Nefertiti (56 page)

Akhenaten’s look was unforgiving. “Of course you are loyal. To be anything else would be foolish.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

AMARNA

ninth of Pachons

DESPITE OUR FATHER’S triumph over Panahesi, by the Season of Harvest Kiya was pregnant. Even after the disaster in the Audience Chamber, Panahesi swept through the halls barking orders as if he could already feel the heavy crown of Egypt in his hands.

One son might be ignored, but a nation could not ignore two princes, two heirs to the throne. If Kiya could do it, the ascension would be final.

Akhenaten found Merit in the Great Hall and instructed her to give Nefertiti the news. He was too much of a coward to do it himself. “Be sure to tell her that no child will ever take Meritaten’s place in my affection. She is our golden child, our child of Aten.”

I watched him as he led his girls away. His adoring princesses. The daughters he believed would never turn on him the way a son might, the way he had turned on his brother and father.
He doesn’t understand girls if he thinks they can’t be cunning
, I thought.

Merit looked at me with rising desperation. “How should I tell her?”

We reached the doors of the Audience Chamber. “Just tell her. She predicted it herself; it shouldn’t be a surprise.”

Inside, Nakhtmin was playing Senet with my mother. On the dais, my father’s head was bent close to Nefertiti’s; for once, my sister wasn’t surrounded by ladies. They had all gone to see Akhenaten ride.

“You’re not outside?” I asked her.

“I don’t have time for the Arena,” she snapped.
“He
can go riding around whenever he chooses, but I have to oversee plans for the walls. If there is an invasion, we’ll have no defense against the Hittites, but Akhenaten isn’t interested—” She interrupted herself, staring sharply between me and Merit. “What do you want?”

I nodded to Merit, and my father lowered the architectural plans to his lap.

“Your Highness,” Merit began, “I have news that is not going to make you happy.” She added as quickly as possible to get it over with, “There is word that Kiya is pregnant.”

Nefertiti remained very still. When the silence stretched on, Merit continued uncertainly. “It is only Kiya’s second child, Your Highness. You have six princesses, and Akhenaten wished me to tell you—”

Nefertiti sent scrolls rolling across the tiles as she stood. “My husband sent
you
to tell me?” she shrieked.

My father rose quickly to be at her side. “We must move now,” he suggested. “Make him show all of Egypt that Meritaten is the one he intends to have reign over Nebnefer.”

Something unspoken passed between them and I asked, “But how?” No one answered my question. “How can you do that?”

There was a strange glint in Nefertiti’s eyes. “In the only way that’s never been done,” she said.

Akhenaten declared a Durbar in Nefertiti’s honor. It was a festival to celebrate their reign together, and the change from jealous wife to victorious queen was immediate. Nefertiti said nothing more about Kiya, and Nakhtmin wondered how deep Amarna’s coffers would be drained to create the largest Durbar in history.

“Mutny, come,” my sister called brightly to me. I entered her Robing Room with its dozens of chests packed with bright linen. There were bronze-handled razors strewn about, and pots of kohl carelessly tipped over. “Which wig should I wear?” She was surrounded by hairpieces.

“The one that cost least,” I said immediately.

She continued to wait for an answer that pleased her.

“The short one,” I replied.

She swept the other wigs into a pile for Merit to clean up later. “Father has sent invitations to every king in the East,” she boasted. “When the princes of the greatest nations in the world are assembled here, an announcement will be made that will write our family’s name in eternity.”

I glanced sideways at her. “What do you mean?”

Nefertiti looked out over her city. “It’s a surprise.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Peret, Season of Growing

IT TOOK UNTIL Tybi to prepare for the coming of a dozen nations, princes and courtiers, minor queens with their traveling entourages, and thousands of nobles from Mitanni and Rhodes. The soldiers worked from dawn till dusk to swathe the Arena in gold cloth and to finish the images of Aten on every shrine. There were seven nights of festivals to plan, rooms to prepare for a thousand dignitaries, and wine to procure. The palace did not sit still for an entire month, and while everyone believed that the first Durbar in twenty years was a celebration of Nefertiti and Akhenaten’s rule, only our family knew better.

My father stood in Nefertiti’s doorway, watching her choose between sandals. “Is it true?” he demanded.

I had heard the rumor, too, that Akhenaten had drawn up a letter on his own, sending it to King Suppiluliumas of the Hittites and inviting our enemy to see the glory of Amarna.

My father stepped inside. “Is it true that your husband is welcoming Hittites? Hittites,” he hissed, “in the midst of this city?”

Nefertiti drew herself up to her fullest height. “Yes,” she declared. “Let them see what we have built.”

“And shall we let them bring in plague?” my father shouted. “Black Death,” he spelled out for her. “Shall we let that happen, too?” He thrust before her face the scrolls that he’d been carrying. She unrolled them fiercely, scanning their contents. “Plague throughout the north,” he told her.

“Akhenaten already knows this.” She pushed them away.

“Then the more fool he!”

They glared at one another.

“You know what I am about to do,” Nefertiti said.

“Yes. You are about to bring death into this city.”

“Everyone must see what is about to happen. They must all understand. Every kingdom in the East!”

I could see what my father wanted to say. That pride, the pride of the whole royal family, would be our undoing. Instead he replied, “Then invite the king of Nubia, but do not risk the Hittites. Do not risk bringing plague into this city.”

“When was the last time there was plague in Egypt?”

“When the Elder was Pharaoh. When soldiers brought it home from the north,” he said forebodingly.

My sister faltered. “Well, there will be no convincing Akhenaten to change his mind.”

My father stared at her. “You have never seen the Black Death,” he warned. “How a person’s limbs turn black, how swelling begins under the skin to become huge black balls.” My sister recoiled and my father drew closer. “We don’t know what they’re carrying in the north. Some sicknesses can take days to appear. They have to be stopped!”

“It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late!” he declared, and Nefertiti shouted back.

“He won’t change his mind! The Hittites will come, and they will disappear when the Durbar is over.”

“Leaving
what
behind?”

Nefertiti grinned smugly. “Their gold.”

My father went to Akhenaten, but there was no changing his mind, just as Nefertiti had said. “Why would Aten allow plague to touch this city?” he demanded. “This is the greatest city of Egypt.”

My father went to his sister and she suggested that one last attempt be made. But Panahesi only laughed. “No one has seen plague in fifteen years,” he sneered.

“But they have seen it in the north,” my father said steadily. “Near Kadesh, hundreds of sailors have died.”

“What is it, Vizier? Are you afraid the Hittites will come marching in and see how defenseless this city really is? That they will see how Pharaoh will need a strong son to lead his army if he ever hopes to defend it? None of your girls could lead men into battle. It’s a matter of time before Nebnefer is made heir.”

“Then you do not know Akhenaten,” my father said, and I wondered if that was Nefertiti’s great secret. If Meritaten would be declared heir when the Durbar began. “And if that is your reason for allowing Hittites into Amarna, then you are more foolish than I thought.”

They arrived from every corner of the world: Nubians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks. The women who came from far reaches of the deserts wore veils on their faces, while we wore hardly anything at all, with our breasts and ankles hennaed and our hair in beaded wigs that made music when the warm wind blew from the west.

The servants fluttered around my sister like butterflies, smoothing and painting and arranging her crown. Thutmose sketched her onto papyrus while she sat under Merit’s care, used to all the fuss and pampering.

“Won’t you tell me what the surprise is?” I asked. “You’re not pregnant again?”

“Of course not. It’s bigger than a son for Egypt. This
is
Egypt,” she said bracingly.

Thutmose flashed a private smile at her, and I turned to the sculptor.

“You
know?” I looked back at Nefertiti. “You told Thutmose and not your own sister?”

“Thutmose
has
to know.” She raised her chin. “He must capture it all.”

The trumpets blared and Merit stood back. Nefertiti was aglitter with the most precious jewels in Egypt. Not even her daughter, the posterity and keeper of her beauty, could rival her. Meritaten stepped forward.

“Will it be a good surprise,
mawat
?”

“It will mean your inheritance as well as mine,” she promised, hooking one arm in her daughter’s, then calling for me. Behind us trailed Meketaten and three-year-old Ankhesenpaaten.

“Where is Pharaoh?”

“At the Window of Appearances,” she replied.

I could hear the cheers even from the inner courtyard of the palace, and when we arrived at the window where my parents spoke in quick tones with Akhenaten, I held my breath. Below us, two hundred altars had been erected and crowned with myrrh. Thousands of priests were gathered in front of them, and on every slab a bull was being slaughtered and offered to Aten; two hundred sacrifices to show the wealth and glory of the palace of Amarna. No expense had been spared for the Durbar that would live throughout history. Everywhere there glittered carnelian, lapis lazuli, and feldspar, on the necks of noblewomen and the ankles of scribes. The people stood beneath shades and canopies, drinking, feasting, and gazing upward in expectation of the god-on-earth who had brought this spectacle to them. The priests were clad in gold, from their ankles to their blazing pectorals, and before them, on the highest altar of all, was Panahesi.