Nefertiti

Chapter Thirty-Two

Peret, Season of Growing

KING TUTANKHAMUN ASCENDED the dais to the Horus thrones with the Princess Ankhesenamun by his side, and I watched my father whisper into his ear the way he had done with Nefertiti.

“Your father is the power behind the throne once more,” Nakhtmin observed.

“Only this time it is for our son.” A faint breeze stirred the summer heat, laden with the scents of lotus blossom and myrrh. I grasped my husband’s hand. “I will never escape it, will I?”

“The Horus thrones?” Nakhtmin shook his head. “No, it doesn’t seem that you will. But this time will be different,” he promised. “This time Egypt will prosper, and there will be no rebellion under Pharaoh Tutankhamun.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I am here, and because Horemheb will destroy the Hittites and return victorious for the glory of Amun. In fifteen years, Aten will be forgotten.”

A shiver passed through me as I thought of Nefertiti’s city lying in the sand, swept away by the winds of time. Everything she had worked so hard for had failed. But there was Ankhesenamun. I looked up at the dais and the little girl who looked so much like my sister, and I found it strange that I should be sitting in the same chair I had occupied when Nefertiti had ruled. How much would this child remember of her mother? She turned her gaze in my direction, the same dark eyes and willowy neck, and I wondered what she and my son would write together on the pillars of eternity.