Nefertiti

“Yes,” I admitted, putting my hands under my legs. “You would tell me if there was talk in the palace?”

Ipu’s dimples disappeared. “What kind of talk, my lady?”

“Of assassination.”

Ipu recoiled.

“It’s not so shocking,” I whispered. “Amunhotep has made enemies. But you would tell me if you heard of something, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” she assured me, and I could see the earnestness in her face.

Nefertiti took me aside that afternoon before we rode to the site of the new temple. “I think I heard something last night,” she confided.

I froze. “Did you tell Father?”

“No, I wasn’t sure that I heard it. It was outside the window.”

A chill went up my spine so violent that I shook. “Have you told the king?”

She shook her head, her hand on her stomach. “No, but I want you to sleep with me tonight.”

Then I remembered it was Amunhotep’s night with Kiya, and I stepped back to take her measure.

“What?” she cried violently. “Do you think I would lie?”

I watched her for a moment, wondering.

“Please,” she said firmly, and there seemed to be real fear in her eyes. “Not just for me. For the baby.”

The child six months in her womb.

That evening, she moved over in the large bed she shared with Amunhotep, and I hesitated.

“Come.”

“But it’s the king’s bed.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Not tonight. Tonight he’s left me alone.”

But I refused to lay there.

“Stop wasting time and get in,” she snapped. Pregnancy was making her irritable.

“No. Come to my bed,” I replied.

She looked at me sharply, her hand on her belly. “I’m pregnant.”

“It will be safer,” I encouraged.

She paused, and I knew I had won her. She tossed back the linens and held out her hand. I took it, helping her across the chamber. Inside my room, she maneuvered carefully onto my cushions.

“Your bed’s not as comfortable as mine,” she complained.

“No, but it’s a whole lot safer.” I smiled, content in my triumph, and she didn’t say anything. I arranged the pillows behind her back.

“Do you really think someone would try to kill me?” she whispered.

I laughed uneasily. “Not if they have to get past the twelve Nubians standing outside my door.” I tried to speak lightly to calm her fears, but Nefertiti’s mood was dark and she persisted.

“But why would someone want to kill me?” she asked.

I shivered to think about it. “Because you are married to Pharaoh and carrying his child. What better way to get to Amunhotep than through you?”

“But the people love me.”

“The people,” I replied. “Not the priests. Not the men whose lives are dedicated to Amun and whose temples you are about to destroy—”

“That’s Amunhotep’s idea,” Nefertiti said sharply. Then there was the sound of footsteps in the hall and we both froze. The person outside must have decided to retreat, because the footsteps immediately pattered away. I held my breath.

“I can’t take this anymore!” Nefertiti exclaimed. “I’m afraid of everything.”

“Well, it’s a bed of your own making,” I said cruelly. But I was still holding her hand, and that night we fell asleep with the lamps still burning. In the morning, both of us awoke at dawn, curled around each other like cats.

Chapter Fourteen

Shemu, Season of Harvest

NEFERTITI’S CHILD WAS to come in the month of Pachons. She refused to give birth to the heir of Egypt in the same pavilion that Kiya had used, so Amunhotep ordered the workers from the temple to begin construction on a birthing pavilion near the lotus ponds.

“There should be windows facing all four directions.” My sister spread her hands so the workers could see what she envisioned, a palace of light and air. “Windows from ceiling to floor,” she instructed. The soldiers bowed obediently and the sculptors set to work, carving leaves into the bedposts and painting fish onto the tile that spread blue and green across the floors.

When she wasn’t directing the construction of her pavilion, she and Amunhotep rode out to the temple to see its progression, which was slower now that the workforce had been divided. “Mutny, find your cloak,” she’d call. “Mutny, we’re going out to the temple.”

I saw General Nakhtmin on the temple grounds, instructing the builders, and I wondered again what he was doing in Memphis when he’d been so adamant about staying in Thebes. He smiled when I passed and I looked away, so Nefertiti wouldn’t think there was anything between us, but Ipu, who rode in my chariot, whispered softly, “Pharaoh has made an offer the soldiers won’t turn down. Twenty deben of silver a month for building in Memphis.”

I turned to her in shock. “General Nakhtmin came here for silver?”

She looked out to where the general was standing and gave a dimpled smile. “Or something else.”

Then one morning my sister was too ill to ride, and she wanted me to go in her place. “I don’t want Amunhotep going with Kiya,” she said spitefully. “I can just imagine her riding out to the site and writing a poem to his shining new building. And he would probably inscribe it for her on the wall of the temple.”

I might have laughed, but what she was asking for frightened me. “You want me to go to the temple site? Alone?”

“Of course not alone. You’ll take Ipu.”

“But what will I do?”

She placed her hand on her belly, weary with my ignorance. “You will do as I’ve always done,” she snapped. “You will establish your presence at the temple to make sure the builders aren’t lazy. You will be sure that the workers aren’t stealing gold, or alabaster, or limestone.”

“And if they are?”

“They won’t,” she said flatly. “They wouldn’t dare with you watching them.”

While the Master of the Horse prepared my chariot, Ipu asked, “Where is Pharaoh? Isn’t he coming?”

“My sister is ill and she wants him by her side.”

“So we’re to go alone? With no guards?”

“None at all.”

When the Master of the Horse was finished, we rode beyond the palace to the site of the temple building. The soldiers were breaking rock and carving into stone. None looked to be pilfering alabaster, but several men waved cheerfully to Ipu as we passed. I raised my eyebrows and Ipu smiled.

“I have friends in strange places, my lady. And because you cannot make friends among the soldiers, I make them for you.”

I followed her gaze to a man in the street who halted our chariot with an outstretched arm. The horses stopped as if they’d been commanded, and Nakhtmin smiled up at the two of us.

“General.” I nodded formally.

“My Lady Mutnodjmet,” he said. Ipu grinned.

“And how is the work going on the temple?” I asked. I made a show of supervising his men. They were grunting in the heat, heaving a heavy stone column into place.

A smile played at the edge of the general’s lips. “As you can see, they are working hard for His Highness’s