Nefertiti

“I came to find you.” My father’s voice was grave, but my aunt had lived through many grave times and wasn’t moved.

“There is trouble in the palace,” she guessed.

“Akhenaten is planning a burial in the east.”

Tiye glanced at him sharply. “No Pharaoh has ever been buried in the east.”

“He plans to be buried where the sun rises beyond the hills and wants the court of Amarna to leave any tombs they’ve already cut in the west.”

My aunt’s voice deepened with rage. “Leave tombs we have already built in Thebes? Move the tombs from where they have always lain at the feet of the setting sun to be buried in the east?” It was the angriest I’d ever seen her. “He will never do it!”

My father spread his palms. “We can’t stop him. But we can build a second tomb and keep the tombs we’ve built in the Valley—”

“Of course, we will keep them. I will never be buried in the city of Amarna,” she vowed.

“Nor I,” my father said, and his voice was also low.

They both turned to me. “You must be the keeper of this,” Tiye instructed me. “If we die, you must make sure we are buried in Thebes.”

“But how?” How would I go against Akhenaten’s wishes?

“You will use your cunning,” my father said swiftly.

When I saw that he was serious, I was stricken with fear. “But I’m not cunning,” I worried. “That’s Nefertiti. She could do it.”

“But she won’t. Your sister is building a tomb with Akhenaten. They have abandoned our ancestors to risk burial in the east.” My father stared at me in earnest. “You are the one who must make sure this happens.”

My voice rose with fear. “But how?”

“Bribery,” my aunt replied. “The men who work as embalmers are as easily bribed as the next.” When she saw that I did not understand, she gazed into my face as if no girl could be as ignorant as I was. “You have never heard of women who give up their children to the infertile wives of the nobility? They tell their husbands the child has died and the embalmers take a monkey and wrap it up like an infant.” I shrank back in horror and Tiye shrugged, as if everyone knew about this. “Oh, yes, they can work miracles in the City of the Dead. For a price.”

“If it should ever come to that,” my father said, “you would bribe the embalmers to place a false body in the city of Amarna.”

My hands began to shake. “And take you to Thebes?” It didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem possible. My father and the queen would never die. But my father patted my shoulder as if I were a child.

“When the time comes—”

“If it comes,” I stressed.

“If it comes.” He smiled tenderly. “Then you will know what to do.” He glanced at Tiye. “Shall we meet here tomorrow?”

“In my garden?” I exclaimed.

My father replied, “Amarna has become a court infested with spies, Mutnodjmet. If we wish to speak, it will have to be here. Akhenaten trusts no one, and Panahesi’s women are everywhere, flitting through the palace and reporting back to him. Even some of Nefertiti’s ladies.”

I thought of Nefertiti alone in the palace, surrounded by false friends and spies. But I refused to feel sorry for her. It’s a bed of her own making.

I was commanded to the palace at the end of Epiphi. A herald arrived with a letter that bore my father’s heavy seal, pressing it into my hand with urgency.

“The queen, my lady, is already in labor.”

I opened the letter and saw it was true. Nefertiti was about to give birth. I pressed my lips together and folded the sheets, unable to bear the sight of the news. The herald continued to watch me. “Well, what do you want?” I snapped.

The boy didn’t flinch. “I want to know if you will you be coming, my lady. The queen has asked for you.”

She had asked for me. She had asked for me knowing that while she was birthing her second child, my first had been murdered! I crumpled the folded papyrus in my hand, and the herald watched me with widening eyes.

“There is a chariot waiting.” The boy’s voice grew pleading.

I studied him. He was twelve or thirteen. If he failed to bring me, it might end his career. His eyes remained wide and hopeful. “Wait, and I will get my things,” I told him.

Ipu hovered in the kitchen. “She has physicians. You don’t have to.”

“Of course I do.”

“But why?”

Bastet arched his silky body against my calf, as if to comfort me. “Because it’s Nefertiti, and if she dies, I would never forgive myself.”

Ipu followed me into my chamber, trailed by Bastet. “Do you want me to come?” she offered.

“No. I’ll be back before night.” I took my box of herbs, but as I went to leave Ipu pressed my hand.

“Remember, you’re going there for the child.”

I swallowed bitterly. “Which should have been mine.”

“She said she had nothing to do with it,” she reminded.

“Maybe,” I replied. “And maybe she sat by and said nothing while it was done.”

The herald took me to his chariot. He snapped the whip and the bright chestnut horses galloped along the Royal Road. On every pillar, at every crossroads, there were statues of my sister. In painted images, she raised her arms over the desert city she and her husband had built, dressed in the dazzling clothes of Isis, and where the gods should have been on the temple gates there was her face with Akhenaten’s.

“Amun, forgive their arrogance,” I whispered.

As in Memphis, a birthing pavilion had been built. I could see Nefertiti’s hand in the design: the floor-to- ceiling windows, the padded seats, the vases spilling over with plants, particularly lilies, her favorite kind. There were dozens of chairs arranged around room for the ladies of the court, nearly all of them occupied.

“The Lady Mutnodjmet,” the herald announced, and the talking and laughing that filled the chamber stopped.

“Mutny!” Nefertiti shooed her women away, and the viziers’ daughters who clustered around her bed all parted, their eyes wide and envious.

I stopped before her bedside. She was healthy and beautiful, propped up on a pile of cushions without any sign of pain. The color rose in my cheeks. “I thought you were in labor.”

“The physicians all say it will be today or tomorrow.”

A storm crossed my face. “Your messenger said it was urgent.”

She turned to her ladies, who were studying my hair, my nails, my face. “Leave us,” she commanded. I watched them flutter away like so many moths, girls I didn’t even know. “It is urgent. I need you.”

“You have dozens of women to keep you company. Why do you need me?”

“Because you’re my sister,” she said sharply. “We’re supposed to be with each other. Watching out for each other.”

I laughed meanly.

“I didn’t take your child!” she cried.

“But you know who did.”

She didn’t say anything.