Sphinx's Queen (39 page)

My second mother, Mery, leaned over to take his hand. “We are together now, and Tiye is truly repentant for what she did. If that won’t let you forgive her, then try to do it for your own sake, or for the sake of the son she lost.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I’ve forgiven her, Father,” I said.

“Have you, little kitten? Well, you’re still young. Wait until you have your own children and someone keeps
you
from knowing if they’re well or happy or even alive!”

“Not knowing if
you
were all well was just as bad,” I replied. “But it’s over.”

He snorted. “I’m not the kind of person who can forget the past, Nefertiti, and my sister has a hand in too many sad memories for me. I’m not ready to forgive her, but for your sake, I’ll try to concentrate on how well she’s treating you now. I hear that Tiye has commanded that Princess Nefertiti be moved out of the women’s quarters into more spacious apartments, with rooms for those Habiru girls you’ve taken into your household.”

“She’s done
what?”

It was so. Aunt Tiye had recovered some of her old spirit. She didn’t bother to ask for my opinion or consent; she simply assigned me a new place to live. There are worse surprises.

I liked my new rooms very much. They were lighter and airier than the old ones, and they were connected to a huge garden with many small pools filled with fish and flowers. The only problem was how empty they felt, even with Mahala, Nava, Teti, and a new contingent of royal handmaidens sharing them with me.

As the time for my wedding banquet drew near, I became more and more uneasy. Mery had spoken to me about what I should expect from my husband, but that wasn’t the source of my distress: It was Bit-Bit. The distance between us was very real and very cold. Several times since our family feast, I’d tried to reach out to her, but all I met with was a wall.

My feelings must have shown plainly in my face. On my last evening as a bride-to-be, I invited Father, Mother, and Bit-Bit to my new apartments. The silence between Bit-Bit and me was still there and sharper than ever. It left me with very little appetite. Mery noticed this, and while the servants cleared away one set of dishes in order to bring in the next, she gently asked me to show her the garden.

“But it’s dark,” I protested, confused.

“We won’t go far, and the moon is high. Please, my dear.”

It didn’t take her long to get me to reveal the reason for my sadness. When I finished, she said, “I thought something wasn’t right between my girls. You need to talk to her.”

“I’ve tried.
She
won’t talk to
me.”

“You’ll try again, and I will find a way to help this along.”

Mery’s “way” was to return to the table and tell Bit-Bit she was going to sleep in my bedchamber that night. “Your sister will be a married woman before the sun sets tomorrow,
and
a royal princess. This is your last chance to be together as you used to be.” Bit-Bit greeted the news with the same face of stone she’d worn since her arrival.

Mother’s plan could have worked better. When Bit-Bit and I were by ourselves, I might as well have been alone. No matter how hard I tried to draw out my sister, she never responded beyond a few terse words, a grunt or two, and some very exaggerated shrugs. Finally she announced, “I’m tired,” lay down on the bed I’d had brought in for her, and closed her eyes so tightly that her whole face looked like a fist.

I tried to sleep after that, but it was no use. There were too many things on my mind—not just my sister’s coldness, but thoughts of what was waiting for me in the new life I was about to start. I gave up and got out of bed, padding through my new rooms and out into the garden. I knelt at the edge of one of the small pools and gazed at the reflection of starlight on the water between the fragrant lotus blossoms.

A rustling in the bushes to my right turned out to be Ta-Miu. The little cat’s family had grown to the point where she could leave the kittens on their own more and more. I scratched the star-shaped marking on her brow and said, “What am I going to do, Ta-Miu? Tomorrow I become Amenophis’s wife, and a princess! I don’t care about the princess part, but—this scares me—with Thutmose gone, Amenophis will be crown prince. He will, I know it. His father recognizes his worthiness, and besides, Aunt Tiye wants her son on the throne. Oh, it’s going to happen! And when it does, I won’t be just a princess: I’ll be
queen
.

“To be a queen—to be Great Royal Wife, like Aunt Tiye.” I hung my head. “No, not like Aunt Tiye. Like myself. I’ll have the chance to do so much good! Amenophis shares my heart. He’ll want me to be more than a wife and a mother, as long as that’s what I want, too. What I want …” My words drifted away as I thought about the future.

“I know what I want,” I said at last. “I want to share his dreams. I want to help him become a stronger man, a pharaoh who governs with justice. If we rule together, maybe we can put a stop to those who buy and sell the word of the gods. I want to help him use his power to clear away schemes and corruption, and to heal … Oh, Ta-Miu, it’s too much! I want to help Amenophis be stronger, but will I be strong enough, too?”

“Don’t be silly; you know you will.” Bit-Bit knelt by my side, put her arms around me, and pressed her cheek to mine. “I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting. I missed you so much!”

“I missed you, too, darling Bit-Bit.”

“Yes, but I think first I envied you even more than I missed you. You were going away to marry a prince! You’d have gorgeous jewelry, and wonderful clothes, and all kinds of servants to wait on you. You’d be
Princess
Nefertiti,
Queen
Nefertiti, and I’d always be nothing more than plain old Bit-Bit.” She was regretful. “I told myself I was being a bad sister, envying you your good fortune. I decided that I was being foolish, because even if you became Great Royal Wife, we’d always be sisters and you’d never forget how much we love one another, but then …” She looked away from me, but not fast enough. I saw the shining trail of tears.

“But then you didn’t hear from me,” I said softly. “Not one letter, not one message, nothing. You couldn’t have known that Aunt Tiye was intercepting my letters. And you must have thought I was so wrapped up in my splendid new life that I’d forgotten I ever had a sister.” I hugged her with all my might. “Never, Bit-Bit. That will never happen, as long as I live. No matter what I am or what I may become, you are
always
my beloved sister.”

We sat under the stars all that night, talking, shedding happy tears, even teasing one another in our old way. Then, as the sky began to lighten with the coming dawn, Bit-Bit said, “Wait here a moment,” and dashed back into my apartments. She came out holding a small piece of papyrus.

“I have something special to give you, Nefertiti,” she said, kneeling beside me once more. “It’s a charm of great power, blessed by Isis herself. Actually, it’s not mine to give. You made it. You didn’t see me, but I was secretly watching you that last night before you left Akhmin. I saw you put this at the goddess’s feet. It’s stayed there ever since, for such a long time, and no matter what the weather. Even though I was angry at you, once I learned we were going to see you again, I knew you should have it. Whatever spell you wrote on it must be very strong if it protected you enough to see this day.” She handed me the papyrus as she added, “I wish I could work so much magic. I wish I could read what it says.”

I looked at the familiar writing, the characters carefully formed with a piece of charcoal rather than a scribe’s pen or brush. It was the oath I’d made to Isis, promising to live my life as bravely as I could and recognizing that it was not enough to be born free if I didn’t have the courage to
live
my freedom.

I put my arm around Bit-Bit’s shoulder and rested the papyrus on the ground between us. “If this is magic, I want nothing better than to share it with you.” As the first gleam of the Aten’s disk showed on the horizon, I began to read aloud the vow I’d made—the vow I hoped my sister would take for her own: to give no one power over my life but myself.

Epilogue
W
AKING THE
Q
UEEN

“Nefertiti? Beloved?” Amenophis peeked around the corner of my doorway in the temple’s guest quarters, a lamp held high in his hand. “Are you almost ready?”

“I would be, except my braids have come undone.” I grinned at my husband. “I must look more like a market woman than a royal wife.”

“You look beautiful.”

“You always say that.”

“It’s always true. And it’s also true that you said you wanted to do this before dawn, though I don’t know why.”

I rolled my eyes as if I’d explained the whole matter to him a hundred times. “Ever since your father named you coruler, everything we do becomes a royal
occasion
. We’re swarmed by people everywhere we go. What I’ve come here to accomplish is simple and personal. That means getting up before anyone else knows about it.”

“Including the priests?”

“Especially the priests.”

“Getting up and sneaking away,” Amenophis mused. “It reminds me of our courtship.” I glared at him so hard he threw his free hand up in surrender and cried, “What? What? I’m ready to go.”

“So am I.”

I tossed on a cloak in case the air was chilly and took one of the oil lamps from my room. Together we left the temple guesthouse in perfect silence and made our way to a place that, until now, I had only seen in my dreams.

The Great Sphinx loomed above us, his human head framed by a scattering of stars, his massive lion’s paws outstretched. I bowed before him. I gave my lamp to Amenophis to hold and stepped forward, holding out the scroll I’d brought with me from Thebes, the same one that my sister, Bit-Bit, had brought to me from home.

In the days since the celebration of our marriage, Amenophis had opened his heart to me, revealing all the plans he hoped to achieve when it was his time to reign over the Two Lands. His ideas were astonishing, world-changing, dangerous, and noble, even if there would be many who wouldn’t see matters that way. More than ever, I wanted to be a part of his dreams, but I also wanted to be his shield and his shelter. More than ever, I would need to be brave.

I laid my written oath of courage at the feet of the Great Sphinx, the one who’d first showed me that I could master my fears and live my life truly free. I gave my thanks in silence, prayed for new strength, then turned to take my husband’s hand and face the east where the Aten dawned in beauty.

A
FTERWORD

In my previous books,
Nobody’s Princess
and
Nobody’s Prize
, I wrote about Helen of Troy, a woman of legendary beauty whose life was mythical but very well might have been historical, too. Many people believed that the Troy Homer described in his epic poem
The Iliad
was purely the stuff of myth, until nineteenth-century amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann used that same epic poem to help him uncover the remains of a real Troy that had been attacked, conquered, and put to the torch at the time Helen would have been living.