stood back. The gold began at my sister’s throat in a lotus pattern, dipping between her breasts in droplets of various lengths. I was glad she was two years older than me. If I had been the one to marry first, no man would have chosen me over her. “Now we are ready,” my mother said. She led the way to the Audience Chamber, where the queen was waiting. We could hear her speaking with my father, her voice low and grating and full of command.

“Come when you are called,” my mother said quickly. “There are gifts on the table from our treasury. Bring them when you enter. The larger one is for Nefertiti to carry.”

Then she disappeared inside, and we stood in the tiled hall to wait for our summons.

Nefertiti paced. “Why
wouldn’t
she choose me to marry her son? I’m her brother’s child, and our father has the highest position in the land.”

“Of course she’ll choose you.”

“But for Chief Wife? I won’t be anything less, Mutny. I won’t be some lesser wife thrown into a palace that Pharaoh comes to visit only every two seasons. I’d rather marry a vizier’s son.”

“She’ll want you.”

“Of course, it’s really up to Amunhotep.” She stopped pacing, and I realized that she was talking to herself. “In the end, he’ll be the one who chooses. He’s the one who has to get a son on me, not her.”

I winced at her crassness.

“But I’ll never get to see him without charming his mother.”

“You’ll do well.”

She looked at me, as if noticing that I was there for the first time. “Really?”

“Yes.” I sat down in my father’s ebony chair and called one of the household cats to me. “But how do you know that you will love him?” I asked.

Nefertiti looked at me sharply. “Because he’s about to become the Pharaoh of Egypt,” she said. “And I am tired of Akhmim.”

I thought of Ranofer with his handsome smile and wondered if she was tired of him, too. Then my mother’s servant came through the doors of the Audience Chamber and the cat slipped away.

“Are we to come?” Nefertiti asked anxiously.

“Yes, my lady.”

Nefertiti looked at me. Her cheeks were flushed. “Walk behind me, Mutny. She has to see me first and fall in love.”

We entered into the Audience Chamber with the gifts from our treasury, and the room seemed bigger than I remembered. The painted marshes on the wall and blue river tiles on the ground looked brighter. The servants had done well, even washing out the stain on the hanging above my mother’s head. The queen looked the same as she had at the tombs. An austere face surrounded by a large Nubian wig. If Nefertiti ever became queen, she would wear such a wig. We approached the dais, where the queen sat in a large, feather-stuffed cushion on the chair with the widest arms in our house. A black cat rested on her lap. Her hand was on its back, and its collar was lapis and gold.

The queen’s herald stepped forward and flung out his arm in a sweeping gesture. “Your Majesty, your niece, the Lady Nefertiti.”

My sister held out her gift and a servant took the gilt bowl. My aunt touched an empty seat to her left, indicating that Nefertiti should sit next to her. As my sister ascended the dais, my aunt’s eyes never moved from her face. Nefertiti was beautiful in a way that made even queens stare.

“Your Majesty, your niece, the Lady Mutnodjmet.”

I stepped forward and my aunt blinked in surprise. She looked at the turquoise box I held out for her and smiled, a concession that in Nefertiti’s presence she’d forgotten about me. “You’ve grown tall,” she commented.

“Yes, but not as graceful as Nefertiti, Your Majesty.”

My mother nodded approvingly. I had turned the conversation to the reason the queen had come to Akhmim, and we all looked to my sister, who tried not to glow.

“She
is
beautiful, Ay. More of her mother, I think, than you.”

My father laughed. “And gifted. She can sing. And dance.”

“But is she clever?”

“Of course. And she has strength.” His voice lowered meaningfully. “She will be able to guide his passions and control him.”

My aunt looked at Nefertiti again, wondering if this was true.

“But she must be Chief Wife if she is to marry him,” he added. “Then she will direct his interests away from Aten, back to Amun and to politics that are less dangerous.”

The queen turned directly to my sister. “What do you say to all this?” she asked.

“I will do what is commanded of me, Your Majesty. I will entertain the prince and give him children. And I will be an obedient servant of Amun.” Her eyes met mine, and I lowered my head to keep from smiling.

“Of Amun,” the queen repeated thoughtfully. “If only my son had so much sense.”

“She is the strongest willed of my two children,” my father said. “If anyone can sway him, it would be her.”

“And Kiya is weak,” the queen conceded. “She cannot do the job. He wanted to make her Chief Wife, but I wouldn’t allow it.”

My father promised, “Once he sees Nefertiti, he will forget about Kiya.”

“Kiya’s father is a vizier,” my aunt said warningly. “He will be displeased that I chose your daughter over his.”

My father shrugged. “It’s to be expected. We are family.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then the queen stood up. “So the matter is settled.”

I heard Nefertiti’s delighted intake of breath. It was over as quickly as it had begun. The queen walked down the dais, a small but indomitable figure, and the cat followed her on the end of a golden leash. “I hope she lives up to your promise, Ay. It is the future of Egypt that is at stake,” she warned darkly.