The Egyptian Royals Collection (7 page)

“Aren’t you coming?” Nefertiti asked.

“Of course not!” I stared at the throngs of pretty courtiers’ daughters, all of whom had been raised in Thebes, all of whom would know the court dances. “I don’t know any of the moves. How will you do it?”

She shrugged. “I’ll watch and learn.”

Perhaps Merit had given her instructions in private, for I was amazed to see my sister leap and spin in time with the others, a vision of lapis lazuli and gold. There were only a few women sitting, and I noticed with unease that I wasn’t alone at our table. Panahesi remained as well. I glanced at him, the way his long fingers were templed under his clipped black beard, the only vizier at court who let his hair grow long. Then he caught me looking at him and said, “This must be very exciting for you. A young girl from Akhmim, coming to the palace with all its feasting and gold. So why aren’t you dancing?”

I shifted in my seat. “I don’t know the dances,” I admitted.

He raised his brows. “Yet your sister seems so natural,” he pointed out, and we be both looked at Nefertiti, who danced as if we’d been attending court functions all our lives. Panahesi looked from her to me and smiled. “You must be half sisters.”

I hoped Ipu’s rouge hid my mortification, and bit my tongue so I wouldn’t reply with something sharp.

“So tell me,” Panahesi went on. “With a sister in the king’s harem, who will you marry?”

My ire rose. “I am only thirteen.”

“Of course, a little girl still.” His eyes traveled to my chest, and suddenly Nefertiti was beside me. The music had ended.

“Yes, but better a blossoming woman than a wilted old man.” Her eyes traveled meaningfully to Panahesi’s kilt. Then our father reappeared, taking his seat at the table.

Panahesi pushed out his chair. “Your children are very charming,” he snapped. “I am sure the prince will come to love them dearly.” He swept away, his white cloak trailing at his heels, and my father demanded, “What happened?”

“The vizier—” I began, but Nefertiti cut me off.

“Nothing.”

My father looked long at Nefertiti.

“Nothing,” she repeated.

“I warned you to be careful. The Vizier Panahesi has Amunhotep’s ear.”

Nefertiti set her jaw, and I could see that she wanted to reply,
Not when I become queen
, but remained silent. Then she searched the room and became agitated. “Where is the prince?”

“While you were charming the vizier, he left the hall.”

Nefertiti faltered. “I won’t meet him tonight?”

“Not unless he returns,” my father said, and I had never heard his voice so deep or stern. This wasn’t Akhmim. This was the court of Egypt, where mistakes couldn’t be tolerated.

“Maybe he’ll come back,” I suggested hopefully, and both Nefertiti and my father ignored me. The musky scent of wine filled the hall. Kiya remained surrounded by her women, court ladies who were dressed, as Ipu had told us, in the fashion she dictated: long hair, sleeveless sheaths, and hennaed feet. They hovered around her like moths, her little belly evidence that she, and not my sister, was the future of Egypt.

“It’s too hot in here,” Nefertiti said, taking my arm. “Come with me.”

Our father warned sharply, “Do not go far.”

I followed Nefertiti’s angry footfalls through the hall. “Where are we going?”

“Anywhere but here.” She stalked through the palace. “He left, Mutnodjmet. He actually left without meeting me. His future queen. The future of Egypt!”

We went outside and found ourselves at the fountain. We put our hands beneath its flow, letting the water drip from our fingers to our breasts. The rippling water carried the scents of honeysuckle and jasmine. As Nefertiti took off her wig, a familiar voice pierced the darkness.

“So you are my mother’s choice of wife.”

Nefertiti looked up and the prince was standing there, clad in his golden pectoral. She wiped any trace of surprise from her face, and at once she was Nefertiti, flirtatious and charming. “Why? Are you shocked?” she asked him.

“Yes.” But there was nothing airy in Amunhotep’s response. He sat and studied Nefertiti in the moonlight.

“Is Egypt’s prince tired of the dancing then?” She did it perfectly, hiding her nervousness by sounding coquettish.

“I am tired of seeing my mother bow to the High Priest of Amun.” When Nefertiti smiled, Amunhotep looked at her sharply. “Is that funny?”

“Yes. I had thought you had come out here to court your new wife. But if you want to talk politics, I will listen.”

Amunhotep narrowed his eyes. “Listen the way my father listens? Or the way you listened to your tutor when he professed love in Akhmim?”

Even in the darkness I could see my sister blanch, and I realized immediately what Kiya had done. I thought I would be ill, but Nefertiti was quick.

“They say you are a great believer of Aten,” she recovered. “That you plan to build temples when you are made Pharaoh.”

Amunhotep sat back. “Your father keeps you well informed,” he remarked.

“I keep myself well informed,” she replied.

She was smart and she was charming, and even he couldn’t resist the earnestness of her stare in the light of the oil lamps. He moved closer to her. “I want to be known as the People’s Pharaoh,” he admitted. “I want to build the greatest monuments in Egypt to show the people what a leader with vision can do. The Amun priests should never have been allowed to achieve such power. That power was meant for the Pharaohs of Egypt.”

There was the crunch of gravel and the three of us turned.

“Amunhotep.” Kiya stepped into the light. “Everyone is wondering where the Prince of Egypt has been.” She smiled lovingly at him, as if his disappearing was both quaint and wonderful. She held out her arm. “Shall we return?”

Nefertiti nodded. “Until tomorrow then,” she promised, and her voice was low and sultry, as if there was a great secret between them.

Kiya’s arm tightened around Amunhotep’s. “I felt our child move tonight. A son,” she swore, loud enough for Nefertiti to hear as she steered him away. “I can already feel him.”

We watched them walk into the darkness, and I noticed how tightly Kiya was holding on to Amunhotep, as if he might disappear at any moment.

Nefertiti seethed, her sandals slapping across the tiles to our chamber. “What will he do in two days when we are united before Amun? Will he bring Kiya along and ignore me then, too?”

My father stood and closed the door. “You must lower your voice. There are spies throughout the palace.”

Nefertiti sank onto a leather cushion and put her head against my mother’s shoulder. “I was humiliated,
mawat
. He sees me as just another wife.”

My mother caressed my sister’s dark hair. “He will come around.”

“When?” Nefertiti sat up.
“When?”

“Tomorrow,” my father said with certainty. “And if not tomorrow, then we will make him see that you are more than just his mother’s choice of wife.”

Chapter Three

twentieth of Pharmuthi

THE CORONATION OF
Egypt’s new Pharaoh and his queen was to take place on the twenty-first of Pharmuthi, and my father did everything in his power to put Nefertiti before Amunhotep’s eye.

In the morning we entered the wide, bronze gates into the towering Arena that Amunhotep III had built for Amun. Nefertiti squeezed my hand, for neither of us had ever seen anything so high or magnificent. A forest of columns encircled a sandy pit and the painted walls stretched to the sky. On the lowest tier of seats, the nobility assembled while their servants held drinks and honeyed cakes. This was where Amunhotep liked to ride in the morning, so we were there, watching the prince sweep around the tracks in his golden chariot. But Kiya was there as well, and the Vizier Panahesi, so that when the prince was finished playing warrior an hour later it was Kiya he kissed, and Kiya he laughed with, while Nefertiti had to smile and look pleased before her rival.

At noon, we were in the Great Hall again, sitting below the dais, eating and chatting as happily as if everything was going our family’s way. Nefertiti laughed and flirted, and I noticed that the more Amunhotep saw of his future wife, the less he could stop watching her. Kiya had none of Nefertiti’s sleek charm. She couldn’t turn a room the way Nefertiti did. But when the afternoon meal was finished, no further words had passed between the prince and Nefertiti, and when we returned to our chamber, my sister was silent. Ipu and Merit rushed around us, and I watched Nefertiti with a growing unease. Amunhotep still saw her as his mother’s choice of wife, and I couldn’t see how my father planned to change that.

“What will you do?” I finally asked.

“Repeat to me what he said in the tombs.”

Merit stiffened, poised to apply gold across Nefertiti’s chest. It was bad luck to speak of what happened below the earth.

I hesitated. “He said he would never bow to his brother. Never bow to Amun.”

“And by the fountain he said he wanted to be loved by the people,” Nefertiti stressed. “That he wanted to be the People’s Pharaoh.”

I nodded slowly.

“Mutnodjmet, go and find Father,” she said.

“Now?” Ipu was applying kohl to my brows. “Can’t it wait until after?”

“After
what?
” she asked tersely. “Kiya has birthed him a son?”

“Well, what are you going to tell him?” I demanded. I wasn’t going to leave until I’d determined that it was worth disturbing our father.

“I am going to tell him how we can turn the prince.”

I sighed, so she would know I wasn’t happy about it, then I went into the hall, but I couldn’t find my father. He wasn’t in his room or in the Audience Chamber. I searched the gardens, made my way into the labyrinthine kitchens, then rushed into the courtyard at the front of the palace, where a servant stopped me and asked what I needed.

“I’m searching for the Vizier Ay.”

The old man smiled. “He’s in the same place he always is, my lady.”

“And where is that?”

“In the Per Medjat.”

“The
what?
”

“The Hall of Books.” He could see that I did not know where this was and so he asked, “Shall I show you the way, my lady?”

“Yes.” I hurried after him into the palace, past the Great Hall toward the Audience Chamber. For an elderly man, he was spry. He stopped short at a pair of wooden doors, and it was clear he could not go inside.

“In there?”

“Yes, my lady. The Per Medjat.”

He waited to see whether I would knock or go in. I pushed open the doors and stood gazing up at the most magnificent room in all of Malkata. I had never before seen a hall of books. Two twisting flights of stairs in polished wood wound toward the ceiling, and everywhere there were scrolls bound in leather, held together by twine—they must have contained all the wisdom of the Pharaohs. My father sat at a cedar table. The queen was there, too, as well as my mother, and all of their voices were quick and tense. When I stepped inside, all three of them stopping speaking. Then two pairs of sharp blue eyes focused on me; I had not seen the strong resemblance between my father and his sister until then.

I cleared my throat and directed my announcement to my father. “Nefertiti would like to speak with you,” I told him.

Ay turned to his sister. “We’ll speak on this later. Perhaps today will change things.” He glanced at me. “What does she want?”

“To tell you something about the prince,” I said as we left the Per Medjat and entered the hall. “She thinks she has found a way to turn him.”

Inside our chamber, Ipu and Merit had finished dressing Nefertiti. Matching cartouches jangled at her wrists, and there were earrings in her ears. I paused, then gasped and rushed over to see what our body servants had done. They had pierced her lobes not once, but
twice
. “Who pierces them twice?”

“I do,” she said, lifting her chin.

I turned to my father, who only looked approvingly at her. “You have news about the prince?” he asked.

Nefertiti indicated our body servants with her eyes.

“From now on your body servants are your closest friends. Kiya has her women, and these are yours. Merit as well as Ipu were both chosen with caution. They are loyal.”

I glanced across the room at Merit. She rarely smiled, and I was thankful my father had chosen Ipu, the merrier one, for me.

“Ipu,” my father instructed quietly, “stand by the door and talk softly with Merit.” He pulled Nefertiti to the side, and I could hear only pieces of what they said together. At one point, my father looked immensely pleased. He patted Nefertiti’s shoulder and replied, “Very good. I thought the same.” Then they went to the door and he addressed Merit. “Come. I have a job.” And the three of them left the chamber.

I stared at Ipu. “What’s happening? Where did they go?”

“To turn the prince away from Kiya,” she said. She indicated the leather stool where she could finish my kohl, and I sat. “I only hope they succeed,” she confided.

I was curious. “Why?”

She took out her brush and uncapped a glass vial. “Before she wed the prince, Kiya and Merit were good friends.” I raised my eyebrows and Ipu nodded. “They were raised together, both the daughters of scribes. But Panahesi became a High Vizier and moved Kiya into the palace. It’s how she met the prince. Then Merit’s father was to become a lesser vizier at the palace as well. The Elder wanted to promote him. But Panahesi told the Elder he wasn’t trustworthy.”

I sucked in my breath. “How devious.”

“Kiya was afraid that with Merit in the palace, the prince would lose interest in her. But Merit always had another man in mind. She was to marry Vizier Kemosiri’s son, Heru, as soon as her father received his promotion. When it didn’t happen, Heru told his father he was still in love with Merit, daughter of a scribe or no. They kept writing, hoping the Elder would discover that he’d been wrong. Then one day, the letters stopped coming.”

I sat forward in my chair. “What happened?”

“Merit didn’t know. Later, she discovered that Kiya had turned Heru.”

I didn’t understand. “Turned?”

“Turned his eye. Even though Kiya knew she was going to marry the prince.”

“How cruel.” But I could imagine Kiya smiling sweetly, the same way she had smiled at me in the baths.
All the girls must be in love with you
, she’d probably told him.

Ipu clicked her tongue softly, holding up the pomegranate paste. “Of course, once Kiya was married, what did it matter if Merit came to the palace?”

“And her father?”

“Oh.” Ipu’s dimples disappeared. “He’s still a scribe.” Her voice grew low and hard. “It’s why Merit still hates Kiya.”

“But how can Nefertiti take Kiya’s place?”

Ipu smiled. “Gossip.”