Nefertiti

Her eyes filled with venom. “Pharaoh will be outraged.”

“We are no threat to him. All we want to do is live together and be married—”

“You have bedded a common soldier!” she shouted. “You take a man to your bed without my permission? Do you think to insult me?” She moved threateningly close. “What you do is for this family, and now you have put this family in danger.”

“This is only a child. My child.”

“Who will come to be a threat to the throne. A royal baby. The son of a general!”

I stared at her in shock. “Our grandfather was a general, and he kept the army readied and loyal to Pharaoh. Only your husband could see it as a threat. Generals have always married into the royal court!”

“Not in Amarna,” Nefertiti seethed. “Akhenaten will never have it.”

“Please, Nefertiti, you have to convince him. This child is no threat—”

She cut her hand through the air. “No. You got yourself pregnant and you will get yourself out of it. You of all people know perfectly well how to do it.”

I stared at her with wide-eyed horror. My hands flew protectively to my stomach. “You would make me do that?” I whispered.

“You are the one who made the problem with your eyes wide open. And your legs,” she added spitefully. “I should have known to keep you closer.”

I drew myself up to my fullest height. “You have a husband, a daughter, and a second child on the way, and you deny me one? One child?”

“I have denied you nothing!” She was wild with rage, and now there was only the faintest sound of moving and packing coming from beyond the cloth. “I married Akhenaten to give you everything, and you throw it all away on a commoner. You are the most selfish sister in Egypt!”

“Because I dared to love someone other than you?”

The truth was too much. She stalked across the room toward the curtains, then said over her shoulder, “You will be at the banquet tonight in the palace.”

I bit back my pride. “Will you tell him we want to get married?”

She stopped, making me ask her again.

“Will you?”

“Tonight you may have your answer,” she said. The curtain twitched closed behind her, and I was alone in the king’s inner chamber.

I went back to my pavilion and was sick to my stomach, wondering if I should find Nakhtmin at the building site and warn him.

“Of what, my lady?” Ipu asked sensibly. “And how will you get there?” She put her hands over mine. “Wait for the queen’s decision. She will ask for you. You are her sister and you’ve served her well.” Ipu handed me my clothes for the night’s celebration. “Come,” she encouraged. “Then I will see that your things are brought to the palace.”

“I want to see my mother first,” I told her. “I want you to bring her here.”

Ipu stood for a moment to measure my resolve, then nodded quietly and left.

I put on the long tunic and golden belt, then fastened a beaded necklace around my neck, rehearsing what I would say when my mother came. Her only daughter. The one child Tawaret had seen fit to give her. I studied my reflection in the mirror, a young girl with dark hair and wide green eyes. Who was she, this girl who would allow herself to become pregnant with a general’s child? I exhaled slowly and saw that my hands were shaking.

“Mutnodjmet?” My mother cast her eyes across my pavilion with disapproval. “Mutnodjmet, why haven’t you packed? We are moving tonight.”

“Ipu said she will do it while we’re gone.” I moved over on the leather bench so that she could sit next to me. “But first I want you to sit here.” I hesitated. “Because…because I have something I must tell you right now.”

She knew what I was going to say before I spoke. Her eyes traveled down to my midriff, and she covered her mouth. “You are with child.”

I nodded, and my eyes filled with tears. “Yes, mawat.”

My mother was very still, the way Nefertiti had been, and I wondered if she was going to strike me for the first time in my life. “You have slept with the general.” Her voice was flat.

My eyes pooled with tears. “We want to be married,” I said, but my mother wasn’t listening.

“Every night I watched him come into the camp and I thought that Akhenaten had beckoned him. I should have known. When has Pharaoh ever been interested in the army?” My mother searched my face. “So the guards looked the other way for you?”

Shame colored my cheeks. “It would have happened without them. We love each other—”

“Love? Commoners marry for love. And they divorce just as quickly! You are the Sister of the King’s Chief Wife! We would have married you to a prince. A prince, Mutnodjmet. You could have been a princess in the land of Egypt.”

“But I don’t want to be a princess.” My tears flooded over. “That’s Nefertiti’s dream. I’m pregnant, mawat. I’m pregnant with your grandchild and the man I love wants to carry me across the threshold of a new house to marry me.” I looked up at her. “Isn’t there any part of you that is happy?”

She pressed her lips together. Then her resolve crumbled and she took me in her arms. “Oh, Mutnodjmet, my little Mutnodjmet. A mother.” She wept tenderly. “But to what kind of a child?”

“A beloved one.”

“One that will frighten Pharaoh and outrage your sister. Nefertiti will never accept it.”

“She must,” I said firmly, pulling away. “I’m a woman. I have the right to choose my husband. This is still Egypt—”

“But it’s Akhenaten’s Egypt. Maybe if you were in Akhmim…” My mother spread her palms. “But this is the king’s city. The choices are his.”

“And Nefertiti’s,” I stressed. “By the time Father arrives, the villas will be finished. Nefertiti can convince Akhenaten to let us live there.”

“She will be angry.”

“Then she will have to learn to accept it.”

My mother picked up my hand and squeezed it. “Your father will be shocked when he returns. Two daughters, both carrying children.”

“He will be happy. Both of his daughters are fertile.”

My mother’s smile was bitter. “He would be happier if you had married a prince.”

That night there was feasting throughout the new city of Amarna. Everywhere was the sound of laughter, and as I helped my mother into a chariot I thought, Nefertiti has done this on purpose. She’s told me she will give me an answer tonight hoping I won’t reach her among all these people.

The courtyards outside the palace were filled with servants bearing platters of honeyed nuts, plump figs, and pomegranates. Thousands of men from the army drank in the streets with total abandon, singing about war and sex and love. I looked for Nakhtmin as we entered the palace, scanning the crowds for his broad shoulders and bright hair.

“He won’t be here,” my mother said. “He will be with his men.”

I flushed to realize that my thoughts were so transparent. A servant took us to the Great Hall, where table after table was filled with feasting viziers and the flirting daughters of wealthy men, all imitating my sister in the way they dressed in the sheerest of linens, hennaing their hands and feet and breasts. But the two Horus thrones on the dais were empty.

“Where is the queen?” I asked, taken aback.

“In the streets, my lady!” cried a passing servant. “They are throwing out gold!” He grinned. “To everyone.”

“Come.” My mother guided me by the arm.