The Egyptian Royals Collection (93 page)

“And Rahotep?” I asked, imagining the High Priest’s sickening grin as he helped spread Henuttawy’s lie among the people.

“Kill the viper first. Snakes may be immune to their own kind’s venom, but you have become something more powerful than a snake today.”

I followed her eyes to the image of a queen painted above the door. The golden wings of the woman’s vulture crown swept down her hair. As Chief Wife, I would wear a similar headdress, for the vulture is the most powerful symbol in Egypt. It is more powerful even than the cobra, for its flight brings it closer to the gods.

“Enjoy these next few days, Nefertari. There will be a Birth Feast tomorrow,” Woserit said. “But when the right time comes …”

When the right times comes,
I thought,
then the viper will see what a vulture can do.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

A T
RUTH
M
ADE
W
HOLE

                  
I TOOK WOSERIT’S
advice and waited, savoring the days I had with my sons before I would have to return to the Audience Chamber and be parted from them. After the Birth Feast, I lay in the pavilion for fourteen days, reading to Amunher and Prehir, and singing to them the hymns of Amun that my mother would have sung to me if she had lived. There was nothing in the world so beautiful as watching them sleep, studying the steady rise and fall of their little chests, and listening to the small noises they made when they were hungry, or tired, or in need of being held in their own mother’s arms. Of course, I was not allowed to suckle them, so Merit bound my breasts with linen and I watched while my sons fed from their milk nurses, cheerful women who had recently given birth themselves.

As my fourteen days passed, Ramesses came to me every afternoon to tell me the news of the Audience Chamber, bringing me presents of honeyed dates and pomegranate wine. At night, when the nurses had wrapped our sons in blankets and placed them in the pavilion’s private chamber, Ramesses lit the oil lamps and climbed into my bed. And there, surrounded by gifts from foreign kingdoms, we studied the day’s petitions together.

For a short while, I knew the perfect life. I wasn’t in the Great Hall to hear the gossip about me, and I didn’t have to see Rahotep’s frightening grin. But the world could not be kept at bay forever, and the news that came into our happy pavilion and disturbed me the most was not about myself, but about Egypt’s security.

“I won’t let this go on!” Ramesses raged on my last night in the birthing pavilion. He pointed to the pile of growing petitions from Memphis. “Sherden pirates attacking our ships along the River Nile. Sherden pirates attacking our ships in Kadesh!”

“The same pirates who overtook the Mycenaean King’s ship and stole the gifts that were meant for little Amunher and Prehir,” I reminded, and Ramesses’s face reddened.

“We won’t let it continue. We will wait until Tybi,” he said decisively. He wouldn’t risk leaving Iset before she delivered her child, not knowing whether she lived or died. “And if these Sherden attack another Egyptian ship, or even a ship that’s bound for Egypt, they’ll be humbled by what will be waiting for them.”

In the Audience Chamber the next day, the viziers crowded around the base of the dais, greeting me with unusually low bows as I took my seat. But when Rahotep smiled strangely at me, I felt the sudden urge to hold my sons. I knew that they were safe, yet as Ramesses struck his crook on the floor of the dais, and as the viziers took their seats, I had to remind myself that there was no better nurse in Egypt than Merit.

“Bring forth the petitioners,” Ramesses announced. The doors swung open, and a figure crossed the tiles of the chamber. I recognized Ahmoses and his shepherd’s staff at once. He didn’t stop at the table where the viziers were waiting but came straight toward me. When the soldiers stepped forward to pull him back, I raised my hand to let them know that the Habiru should come forth.

“Princess Nefertari.” Unlike our previous meeting, Ahmoses bowed briefly before my throne. I wondered if this was because Ramesses was present. No one in Egypt would dare to come before a Pharaoh without bowing. I didn’t wait for him to rise. “How did you know I would have twin sons?”

“Because Queen Nefertiti gave Pharaoh Akhenaten twins,” he replied, meeting my gaze. “I said nothing about sons.”

Though we were speaking in Canaanite, I still glanced at Ramesses. He was watching us with a peculiar expression. “You are
never
to mention the names of the Heretic Rulers in Thebes,” I said harshly.

“The Heretic
Rulers?
” Ahmoses frowned. “Akhenaten, yes. But your aunt …” He shook his head.

“Are you saying,” I demanded, “that she didn’t worship Aten?”

“She only worshipped Aten while her husband still lived. Otherwise, she allowed shrines to be built to the gods that her husband had abandoned.”

Now both Ramesses and Iset had stopped listening to petitions. Both of them were watching me. “What are you saying?” I grew flustered.

“I am saying that Queen Nefertiti never stopping praying to Amun. She was not a heretic, as Pharaoh Horemheb called her.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I saw her shrines, and I watched your mother accompany the queen to the hidden temples of Tawaret. There was great danger in what your aunt was doing. If her husband had discovered it, he would have cast her off and taken Princess Kiya as Chief Wife instead.”

I was aware that even though we were speaking Canaanite, the entire chamber had become my audience. “You have been to the palace of Malkata three times,” I said angrily. “What is your purpose?”

“To remind you that your aunt suffered in the name of her gods. She wasn’t free to worship as she wished. Instead, she had to bow to Aten, and your mother—”

“My mother never bowed to Aten!”

“But there were times when she wondered if she should, when the pressure was so great she would have done anything to escape it. Your family suffered like the Habiru are suffering—”

“Pharaoh will not set the Habiru free!” I swore. “They are a part of his army.”

Ahmoses searched my face, to see if I might change my mind, and when he saw that I wouldn’t, he shook his head and turned away. I watched him make his way across the chamber. When he reached the guards, I heard myself exclaim, “Wait!”

He turned slowly to face me, and I stood from my throne.

“What are you doing?” Ramesses asked. But I walked beyond the viziers’ tables and met Ahmoses at the heavy bronze doors. The courtiers had stopped playing Senet to listen, but even if they could understand Canaanite, I lowered my voice so that only Ahmoses would hear. “Come again in Thoth,” I told him.

“Will the Habiru be set free with the next new year?”

I hesitated. Because Ramesses trusted me, it was possible that I could persuade him. But was I willing to risk the safety of Egypt because one Habiru had revealed to me the truth about my ancestors? “I … I don’t know. In eight months, a great deal can change.”

“You mean perhaps, by then, you will be queen?”

I felt the eyes of the entire court boring into my back and whispered, “Have you heard what the people are saying about my sons?”

Ahmoses didn’t flinch or look away. And he didn’t lie, as one of the courtiers might have. “Your mother was known for her honesty at court, and I believe the same of her daughter,” he said. “I have told the Habiru that Prince Amunher and Prince Prehir are royal sons.”

I closed my eyes briefly. “My husband thinks he can threaten gossip away. He swears that anyone speaking such things will be sent to the quarries, but you and I know … Will you tell the rest of the people?” I asked, and I was aware of how desperate I had become that I was asking a favor from a heretic. “Will you spread the word in eastern Thebes?” I repeated.

Ahmoses regarded me for a moment, and instead of naming a price, as I thought he might, simply nodded his assent.

LATER THAT
evening, before Ramesses visited my chamber, I told Merit what had happened. “He told me she never worshipped Aten.”

Merit stood from the brazier where she was setting aloe wood to flame. Poorer households used cow dung and river reeds for their fires, but the scent of aloe has a calming effect, and through the open door to Merit’s chamber I could see that my sons were already asleep. Her brows drew together until they formed a dark line.

“Well, you were there!” I said passionately. “Is it
true?
”

Merit sat on the edge of the bed with me. “I saw her worship Aten, my lady.”

“Because she had to?”

Merit spread her palms. “Perhaps.”

“But did you see her go to other shrines as well? Did she secretly worship Tawaret, or Amun?”

“Yes, when it pleased her,” she admitted.

“And when was that?”

“When she wasn’t worshipping herself,” Merit said with brutal honesty.

It was as though a heavy stone had been lifted from my chest. Perhaps she had been selfish, and greedy, and vain. Perhaps these things all went against the laws of Ma’at. But there was nothing worse than heresy. And she had not been a heretic.

The door of my chamber opened. Ramesses came inside and Merit stood to bow. As soon as she left, I joined Ramesses on the long leather bench near the fire and told him what Ahmoses had said. For several moments he was silent, then he placed the scrolls he had brought with him on a low table next to the brazier, and said, “I
knew
that what they taught in the edduba wasn’t true. How could anyone related to you be a heretic, Nefer? Look at your mother; look at
you!
” His voice rose in excitement. “And what does Merit say?”

“The same as Ahmoses. She had seen my aunt worshipping at Tawaret’s shrine.” I held my breath, wondering if this was the moment he would decide to make me Chief Wife. If I could have silently willed the decision into his heart, I would have then.

He took my hands and swore, “The people may not know the truth, Nefertari, but we do. And someday, I will resurrect the names of your
akhu
in Egypt.”

I was disappointed. “Until then?”

Color tinged Ramesses’s cheeks. Surely he knew what I’d been hoping for. “Until then, we will try to change the people’s hearts.”

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

S
EKHMET’S
C
LAWS

                  
IN THE DAYS
after Ahmoses’s visit, I thought a great deal about my family and wished for things that could never be. I wished I could have gone with Asha to Amarna and seen the crumbling walls and abandoned remains of the city that Nefertiti had built. I longed to tear down every statue to Horemheb the way he tore down the statues of Ay and Tutankhamun, or wipe his name from the scrolls just as he tried to wipe away theirs. To avoid being consumed with vengeance, I spent my time thinking about my sons. I tried not to love them as much as I did; I knew that half of all children born never reached the age of three. But every day with my sons was an adventure, and neither Ramesses nor I could help but take them into our arms whenever our time in the Audience Chamber was finished. We laughed over the new faces they made when they were happy, or tired, or frustrated, or sad. By Tybi, they had their own little personalities, so that at night when I heard them crying from Merit’s chamber, I could tell their cries apart. Even after a long day of petitioners, I would sit up, and Ramesses would follow me to Merit’s door. “Go to sleep,” I’d tell him, but he wanted to be awake with me. So he would take Prehir, and I would take Amunher, and we would rock them by the light of the moon and smile at each other on those clear late-autumn nights.

“Can you imagine the day they’re old enough to hunt with us?” Ramesses asked one evening.

I laughed. “
Hunting?
Merit probably won’t even allow them to go swimming!”

Ramesses grinned. “She’s a good nurse, isn’t she?”

I looked down at Prehir’s contented face in my arms, and nodded. During the day, I doubted if our sons even noticed we were gone. They ate and slept under Merit’s supervision, and she was the perfect
mawat,
watching over them with a lioness’s ferocity.

“In a month, Iset will be going into the birthing pavilion,” Ramesses said quietly. “I’m going to take the army north before she gives birth.”

“To fight the pirates?”

“Yes. And I’ve been thinking, Nefer. What if you came with me?” My heart raced in my chest, and when I didn’t say anything Ramesses added, “What better way to convince the people that you’re beloved of Amun than to let them see you at my side when I defeat the Sherden? You would remain in the cabin surrounded by guards. There would be no danger—”

“Yes.”

Ramesses peered through the darkness at me. “Yes …”

“I will go with you. To the north … to the south … to the farthest ends of the desert.”

ON THE
fifteenth of Tybi, good news came to Ramesses with the bad. Iset had been taken early to the birthing pavilion, and in the Northern Sea the Sherden pirates had attacked another Egyptian ship carrying five thousand deben worth of palace oil to Mycenae. Ramesses dismissed the day’s petitioners, shouting that the Audience Chamber must be cleared at once. Even Woserit and Henuttawy couldn’t calm him.

“There is nothing you can do today,” Henuttawy reminded, but Ramesses ignored her.

“Guards!” he demanded, as the viziers gathered nervously around the steps of the dais. “Summon Asha and his father, General Anhuri. Bring General Kofu in as well!”

“What will you do?” Henuttawy asked. “The army isn’t supposed to leave for ten days.”

“I’ll prepare a small fleet of ships tonight, and we will leave as soon as Iset has given birth.”

“But what if it’s a son?” Henuttawy asked. “How will Amun know that an heir has been born if no Birth Feast has been held?” Rahotep spread his hands in question, and the viziers looked at one another, waiting for Ramesses to make a decision.

“I will stay for the feast,” Ramesses conceded. “But only so that Amun knows this child. I won’t sit in Thebes while a band of thieving Sherden make
fools
of Egypt!”

I picked up the list that Paser had made, reading off the number of goods that Egypt had lost to the pirates. “A grove of potted myrrh trees for ointment, three golden collars from Crete, leather armor from Mycenae, chariots plated in gold and electrum, fifty barrels of olive oil, and twenty barrels of wine from Troy. The sooner we leave the better,” I said cunningly.

Henuttawy and Rahotep turned.
“We?”
Henuttawy said, and her eyes grew so narrow they looked like they had been painted on with the thinnest stroke of a reed brush. “Where do you think you’re going, Princess?”

“With me,” Ramesses said firmly.

“You are taking the mother of your sons,” Henuttawy asked calmly, “to war with the Sherden?”

“I wouldn’t call it war.” Ramesses glanced at me. “More like a battle.”

But Henuttawy wasn’t concerned about me; she was concerned that while Iset was recovering in the birthing pavilion, I would be riding into battle at Ramesses’s side, like the lion goddess Sekhmet, who avenged men’s evil deeds through war.

“It is kind of you to be concerned, Henuttawy,” I said, noting silently how much she resembled the viper she wore on her brow. “But I have no fear when I am with Ramesses. I know he’ll protect me.”

The doors to the Audience Chamber swung open and Asha arrived with his father, General Anhuri, and a second officer. The viziers stepped back to allow them through. “Your Majesty.” The men bowed.

“Have you heard?” Ramesses demanded.

“Sherden,” Anhuri replied. He was tall, like Asha, but with darker skin and harder eyes. I thought, as I often had, that he looked like he had spent many days in the desert without water or shade, and that neither had bothered him. “We have waited long enough to deal with these pirates,” Anhuri said. “Every day they’ll grow bolder until ships no longer come to Egypt from the Northern Sea.”

“We will wait until my wife has given birth,” Ramesses said. “But make ready a fleet.”

“Of how many ships?” General Kofu asked. “The Sherden use two ships to attack. Both ships work together.”

“Then ready ten. We’ll send one ship to lie in wait for them,” Ramesses plotted. “And we’ll stock it to look like a merchant ship. The soldiers will dress as sailors, and when the Sherden come to attack—”

“They’ll become prey themselves!” Asha finished. His eyes were bright with expectation. A baited merchant ship could dock at a bend in the river, while around the bend, nine of Pharaoh’s best ships could be waiting. When both of the pirate ships were lured in, Pharaoh’s ships would surround them. “But the Sherden are no fools,” he said cautiously. “They will be wary now of a ship moving slowly on the river.”

“Then we can dock and pretend to be unloading barrels,” Ramesses said.

“They have grown fat on their thievery,” General Anhuri warned.

“They will want something more than barrels of oil. Perhaps a ship they believe is carrying gold …”

“What if we sail the ship with Pharaoh’s pennant?” General Kofu suggested.

“No. They may not trust that,” Anhuri said.

“Then what if it’s a princess’s ship, sailing for Mycenae?” I asked.

“They may still be suspicious,” Anhuri warned.

“And what if the princess was on board, wearing gold that would reflect far enough for them to see? I could walk the decks and there would be no doubt of it being a royal barge.”

The generals looked at Ramesses.

“We’re not using you as bait,” he said. “It’s too great a risk.”

“But the idea is good,” Anhuri admitted. “And we could just as easily dress up a boy. It might lure in the Sherden.”

A messenger entered the chamber and bowed before the dais. Henuttawy demanded, “Has she given birth yet?”

I flinched at her callousness and wondered who was sitting with Iset while we clustered in the Audience Chamber.

“Not yet, my lady. But she will deliver His Majesty’s next heir at any moment.”

Ramesses stood from his throne. “Have the proper midwives been summoned?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” The messenger bowed. “They are ready.”

We rushed through the palace, and I wondered what Ramesses was hoping for. I never dared to discuss it with him at night, but if it was a son, the will of the gods would be unclear. However, if it was a daughter …

We reached the birthing pavilion, and behind us the courtiers halted to wait at the chamber’s entrance. I hesitated in front of the doors. “I … I shouldn’t. She already thinks I stole the
ka
of her last child!”

Ramesses scowled. “Then she will have to get over such superstitious nonsense.”

I passed a look to Woserit, who followed us across the threshold of the pavilion. Inside the chamber, the wall hangings and reed mats had all been changed. Even the color of the linens was different. I heard the sharp intake of breath as Iset saw Ramesses cross the room, and I knew she was afraid that his presence might incur the wrath of Tawaret. From her bed, she cried out in pain, and the midwives lifted her up, a woman under each arm, until she was seated on the birthing chair. Her lap was covered by a wide strip of linen and her hair had been pulled back in elaborate braids. She was perfectly beautiful even in childbirth. I knew I had not looked so well kempt during my own time in the pavilion.

I went to the statue of Tawaret and lit one of the cones of incense. Most had been burned by the midwives, and a pile of ashes smoldered at the feet of the hippopotamus goddess. I closed my eyes and whispered obediently, “May you bless Iset with the strength of a lioness. May you give her an easy birth …”

Iset shrieked; Henuttawy pointed to me and cried, “Nefertari, take back that terrible prayer!”

I blanched. Even the midwives turned.

“I heard what she prayed for,” Woserit said. “She was praying for Iset’s health.”

“Get her out!” Iset cried, gripping the arms of her chair.

“Nefertari is my wife,” Ramesses said sharply. “She has prayed for your health—”

“She stole the
ka
of my son and now she wants another!”

I turned from the shrine. When Ramesses reached out his hand to stop me, I shook my head firmly.
“No!”
I pushed the door open with Woserit following close behind, as the waiting crowd shifted to catch a glimpse inside. Paser separated himself from the group of viziers expectantly. “Has she given birth?”

“No.” Woserit scowled. “But she ordered us from the pavilion. Henuttawy accused Nefertari of praying for Iset’s death.”