The Heretic Queen

I had promised Woserit that each evening Ramesses spent away from me, I would meet with Paser. So I made my way through the dimly lit halls around the royal courtyard, and when Paser’s body servant opened his door, I saw my former tutor sitting with Woserit at his brazier. At once, they moved apart, but the scene had been so intimate that I stepped back. Paser’s long hair was loosened from its braid, and in the firelight it gleamed like a raven’s wings. He is beautiful, I realized. I immediately thought the same of Woserit, whose face seemed suddenly younger. She was only twenty-five, but the weight of life at court had etched thin lines between her brows.

“Princess Nefertari,” Paser said, and stood to greet me. His chamber was large, painted with murals and decorated with expensive hangings from Mitanni. Above the bed were carvings from Assyria, sphinxes whose tightly curled beards gave away their origin. And at the entrance to his robing room, the carved wooden faces of Babylonian gods stared back. Has he been to all of these lands? I wondered.

It was cold, and Woserit was wearing her heaviest cloak. “You did well today,” she said while I took an empty seat. “Especially with your entrance. There was no one in that chamber who couldn’t tell that you were a princess, born and bred.”

“And you judged wisely,” Paser added.

“Then I must thank you for sending me all of your simplest petitions.”

Paser raised his brows. “Those foreign petitioners wouldn’t have been simple for Iset. Once the court begins to recognize your talent for languages, perhaps we’ll start sending those cases to her instead.” He smiled at Woserit. “If Rahotep thinks he’s the only one who can play this game, then he’ll discover very quickly that he’s wrong.”

“What were your impressions of the Audience Chamber?” Woserit asked.

I looked between them, wondering what she wanted me to say. “It was filled with interesting people,” I said carefully.

“Did you find it tiresome?” Paser asked.

“With so many petitioners to talk to?” I exclaimed. “No.”

Paser glanced at Woserit. “She’s not another Iset,” he said thankfully, then turned to me. “When the people see how valuable you are, the tide of love for Iset may change.”

“Especially if you are pregnant,” Woserit added.

We both looked down at my tunic, with its amber studded belt emphasizing the smallness of my waist. They both knew the story of my mother. It was a legend now at court, how she had been poisoned by the Heretic King and lost her first child. She had been tall, with wide hips for childbearing, but it was years before Tawaret blessed her womb again with my brother. Yet she’d wanted more children, and I could only imagine how she must have felt when her third had come into the world robbed of its breath. And then, while she had been pregnant with me, there was the fire in the royal courtyard. I shuddered to think of her gentle heart having to bear the news that everyone she had ever loved—her mother and father, her son and husband, both of Nefertiti’s remaining daughters—was gone. Was it any wonder that after my birth, she had no more energy left for living?

“We are not always our mother’s daughters.” Woserit read my mind. “Your aunt gave Pharaoh six healthy girls.”

“Then I should hope to be more like the Heretic Queen?” I whispered.

“In this regard, yes.”

I was silent for a moment, then asked, “And if I never become pregnant?”

“Why would you say such a thing?” Woserit shot Paser a look, and he said warningly, “Nefertari, a Chief Wife’s duty is to give Pharaoh a son.”

“My aunt never gave her husband a son!”

“But she gave him children,” Woserit said sternly. “Six princesses to marry any prince. Ramesses married you for the children you will bring him.”

“He married me for love!”

“And sons,” Paser said. “Do not mistake him.”

I stood from my chair. “And he would rather have a son than a wife?” I demanded.

There was silence in the chamber, and the crackle of the fire in the brazier seemed unnaturally loud. Paser gave a heavy sigh, and Woserit reached out to touch my hand. “No man ever thinks of childbirth as a choice between his children and his wife. Every husband hopes for both.”

Woserit stood from her stool and wrapped me in her arms. “You are not fated to die in childbirth, Nefertari.”

“How do you know?” I pulled back to look at her face.

“Instinct.” She shrugged. “You are meant to have a very long reign. If you give Ramesses a prince. And if he makes you Chief Wife.”

“And he would never make me Chief Wife without a son.”

Woserit shook her head. “He cannot.”

When I returned to my chamber, I went to the balcony and watched the moon drift behind thin wisps of cloud. Even though the wind was cool, there was still no dusty scent of rain in the air. No relief from the drought and the rising hunger. Already, there were reports of men stealing the food offerings from mortuary temples to feed their families. And when a group of these thieves had been brought before their elders, the old men had pardoned them with the belief that it is better to feed the living than the dead. But how long would it be before the gods grew angry, or even the wealthy began to starve and the people rebelled? Then, what would it matter if I was pregnant? Had I seven sons, the people would still blame me.

“You have had a very long day, my lady. You must eat something,” Merit chided. Her squat body was framed by the doorway, and she held up the cooked perch for me to see. I left the balcony and she handed me the bowl, slamming the wooden doors shut behind us. “Standing out in the dark and the wind,” she grumbled. “Don’t you have any sense?”

“It’s beautiful,” I objected. “It’s how Amun must have felt when he emerged from the dark waters at the beginning of time, when everything was possible.”

“Was it possible for him to get sick as well? Because that’s what you’re about to do, my lady. Sit next to that fire.”

I did as I was told, and Merit took a blanket from the wooden chest and draped it over my shoulders. “Did you know there’s already talk about you in the palace?”

I lowered the bowl. “What kind of talk?”

“First, you must eat!” She crossed her arms over her chest, and when I’d taken a bite of perch to satisfy her, she smiled. “The kind you want,” she revealed. “It was about the Audience Chamber. You must have done very well today. There was surprise in the palace that someone so young could command so many languages and deal so justly. I heard it in the baths, and in the kitchens as well.”

I put down the bowl of fish. “But those are just servants.”

Merit passed me a long look. “And what kind of gossip do you think the people trust? Gossip from the mouths of cooks, or courtiers?”

“Do you think it’s possible to change the people’s hearts?”

“It might be easier,” she said quietly, “if the River Nile would overflow its banks.”

I went to my mother’s shrine and looked into the face of the feline goddess. In the firelight, it was impossible to see that she’d once been broken.

“Mut watches over you,” Merit whispered. “But there is nothing she can do if your body is not strong!” She thrust the half-eaten perch at me again. “Eat!”

I looked over her shoulder and gasped with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

Ramesses stood in the door. Merit inhaled so sharply at the sight of him that her pelican’s pouch disappeared. “Your Highness!” She rushed across the room to get him a proper chair. I looked at Ramesses in his short kilt and bedroom sandals and repeated my question. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I would come here tonight.” He added sheepishly, “If you don’t mind? Iset is going to sleep, and I want to be with you.”

I could see that Merit was shocked, but she excused herself at once. I sat across from Ramesses at the brazier.

“Your first Audience Chamber, and all of Thebes is talking about you. You have a great talent, Nefer. And I