The Egyptian Royals Collection (46 page)

“If it is, I will return from the Afterlife to find you.”

Djedi laughed. “There will be no need for that. I will be eating fish from the same catch tonight. Perhaps you will come tomorrow and tell me how it was?”

Ipu tossed her hair coyly over her shoulder and the beads made a hollow music together. “Perhaps.”

When we left the market, I turned to Ipu at the bend in the road. “He is interested!” I exclaimed.

“He’s only a fish merchant,” she said dismissively.

“He’s more than that. Look at the gold on his fingers.”

“Then perhaps he’s a fisherman.”

“With rings like those?” I shook my head. “Haven’t you said you wanted a husband with a little wealth? What if this is him?”

We stopped at the path that led up to my garden and Ipu grew serious. “Please tell no one about this,” she said.

I frowned. “Such as who?”

“Such as any of the women who come to buy your herbs.”

I stepped back, offended. “I never spread gossip.”

“It is only because I want to be cautious, my lady. He could be married.”

“He said—”

“Men say many things.” But there was a gleam in her eyes. “I only want to be careful.”

I didn’t go with Ipu into the market the next day, but I saw her leave and whispered to Nakhtmin that her dress was finer than usual.

“Do you think she is going to see him?” he asked, hugging me to his chest.

“Of course! We have plenty of meat and no need for fish. Why else would she go?” I smiled, thinking of Ipu finally in love.

Now that my return to Thebes had become known, women began appearing at my door again. Most of my business was for acacia and honey, a mixture that women in the villas of Thebes were afraid to send to their physicians for. So servants crept up my pathway at first light, always careful to conceal their lady’s name, arriving with purses full of deben rings in exchange for the certainty that trysts with lovers or unhappy marriages would not produce a child. I tried not to see the irony in this, giving women herbs to stop children when that was all that I prayed for.

Sometimes the women came for other drugs, plants that could cure warts or heal wounds that had been inflicted in ways they did not tell and I did not ask about. One such woman showed me bruises and whispered, “Is there anything that can cover these?”

I flinched to touch the raised bruise on the woman’s small arm. I moved across the room that Nakhtmin had furnished with wooden shelves to hold my glass jars and vials. I took down my book of patients and flipped through the pages. “You came six months ago for acacia and honey. Now you return for something to cover the bruises?”

She nodded.

I said nothing; I only went to the polished cedar shelf where I kept my oils. “If you wait, I will mix you some rosemary oil with yellow ocher. You will have to apply it with a brush in several layers.”

She sat near my table and watched me work with the pestle to grind the powder. I could see by the tone of her skin she would need a yellow copper, and I was proud of myself when she reached out her arm and the bruise disappeared under my paste. She paid with a deben of copper, and I looked at the gold around her neck and asked her if his riches were worth it.

“Sometimes,” she replied.

Servants came all afternoon—some that I knew, others that were strangers. When the house was quiet, I went outside to watch Nakhtmin in the open courtyard of our villa, where the river winked blue and silver between the columns. His shirt was off, and in the warm sun his golden torso glistened with sweat. He turned and saw me watching and smiled. “All the customers gone?” he called.

“Yes, but I haven’t seen Ipu since morning,” I worried.

“Perhaps she developed a sudden interest in fish.”

I thought how strange it was, my helping Ipu dress for her dinner with Djedi—who owned not just one merchant ship, but three. I placed my best wig on her head, and each tress was threaded with golden tubes and scented with lotus. She wore a smooth-fitting tunic and my fur-lined cloak. The braided papyrus sandals on her feet were mine, and when I looked at her in the mirror I was reminded of Nefertiti and all the times I had dressed my sister for dinner. I embraced Ipu and whispered encouragement in her ear, and when she left, I thought selfishly,
If she marries, I will have no one except Nakhtmin
. Every night I placed oil at the feet of my little shrine to Tawaret, and every moon my blood came. I was twenty years old without any children. I might never have any.
And now I won’t have Ipu, either
.

At once I flushed, appalled that I could ever think like Nefertiti.
Perhaps we are more similar than I realized
.

I went into the kitchen and found the bread and goat’s cheese that Ipu had left. “Ipu is dining with the fish merchant tonight,” I told Nakhtmin.

But he was studying a scroll in the loggia. He didn’t look up at me.

“What is it?” I asked, bringing him food.

“A petition from men in the city,” he said gravely. He held it up for me to take. It was from the men of Thebes. I recognized some of the names as men who had held positions of power before the Elder had died. Old friends of my father and former Amun priests.

I gasped. “They want you to take over Amarna!”

Nakhtmin said nothing, staring beyond the balcony to the River Nile.

“We must show this to my father at once—”

“Your father already knows.”

I sat down, staring at him in the light that came through the lowered reed mats. “How can he know this already?”

“He knows everything, he watches everything. If armed men have not come here to slit my throat, it is because he has commanded that I remain safe. He trusts that I will not lead an army against Amarna because he knows that you are more important to me than any crown.”

“But why wouldn’t my father arrest these men? They are traitors!”

“Only if I lead them in rebellion. Until then they are friends, and if Amarna ever falls and Aten turns his back on Egypt, where will your father turn for help?”

I looked up slowly, realizing, “You. You will have the loyalty of the Elder’s people.” He nodded, and I felt a sudden awe of my father. “He is planning in case Akhenaten dies. In case the people turn. This is why my father let me marry you.”

Nakhtmin smiled. “I should hope it was for more than that. So there is no need to send this to him.” He took the scroll and crumpled it in his hand. “I will not lead the people in rebellion and he knows it.”

“But Akhenaten doesn’t.”

“Akhenaten does not deal with anything outside his sphere of Amarna. All of Egypt could crumble, and if Amarna was left standing, he would be content.”

I felt a heat creep into my cheeks. “My sister would never—”

“Mutnodjmet,” he interrupted. “Your sister is the daughter of a Mitanni princess. Did you know that twelve nights ago Mitanni was attacked?”

My breath caught in my throat. “The Hittites
invaded?
”

“And Egypt did nothing,” he said ominously. “But history will remember that we stood by and watched. If Mitanni falls, we will be next. If she survives, it is a kingdom that will never forgive us, Mitanni princess or no.”

“Nefertiti never knew her mother. You can’t blame her—”

“No one is blaming.” His face looked sharp in the moonlight. “But the wars we shut our eyes to now may blind us in eternity.” A night breeze stirred the curtains and he stood. “Would you care for a walk?”

“No,” I said quietly, sick at heart. “You go.”

He took my chin in his hand. “Amun watches over us. We will always have each other, no matter what happens in Mitanni or the city of Amarna.”

He left. I went into my chamber, but I couldn’t sleep. In the heat, all I could do was go to the balcony to sit and think. When Ipu returned, I got up to see how her night had been. At twenty-four years old, she looked young and radiant. Care sometimes made me forget we were both still young.

“Look!” she gushed. She held out her arm and showed me a bracelet. “He bought it for me. It’s as if we have known each other all our lives, my lady. We grew up near the same town, near the same Temple of Isis. His grandmother was a priestess and so was mine!”

I motioned for her to sit with me in the loggia, and we talked into the night.

Chapter Twenty-Two

fourteenth of Pachons

“
THERE’S A SURPRISE
for you waiting at the quay,” Nakhtmin whispered the next morning when I opened my eyes.

I sat up at once, blinking against the light. “What is it?”

“Get up and see,” my husband teased.

I pushed Bastet off the bed and went to the window, then shouted, recognizing the blue and gold standards of my parents’ bark. “Ipu!” I called, throwing on my good linen. “The Vizier Ay and my mother have arrived. Prepare the house and get out the good wine!”

Ipu appeared at the doorway to my chamber.

“What are you doing? Find the wine!” I exclaimed.

She exchanged a private smile with Nakhtmin. “It’s already done.”

I looked back at my husband, who was grinning like Bastet. Then I understood. “Did you know about this?”

“Of course he did,” Ipu replied eagerly. “He has been hiding this surprise for more than ten days.”

I stopped what I was doing, fastening a gold chain around my neck, and my eyes filled with tears.

“Go!” he urged me. “They’re waiting!”

I ran out to meet my parents the way a child runs to meet her friends at the market. When my mother saw me, her face transformed. “Mutnodjmet!” she cried, throwing her arms around me. “You look well.” She pulled back to see me. “Not so skinny anymore. And the house!”

“It’s a handsome villa.” My father appraised, studying the faience tiles and surrounding hills. The villa’s reflection wavered in the Nile, and the rising sun splashed the water with gold. Already Thebans on both sides of the river were staring from their windows, recognizing the pennants on the bark as royal colors and wondering who had come to visit the city.

“Ipu! Find a sheet of papyrus and write that I will not be having customers today,” I shouted. “Hang it on the door.”

Servants stayed behind with the ship while I took my mother and father up through the gardens. My father greeted Nakhtmin solemnly. “So tell me what is happening in Thebes,” he said.

I didn’t listen to what they were saying. I already knew. And while they talked in the loggia over roasted goose and spiced wine, my mother and I sat in the garden. My mother looked down the hill to the River Nile, comparing the land in her mind to Amarna. “It’s richer here, somehow,” she said.

“Thebes is older. There’s less glitter and rush.”

“Yes. Everything’s a rush in Amarna,” she agreed.

“And Nefertiti?” I asked, raising my cup.

My mother inhaled. “Still strong.”

Still ambitious, she meant
. “And my nieces?”

“They couldn’t be more spoiled if they were the daughters of Isis. No horse is too fine or chariot too grand.” My mother clicked her tongue.

“It’s a bad way to teach them.”

“I tell Nefertiti that, but she won’t hear it.” My mother’s voice dropped, though there was no one in the garden to hear her but me. “You have heard about Mitanni?”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes. “And we have sent no soldiers to help them,” I guessed.

“Not one,” she whispered. “It’s why your father has come here, Mutnodjmet.”

I sat back. “It wasn’t to see me?”

“Of course to see you,” she said quickly. “But also to speak with Nakhtmin. He’s a hero to the people and valuable to us as an ally. You chose wisely in your husband.”

“Because
now
he can help us?” I asked bitterly. At once, I regretted my tone of voice. My mother, who was no more cunning or pretentious than I would ever be, sat back in shock.

“Egypt will need him if Akhenaten’s reign should ever crumble.”

“And by Egypt, you mean our family.”

She put down her cup and reached across the table, covering my hand with hers. “It is your destiny, Mutnodjmet. The path to the Horus throne was laid long before you were born, before Nefertiti was born. It was the destiny of your grandmother, and her mother, and her mother before that. You can accept it, or it can chase you down and wear you out with all the running.”

I thought of my father in the loggia, plotting with Nakhtmin, drawing him into the web that would ensnare us and bring us back to Amarna.

“Nefertiti will always be queen,” my mother continued. “But she needs a son. She needs an heir to make sure that Nebnefer never rules in Egypt.”

“But she’s had only princesses.”

“There’s still hope,” my mother said, and something about her tone made me lean forward.

“She isn’t—”

My mother nodded.

“Three months after Ankhesenpaaten?” My lip trembled. Then surely this one would be a boy, and Nebnefer would be forgotten and our family would be safe. So Nefertiti was pregnant with a fourth child.
Four
.

“Oh, Mutnodjmet. Don’t weep.” My mother embraced me.

“I’m not weeping,” I replied, but the tears came fast, and I rested my face against her breast. “But aren’t you disappointed,
mawat?
Aren’t you disappointed you will never have a grandchild?”

“Shh …” She stroked my hair. “I don’t care if you have one child or ten.”

“But I have none,” I cried. “And doesn’t Nakhtmin deserve a child?”

“It is up to the gods,” my mother said resolutely. “It is not about deserving.”

I wiped away the tears. Nakhtmin and my father came out into the garden, and both wore grave faces. “We’ll be meeting with former Amun priests tomorrow night,” my father said.

“In my house?” I exclaimed.

“Mitanni has been burned, Mutnodjmet,” Nakhtmin said.

I glanced at my father in horror. “Then shouldn’t you be in Amarna? The Mitanni king will ask for soldiers. Surely
now—”

“No. It is better to be here, planning for a time when there might not be an Amarna.”

I flinched. “Does Nefertiti know what you are doing?”

“She knows what she wants to,” my father replied.

The next night, when the moon was a thin sliver cut into the sky, my parents’ servants moved the long table from the kitchen to the middle of the open loggia. Ipu dressed it with fine linen and laid out our best wine, lighting the brazier and throwing sticks of cinnamon onto the coals. I wore my best wig and earrings, and Nakhtmin left to stand watch at the bottom of our hill. Then men whose names I’d heard spoken with the deepest reverence as a child began to arrive in hooded cloaks and gilded sandals. Their bald heads shone in the light of the oil lamps. They were silent as they came to the door and addressed Ipu with respectful greetings from Amun.

“How many men are coming?” I asked.

My father replied, “Nearly fifty.”

“And women?”

“Eight or nine. Most of these guests tonight were once Amun priests. They are powerful men”—his voice was full of meaning—“and they still practice in secret shrines.”

There was no official welcome. When my father determined that everyone he’d summoned had arrived, he slipped off into the darkness to find Nakhtmin, then returned. Sitting cross-legged on a cushion, he announced, “Everyone here knows that I am the Vizier Ay. You know the former general Nakhtmin.” My husband inclined his head. “My wife.” My mother smiled softly. “And my daughter, the Lady Mutnodjmet.”

Sixty silent faces turned toward me, searching out my eyes in the flickering light. I inclined my head, which felt heavy and cumbersome in its wig, and I knew they were comparing me to Nefertiti: my dark skin to her light, my plain features to her chiseled ones.

“We are all aware that Mitanni has been invaded,” my father went on. “The Hittites have crossed the Euphrates and subdued Halab, Mukish, Niya, Arahati, Apina, and Qatna. No one here is under the assumption that Egypt will send soldiers to Mitanni’s King Tushratta. These cities are gone.” The men in the loggia shifted. “But Pharaoh Akhenaten finds comfort in the treaty he has signed with the Hittite king.”

There was the rise of voices in our loggia.

“You have talked of rebellion,” Nakhtmin addressed the men who looked to my father with alarm, “and the Vizier Ay is on our side. He
wants
to fight the Hittites, he
wants
to release General Horemheb from prison, he
wants
to turn back to the great god Amun—but now is not the time for rebellion.”

A chorus of disapproval went up and dozens of shaved heads rose angrily.

“I have no desire to be Pharaoh, and my wife has no desire to be queen.”

“Then raise the Vizier Ay!” one of the men said loudly.

My father stood. “My daughter is Queen of Egypt,” he replied. “The people of Amarna support her possession of the crook and flail. And
I
support her.”

“But who supports Pharaoh?” someone shouted.

“We all must. It is through him that Egypt will be given an heir. The queen,” he announced, “is with child again.”

“We must hope it is a son,” Nakhtmin added quietly.

“Hope
has gotten us nowhere,” one of the men interjected. Two gold earrings pierced each of his ears. He stood up, and the cut of his linen was very fine. “In the Elder’s time, I was High Priest in Memphis. When the Elder embraced Osiris, I
hoped
to return to my temple. I
hoped
not to lend out my services as a scribe to put food on my table, but hope has done me little. I am lucky that I saved and was a frugal man. But not all of these men can say that.” He gestured with a bangled arm. “What Egyptian could have foreseen what would happen at the Elder’s death? A new religion, a new capital. Most men here have lost everything. And Vizier, we are not a group without means,” he warned. “We have sons in the army; we have daughters in Pharaoh’s neglected harem. We hoped your daughter would bring sense to Egypt, but we are tired of hoping. We are
tired
of waiting.” He sat down, and my father spoke directly to him.

“But wait you must,” he said simply. “To meet here is treason”—his voice grew low—“to suggest removing Pharaoh is more dangerous still. To remove a Pharaoh is to risk setting a terrible precedent. The Queen of Egypt watches over her people.”

“Yes, in
Amarna
. What about Thebes?” the former priest demanded.

“Thebes’s time will come,” my father promised.

“When?” An old woman stood up. “When I have embraced Osiris as well? By then it will be too late!” She steadied herself on her ebony cane and peered across the room. “Do you know who I am?”

My father nodded respectfully.

“I was Prince Tuthmosis’s nurse. I tended him even to his deathbed. And there is no one here who doesn’t know the story of what I saw that night.” There was an uneasy shuffling in the loggia. “A prince surrounded by tangled sheets,” she went on, “a pillow cut with teeth marks!” I shot a terrified look at my father, who allowed the old woman to continue with her fratricidal tale. “Akhenaten cast me out of Malkata Palace as soon as his brother was buried. He might have killed me, too, but he thought I was old and useless. And now what family will hire me,” she cried, “the nurse of a dead prince?”

She sat down, and a shocked silence filled the loggia. I held my breath. The old woman had just accused Pharaoh of murder.

“All of us have deeds that will weigh heavy with Osiris, some heavier than others,” Nakhtmin replied. “We have all been wronged. We have all struggled since the Elder’s death, and we have all been called here to be reminded that destinies are decided by the gods, not former Amun priests. We must wait for a prince to be born to the queen, and Vizier Ay will train him to be a soldier worthy of Egypt.”