Nefertiti

Chapter Twenty-Three

1346 BCE

Peret, Season of Growing

NEWS OF NEFERTITI’S confinement came in the first month of Peret, only this time I was not commanded to attend. If my sister died, I would not even be there to say good-bye.

I went into my shop and Nakhtmin followed. He sat on the bright-orange cushion for customers, watching me take down a box of cinnamon bark that would keep away head lice and perfume a home. It was for a woman who came every ten days at this time, the daughter of a well-respected scribe who could afford such luxuries from the land of Punt.

Nakhtmin kept staring and I turned around.

“I rarely see you at work,” he explained. “I’m always outside.” His skin was dark because of his practice with local soldiers, and the contrast with his hair and eyes was stunning. I believed there was no man more beautiful. He stood up and took me in his arms. “I’m glad you won’t be going to Amarna,” he admitted, kissing my neck. “I miss you when you’re gone.”

While we waited for word from Amarna, other news came one evening as Nakhtmin and I walked along the Nile. We were discussing how stalwart the soldiers of Mitanni must be to keep fighting the Hittites though half of their cities were lost. The waning sun shimmered on the water, and every so often the sound of fish cut the still evening air. Then Ipu came running down the riverbank, dressed in her finest linen. Holding up her middle finger, she cried, “I am getting married!”

The three of us stopped. Nakhtmin was the first to congratulate her, embracing my body servant and promising we would throw her the grandest feast in all of Thebes.

I took her hand to examine the ring. A thick golden band. It must have cost three months’ worth of wages. “When did this happen?”

“This afternoon!” Ipu’s cheeks were flushed. “I went to his stall and he gave me a little boat he had carved himself. He said someday we would sail in one just like it. Then he told me to look inside the miniature cabin and there it was.”

“Oh, Ipu! We shall have to begin planning the feast at once. When will you move?”

“At the end of Tybi.”

“That’s soon,” I exclaimed.

She smiled. “I know. But I won’t be leaving you.”

“That’s not my—”

“But I won’t. His home is not so far away. I’ll come every morning and leave when he returns from the fish stall at night,” she promised.

Ipu’s marriage feast was held on the tenth of Tybi, an auspicious day. On that evening, I dressed her in Thebes’s finest linen, painting her eyes and lending her one of my golden pectorals studded with turquoise. Blue faience earrings pierced her ears, and her hair was swept back by a blue Nile flower. Women came to henna her hands and breasts, and when Nakhtmin appeared at the door to our chamber he gave a low whistle. “A bride to rival Isis,” he complimented.

Ipu stared at herself in the polished bronze. “I wish my mother could see me,” she whispered, putting down the mirror and holding up her arm, letting her jewels catch the evening light.

“She would be proud,” I told her, taking her hand. “And I am sure her ka is watching over you.”

Ipu choked back her tears. “Yes, I am sure it is.”

“Now come, Djedi is waiting.”

In the glitter of a torchlit night, barks sailed along the River Nile. Three hundred people watched the ships from our courtyard, the triangular sails like white moths in the dusk, and I marveled that Ipu knew all of these guests, men and women, children and grandmothers. Lamps burned along the pathway down into the garden, and people came and went all evening long, bringing gifts of gold and spices for the new couple, kissing Ipu’s forehead and rubbing her stomach to bless her womb. I watched the proceedings and I felt like the scales of Anubis, my happiness going both up and down.

“Do you wish you’d had this?” Nakhtmin asked me during the celebration. We were surrounded by tables of roasted goose in garlic, lotus flower dripping in honey, and barley beer. Wine had been flowing all night and women danced to a chorus of flutes.

I smiled, reaching across the table to take his hand. It was rough, not like my father’s hand, but there was strength in it. “I wouldn’t trade you for all the gifts in Thebes.”

Ipu and Djedi appeared, their hair decked with flowers and their faces filled with the wonderful contentment of a newly joined couple. “To the hosts of this feast,” Djedi shouted above the din, and hundreds of guests raised their cups to us, and the musicians struck up a happy tune. “Come and dance!” Ipu cried.

I held out my hand to Nakhtmin, and then we crossed the courtyard to where men and women were clapping, shaking sistrums, and watching the young dancing girls from Nubia, their skin like polished ebony in the torchlight, bending backward and leaping in unison to the men’s cries.

If a stranger stood across the Nile, he would have seen a hundred golden torchlights flickering like stars against an indigo palette, rising in tiers and casting illuminations across the villa belonging to the Sister of the King’s Chief Wife. The celebration disappeared in the early morning hours, when litters arrived bearing the most important guests back to their villas along the water. When the courtyard was empty at last, I spent the first night since my childhood without Ipu.

The next morning, a servant from Amarna arrived. He held out a scroll that I didn’t wait to read. “What does it say?” I held my breath, and the young man’s face grew bleak.

“The queen has given birth to the Princess Neferuaten. They both survived.”

A fourth princess.