The Heretic Queen

“Will you marry after Nefertari’s coronation?” Aloli pressed.

“Yes.” Woserit blushed. “I believe we will.”

“But as High Priestess—”

Woserit nodded at me. “I’ll have to give up my chambers in the temple and move into the palace. Someone else will perform the morning rites. Then someday, if there are ever any children, perhaps I will have to leave altogether. But . . . but not yet.”

“And Henuttawy?” I whispered. “Do you know what will be done—”

“She is to receive a burial without recognition. But I will place an amulet in her mouth,” she promised. “So the gods will know who she is.”

I nodded quietly, and I understood that even though they had never been friends in life, they had still been sisters, and Woserit would do what was right.

In the Temple of Amun in Avaris, the new High Priest, Nebwenenef, poured the sacred oil over my wig. I closed my eyes, knowing that somewhere below the dais Iset was watching. I imagined her face holding the same bitter expression Henuttawy used to wear. If she had sent Rahotep after Henuttawy, I didn’t want to know. Then came the words. “Princess Nefertari, daughter of General Nakhtmin and Queen Mutnodjmet, granddaughter of Pharaoh Ay and his wife, Queen Tey, in the name of Amun I crown you Queen.”

There was a deafening sound of cheers from all around me. Amunher and Prehir were bouncing and clapping as well, caught up in the jubilation of the crowd. My wig was removed and the vulture crown of queenship placed on my head. The wings of the vulture swept from the diadem over my hair. I would never wear the seshed circlet of a princess again. On the steps of the altar, Ramesses took my hand.

“You are queen,” he said, marveling at the beauty of the vulture headdress that framed my face in lapis and gold. “The Queen of Egypt!”

A thousand courtiers celebrated behind us, and when I looked beyond the Temple of Amun, the faces of the people were filled with joy. The morning had dawned cloudless and brilliant, and the sound of sistrums filled the temple and echoed far beyond the banks of the River Nile. Children held palm branches above their heads, and the women who had come in their finest wigs laughed beneath their white linen sunshades. For as far as the eye could see, there was smiling and celebration, and the scent of roasted duck with barley beer and wine filled the streets. Thousands of people pressed into the roads, wanting to share in the joy of the day. I was their queen. Not the Heretic Queen, but a Warrior Queen, beloved of Ramesses the Great.

“So what will you do first?” Ramesses asked me.

I thought of the Ne’arin who had come to Egypt’s rescue in Kadesh, and when I turned to Ramesses, he knew my request before I said the words.

THAT EVENING, Ramesses announced to the Great Hall that I had expelled the heretics from Egypt. The people rejoiced as if the army had just taken back Kadesh. But across from me, Iset’s face grew pale. “Will every Habiru be leaving?” she asked desperately.

“Only the ones who want to go,” I replied in a low voice.

Iset excused herself early, and though I knew where she was going, I kept my silence.

The next morning, Merit reported that a painter named Ashai would be keeping his family in Avaris while the Habiru journeyed north.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

YOUR AKHU WILL STAND WITH MINE

Nubia, 1278 BC

  BEFORE DAWN, IN the third month of Akhet, the court sailed in a flotilla of ships up the River Nile. Gold pennants snapped from the mast of Amun’s Blessing, and on the deck of the ship Ramesses pointed to the west. He had waited two years to show us this. “Do you see them?” he asked, and as the sky brightened behind the eastern hills, light fell across a pair of temples carved into the face of two mountains.

Courtiers flocked to the sides of the ships, awed by the grandeur we had traveled so far south to see. Asha asked the architect Penre, “You created these?”

But Penre shook his head. “They were Pharaoh’s design, from beginning to end.”

When the ships reached the quay, Ramesses took my hand. He led me to the entrance of the smaller temple while the astonished court of Pi-Ramesses followed behind. At that moment I knew what it must feel like to be a beetle in a human’s world. Everything around us made me feel small. Two images of Ramesses and two of myself gazed across the Nile, our colossal legs taller than anything the gods had yet created, and when we stood beneath the entrance, Ramesses indicated the words that had been carved into the stone.

For my queen Nefertari, beloved of Mut, for whose sake the sun shines in Nubia every day.

“For you,” Ramesses said.

After nineteen years I could lay down libations in my own mortuary temple to my akhu. It was a temple that would last until eternity, and as we entered the cool recesses of the hall, I was too overcome to speak. On every wall the artists had depicted me smiling, raising my arms to the goddess Hathor, and offering incense to the goddess Mut. Statues of my ancestors were carved in granite, and when Ramesses explained how long men had toiled in the desert for this, I let tears roll down my cheeks and ruin my kohl. I touched the limestone statue of my mother, Queen Mutnodjmet, together with my father, General Nakhtmin, and felt for the first time that I had come home. Only Nefertiti had ever possessed her own temple as queen. When I looked across the hall and saw her eyes gazing back into mine, I realized then how much we were alike. “Ramesses,” I whispered, “where did you get—”

“I sent Penre to Amarna to search for their likenesses.”

The ache in my throat made it painful to swallow. “But what will the people think?”

“This temple belongs to you. Not to the courtiers of Avaris or the viziers of Pi-Ramesses. And for as long as there is an Egypt,” he promised, “your akhu will stand with mine.” He led Amunher and Prehir by the hand into the second temple’s innermost chamber, and Penre instructed the courtiers to step back.

Ramesses grinned at me. “This will only ever happen twice a year. Are you ready?”

I didn’t know what to be ready for. Then, through the cool shadows of the early morning, shafts of light crept slowly across the floor of the inner sanctum, and the statues of Ramesses, Ra, and Amun shone in sudden illumination. Only the statue of Ptah, the god of the Underworld, remained in darkness, and cries of wonder echoed through the halls.

“It’s magnificent,” Merit murmured.

Ramesses searched my face for my reaction. These were our mortuary temples, side by side, together for eternity. On every wall in Ramesses’s temple, my image was as tall as his own. There were scenes of us hunting in the marshes with Asha, images of us using throwsticks to catch waterfowl on the river, and on the largest wall, artisans had re-created the Battle of Kadesh.

“The gods will never forget this,” I told him.

“But does it please you?”

I smiled through my tears. “More than you’ll ever know. And someday, when our children are old enough to understand, we will bring them back here to meet their akhu and they will know that they have never been alone in Egypt.”

“Neither have you,” he said, and when he held me in his arms, and I looked from Merit to Woserit and my beautiful sons, I knew that it was so.

HISTORICAL NOTE