Nefertiti (8 page)

“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.”

Chapter Four

twenty-first of Pharmuthi

ON THE MORNING of Nefertiti’s marriage and coronation, rumors began spreading in the palace that a beauty never before seen in Egypt had descended on Thebes and would become the queen. Ipu suspected those rumors began with my father and involved the transfer of deben, which were rings of metal value, because by sunrise there was nowhere Nefertiti could go without servants peering through the windows at her. Ladies newly arrived at court for the coronation suddenly began appearing at our room on false errands, calling to see if Nefertiti needed perfume, or linen, or spiced wine. Eventually, my mother barricaded us in her chamber and drew the curtains on all four sides.

Nefertiti was irritable; she hadn’t slept all night. She’d rolled around, stealing my covers and whispering my name every so often to see if I was awake. “Stand still or I can’t fasten your necklace,” I said.

“And be gracious,” my mother advised. “These people are whispering in the prince’s ear even as we speak, telling him about you.”

Nefertiti nodded, while Merit applied cream to her face. “Mutnodjmet, find my sandals, the ones with amber. And you should wear the same. It doesn’t matter that they’re uncomfortable,” she said, anticipating my reaction. “You can throw them away afterward.”

“But no one will even see my sandals,” I protested.

“Of course they will,” Nefertiti replied. “They’ll see your sandals, your linen, and your crooked wig.” She frowned, interrupting Merit to lean forward and fix my hair. “Gods, Mutny! What would you do without me?”

I handed her the amber-studded sandals. “Tend my garden and have a quiet life.”

She laughed and I smiled, even though she was being unbearable.

“I hope it goes well,” I said earnestly.

My sister’s face grew serious. “It has to, or our family will have traveled to Thebes and exchanged our lives for nothing.”

There was a knock on the chamber door and my mother rose to get it. My father stood at the threshold with six guards. The men stared into the room and I smoothed my hair quickly, trying to look like a Sister of the King’s Chief Wife. Nefertiti, however, ignored them all, closing her eyes while Merit applied the last sweeps of kohl.

“Are we ready?” My father strode into the chamber while the guards remained at the door, studying Nefertiti’s reflection in the mirror. They hadn’t even noticed I was there.

“Yes, we’re almost ready,” I announced. The guards looked in my direction for the first time and my mother frowned at me.

“Well, don’t just stand there.” My father gestured. “Help your sister.”

I flushed. “With what?”

“With anything. The scribes are waiting, and soon the barges will be sailing for Karnak and we’ll all have a new Pharaoh.” I turned to look at him because there was such irony in his voice, but he gestured for me to keep moving. “Hurry.”

Then Nefertiti was ready. She stood, her beaded faience dress spilling to the floor as the sun caught her necklace and gilded bangles. She looked at the guards, and I studied their reaction. Their shoulders straightened and their chests expanded. Nefertiti moved forward, hooking our father’s arm in hers, and she told him winningly, “I’m glad we came to Malkata.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he warned. “Amunhotep will stay at Malkata only until Tiye has decided that he is ready to leave. Then we will go to the capital of Lower Egypt to rule.”

“Memphis?” I cried. “We’re going to Memphis? Forever?”

“Forever is a big word, Mutny,” my father said. We walked out into the tiled hall and passed through the columns. “Perhaps not forever.”

“How long then? And when will we return?”

My father looked at my mother, and it was understood between them that she should explain. “Mutny, your sister will be Queen of Egypt,” she said in a voice used with small children, not thirteen-year-old girls. “When the Elder embraces the Afterlife, Amunhotep will move back to Thebes to rule Upper Egypt as well. But we will not return here until the Elder dies.”

“And when will that be? The Pharaoh could live for twenty more years!”

No one said anything, and I saw from my father’s look that the guards had probably overheard me.

“Now that the court is to be split, dangerous games are going to be played,” my father said in a lower voice. “Who will stay with the old king, and who will place their bets on the new? Panahesi will go with Kiya to Memphis, since she is carrying Amunhotep’s child. We, of course, will go as well. Your job will be to warn Nefertiti when there is trouble.”

We entered the open courtyard outside the palace where the procession was waiting, and my mother took Nefertiti to Queen Tiye’s side. I pressed my father’s hand before he, too, could leave. “But what if she doesn’t want to listen to me?” I asked.

“She will because she always has.” He squeezed my shoulder gently. “And because you are the one who will be honest with her.”

The procession was to begin at noon. The Elder and Queen Tiye were to ride in chariots. Behind them, the rest of the court would be carried in open litters shaded by thin canopies of linen. Only Amunhotep and Nefertiti would be on foot, as tradition decreed, walking through the city to Pharaoh’s barge, which would be waiting on the waters of the Theban quay. From there, the barge would sail to Karnak, where the royal couple would proceed to the temple gates to be crowned Pharaoh and Queen of Lower Egypt.

As the courtyard filled with nobility, the guards grew tense. They shifted nervously from foot to foot, knowing if anything happened during the procession, their lives would be forfeit. I noticed one soldier in particular, a general with long hair and a pleated kilt. Ipu saw the direction of my gaze and said, “General Nakhtmin. Only twenty-one. I can make an introduction—”

“Don’t you dare!” I gasped.

She laughed. “An eight-year difference is not so big!”

Nefertiti heard us laughing together and frowned. “Where is Amunhotep?” she demanded.

“I wouldn’t be concerned,” my father said wryly. “He won’t miss his own coronation.”

When the prince appeared, he was escorted by Kiya on one arm and her father, Panahesi, on the other. Both were whispering into the prince’s ear, speaking quickly, and when they came to our place in line Panahesi greeted my father coldly. Then he caught sight of Nefertiti in a queen’s diadem, and it looked as though he had bitten into something sour. But Kiya only smiled, touching Amunhotep softly on the hand as she prepared to take her leave of him. “Blessings to Your Highness on this auspicious day,” she said with a sweetness that was sickening. “May Aten be with you.”

Nefertiti met my father’s eye. Kiya had just blessed Amunhotep in the name of
Aten
. So this was how she held him.

My father’s eyes glinted. “Stay close,” he warned me. “Once we reach Karnak, we will be walking to the temple, and there will be more Egyptians in the streets than you have ever seen.”

“Because of the coronation?” I asked, but he didn’t hear me. My voice was lost in the melee of horses and chariots and guards.

“Yes, and because rumors have been spreading through the city that the reincarnation of Isis has appeared.”

I turned. The young general was smiling up at me.

“A beauty who can heal with the touch of her hand, if you listen to palace servants.” He held out his arm and helped me into my litter.

“And what servant would say that?”

“You mean, why would someone pay a servant to say that?” he asked. “Because if your sister can win the people’s hearts,” he explained, “your family’s stakes will have risen higher in this kingdom.”

The litters were borne up, and in the swell of people the general disappeared.

As the procession made its way into the city, people began chanting the prince’s name, and as we passed through the markets, we were overwhelmed by the passion of a thousand Egyptians crushed into the streets, shouting my sister’s name, begging for the blessings of Isis and chanting, “Long live the queen! Long live Nefertiti!”

As the people crushed against our litters, I tried to imagine the large chain of supporters my father must have called upon, and I realized how truly powerful the Vizier Ay was. The guards repeatedly pushed the people back, and I turned in my litter to see Amunhotep looking with astonishment on the woman who was so beloved in his kingdom. I watched as Nefertiti raised Amunhotep’s hand in hers, and the roar that went up in the streets was deafening. She turned to him triumphantly, and I could read her expression:
I am more than just your mother’s choice of wife
.

As we reached the barge, the cries throughout the city became “AMUN-HOTEP. NEFER-TITI.”

The prince’s face was aglow with the people’s love. Nefertiti raised Amunhotep’s hand in hers for the second time and proclaimed loud enough for Osiris to hear, “THE PEOPLE’S PHARAOH!” Then the crowds swelling along the riverbank grew untamable. The guards brought us to the quay with difficulty; we descended quickly from our litters and boarded the barge, but commoners had already surrounded the ship. The guards were forced to pry them off the ropes and from the hull. When the barge surged forward, it left thousands on the riverbank. The crowd immediately followed the barge along the shore, chanting blessings and throwing lotus blossoms into the water. Amunhotep stared at Nefertiti with the look of a man who’d been caught unawares.

“Is this why the Vizier Ay chose to raise his daughters in Akhmim?”

Nefertiti was flushed with triumph and her voice turned coy. “That, and the vizier didn’t want us believing as his sister does in the power of the Amun priests.”

I pressed my lips together in fear. But I saw what she was doing. She had taken her cue from Kiya.

Amunhotep blinked in surprise. “Then you believe I’m right?”

Nefertiti touched his arm, and I thought I could feel the heat of her palm as she whispered forcefully, “Pharaohs determine what is right. And when this barge reaches Karnak, you will be Pharaoh and I will be your queen.”

We reached Karnak quickly, for the Temple of Amun was only a short distance from Malkata Palace. We could have walked, but sailing the Nile was tradition, and our fleet of barges with their golden pennants made an impressive sight in the midday sun. When the plank was lowered, thousands of Egyptians swelled around the barge. Their chants boomed over the water, and they struggled against the guards to glimpse the new king and queen of Egypt. Amunhotep and Nefertiti weren’t afraid. They brushed past the soldiers and into the crowd.

But I stood back.

“This way.” The general appeared at my side. “Stay close to me.”

I followed him, and we were swept into a quick-moving procession. Up ahead, I could see the four golden chariots of the royal family. My mother and father were allowed to ride with the Pharaoh and his queen. The rest of us would walk to the Temple of Amun. On all sides of us women and children shouted, reaching out to touch our robes and wigs so they, too, could live for eternity.

“Are you all right?” the general asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Keep walking.”

As if I had a choice. The temple loomed ahead, and I could see the beautiful and nearly completed limestone chapel of Senusret I, and the towering shrines of the Elder. Sun spilled across the courtyard, and as we passed through the enclosure, the cheering fell behind us and everything grew suddenly cool and silent. Geese waddled between the columns, and shaven-headed boys in loose robes appeared, holding incense and candles. I listened to the crowds outside the walls, still chanting Nefertiti’s name. If not for them, the only sound would have been trickling water and sandals slapping on stone.