Sphinx's Queen (29 page)

There was no answer. The girl returned looking downcast and handed back my letter. “I’m so sorry, Lady Nefertiti. When I reached the prince’s apartments and announced I had a letter for him from you, I was told that he’d gone away. I asked where he was and when he might return, but all I got was a slap and a scolding about minding my own business.” She looked at her feet. “Forgive me; I’ve failed you.”

I forced her to look up again. “You’ve done no such thing. I’m the one who’s sorry that Prince Amenophis has such churlish servants. When I see him next, I’ll be sure to tell him to teach them better manners. They had no right to strike you. If I write another letter, will you carry it for me?” She looked hesitant, so I quickly added, “Not to Prince Amenophis—to the household of Princess Sitamun.”

This time the messenger returned happily, her mission fulfilled, a reply from Sitamun in her hands:

Dear friend, I don’t know what to tell you. I have no
idea where my brother Amenophis is. I sent him my own
note and the servant who carried it to his apartments
received the same reception as your messenger, except for
the slap. Perhaps that was because I sent one of my
strongest manservants and not a defenseless girl. Slap or
no slap, no one in my brother’s household would say
where he’d gone or when he might come back. Come see
me and we will speak more about this. Sitamun
.

I had the girl turn around and take me to Sitamun’s rooms. I found my friend walking in her garden, watching a flight of egrets cross the sky. After we exchanged a kiss in greeting, she had me sit beside her on a bench that viewed a small lotus pool. Here I told her everything that had happened in my bedchamber the previous night.

“So much for you to endure in one day!” she exclaimed. “And to enjoy.” Her smile was genuine. “I’m very happy for you and Amenophis.”

“Your mother’s not,” I said. “She’s after me again to marry Thutmose.”

“I heard. And this time she’s got even more pressing reasons to force things along. I’ll never understand how her mind works. It’s brilliant and frightening at the same time. Father would be more likely to pardon Thutmose if he saw irrefutable evidence that you’d done so.”

“There’s no better proof of my forgiveness than marrying the man who tried to kill me,” I said bitterly.

“Forgiveness or revenge.” Sitamun was joking, though there was a grain of truth in the jest.

“At the cost of being his wife for even one day? No, thank you. Even if I knew I’d be able to make him pay for everything he’s done to me,
that
price is too high.”

“No need to pay it, then. You’ve got a
much
more pleasant way to punish him at hand.” Her eyes twinkled. “I can’t wait for the day when you and Amenophis live as man and wife!”

“I’ll have to find him first.” It was my turn to joke, but I couldn’t quite manage to free my words from the uneasiness that was beginning to gnaw at me. I remembered the disturbing note in Aunt Tiye’s voice when she’d wished me “good luck.” It still troubled me.

I’m being ridiculous
, I thought.
I’m reading too much into an accident of tone. She didn’t mean anything more than what she said
.

But I’d spent enough time with Aunt Tiye to know that there was seldom only one face to what she said or did.

“Find him?” Sitamun’s carefree voice plucked me out of my worries. “Not before he finds you, I bet. Then you’ll come running to me, complaining that he’s not giving you a single moment alone!”

I scared up a weak smile. “You’re probably right. It’s just that I’d like to see him soon, to make sure he’s all right. Your mother said some deeply hurtful things to him last night. Every time she spoke as if Thutmose were her only son, I wanted to throw water in her face.”

“Is that all you wanted to do? I’ve wanted to do worse to her for years. She’s always acted that way toward Amenophis. It’s awful, I hate it, and it’s not what he deserves.”

“It’s not what any child deserves.”

Sitamun squeezed my hand. “I thank Hathor for bringing you into Amenophis’s life, dear Nefertiti. Listen, why don’t you come back here this evening? I don’t know what he’s up to, but instead of you chasing after him all day, I’ll see to it that he’s here to join us for dinner. It will be a lovely time, just the three of us.” She winked and added, “To start. I’m deathly afraid that I’m not going to be feeling well and I’ll have to leave the two of you alone. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Poor thing, you can’t help it,” I replied as gravely as I could before the two of us burst into giggles.

I went back to my rooms and spent the day resting, dreaming, fussing over Ta-Miu, and enjoying the gift of peace. I took a little time to search my belongings for something that would be a fitting gift for the maidservant who’d done so much for me earlier in the day. I settled on a precious vial of rare perfume. If the girl didn’t want to use it herself, she’d be able to barter it for something equally valuable.

After I found her and rewarded her, I lingered in the women’s quarters to play with the children and to chat with their mothers. One of Pharaoh’s junior wives was a good harp player; another had a sistrum whose delicate metal disks made the most beautiful jingling sound when she rattled them. Still others were famous for their singing voices, and so I soon found myself dancing in line with six young women, a handful of excited toddlers, and someone’s pet dog. It was joyous, exhausting, and wonderful.

My heart was high as I made my way back to Sitamun’s apartments that evening, but my elation slipped away the instant I saw her face. “He’s not here,” she told me.

“That’s all right, we can still enjoy our dinner together,” I said. I didn’t want her to feel as though she’d let me down over something out of her control. “Did he mention if he could come tomorrow night instead? We could eat in my rooms. My maids will probably break half the dishes, but if you bring some of your servants to help them, it might not be
too
bad.”

“Nefertiti, he won’t be there. Unless something happens to intervene, you won’t be meeting Amenophis again. She’s seen to that.”

I didn’t need to ask who “she” was. My flesh went cold.

“He’s all right,” Sitamun went on quickly, seeing the look on my face. “She hasn’t done anything to hurt him. She’d never do something so unnatural. No matter how angry she gets or how much she prefers Thutmose, she always remembers that the rest of us are her children, too.”

“But she’s imprisoned him, hasn’t she?”

“Not even that. Not exactly. How could she justify such a thing? She knows that word of it would fly to Father’s ears. She’s too sharp-witted to risk doing anything that would anger him further. But she doesn’t need to shut Amenophis in a room in order to keep him away from you.”

“So that was what she meant when she wished me luck in finding him,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Tell me, Sitamun, how is she doing this?”

“Today it was by sending him a message before dawn, telling him that there was hope she could repair the breach between Father and Thutmose. Father loves banquets, so she planned a magnificent one for tonight to soften his mood. She told Amenophis that she was terribly sorry for any hurt she’d caused him last night and wanted to make it up to him. That was why she was going to entrust all the arrangements for the banquet to him.”

“Perfect.” I had to admire Aunt Tiye’s cunning. “Amenophis couldn’t say no. It’s a chance to prove how much he wants to reestablish peace between his father and brother and show his mother that he does care about her. But, Sitamun, how did you come to learn all this?”

“My messenger returned from Amenophis’s apartments with the bare bones of the story. I was sure there had to be more to it, so I let all my servants know I’d be very generous to anyone who could bring me more information. My household butler is a very reliable, truthful man with excellent contacts among the other royal servants. He told me everything I’ve just told you, and more.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “Amenophis isn’t here tonight because he’s a guest at the feast he spent all day organizing. And he won’t be free tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, because our mother has suddenly discovered how highly she values her younger son and has already prepared an endless list of tasks that require his ‘help.’ ”

“She can’t keep him busy forever!”

“Don’t make a wager on that. She’s a resourceful woman. I hear that she was so pleased with the arrangements he made for tonight’s banquet that she couldn’t stop praising him. He was like parched ground, drinking up every drop of her new kindness and thirsting for more.”

I shook my head. “I don’t care how many tasks she gives him or how long she intends to play this game; I’ll play it longer. Aunt Tiye might think she’ll make us grow indifferent to one another if she keeps us apart, but I know Amenophis loves me. I trust his heart.”

“And he can trust yours,” Sitamun said. “Meanwhile, let me help the two of you. Don’t give up trying to see him, but find other ways to touch his life.” She smiled. “Weren’t you Henenu’s best student?”

“More likely that honor belongs to you, or even Nava,” I said. “Besides, I don’t have my scribe’s kit anymore.”

“That’s easily fixed. I’ll send you one before midday tomorrow; then you can write a letter to Amenophis.”

“I wrote letters home. They never got there. Or if they did,
someone
made sure I never saw the replies. When I sent a letter to Amenophis’s door today, the girl carrying it was told lies and given a smack for her troubles. I’m sure we can thank Aunt Tiye for that, too. What makes you think she’d allow
any
of my letters to reach Amenophis?”

“Because they won’t be
your
letters,” Sitamun said. “They’ll be mine.”

“Oh. Then I guess I’ll have to be even more careful about what I say when I write them.” I blushed, and she laughed at me.

It seemed like a good plan, or at least the best one we could devise until Sitamun or I came up with a better one. As she had promised, she sent me a new scribe’s palette and a box of pens and brushes, along with a generous supply of papyrus. I spent a lot of time composing my first letter to Amenophis, doing all I could to make it seem as though the words came from his sister, not from the girl who loved him as dearly as breath.

It was a challenge—a very time-consuming, irritating challenge. What good was it for me to have the freedom to go anywhere in the palace or the city when my words were still enslaved? And what could I do about it? Aunt Tiye had robbed me of my most precious treasure, the gift of choice, the gift that the gods themselves put into our hands when the world and all its possibilities were new.

At least I didn’t have to lose more time over making a perfect copy. Sitamun offered to transform my scribbled sentences with her own pen so that our messenger could swear by Ma’at or any other god that he was delivering “a letter from Princess Sitamun to her royal brother, Prince Amenophis, written by her own hand.”

When the first reply from Amenophis revealed that he knew exactly who had composed “Sitamun’s” letter, we all felt very clever. It amused me to see how readily he fell into the spirit of our plot. Even so, he didn’t break away from the series of errands and assignments Aunt Tiye kept heaping in his lap, although he saw plainly that they were keeping him from being with me. It was good to know that his eyes had been opened, yet I felt some sadness, too.

He sees the truth, and the truth is that his mother isn’t drawing him closer because she loves him as he deserves, but because she wants to use him
. Then and there, I promised myself that if we ever were able to break away from Aunt Tiye’s web, I would give him a family where the love was as unconditional as the Aten’s light, favoring no single person over another, embracing all.

The days passed uneventfully for me. My life in the women’s quarters was pleasant but bland. The only change that seemed to touch my existence was that the list of people I missed so badly was growing longer—my family, my friends, and those who had become as dear as family to me. Every morning I woke up hoping to hear that Nava and Henenu had returned from Memphis after successfully buying Mahala’s freedom, but no word came. I had to comfort myself with the thought that they had undertaken a much longer journey than our voyage to Dendera and that once they reached Memphis, they might not be able to make a bargain with Mahala’s owner right away. All I could do was wait and pray. Sometimes I implored Isis for help, but once I found myself looking up into the morning sky, my face to the sun, and asking the One to bring them home.

I’m praying for Nava and Mahala
, I thought as the Aten’s light bathed my face and its warmth soothed me.
Is it wrong to make that prayer to their god?

There was just one part of the day that filled me with excitement. I lived for the moment when Sitamun’s servant would come to fetch me to her rooms with one excuse after another—I had to see her new wig, she wanted my opinion about which dress to wear that night, or she was blending perfumes and had some to give me. The real reason was always the same: Amenophis’s letter had arrived and it was time for me to write my reply.

One afternoon, while watching me bent over the papyrus, Sitamun said, “How long will you let this go on, Nefertiti? May the gods forgive me for asking such a question, but do you and Amenophis intend to wait until Mother is
dead
before you live your own lives?”

“We don’t need to wait that long, Sitamun,” I replied, grinning. “Only until she grows tired of pounding at yet another closed door and looks elsewhere for a way to make Pharaoh favor Thutmose again—or if not favor him, at least forgive him.”

“Hmph. Why should she? She pounded at Father’s closed door long enough and it opened. The two of them are like newlyweds these days.”