Nefertiti (57 page)

“Impressed?” Akhenaten stood beside me, and I thought it was strange that he should want my opinion. I looked back down, listening to the blend of laughter and harps as the men sang songs to the great god Aten, the god who created so much gold and wine. Bull meat and myrrh wafted through the air to the heights of the palace, and there was the heady scent of beer in the wind.

“It will be remembered until eternity,” I replied.

“Yes, eternity.” Then Akhenaten took Nefertiti’s hand in his and revealed himself in the Window of Appearances. “A Durbar for the greatest Pharaohs in Egypt,” he declared and the people cheered. “Pharaoh Akhenaten and the Pharaoh Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti!”

I gasped.

“What does that mean?” Meritaten asked.

Nefertiti and Akhenaten remained at the window, united, and the people sent up a cry that might have deafened the gods.

“What does that mean?” Meritaten repeated, and my husband gave her an answer, for I was in shock.

“It means your mother shall do what no other queen has done before her. She’s about to become Pharaoh and Coregent of Egypt.”

It was unthinkable. For a queen to become a king. To be coregent with her husband. Even my aunt had not made herself Pharaoh. My father’s expression was unreadable, but I knew what he must be thinking. It was higher than our family had ever reached.

“Where is Tiye?” I searched the chamber.

“With the emissaries from Mitanni,” my father said.

“And Panahesi?” my husband asked.

My father used his chin to indicate a man who’d grown red with fury. Panahesi looked first to his right, then to his left, trying to find a way out of the courtyard among the chanting priests and thousands of dignitaries, but there was nowhere to go. Then he looked up at the picture our family created, perfectly framed in the Window of Appearances.

I stepped away. Next to me, Nakhtmin shook his head, his eyes bright with speculation, trying to determine what this would mean for a queen with no sons. But I already knew what it would mean. No one, not Kiya or Nebnefer or Panahesi, could pull our family down now.

“Mutnodjmet! Meritaten! Come,” Nefertiti called.

We moved forward.

“Where is Nakhtmin?” Akhenaten demanded. He saw my husband at the back of the chamber. “You, too.”

My father stepped forward quickly. “What is it that you need, Your Highness?”

“The former general is to stand beside me. He will stand beside me and the people will see that even Nakhtmin bows down before the Pharaohs of Egypt.”

My heart quickened in my chest, knowing that Nakhtmin was going to refuse. I caught my husband’s gaze, then my father stepped toward him and touched his arm, whispering something into his ear.

At the sight of Nakhtmin in the Window of Appearances, the men on the ground, soldiers and commoners alike, threw up such a cry that even Akhenaten moved back as if confronted by a vicious blow.

“Take my hand!” Akhenaten commanded. “They will love me the way they love you,” he swore. He raised Nakhtmin’s arm with his, and it seemed as if all of Egypt had begun to cry, “Akhen-aten.” On his left was Nakhtmin. On his right stood Nefertiti. He turned to his Pharaoh-Queen and cried, “My people!” glowing with the love of commoners who’d been bought with bread and wine. “The Pharaoh Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti!”

The cheers became deafening when Nefertiti held up the crook and flail, the unmistakable sign of kingship in Egypt. I stood back, and Nefertiti shouted, “We welcome you to the greatest Durbar in history!”

“They will think you love him,” I whispered to my husband during the procession to the temple. “All the soldiers will think you have bowed to Aten!”

“They will think no such thing.” He pressed close to me. “They aren’t fools. They know I am a believer in Amun who is only in Pharaoh’s presence because of you.”

I looked ahead at the procession of men in their soldiers’ kilts and military belts. “They will also know that I am the reason you are no longer general.”

“Horemheb is imprisoned; I would be there, too, if you hadn’t loved me.”

We stopped in a courtyard crowded with chariots. They were ablaze with electrum, turquoise, and copper. Then Panahesi stepped forward to carry Nefertiti to the destiny she had carved for herself without sons or history or precedent. His face was arranged in a smile, as if her ascension to Egypt’s throne over his grandson was his greatest wish.

“Now he will have to hitch his star to hers or plot against two Pharaohs,” my husband said.

“Even at the expense of his daughter and grandson?” I asked.

Nakhtmin spread his palms. “Whatever star is rising.”

We were swept away into a sea of chariots and carried across the Courtyard of Festivals to the temple with its statues of Nefertiti and Akhenaten. Trumpets blared and a path to the gates was cleared. “You look as if you’ve swallowed something bitter.” Nefertiti laughed musically, descending from her chariot. “What’s wrong, Mutnodjmet? This is the greatest day we shall ever know. We are immortal.”

No. We are surrounded by lies
. Before she could be carried away by the priests into the inner sanctum of the temple to receive the pschent crown of Egypt, I said aloud, “These people are happy because they’ve free bread and wine. And there are
Hittites
. In the capital, Nefertiti. How do you know they haven’t brought plague?”

My sister turned an incredulous face to Nakhtmin, then back to me. “Why are you saying this during my greatest triumph?”

“Shall I lie to you, the way everyone else will do when you are Pharaoh?”

Nefertiti was silent.

“Just don’t touch them,” I advised. “Don’t let them kiss your ring.”

“Touch who?” Akhenaten appeared behind Nakhtmin.

“The Hittite emissaries,” Nefertiti said. “Do not let them kiss your ring,” she told him, and Akhenaten sneered.

“No, they shall kiss my feet when they see what I have built.”

Throughout the Durbar, there was nothing Akhenaten did not lavish on Nefertiti. She was his Chief Wife, his chief adviser, his partner in every plan, and now she was Pharaoh. And so that the world should never forget it, we traveled to the borders of Amarna, where he erected a pillar to her reign. He stood before the emissaries of the East and ordered Maya to read the inscription he had written for his wife, the Pharaoh-Queen of Egypt.

To the Heiress, Great in the Palace, Fair of Face
,

Adorned with the Double Plumes, Mistress of Happiness
,

Endowed with Favors, at hearing whose voice the Pharaoh rejoices
,

The Chief Wife of the King, his beloved, the Lady of the Two Lands
,

And now Pharaoh Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti
,

May she live for Ever and Always
.

No Pharaoh had ever granted the crook and flail to a woman. But when Nefertiti stood before the crowds to bless them, they pressed against each other and stood on stools simply to catch a glimpse of her face.

“They love me,” she swore on the second day of the Durbar. “They love me more than when I was queen!”

“Because now you have greater power over them,” I said.

But she ignored my cynicism. “I want the people to remember this forever,” she answered. In the waning light of her Robing Room, the setting sun turned her skin to gilded bronze. “Mutny,” she said, “find Thutmose. I want to be sculpted just as I am.”

I crossed the palace to the artist’s studio. The Durbar would last six days and seven nights, and already there were drunken men in the streets, while the wives of dignitaries went stumbling to their litters, reeking of scented oil and wine. Thutmose was in his workshop, laughing in the midst of a gaggle of young girls and handsome men. His eyes lit up when he saw me.

“A sculpture?” he asked breathlessly. “I’ll be ready at once. When I saw her at the temple with the crook and flail,” he confided, “the cobra rearing on her crown, I knew she would call for me. No queen has ever worn that crown with such grace.”

“No one has ever worn it at all,” I said dryly.

Thutmose laughed. “Tell Her Majesty she should come,” he said grandly, then motioned with his hands. “Everybody must go!” The women pouted, trailing out the door with their wine cups and beaded skirts.

When the crowd was gone, I asked Thutmose, “Why is it that the women love you so much?”

He thought for a moment. “Because I can make them immortal. When I find the right model I might use her for Isis, and when the winds of time erase her memory from her house, there will still be her face looking down from the temples.”

I thought of what Thutmose said when I went to tell Nefertiti that he was ready. She had changed, and I wondered if this was the way she would be remembered to history. She was wearing a linen so thin that it was perfectly transparent. On her wrists, at her ankles, from her ears and on her toes, thick gold and faience glittered. We walked through the halls of the palace together as we had done so many years before in Thebes, on the night when she had gone to Akhenaten as a virgin. We could hear the crowds outside in the courtyards, laughing and dancing, but inside the palace it was cool and silent.

In Thutmose’s studio, cushions had been placed where Nefertiti should sit. There was an armed chair for myself and when Nefertiti entered Thutmose executed a deep bow. “Pharaoh Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti.”

My sister smiled at the sound of her new name. “I want a bust,” she told him. “From my pectoral all the way to my crown.”

“With the spitting cobra,” Thutmose nodded approvingly, coming closer to study the rubies that made the snake’s glittering eyes. Nefertiti sat a little higher on the cushions. “I shall do the bust in limestone,” he announced. I stood up to go and Nefertiti cried, “You can’t leave! I want you to see this.”

So we spent the afternoon that way, and although my memory of the greatest Durbar in history is filled with images of drinking and dance, the memory that remains clearest to me is that of Nefertiti sitting forward on her ocean of cushions, the coral and turquoise from her golden pectoral catching the sun’s last light, her black eyes like pools of obsidian. There was true tranquillity on my sister’s face. At last, Nefertiti was convinced that she would never be abandoned, that a Pharaoh’s crook and flail would mean that she would be remembered by eternity.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

sixth day of the Durbar

THE JACKAL-HEADED GOD descended on Egypt while there was still dancing in the streets and thousands of dignitaries in the palace. At first he stole through the alleys at night, snapping up workers in Pharaoh’s tomb, then he grew bolder and stalked the Baker’s Quarter by day. When panic finally spread to the palace, there was no one in Amarna who could deny what they had seen.