Akhenaten was so strange. He didn't like the gods. No one else in all of Egypt disliked the gods, but Akhenaten did. Nefertiti didn't understand why Amun, king of the gods, hadn't struck him blind—or worse—for his heresy. She'd listened to him complain about Osiris, god of death and rebirth, only this morning. Akhenaten was always mad at the gods, all except one, the Aten, whom he claimed for his own.
All girls married. It was the way of things. How else could men survive and have children who would care for them in old age? She had always known she would marry someone, but not her odd cousin.
Akhenaten's behavior was as strange as his appearance. Always sympathetic of heart, Nefertiti had never laughed at her cousin behind his back as many at court did. The young noblemen scoffed at Akhenaten's scrawny shoulders, sagging belly, and equine face. The ladies of the royal household were no kinder. Nefertiti despised those callous creatures who cared not that Akhenaten might perceive their contempt. There had been many times when she tried to distract his attention so that he wouldn't see a smirk or hear a derisive comment. Akhenaten might be odd, but he did have feelings.
Now Nefertiti could see that her pity and her attention had been what caught Tiye's attention and inspired the queen to consider her for her son. Aunt and pharaoh thought their plans a secret. They made the mistake of thinking their significant looks and prodding questions beyond the perception of a mere girl. Even Father thought her ignorant. With everyone bent on secrecy, Nefertiti had turned to her friend for comfort.
"If I have to marry him and be queen, I won't be able to see you anymore," Nefertiti said to Webkhet. "I won't be able to do anything interesting or fun. I'll be trained by Aunt to be queen, and she'll make me study forever."
"No more running off to sail on the river," Webkhet said with a pitying shake of her head.
They clambered out of the fishing boat, unhappy and apprehensive. Returning to the skiff, Nefertiti helped Webkhet push it into the water. Each must return home before someone missed her. Nefertiti watched her friend shove away from the bank with her paddle, seeing freedom about to sail away.
"What's that?" Webkhet pointed at something over Nefertiti's shoulder.
Specks of yellow light bobbed and danced across the causeway. Nefertiti caught her breath and counted. Ten, sixteen. She stopped counting. She jumped clear of the skiff and gave it a shove, sending the small craft into deeper water.
"Go," she said. Webkhet gawked at her. Nefertiti raised her voice in fear. "Go! They're looking for me. If they find you—" She had no need to finish. Webkhet knew the danger.
Nefertiti's friend held out her hand. "Come with me. We'll run away together."
Nefertiti shook her head. She sloshed toward shore and turned back to the other girl.
"I must lead them away before they see you." With grim courage she steadied her voice to conceal the wreck of her hopes. "The gods protect you, Webkhet, my friend." She lifted her hand in salute before racing toward the line of guards that spilled onto the riverbank.
Webkhet's voice sailed after her. "May the gods protect you."
Lord Ay walked in the royal pleasure garden in pharaohs palace. Beside him strode his indomitable sister Tiye, great royal wife, queen of Egypt. Ay had been summoned for an audience with the living god, only to find himself waylaid by the queen and taken to the gardens for a private talk.
Tiye had dismissed all her attendants. A slight woman with deep-set eyes that reflected a world of experience, Tiye walked with the swift, nervous gait of a much younger woman. When the last slave had vanished, Tiye took refuge from the sun beneath an aged tamarisk tree but walked back and forth in its shadows.
"Brother, you understand pharaohs difficulty." Or course.
"You know that his many years of good living sit ill upon him. Although his wits are as sharp as ever, the king's health isn't as it should be."
Ay nodded. Pharaohs teeth had rotted, and he suffered from his weight. Although no longer the embodiment of a great warrior and son of the king of the gods, Amun, pharaoh suffered far more from knowing that his heir, Akhenaten, was a strange and unpredictable young man whose wisdom was as questionable as his religion. Pharaoh had recently decided to cure his heir's strangeness and lack of training. As some heirs had done before him, Akhenaten was to share the throne with his father in a joint reign, and he was to be married.
"If your oldest had lived…" Ay's voice trailed off.
Tiye threw up her hands. "Regret is useless. Akhenaten is heir. Akhenaten. He won't even use his real name, no doubt because it's also his father's." Tiye sighed and turned to regard her brother with the solemn confidence he'd come to recognize.
"Pharaoh and I have decided upon a wife for Akhenaten."
Bracing himself, Ay heard the voice of his heart in his ears. He'd dreaded this decision, prayed to the gods to guide pharaoh's choice in a different direction.
"We've chosen Nefertiti."
"You know I don't want my daughter given to Akhenaten."
Tiye rolled her eyes. "Of course I know, brother. Haven't you shouted it at me for months? But Nefertiti is the only girl who possesses all the qualities needed in a great queen. She has composure, a clever heart, and that amazing beauty." Tiye put her hand on his arm. "And above all, she has a strong will. Egypt is going to need her, Ay. There is no one so well suited to guide Akhenaten without allowing him to suspect he's being guided."
"Has pharaoh said this himself?"
Tiye nodded and slipped her arm through his. She began to describe her plans for Nefertiti's training as they walked in the shade. Miserable, certain that pharaoh's decision was final, Ay hardly listened.
There had been another heir, an older boy who had been killed in a hunting accident. Ay had liked Prince Thutmose. Full of humor, clever like his mother, Queen Tiye, he had been a fitting choice to fulfill pharaoh's role as the warrior king of Egypt's far-flung empire. Nefertiti would have been suitable for Thutmose.
No one had ever paid much attention to Thutmose's weakling younger brother. Since birth, the boy named Amunhotep—who now insisted upon being called Akhenaten—had been afflicted with infirmity. It seemed that father and son conceived a mutual dislike from birth, perhaps stemming from the strength of one and the feebleness of the other.
Certainly the pharaoh Amunhotep never hid his distaste for Akhenaten's almost effeminate appearance. The lad had an oblong skull from which his fleshy lips and tilted, slanting eyes protruded. Ay pitied him, for every body part that should be large was small, and what should have been small was large. His ears were too big, as was his projecting jaw. His hollow shoulders were eclipsed in size by his protruding stomach, wide hips, and bulging thighs, all of which were balanced precariously on top of sticklike legs.
Alternately ignored and scorned by his father, Akhenaten had taken refuge behind his mother. Tiye, with a mothers great heart, had sheltered him from pharaohs intolerance. The lad had also taken refuge in learning and religion, devoting himself to study and avoiding the arts of hunting and warfare so prized by his father. Ay suspected that it was during his years of sheltered study that Akhenaten conceived the bizarre notion that the sun disk, called the Aten, was the sole god. The Aten was the vehicle through which light entered the world, and that light, Akhenaten believed, was the true creator, the source of all life, the one god.
He'd listened once to the young man's beliefs, for Akhenaten thought about matters usually left to learned priests. According to the priests of Amun, the source of all creation was a mysterious and unknowable force, which they called the Hidden One, Amun. Akhenaten scoffed at this mystery.
"The sun's rays are the source," he said. "It's obvious. The sun causes crops to grow and cattle to multiply so that people may live. How absurd to overlook so plain an explanation for existence. The answer is the Aten—the source of heat and light."
Lately court rumor whispered that the young man denied the existence of all the other ancient gods of Egypt—Amun, king of the gods; Osiris, who rose from the dead to give hope of rebirth in the afterlife to all Egyptians; Isis, his sister, who had been responsible for bringing Osiris back to life. For century after century the towns of Egypt had worshiped their own gods, including Set, Montu, Hapi, the great Ra who was the sun. Aten had always been the god of the physical heat of the sun's rays, not a very special god at all. What was so unique about the Aten to pharaoh's strange son?
No matter. The problem pharaoh faced—that Ay and Tiye faced—was how best to train Akhenaten to rule Egypt well. He was a young man, set in his ideas, unschooled in diplomacy or governance of any kind. Tiye had suggested, and pharaoh had agreed, that making Akhenaten coregent was the best solution. So now father and son were to share the throne of Egypt and rule jointly. And his daughter was to be queen.
"Do you understand, brother? I'll be at her side, teaching, counseling, guiding. She will be safe."
Ay looked away from Tiye, over the high walls and gently swaying branches of the trees that sheltered the palace from the dangerous heat of the sun. "If she is married to Akhenaten, Nefertiti will never be entirely safe."
"Come," Tiye said. "Pharaoh is with the physicians and priests. He suffers from an ache in a tooth today."
They went into the palace, to the enormous golden doors that guarded pharaoh's apartments. The portals swung open under the strong hands of the king's Nubian guards. Taking shallow breaths, Ay walked with his sister toward the group of physicians and priests kneeling on the raised platform that held the royal bed.
The nauseating sweetness of incense combined with medicines burning in a closed room threatened to make Ay empty his stomach. He began to breathe through his mouth. The room was dark and patched with light from alabaster lamps. The dark blue of a water scene painted on the floor absorbed the light. A physician priest muttered charms and burned incense. Two more holy ones huddled over a yellowed papyrus with health amulets clutched in their hands.
Tiye went to her husband. He was sitting in bed, holding a damp cloth to his cheek. Ay knelt beside him, touched his forehead to the floor, and uttered homage.
Amunhoteps plump cheek was slightly swollen from his bad tooth, his body thickened from culinary indulgence, but his eyes glinted in the lamplight, and he'd been reading tax reports. Papyri were spread about the bed and littered the floor around it. A flick of pharaoh's hand caused all the physicians and attendants to vanish.
"So, old friend, we've made a mess of things. I by losing my oldest son, and you by not counseling me to kill Akhenaten years ago."
"Husband!" Tiye cried.
Amunhotep patted her hand. "You've lost your appreciation of my humor, little wife."
"This is not the time for jests," Tiye snapped, "and there's never a time for joking about our son's life."
Ay's head felt light with fear. There was no reply one could make when the golden one spoke of murdering his heir. It was a wonder the gods didn't burn him alive for hearing such words. Ay studied the leg of the bed. It was gold and shaped like the paw of a lion. He waited while Tiye and her husband squabbled with the ease of practice.
"So, Tiye told you of my decision, Ay. Nefertiti will guide my son and temper his strangeness with her wisdom."
"She is but a child, majesty."
Tiye waved her hand. "Nonsense. Girls are far wiser than boys at her age."
"Besides," pharaoh said as he refolded the damp cloth, "Akhenaten has seen your daughter again, for the first time in months, and is enamored."
Startled at the distaste he felt, Ay bowed low to conceal his expression. "I understand, divine one."
"Be done with your subservience, Ay. We've known each other too long, and I haven't the strength to suffer through it."
Ay bowed and managed a smile. They had always understood each other, pharaoh and he. From the beginning Amunhotep recognized Ay's gift for statecraft and lack of personal ambition. Ay was well aware that a pharaoh less perceptive, less secure in his own power, would have had him killed long ago.
"We take another gamble, my pharaoh, and this time with a twelve-year-old girl who has lived in obscurity, even if it has been in the royal household. You say the heir is fond of Nefertiti, but that doesn't mean he'll accept her guidance."
"By the time I've schooled her, he will," Tiye said as she began gathering the tax documents on the bed.
"They already deal well with each other," Amunhotep said through his compress. "Akhenaten is quite protective of her in his strange way." Amunhotep sat up straighter and leaned toward Ay. "Mark me. I'll undo the damage I've wrought upon the Two Lands by producing such a son. I'll do it through Nefertiti. Now silence your doubts. The physicians want to give me a potion, and I want to see the girl before I have to swallow that foul mess."
Tiye clapped her hands. The golden doors opened, revealing a slim girl standing alone. Light from the robing room beyond framed her in gold. Ay smiled at his daughter. She had her mother's loveliness as well as his athletic frame. Her delicate head sat upon a long, graceful neck like a heavy bloom upon a stem. Soon her face would lose the last of her child's plumpness and become startling in its refined and angular beauty. From her birth he had loved her for her unconquerable spirit and her entrancing smile. Now she had an air of sad dignity that caught at Ay's heart.
Although her expression was carefully blank, he could read her face like the hieroglyphs on a boundary stone. She had already been told. He would have liked to be the one to do that.
Ay watched with great pride and even greater fear as the guards pulled the doors shut, trapping his daughter inside pharaoh's bedchamber. She stood quite still, holding herself erect, arms at her sides, chin high. Ay experienced a thrill of approval. Her upbringing at court served her well; few approached pharaoh with their fear so well hidden. But Ay was her father, and he could see the little vein in her neck throb, saw her dread in the way she clenched her teeth to prevent her jaw from quivering.