Nefertiti (52 page)

“Do you wish you’d had this?” Nakhtmin asked me during the celebration. We were surrounded by tables of roasted goose in garlic, lotus flower dripping in honey, and barley beer. Wine had been flowing all night and women danced to a chorus of flutes.

I smiled, reaching across the table to take his hand. It was rough, not like my father’s hand, but there was strength in it. “I wouldn’t trade you for all the gifts in Thebes.”

Ipu and Djedi appeared, their hair decked with flowers and their faces filled with the wonderful contentment of a newly joined couple. “To the hosts of this feast,” Djedi shouted above the din, and hundreds of guests raised their cups to us, and the musicians struck up a happy tune. “Come and dance!” Ipu cried.

I held out my hand to Nakhtmin, and then we crossed the courtyard to where men and women were clapping, shaking sistrums, and watching the young dancing girls from Nubia, their skin like polished ebony in the torchlight, bending backward and leaping in unison to the men’s cries.

If a stranger stood across the Nile, he would have seen a hundred golden torchlights flickering like stars against an indigo palette, rising in tiers and casting illuminations across the villa belonging to the Sister of the King’s Chief Wife. The celebration disappeared in the early morning hours, when litters arrived bearing the most important guests back to their villas along the water. When the courtyard was empty at last, I spent the first night since my childhood without Ipu.

The next morning, a servant from Amarna arrived. He held out a scroll that I didn’t wait to read. “What does it say?” I held my breath, and the young man’s face grew bleak.

“The queen has given birth to the Princess Neferuaten. They both survived.”

A fourth princess.

Chapter Twenty-Four

1345 BCE

seventh of Thoth

FOR EIGHT LONG months after the birth of Nefertiti’s fourth daughter, Egypt knew only drought. A hot wind blew over the arid land, parching the crops and sucking the life from the River Nile. It began in the season of Peret. At first it was only a warm breeze at night when the desert chill should have arrived. Then the heat invaded the shadows, stealing into places that should have been cool, and old men began to go down to the river to stand in the water, splashing their faces in the withering sun.

At the wells, women began to gossip, and outside the city temples men whispered that Pharaoh had turned his back on Amun-Re, and now the great god of life had unleashed his anger, a drought that killed off half our neighbors’ cattle and sent fishermen’s children begging in the streets. Only Djedi seemed immune to the famine, telling Ipu that now was the time to sail, and that they could go upriver to Punt and bring back treasures far more valuable than any fish: ebony, cinnamon, and green gold.

“But Ipu’s not a sailor,” I cried. “She will die in Punt!”

Nakhtmin laughed at me. “Djedi is a talented man. He will hire sailors, and merchants will invest in his expedition.”

“But Ipu wants children,” I complained.

Nakhtmin shrugged. “Then she will have them in Punt.”

The horror of the notion left me speechless.

“It’s what she has chosen,” he reminded, “and I would bid my farewell to her before morning.”

I went to Ipu’s home with a heavy heart; I was losing my closest friend. Ipu had been with me since I had first passed the threshold of Malkata Palace, and now she was sailing for a foreign land from which she might never return. I was quiet, watching my body servant who was more than a body servant stuff linen into baskets and wrap cosmetics in papyrus.

“I’m not leaving for the ends of the earth,” Ipu remonstrated.

“Do you even know how they treat women in Punt? How do you know it’s not like Babylon?”

“Because Egyptians have been there before.”

“Egyptian
women?”

“Yes. In Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s time, Punt was ruled by a woman.”

“But that was Hatshepsut’s time. And besides, you’ve never really sailed. How do you know that you won’t get sick?”

“I’ll take ginger.” She took my hand. “And I’ll be careful. When I return, I will bring you herbs that no one in Thebes has ever seen. I will search the markets for you when I am there.”

I nodded, trying to reconcile myself to what I couldn’t change. “Be safe,” I made her promise again. “And don’t you dare bear a child on foreign bricks without me!”

Ipu laughed. “I will tell my child it must wait for its godmother.”

She and Djedi, with their ship full of sailors and merchants, departed the next morning for a land we Egyptians imagined as far away as the sun.

“It’s not so far as you believe,” my husband told me, sharpening his arrows in the courtyard the following morning. “She’ll be back before next Akhet,” he predicted.

“In a
renpet?”
I cried. “But what will I do without her?” I sat down on the stump of a fallen palm, feeling sorry for myself.

Nakhtmin looked over and a slow smile spread across his face. “Oh, I can think of some things we can do while Ipu is away.” I had the feeling he would be glad to be relieved of Ipu’s incessant chatter for a time.

But every month, my moon blood came.

I grew mandrakes, I added honey to my tea, I visited the shrine of Tawaret in the city every morning, laying down the choicest herbs from my garden. I began to accept that I would never give Nakhtmin the children we wanted. I would never be fertile again. And instead of turning me aside the way many husbands might have, Nakhtmin only said, “Then the gods meant for you to make the earth fertile instead.” He caressed my cheek. “I would love you the same with five children or none.” But there was a fire in his eyes, and I was afraid. It was only for me, for my family, that he refused to rid Egypt of a man who should never have been Pharaoh. Yet he never said a word about the letters that arrived from soldiers in Akhenaten’s army. He only took me in his arms and held me close and asked me if I wanted to walk along the river. “Before it disappears,” he joked darkly.

“I hear the priestesses in the shrine talking among themselves,” I told him. “They think this drought is the result of something that Pharaoh has done.”

Nakhtmin didn’t disagree. He opened the gate to the garden so we could pass through and walk the short distance to the water. “He has neglected Amun and every other god.”

We both looked at the river. On the exposed banks, naked children were playing, tossing a ball and laughing while their parents watched them, covered by sunshades. Three women nodded deferentially to us as we passed, and Nakhtmin said, “It’s amazing how much Egyptians will tolerate before they rise and rebel.” He turned to me in the setting sun. “I am telling you this because I love you, Mutnodjmet, and because your father is a great man forced to serve a false Pharaoh. The people won’t always bow, and I want to know that you won’t be crushed. You will be ready.”

His words were making me afraid.

“Promise me you won’t make foolish decisions,” he pressed. “When the time comes, promise me you’ll make decisions for the both of us, not just for your family.”

“Nakhtmin, I don’t know what you’re talking—”

“But you will. And when you do, I want you to remember this moment.”

I looked beyond him to the River Nile, the sun reflecting on its shrinking surface. I looked at Nakhtmin, who was waiting for my response. I replied, “I promise.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

1344 BCE

Akhet, Season of Overflow

MY HUSBAND DIDN’T mention my promise on the river again, and before I knew it the seasons of Peret and Shemu passed and word arrived that Djedi’s ship had come into the harbor. I put on my wig and brightest linen belt.

Nakhtmin raised his brows. “You’d think it was the queen who was arriving.”

We rode to the port, where we found the ship to be as large and impressive as I remembered it. The scent of roasted cumin hung heavy in the air, and we pushed our way past the people who were packed like fish along the quay. Many of them had come to see their loved ones arrive. More than fifty sailors had left with Djedi that day in Thoth, and now their wives pressed against each other with flowers and lotus blossoms in their hair. When I spotted Ipu on the docks, I gaped. She was round with child!

“My lady!” Ipu made her way through the throng. “My lady!” She threw her arms around my neck, and I could barely reach mine around hers. “Look.” She grinned, and indicated her round stomach. “He waited for you.”

“How many months?” I gasped.

“Nearly nine.”

“Nine,” I repeated. It was impossible to believe. Ipu. My Ipu. With child.

She turned to Nakhtmin. “I thought about you when I was gone,” she admitted. “On the shores of Punt, the soldiers carry weapons unlike anything in Egypt. My husband brought you back examples of their weaponry. All kinds. In ebony and cedar. Even one in a metal they call iron.” She put her hand on her round stomach, looking healthier than I’d ever seen her.

Nakhtmin said gently, “Why don’t you two go home. I can help Djedi here, and the two of you can talk. This is no place for a woman nine months with child.”

I took Ipu back to the house she hadn’t seen in nearly a year. As we walked, she told me about a land where the people were darker than Egyptians and lighter than Nubians. “And they wear strange ornaments in their hair. Bronze and ivory. The wealthier the woman, the more charms in her hair.”

“And the herbs?” I pressed.

“Oh, my lady, herbs like you’ve never seen. Djedi has an entire chest of them for you.”

I clapped my hands. “Did you ask the local women what they were for?”

“I wrote down most of it,” she replied, but we had come upon her house and her footsteps slowed. She looked up in wonder at the two-story building, white with brown trim around the windows and doors. “I had forgotten how nice it is to be home,” she said, holding her stomach, and a strange feeling of envy washed over me.

There was a deep sense of stillness when we opened the door, a quiet I could only remember from the tombs in Thebes. Ipu looked around at the statues of Amun, all standing in the same places that she had left them. Besides a thin layer of dust, nothing had changed. Except her. I was the first to speak. “We should roll up these shades and let in some light.” I went about rolling up the reed mats while Ipu watched. Then I turned around. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.