Nefertiti

Chapter Twenty-Two

fourteenth of Pachons

“THERE’S A SURPRISE for you waiting at the quay,” Nakhtmin whispered the next morning when I opened my eyes.

I sat up at once, blinking against the light. “What is it?”

“Get up and see,” my husband teased.

I pushed Bastet off the bed and went to the window, then shouted, recognizing the blue and gold standards of my parents’ bark. “Ipu!” I called, throwing on my good linen. “The Vizier Ay and my mother have arrived. Prepare the house and get out the good wine!”

Ipu appeared at the doorway to my chamber.

“What are you doing? Find the wine!” I exclaimed.

She exchanged a private smile with Nakhtmin. “It’s already done.”

I looked back at my husband, who was grinning like Bastet. Then I understood. “Did you know about this?”

“Of course he did,” Ipu replied eagerly. “He has been hiding this surprise for more than ten days.”

I stopped what I was doing, fastening a gold chain around my neck, and my eyes filled with tears.

“Go!” he urged me. “They’re waiting!”

I ran out to meet my parents the way a child runs to meet her friends at the market. When my mother saw me, her face transformed. “Mutnodjmet!” she cried, throwing her arms around me. “You look well.” She pulled back to see me. “Not so skinny anymore. And the house!”

“It’s a handsome villa.” My father appraised, studying the faience tiles and surrounding hills. The villa’s reflection wavered in the Nile, and the rising sun splashed the water with gold. Already Thebans on both sides of the river were staring from their windows, recognizing the pennants on the bark as royal colors and wondering who had come to visit the city.

“Ipu! Find a sheet of papyrus and write that I will not be having customers today,” I shouted. “Hang it on the door.”

Servants stayed behind with the ship while I took my mother and father up through the gardens. My father greeted Nakhtmin solemnly. “So tell me what is happening in Thebes,” he said.

I didn’t listen to what they were saying. I already knew. And while they talked in the loggia over roasted goose and spiced wine, my mother and I sat in the garden. My mother looked down the hill to the River Nile, comparing the land in her mind to Amarna. “It’s richer here, somehow,” she said.

“Thebes is older. There’s less glitter and rush.”

“Yes. Everything’s a rush in Amarna,” she agreed.

“And Nefertiti?” I asked, raising my cup.

My mother inhaled. “Still strong.”

Still ambitious, she meant. “And my nieces?”

“They couldn’t be more spoiled if they were the daughters of Isis. No horse is too fine or chariot too grand.” My mother clicked her tongue.

“It’s a bad way to teach them.”

“I tell Nefertiti that, but she won’t hear it.” My mother’s voice dropped, though there was no one in the garden to hear her but me. “You have heard about Mitanni?”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes. “And we have sent no soldiers to help them,” I guessed.

“Not one,” she whispered. “It’s why your father has come here, Mutnodjmet.”

I sat back. “It wasn’t to see me?”

“Of course to see you,” she said quickly. “But also to speak with Nakhtmin. He’s a hero to the people and valuable to us as an ally. You chose wisely in your husband.”

“Because now he can help us?” I asked bitterly. At once, I regretted my tone of voice. My mother, who was no more cunning or pretentious than I would ever be, sat back in shock.

“Egypt will need him if Akhenaten’s reign should ever crumble.”

“And by Egypt, you mean our family.”

She put down her cup and reached across the table, covering my hand with hers. “It is your destiny, Mutnodjmet. The path to the Horus throne was laid long before you were born, before Nefertiti was born. It was the destiny of your grandmother, and her mother, and her mother before that. You can accept it, or it can chase you down and wear you out with all the running.”

I thought of my father in the loggia, plotting with Nakhtmin, drawing him into the web that would ensnare us and bring us back to Amarna.

“Nefertiti will always be queen,” my mother continued. “But she needs a son. She needs an heir to make sure that Nebnefer never rules in Egypt.”

“But she’s had only princesses.”

“There’s still hope,” my mother said, and something about her tone made me lean forward.

“She isn’t—”

My mother nodded.

“Three months after Ankhesenpaaten?” My lip trembled. Then surely this one would be a boy, and Nebnefer would be forgotten and our family would be safe. So Nefertiti was pregnant with a fourth child. Four.

“Oh, Mutnodjmet. Don’t weep.” My mother embraced me.

“I’m not weeping,” I replied, but the tears came fast, and I rested my face against her breast. “But aren’t you disappointed, mawat? Aren’t you disappointed you will never have a grandchild?”

“Shh…” She stroked my hair. “I don’t care if you have one child or ten.”

“But I have none,” I cried. “And doesn’t Nakhtmin deserve a child?”

“It is up to the gods,” my mother said resolutely. “It is not about deserving.”

I wiped away the tears. Nakhtmin and my father came out into the garden, and both wore grave faces. “We’ll be meeting with former Amun priests tomorrow night,” my father said.

“In my house?” I exclaimed.

“Mitanni has been burned, Mutnodjmet,” Nakhtmin said.

I glanced at my father in horror. “Then shouldn’t you be in Amarna? The Mitanni king will ask for soldiers. Surely now—”

“No. It is better to be here, planning for a time when there might not be an Amarna.”

I flinched. “Does Nefertiti know what you are doing?”

“She knows what she wants to,” my father replied.

The next night, when the moon was a thin sliver cut into the sky, my parents’ servants moved the long table from the kitchen to the middle of the open loggia. Ipu dressed it with fine linen and laid out our best wine, lighting the brazier and throwing sticks of cinnamon onto the coals. I wore my best wig and earrings, and Nakhtmin left to stand watch at the bottom of our hill. Then men whose names I’d heard spoken with the deepest reverence as a child began to arrive in hooded cloaks and gilded sandals. Their bald heads shone in the light of the oil lamps. They were silent as they came to the door and addressed Ipu with respectful greetings from Amun.

“How many men are coming?” I asked.

My father replied, “Nearly fifty.”

“And women?”

“Eight or nine. Most of these guests tonight were once Amun priests. They are powerful men”—his voice was full of meaning—“and they still practice in secret shrines.”

There was no official welcome. When my father determined that everyone he’d summoned had arrived, he slipped off into the darkness to find Nakhtmin, then returned. Sitting cross-legged on a cushion, he announced, “Everyone here knows that I am the Vizier Ay. You know the former general Nakhtmin.” My husband inclined his head. “My wife.” My mother smiled softly. “And my daughter, the Lady Mutnodjmet.”

Sixty silent faces turned toward me, searching out my eyes in the flickering light. I inclined my head, which felt heavy and cumbersome in its wig, and I knew they were comparing me to Nefertiti: my dark skin to her light, my plain features to her chiseled ones.

“We are all aware that Mitanni has been invaded,” my father went on. “The Hittites have crossed the Euphrates and subdued Halab, Mukish, Niya, Arahati, Apina, and Qatna. No one here is under the assumption that Egypt will send soldiers to Mitanni’s King Tushratta. These cities are gone.” The men in the loggia shifted. “But Pharaoh Akhenaten finds comfort in the treaty he has signed with the Hittite king.”

There was the rise of voices in our loggia.

“You have talked of rebellion,” Nakhtmin addressed the men who looked to my father with alarm, “and the Vizier Ay is on our side. He wants to fight the Hittites, he wants to release General Horemheb from prison, he wants to turn back to the great god Amun—but now is not the time for rebellion.”

A chorus of disapproval went up and dozens of shaved heads rose angrily.

“I have no desire to be Pharaoh, and my wife has no desire to be queen.”

“Then raise the Vizier Ay!” one of the men said loudly.

My father stood. “My daughter is Queen of Egypt,” he replied. “The people of Amarna support her possession of the crook and flail. And I support her.”

“But who supports Pharaoh?” someone shouted.

“We all must. It is through him that Egypt will be given an heir. The queen,” he announced, “is with child again.”

“We must hope it is a son,” Nakhtmin added quietly.

“Hope has gotten us nowhere,” one of the men interjected. Two gold earrings pierced each of his ears. He stood up, and the cut of his linen was very fine. “In the Elder’s time, I was High Priest in Memphis. When the Elder embraced Osiris, I hoped to return to my temple. I hoped not to lend out my services as a scribe to put food on my table, but hope has done me little. I am lucky that I saved and was a frugal man. But not all of these men can say that.” He gestured with a bangled arm. “What Egyptian could have foreseen what would happen at the Elder’s death? A new religion, a new capital. Most men here have lost everything. And Vizier, we are not a group without means,” he warned. “We have sons in the army; we have daughters in Pharaoh’s neglected harem. We hoped your daughter would bring sense to Egypt, but we are tired of hoping. We are tired of waiting.” He sat down, and my father spoke directly to him.

“But wait you must,” he said simply. “To meet here is treason”—his voice grew low—“to suggest removing Pharaoh is more dangerous still. To remove a Pharaoh is to risk setting a terrible precedent. The Queen of Egypt watches over her people.”

“Yes, in Amarna. What about Thebes?” the former priest demanded.

“Thebes’s time will come,” my father promised.

“When?” An old woman stood up. “When I have embraced Osiris as well? By then it will be too late!” She steadied herself on her ebony cane and peered across the room. “Do you know who I am?”

My father nodded respectfully.

“I was Prince Tuthmosis’s nurse. I tended him even to his deathbed. And there is no one here who doesn’t know the story of what I saw that night.” There was an uneasy shuffling in the loggia. “A prince surrounded by tangled sheets,” she went on, “a pillow cut with teeth marks!” I shot a terrified look at my father, who allowed the old woman to continue with her fratricidal tale. “Akhenaten cast me out of Malkata Palace as soon as his brother was buried. He might have killed me, too, but he thought I was old and useless. And now what family will hire me,” she cried, “the nurse of a dead prince?”

She sat down, and a shocked silence filled the loggia. I held my breath. The old woman had just accused Pharaoh of murder.

“All of us have deeds that will weigh heavy with Osiris, some heavier than others,” Nakhtmin replied. “We have all been wronged. We have all struggled since the Elder’s death, and we have all been called here to be reminded that destinies are decided by the gods, not former Amun priests. We must wait for a prince to be born to the queen, and Vizier Ay will train him to be a soldier worthy of Egypt.”

“That’s not for fifteen years!” several men cried.

“Perhaps,” my father conceded. “But know that I am with you, that my daughter, Queen Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, stands by you as well. Amun will not be lost to Egypt forever.” He stood up, and it was clear the meeting was over.

Our hooded guests bowed with respect to my family. When they had left, I whispered to Nakhtmin, “I don’t see how this meeting will stem rebellion.”

“These men won’t be so quick to want war against Pharaoh now that they know Amun has not died in the heart of Akhenaten’s closest adviser,” he replied. “Egyptians are a patient people in the end. The worst is over. Now they have only to wait for change.” Nakhtmin squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t worry, miw-sher. Your father knows what he is doing. He wanted to calm their fears, to tell them that the future is not as bleak as it seems so long as he is there to mold it. And to see you there, his second daughter, with a former general willing to fight against the Hittites, it sends a powerful message.”

“And what is that?”

“That not all Egyptians have fallen under the spell of Amarna. There is hope within the royal family.”

My parents stayed through the end of Pachons, and when it was time for them to go I bit my lip and swore I wouldn’t cry, even when I knew they would not be coming again soon.