Nefertiti

“Say something,” Nefertiti commanded.

“What is it that you want me to say?” my father asked quietly. “You called this meeting.”

“Because I wanted your advice.”

“What do you need my advice for? You don’t take it.”

“What am I supposed to do?” she demanded.

“Save Amun!” he lashed out. His eyes were blazing in the firelight. “Save something. What will be left of Egypt when he is through with it?”

“You think I don’t know this?” Her voice broke a little. “He is building a city and he wants it in the desert.”

“In the desert?”

“Between Memphis and Thebes.”

“No one can build there. It’s desolation—”

“That’s what I told him! But Panahesi has convinced him it is Aten’s will.” Her voice rose hysterically. “You gave him the job of High Priest of Aten and now Akhenaten thinks that Panahesi is the mouthpiece of the god.”

“Better the mouthpiece of the god than treasurer. In the end, it will not be Akhenaten who decides the next Pharaoh of Egypt. If death should strike your husband, it will be the people and their advisers who choose. Panahesi may control the temple, but I control its gold, and gold will win more hearts than a god no one can see.”

“But Akhenaten wants to choose the site by the end of Aythyr. And he wants to take Kiya!”

My father glanced at her. So here was the real crisis. Not that the city would be in the midst of desert, but that Akhenaten would take Kiya to help choose where it should be.

Nefertiti’s panic rose. “What will I do?”

“Let him.”

“Let Akhenaten take Kiya to choose our site?”

“There is nothing you can do.”

“I am Queen of Egypt,” she reminded.

“Yes, and one of two hundred other women that Akhenaten inherited from his father’s harem.”

“Akhenaten will have nothing to do with them. They were his father’s women.”

“So anything his father ever touched is tainted now? Including this city?”

Nefertiti sat silent.

“How will he find workers to build Amarna?” he asked her.

“The army.”

“And how will we defend our foreign territories when they are invaded by Hittites?”

“Hittites! Hittites! Who cares about the Hittites? Let them take Rhodes or Lakisa or Babylon. What do we want with them?”

“Goods,” I interrupted, and everyone looked at me. “We get pottery from Rhodes, caravans of gold from Nubia, and every year a thousand baskets of glass arrive on Babylonian ships.”

Nefertiti narrowed her eyes. “How do you know?”

“I listen.”

She stood up and directed her words at our father. “Send messages in Akhenaten’s name and threaten the Hittites with war.”

“And if they still invade our territories?” he asked.

“Then we’ll tax the temples and send them the gold to raise an army!” she retorted. “Akhenaten has already sworn that our army will build the city of Amarna. He thinks it will write our name in eternity. There’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“And you?” my father asked shrewdly. “Do you think it will write your name in eternity?”

She paused over the brazier, the rage gone from her face. “It could.”

“Has Akhenaten met with Maya?” my father asked.

“Maya said it will take six years. They will build a main road and the palace first. Akhenaten wants to move by Tybi.”

“So soon?” my father demanded.

“Yes. We’ll set up tents so we can watch the progress and be there for every phase.”

We both stared at her. “You?” I asked, brutally frank. “You, who like all the comforts of the palace?”

“And what about the old?” my father asked her. “What will they do when it begins to grow cold during Inundation?”

“Then they can stay behind and come when the palace is finished.”

“Good. And so shall I.”

Nefertiti stared. “You have to come. You’re treasurer.”

“And will there be a treasury? A secure-enough holding to keep safe all that gold?”

Nefertiti bridled. “Akhenaten won’t like your staying behind at the treasury,” she warned. “And not just you, but his mother.”

My father stood up. “Then he’ll simply have to learn to accept it,” he said and stormed from the chamber.

Chapter Sixteen

Peret, Season of Growing

THE ROYAL BARGES were readied for the journey south. Panahesi and Kiya were given their own boat, the Dazzling Aten, in which to sail. I stood on the quay and asked my sister how Akhenaten would know the right spot for the building.

“Obviously, it will be near the Nile,” she snapped. “Between Memphis and Thebes on land upon which no other Pharaoh has built.”

She was angry with me because I’d refused to go, and my father hadn’t made me.

As the barges set sail, the king’s pennants with images of Aten whipped back and forth in the wind. Hundreds of soldiers and workers were going. They’d be left in the desert to begin building Amarna. I waved at Nefertiti from the quay and she stared back, refusing to raise her hand to me. When the barges slipped over the horizon, I went into the gardens, wondering about seeds. Gardens for the new city would have to be started…

A palace worker watched me from the shade beneath a sycamore. “May I help you, my lady?” The old man came over, his kilt stained with soil. His nails were full of earth. A true gardener. “You are the Sister of the King’s Chief Wife,” he said. “The one the women go to for remedies.”

I glanced at in him surprise. “How did you—”

“I have seen the herbs you grow in pots,” he admitted. “They are all medicinal.”

I nodded. “Yes. Once in a while women come to me for help.”

He smiled, as if he knew that it was more than once in a while; that sometimes different women came six and seven times a day for the plants that Ipu procured for me in the markets. My pots weren’t big enough to fit all the herbs I would’ve like to have planted, but she found the rest among the busy vendors on the quay. I looked across the royal gardens and sighed. There would be no green in the wide stretch of desert between Thebes and Memphis. And who knew how long it would be before markets sprang up that would sell raspberry leaf or acacia? I looked down at the goldenrods and moringa. In Amarna, there would be only weeds and tamarisk plants for company. “May I take some cuttings with me when I go?”

“To the new city of Amarna, my lady?”

I stood back, to get a better look at this servant. “You hear a lot in these gardens.”

The old man shrugged. “The general likes to walk here at times and we talk together.”

“General Nakhtmin?” I asked quickly.

“Yes. He comes from the barracks, my lady.” He turned his eyes south, and I followed his gaze to a row of squat buildings. “He likes to sit here beneath the acacias.”