THE JACKAL-HEADED GOD descended on Egypt while there was still dancing in the streets and thousands of dignitaries in the palace. At first he stole through the alleys at night, snapping up workers in Pharaoh’s tomb, then he grew bolder and stalked the Baker’s Quarter by day. When panic finally spread to the palace, there was no one in Amarna who could deny what they had seen.
Anubis had arrived with the Black Death in his jaws.
My father came into the Audience Chamber on the sixth day of the Durbar to bring Pharaoh the news. In the open courts that looked out onto the river, there was still dancing. “Your Highness,” my father said, and the gravity on his face stopped Nefertiti’s laughter.
“Come forward.” Akhenaten smiled widely. “What is it, Vizier?”
My father’s face remained serious. “There is report of plague in the workers’ quarters, Your Majesty.”
Akhenaten glanced at Nefertiti. “Impossible,” he hissed. “We sacrificed two hundred bulls to Aten.”
“And eleven workers in the tombs have died.”
Several dignitaries backed away from the dais and Nefertiti whispered, “It must have been the Hittites.”
“I suggest quarantining yourself in the Northern Palace, Your Highness.”
“To a Second Wife’s palace?” Nefertiti cried.
“No. We stay here,” Akhenaten was firm. He scanned the Audience Chamber. The horror of plague had frozen the court. The music played on in the outer chambers, but now the women’s laughter went silent.
“Your Highness,” my father interrupted. “Rethink whether it is wise to stay in this palace. The Hittites, at least, should be quarantined. Anyone from the north should be sent—”
“No one is to be sent away!” Pharaoh boomed. “The Durbar is not finished.” Even the musicians fell silent. He turned and commanded, “Keep playing!”
At once they struck up a tune, and Panahesi moved quickly to the base of the dais. I had not even seen him appear. “We could make a special offering in the temple,” he suggested.
Akhenaten smiled at him, snubbing my father. “Good. And Aten will protect this city.”
“But seal the city gates,” my father implored. “No one should be allowed in or out.”
Nefertiti agreed. “We must seal the gates.”
“And let our guests think that there is plague?”
My father said quietly, “They will know it soon enough. The Baker’s Quarter has also been infected.”
There was a moment of panicked silence, then dignitaries began talking at once. A surge of courtiers pressed against the dais, wanting to know what to do and where to go. Akhenaten stood from his throne, and my father gathered our family around him. Tiye, my mother, and Nefertiti were there. “You must all go back to your chambers,” my father instructed the court. “Go back to your chambers and do not go outside.”
Nefertiti contradicted him. “Do as the vizier says!”
We swept as an entire family down the hall, and even Tiye’s steps were brisk. We turned the corner to the royal rooms, but Akhenaten refused to go any farther. “We must prepare for tonight.”
Nefertiti grew enraged, and I saw that it was fear that was making her shake. “During plague, you want to prepare for a feast? Who knows who could be sick? It could be all of Amarna!”
“And do we want our enemies to see us weak?” Akhenaten challenged. “To see trouble in the midst of our celebration?”
She didn’t answer.
“Then
Nefertiti watched him disappear into the Great Hall, and I was reminded of the boat ride many years ago when my father had remarked, “He is not stable.” My sister looked up at the carvings of herself and her family and her eyes welled with tears. “It was supposed to be glorious.”
“You invited the Hittites, and you knew they were tainted,” I replied.
“And what could I do?” Nefertiti snapped. “Could I stop him?”
“You wanted it, too.”
She shook her head. Her answer might have been a yes or a no. “The people will blame us,” she said as we came upon her chambers. “They will blame our devotion to Aten.” She closed her eyes, already knowing how the drama would play in the streets of Amarna and across the kingdom. “And what if it comes into the palace?” she asked. “What if it destroys everything that we’ve built?”
I thought of Ipu, who once told me that her father had used mint to keep rats away from the cellar and that none of his workers had ever died of plague. “Use mint,” I told her. “Use mint and rue. Tie it around your neck and hang it over every door.”
“You should leave, Mutnodjmet. You are pregnant.” Nefertiti choked back her tears. “And you’ve wanted a child so badly.”
“We don’t even know if it’s plague,” I said hopefully.
My father gave me a long look before we entered the royal rooms. “It is plague.”
Yet we feasted. The night was filled with harpists and lotus candles, and a hundred dancers glittered in the firelight, reflecting silver and gold. There was a tension among the guests, but no one dared to mention plague beneath the columns of the Great Hall of Amarna. The scent of orange blossoms floated on the night air between the pillars, and guests laughed high and nervous in the courtyard. Nakhtmin brought me a plate with the choicest meat, and we ate while below us Anubis roamed the streets. Women flirted and men played Senet and servants refilled cup after cup of red wine. By the end of the night, even I had forgotten the fear of death. It was only the next morning, when several hundred of the guests smelled a cloying sweetness in the air, that anyone thought to see what was happening in the city.
When the messenger returned, he reported what he’d seen to a filled Audience Chamber.
While we had been feasting, a thousand poor lay rotting in their beds.
“Seal the palace!” Akhenaten shouted, and the Nubian guards rushed to isolate Pharaoh’s palace from the rest of the city.
“What about the servants on errands?” my father asked.
“If they’re not in the palace, then they die in the streets.”
Nakhtmin turned to me. “It’s our last chance, Mutnodjmet. We can go back to Thebes now. We can escape.”
I gripped the edge of my chair. “And leave my family?”
“It’s their choice to stay.” His eyes held me in their sway, reminding me of that evening by the river.
My father came up and spread his hands on my shoulders. “You are pregnant. You have a child to think of.”
The staccato of hammers fell in the distance. The doors were being boarded, the windows shut. If the sickness crept in, it would spread to every chamber. I put my hands across my belly, as if I could shield my child from this terror. I looked at my father. “And what about you?”
“Akhenaten won’t leave,” my father’s voice was solemn. “We stay with Nefertiti.”
“And mother?”
My mother took my father’s arm for support. “We stay together. It’s unlikely that plague will come into the palace.” But her eyes remained uncertain. No one knew why plague came, to what house, to what person.
I looked at Nakhtmin, and he already knew the choice I would make, the choice I would always make. He nodded in understanding, taking my hand. “It could be in Thebes as well.”
