Nefertiti

“It’s how she shows she loves you,” my mother offered.

“What? By making me her servant?”

The music began, and Nefertiti clapped as the dancers emerged, clad in bright linens and bangles with bells. Half a dozen ladies were watching the way Nefertiti drank, holding their cup the way she did, between forefinger and thumb. “How long do I have to stay?” I demanded.

My mother frowned. “Until the dancing is over.”

My father said, “I hear you visited Tiye.”

“I told her what happened to Kiya,” I replied.

He nodded. “Of course.”

“And she wasn’t surprised.”

He stared at me strangely, and I wondered for a moment if there had been any poisoning at all, or if it had just been a happenstance of fate. Nefertiti looked down at us and her sharp brows lowered. She crooked her finger at me.

My father motioned with his chin. “She wants you.”

I got up, and Nefertiti patted an empty chair on the dais where guests were allowed to sit and converse. “I hope you weren’t talking to Father about Kiya,” she warned.

“Of course not.”

“It’s a dead subject.”

“Like her child.”

Nefertiti’s eyes widened. “Don’t you let Akhenaten hear you,” she warned. Akhenaten turned to see what we were saying. She smiled for him and I stared back expressionlessly. She turned back to me. “Look at this feast I had to arrange just to take his mind off her.”

“How kind of you,” I replied.

Her temper flared. “Why are you so angry with me?”

“Because you’re endangering your immortal ka and going against the laws of Ma’at,” I retorted. “And for what?”

“For the crown of Egypt,” she replied.

“Do you think there won’t be a single vizier who hasn’t wondered whether Kiya was poisoned?”

“Then they’d be wrong,” she said firmly. “I didn’t poison her.”

“So someone else did on your behalf.”

There was a lull in the music and our conversation stopped. Nefertiti smiled brightly, so that Akhenaten would think we were talking of inane, sisterly things. When the music started up again, she leaned over and said briskly, “I need you to discover what Kiya’s ladies are saying.”

“No,” I replied, and my answer was resolute. “I am returning to Thebes. I told you I’d leave. I told you that even before Ankhesenpaaten was born.” The musicians still played at the other end of the hall, but those nearest the thrones could overhear what we were saying. I walked to the bottom of the dais and she sat forward on her throne.

“If you leave me, then you can never come back!” she threatened. The court turned to look at me and she was aware of an audience. She flushed. “Make your choice!” she shouted.

I saw Akhenaten’s eyes widen with approval. Then I turned to look at my father at the royal table. His face was a perfect vizier’s mask, refusing to reveal what he thought of his two daughters fighting it out in public like cats. I inhaled deeply. “I made my choice when I married Nakhtmin,” I replied.

Nefertiti sat back on her throne. “Go,” she whispered. “Go and never come back!” she shrieked.

I saw the determination in her face, the bitterness that had set there, and I let the doors of the Great Hall swing shut in my wake.

In my chamber, Ipu had already heard what had happened. “We’ll leave, my lady. We’ll leave on the first royal barge tonight. You’re already packed.”

My chests readied on the bed, and I was shocked by the immediacy of it all.

I had been banished.

Then, suddenly, my mother was there. “Mutnodjmet, rethink what you’ve done,” she pleaded. My father stood like a sentinel at the door. “Ay, please! Say something to your daughter,” she cried. But he would not try to convince me to stay.

I went over to my mother and held her face in my hands. “I’m not dying, mawat. I am simply returning to my husband, to my house, to my life in Thebes.”

“But you have a life here!” She looked at my father, who took her hand in his.

“It’s what she has chosen. One daughter reached for the sun and the other is content to feel its rays on her garden. They are different, that is all.”

“But she can never come back,” my mother cried.

“Nefertiti will change her mind,” he promised. “You were good to have come here at all, little cat.”

I embraced my father, then held my mother tightly as the servants moved the chests, balancing them one on top of another.

“We will come twice a renpet,” my father promised. “I will arrange a meeting with the Mitanni king while we are there.”

“If Akhenaten lets you.”

My father said nothing, and I knew he intended to do it with or without Pharaoh’s permission. Then I heard a noise and turned, catching two little girls peeking around the columns at me. I beckoned them with my finger.

“Are you leaving?” the older one asked.

“Yes, Meri. Would you like to walk to the quay and bid me farewell?”

She nodded, then began to weep. “But I want you to stay.”

I was touched. She had only known me for a month.

“You haven’t even seen all my horses. I wanted to show them all to you.”

I blinked at her selfishness, then bent down and kissed her forehead. “Someday I will return and see them,” I promised.

“Even my temple?” Meri managed between sobs.

“Even your temple,” I said, biting my lip against such indulgence. Her own temple to Aten? What kind of queen would this little child become if she was permitted every luxury? How would she come to know restraint or patience?

I walked with my mother down to the quay and cried despite myself when the ship was ready. Who knew what might happen once we said farewell? I could die in childbirth or my mother could succumb to any pestilence that flourished near the Nile. We held each other’s hands, and I felt keenly how much I’d failed her. I had brought her only sorrow when a daughter was supposed to bring a mother joy.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “If I’d been a better daughter, I would have married a man who was acceptable to Pharaoh and stayed close to you. I would have given you grandchildren to bounce on your knee and be thankful for. Instead, all I have given you is heartache.”

“You have lived the life that Amun destined. There is nothing to regret.”

“But you are lonely,” I argued.

She bent close to whisper so that my father wouldn’t hear. “And I am consoled every night by the reminder that of my daughters, you are the one that eternity will smile upon. Even without gold, or children, or a crown.”

She kissed the top of my head, and even my father looked moved when I waved farewell to the towering city of Amarna, a jewel my family had created from the sand. She was only a cheap rival to Thebes, full of new glitter and gold, yet when I left her, there was a sense of loss, too: that this was my family’s legacy and I’d left it forever.

Chapter Twenty-One

THEBES

fourteenth of Phamenoth