The Heretic Queen

“What do I prepare?”

“Linens and sandals,” I said swiftly.

“And for the princes?”

I kissed each of my sons on their soft cheeks. They were the brightest babies, always wanting to touch, and grab, and explore. “All they truly need is each other,” I told her. They had recently stopped nursing, and now they drank their milk from clay bottles and ate chicken from my bowl when it was cut small enough. They ate together, played together, and now they would see their first battle together, watching from the hills. I laid my sons back on their linen, and felt the thrill of knowing that by Epiphi the gods would recognize them. It might only be a small thing, and their names might not echo in Amun’s ears just yet, but to share in Egypt’s conquests was certainly a beginning.

In the Audience Chamber that morning, petitioners had been forbidden, and from a dozen polished tables, generals and viziers debated the strategy that Egypt would use to take back Kadesh. I sat listening to Asha and his father as they described the Hittite army.

“They have allies from eighteen kingdoms,” Anhuri warned. “Nearly two thousand chariots and thirty thousand soldiers. They have men from Aleppo, Ugarit, Dardany, Keshkesh, Arzawa, Shasu . . .”

“Aradus, Mese, Pedes, and many more,” Asha finished. “There is no doubt we will need all our twenty thousand soldiers.”

“Then we will break the army into five divisions,” Ramesses decided. We had stayed up for nights looking at maps, translating cuneiform messages that spies had intercepted. “There will be the division of Amun, which I will lead. The division of Ra, with Kofu at its head. General Anhuri will take the division of Ptah and name a general to the division of Set. Each division will march a day apart, so that if Hittite spies should see Amun’s division, they will think we are only five thousand strong. Then Asha will take a final, smaller army by river. If we can surround the Hittites and cut off their supplies, they will face starvation and will surrender within a month.”

The viziers frowned at one another. “You are going to divide the army, Your Highness?” Paser was wary. “No Pharaoh in my memory has done this.”

Around the tables, men shifted in their seats. It was either a brilliant plan or madness.

“I think it can work,” General Kofu spoke up.

“Can work, or will work?” Paser challenged.

“Will work,” Ramesses said fearlessly.

Rahotep remained silent, his bloody eye fixed on Ramesses’s throne. But Paser was braver. “If there is any chance of success in this, there will need to be excellent communication between the divisions.”

“And I have grave reservations,” General Anhuri admitted.

Ramesses hadn’t expected dissent from Asha’s father. “Tell me why.”

“You will lead four divisions up through Canaan, then on through the woods of Labwi. It will be a month’s march. If the Hittites should turn and surprise Amun’s division, how quickly can a runner be sent to Ra, Set, or Ptah? This has never been done—”

“Which is why we must try,” Ramesses said passionately. “Akhenaten lost Kadesh along with the Eleutheros Valley. Since then Pharaohs have tried to regain it and failed. It belongs to Egypt! How long was it in my father’s possession before the Hittites took it back? Without the Valley, we will never regain our land in Syria. If we allow the Hittites to hold Kadesh, they will keep Egypt’s territory along the Arnath River forever! Akhenaten let our empire crumble, but we will rebuild. We will reconquer. And to do that, we must crush the Hittites. We cannot simply use a huge blocking force, as before. It’s not enough to push them back—we must surround them, starve them, and force them to surrender completely!”

Ramesses’s speech roused his generals. They understood that if something different wasn’t tried, there might be battle after battle against Hatti without end. The Hittites had to be engulfed and destroyed once and for all.

THAT EVENING, I looked at Ramesses in the low light of the oil lamps. He sat on our bed, perched tensely like a bird of prey, a nineteen-year-old Pharaoh of the most powerful kingdom in the world. In a month, he would show the Hittite emperor that Egypt should never be mistaken for a gosling.

“Since the reign of Tuthmosis,” he said, “only my father and I have led armies into battle. And only a few pharaohs in history have ever taken their wives.”

“We will be fine,” I promised him.

“It’s not you who concerns me. It’s Iset. The march will be long, and she isn’t meant for such things.” I wanted to ask him what he thought Iset was meant for, but he went on. “I could send her on by ship in Asha’s galley,” he considered, “but they will be far ahead of the army, and that could prove more dangerous.”

“She has chosen to come,” I reminded. “She will do well.”

But I could see that Ramesses wasn’t convinced.

The next morning the court assembled on the small bluff outside Avaris. Viziers, wives, priestesses, and noblemen had come to see the awesome sight of twenty thousand soldiers readied for battle in the fields below. Helmets and axes gleamed in the sun, and from each division flew the standards of Amun, Ra, Set, and Ptah. Among the thousands of soldiers were Nubians, Assyrians, the new Sherden recruits, and the Habiru. They carried leather shields to be quick and agile, where the Hittite armor would be cumbersome and heavy.

“You see how fast our chariots are?” Paser pointed a driver out to me who charged across the floodplains, then reined in his horses with the slightest tug of his hand. “The Hittite chariots are much heavier than ours, because they carry three men.”

“A driver, a shield bearer, and an archer,” I guessed.

Paser nodded. A slight wind rustled his kilt, and in the morning sun his eyes looked tired. “Be careful, Nefertari. The Hittites will not hesitate to kill a woman. They aren’t Egyptians, and they may not take you alive . . .” He left his words unfinished, then stepped back so Woserit could embrace me.

“You are braver than I.”

“Or more foolish,” I answered. “But I’ve promised Ramesses that wherever he goes, I’ll be with him. And if he should meet with disaster, all Egypt would fall to the Hittites anyway. How could I stay here? I must have a hand in my own fate.”

We both looked to Henuttawy and Iset. Although they were standing close to each other, a wide river might as well have been flowing between them. Neither spoke, and the women Iset had grown up with since childhood shifted nervously. They had never known anything but life in the harem, and now Iset would be riding a chariot between desert cities while the army marched. They had no advice to give her, and Iset’s face was as white as her diaphanous sheath.

Woserit shook her head. “She will never survive. She’ll want to ride in the litter with the children all the way to Kadesh.”

Ramesses appeared in his golden pectoral, his courtiers chatting excitedly. The early morning sun reflected from his breastplate: His bronze armor was cinched with an azure sash, and from his khepresh crown of war the uraeus bared its fangs at the enemy.

“Like Montu,” I told him, the male god of war.

“And you are my Sekhmet,” he replied.

Iset came up beside him; her broad inlaid belt was so thick that it weighed her down as she walked. Up close I could see her nails had been hennaed. She was perfectly beautiful, like a freshly painted doll from the palace workshops. “We’re marching through the desert,” Ramesses exclaimed. “Not hosting a feast!” He looked at my linen kilt and simple sandals, then hesitated. “You are simply too beautiful for the battlefield, Iset. Perhaps you should—”

But she wouldn’t listen to him. “I am coming with you,” she said. “I want to be by your side. Battle doesn’t frighten me.”

Yet even the courtiers from the palace, who wanted to believe everything of her, could see through this. One of her women, the daughter of a scribe, suggested kindly, “You could remain with Vizier Paser in the Audience Chamber, Iset. Pharaoh needs loyal eyes to look after his kingdom.”

“Pharaoh needs someone to look after him in war!” she snapped, and then she turned her gaze in my direction. “And if it means I have to look like a boy, I’ll do it.”