arranged in clusters beneath the sycamore trees so that the pilgrims to Hathor’s temple could sit and contemplate the goddess’s splendor.
“It is beautiful,” the young gardener agreed. Woserit’s smile widened. “But that is only because it is a reflection of you.”
Woserit smiled fully. “Very pretty.”
She laughed, but the young man didn’t laugh. He was taken by her, and there was a light of new fascination in his eyes. “Come,” Woserit said to me primly. “I will show you the orchards.” When we left the courtyard and passed into the groves, Woserit turned.
“He stared after you until we left the courtyard!” I cried.
“You see what a smile can do? And mine is not even pretty.” I made to interrupt her, but she shook her head at my protest. “It’s true. It’s nothing like yours. You have teeth as white as pearls, and no man who sees your smile will ever forget it.”
“I don’t think that gardener will ever forget yours,” I pointed out.
“That’s because I’ve learned how to use it,” Woserit said. “I don’t pass it out like an old woman giving free milk to the village cats. It’s something that must be controlled, and for you especially. You use it on anyone. You must learn to be more judicious.”
She looked down the path and I followed her gaze to a group of men harvesting figs from the sycamore trees. “Do you see one who is handsome?” she asked.
I flushed.
“Don’t be shy. There will be plenty of men at court, and some will need to be convinced that they are in your special favor. How will you do that? With a look,” she answered. “With a smile. As we walk by, I want you to choose a man,” she said. “Make him feel that he has been chosen. And then make him speak to you.”
“Without using words?” I exclaimed.
“Using only your smile. So, which one shall it be?” she said slyly.
I looked over at the group of men. Sitting down, sorting the good figs from bad, was a young man with dark hair. “The one who is counting,” I said immediately.
I thought a smile alone might not suffice, and the thought came to me to reach for my bracelet. . . . Quickly, I loosened the clasp, and as we passed the group of men I met the expressive eyes of the dark-haired man and smiled slowly. When his eyes widened with the realization that I was acknowledging him specifically, I let the bracelet fall. “My lady!” He jumped up and fetched my bracelet. “You have dropped something!” He held the bracelet up, and I let him have my fullest smile, the way Woserit had with the gardener.
“How clumsy of me!” I took the bracelet from his hand, brushing his palm with my fingertips, and the group of men watched in silence as Woserit and I disappeared through the groves.
At the bank of the River Nile, Woserit nodded approvingly, “Now you are no longer a giggling child, smiling at whoever comes along. You are a woman with power. Learn to control your smile, and you can control what men will think about you. So, the next time you see Ramesses, what will you do?”
I smiled slightly so that only the top of my front teeth could be seen.
“Good. Slow and reserved. You don’t give him everything, because you don’t know how it will be received. By the time you see him again he may already have decided to make Iset Chief Wife. We also don’t want Henuttawy to realize that you haven’t retreated. You never want to give away everything at once,” she warned. “We are playing a delicate game.”
I looked up, still guessing at her true purpose. “What kind of game?”
“The kind you played when you dropped your bracelet,” she said with finality.
The sun reflected in Woserit’s diadem, and in the golden sun disc at the center of her brow I could see a twisted reflection of myself. “Tomorrow,” Woserit went on, “your temple training will begin. If Henuttawy asks one of my women what you are doing here, it must look as though you are truly planning to devote your life to Hathor. I don’t expect you to join the priestesses in the Great Hall tonight, but tomorrow morning Aloli will summon you to my chamber and I will explain how we are to proceed.”
AFTER THE sun sank below the hills that evening, Merit sat on the edge of my bed. “Are you nervous, my lady?”
“No,” I said honestly, drawing the covers up to my chest. “We are doing what must be done. Tomorrow, Woserit is going to tell me how I am to spend my year.”
“In a manner befitting a princess, I should hope.”
“Even if I have to swing a bronze censer from dawn to dusk, if it makes Ramesses miss me, then it will be worth it.”
THE NEXT morning, Aloli knocked on the door to my chamber, and her big eyes grew even wider when she saw me in Hathor’s long blue robes. “You are really one of us now!” she exclaimed, and her voice echoed through the silent halls.
“Perhaps we should be quiet,” I offered.
“Nonsense! It’s practically dawn.” She gave me her arm as we walked through the halls. It was so early in the morning that she needed an oil lamp to guide us down the gray passages of the temple. “So, are you nervous?” she asked merrily, and I wondered once more why everyone thought I should be. “I can still remember my first day in temple. I began my career in the Temple of Isis.”
“With
“Yes.” Aloli wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know why my mother chose that temple. She might have chosen the Temple of Mut, or Sekhmet, or even Hathor. If she were still alive, I’d ask her. But she died when I was ten. I spent five years with the High Priestess. Fetching her water, polishing her sandals, fixing her hair . . .”
“Is that what a priestess is supposed to do?”
“Of course not!”
A door opened at the end of the hall and a voice cried sharply,
“That’s Serapis. The old priestess likes to sleep in late.”
“Shouldn’t we be silent then?”
“Silent?” Aloli laughed. “Soon she’ll be sleeping for eternity. She ought to get up and enjoy the hours she has left.” We reached a hall that ended in a pair of double doors, and Aloli said, “Stay here.”
Her silhouette dissolved into the chamber’s blackness as I waited in the hall beneath a painted image of the Nile in the Sky. When I was younger, Merit had pointed to the band of stars clustered across the void and told me the story of how the cow goddess Hathor had sent her milk across the heavens as a path on which Ra could sail his solar bark. I stared up at the painting, wondering if that was the same path my parents had taken to the heavenly fields of Yaru. Then the creak of a door interrupted my thoughts, and the priestess’s hand beckoned to me. “Come. She is willing to see you.”
She let me pass into Woserit’s private chamber, and as I entered the room I tried to hide my shock. Three chairs had been placed around a lit brazier sunk into the tiled floor, and one of them was taken by Paser. Instead of wearing his hair in a severe scholar’s knot, it was now tied back in a lapis band. In the firelight, I could see a cartouche hung at his neck, engraved with Ramesses’s full title in gold.
“You may close the door, Aloli.” The priestess did as she was told, and Woserit pointed to a seat across from her. “Nefertari,” she began when I was seated, “I am sure you are surprised to see your tutor here, especially as he has now become vizier.”
I looked at Paser to see how being part of Pharaoh’s court had changed him. Wearing a vizier’s tunic made him seem somehow different.
“Paser has many new duties in the palace now,” Woserit explained, “but he has agreed to continue your education. Every morning, before he reports to the Audience Chamber, he will come to the temple to tutor you in the languages that you have studied with him.”
“At sunrise?” I exclaimed.
“And earlier.” Paser nodded.
“He knows you will not disappoint him,” Woserit said. “You have mastered seven languages in the edduba. This is what will separate you from Iset and make you invaluable.”
I frowned. “To Ramesses?”
