Chapter Twenty-Nine
sixth day of the Durbar
THE JACKAL-HEADED GOD descended on Egypt while there was still dancing in the streets and thousands of dignitaries in the palace. At first he stole through the alleys at night, snapping up workers in Pharaoh’s tomb, then he grew bolder and stalked the Baker’s Quarter by day. When panic finally spread to the palace, there was no one in Amarna who could deny what they had seen.
Anubis had arrived with the Black Death in his jaws.
My father came into the Audience Chamber on the sixth day of the Durbar to bring Pharaoh the news. In the open courts that looked out onto the river, there was still dancing. “Your Highness,” my father said, and the gravity on his face stopped Nefertiti’s laughter.
“Come forward.” Akhenaten smiled widely. “What is it, Vizier?”
My father’s face remained serious. “There is report of plague in the workers’ quarters, Your Majesty.”
Akhenaten glanced at Nefertiti. “Impossible,” he hissed. “We sacrificed two hundred bulls to Aten.”
“And eleven workers in the tombs have died.”
Several dignitaries backed away from the dais and Nefertiti whispered, “It must have been the Hittites.”
“I suggest quarantining yourself in the Northern Palace, Your Highness.”
“To a Second Wife’s palace?” Nefertiti cried.
“No. We stay here,” Akhenaten was firm. He scanned the Audience Chamber. The horror of plague had frozen the court. The music played on in the outer chambers, but now the women’s laughter went silent.
“Your Highness,” my father interrupted. “Rethink whether it is wise to stay in this palace. The Hittites, at least, should be quarantined. Anyone from the north should be sent—”
“No one is to be sent away!” Pharaoh boomed. “The Durbar is not finished.” Even the musicians fell silent. He turned and commanded, “Keep playing!”
At once they struck up a tune, and Panahesi moved quickly to the base of the dais. I had not even seen him appear. “We could make a special offering in the temple,” he suggested.
Akhenaten smiled at him, snubbing my father. “Good. And Aten will protect this city.”
“But seal the city gates,” my father implored. “No one should be allowed in or out.”
Nefertiti agreed. “We must seal the gates.”
“And let our guests think that there is plague?”
My father said quietly, “They will know it soon enough. The Baker’s Quarter has also been infected.”
There was a moment of panicked silence, then dignitaries began talking at once. A surge of courtiers pressed against the dais, wanting to know what to do and where to go. Akhenaten stood from his throne, and my father gathered our family around him. Tiye, my mother, and Nefertiti were there. “You must all go back to your chambers,” my father instructed the court. “Go back to your chambers and do not go outside.”
“I am Pharaoh, and no ones goes back to their chambers!”
Nefertiti contradicted him. “Do as the vizier says!”
We swept as an entire family down the hall, and even Tiye’s steps were brisk. We turned the corner to the royal rooms, but Akhenaten refused to go any farther. “We must prepare for tonight.”
Nefertiti grew enraged, and I saw that it was fear that was making her shake. “During plague, you want to prepare for a feast? Who knows who could be sick? It could be all of Amarna!”
“And do we want our enemies to see us weak?” Akhenaten challenged. “To see trouble in the midst of our celebration?”
She didn’t answer.
“Then I will prepare the feast and no one will forget why they are here. For the glory of Aten. This is what will be remembered in history.”
Nefertiti watched him disappear into the Great Hall, and I was reminded of the boat ride many years ago when my father had remarked, “He is not stable.” My sister looked up at the carvings of herself and her family and her eyes welled with tears. “It was supposed to be glorious.”
“You invited the Hittites, and you knew they were tainted,” I replied.
“And what could I do?” Nefertiti snapped. “Could I stop him?”
“You wanted it, too.”
She shook her head. Her answer might have been a yes or a no. “The people will blame us,” she said as we came upon her chambers. “They will blame our devotion to Aten.” She closed her eyes, already knowing how the drama would play in the streets of Amarna and across the kingdom. “And what if it comes into the palace?” she asked. “What if it destroys everything that we’ve built?”
I thought of Ipu, who once told me that her father had used mint to keep rats away from the cellar and that none of his workers had ever died of plague. “Use mint,” I told her. “Use mint and rue. Tie it around your neck and hang it over every door.”
“You should leave, Mutnodjmet. You are pregnant.” Nefertiti choked back her tears. “And you’ve wanted a child so badly.”
“We don’t even know if it’s plague,” I said hopefully.
My father gave me a long look before we entered the royal rooms. “It is plague.”
Yet we feasted. The night was filled with harpists and lotus candles, and a hundred dancers glittered in the firelight, reflecting silver and gold. There was a tension among the guests, but no one dared to mention plague beneath the columns of the Great Hall of Amarna. The scent of orange blossoms floated on the night air between the pillars, and guests laughed high and nervous in the courtyard. Nakhtmin brought me a plate with the choicest meat, and we ate while below us Anubis roamed the streets. Women flirted and men played Senet and servants refilled cup after cup of red wine. By the end of the night, even I had forgotten the fear of death. It was only the next morning, when several hundred of the guests smelled a cloying sweetness in the air, that anyone thought to see what was happening in the city.
When the messenger returned, he reported what he’d seen to a filled Audience Chamber.
While we had been feasting, a thousand poor lay rotting in their beds.
“Seal the palace!” Akhenaten shouted, and the Nubian guards rushed to isolate Pharaoh’s palace from the rest of the city.
“What about the servants on errands?” my father asked.
“If they’re not in the palace, then they die in the streets.”
Nakhtmin turned to me. “It’s our last chance, Mutnodjmet. We can go back to Thebes now. We can escape.”
I gripped the edge of my chair. “And leave my family?”
“It’s their choice to stay.” His eyes held me in their sway, reminding me of that evening by the river.
My father came up and spread his hands on my shoulders. “You are pregnant. You have a child to think of.”
The staccato of hammers fell in the distance. The doors were being boarded, the windows shut. If the sickness crept in, it would spread to every chamber. I put my hands across my belly, as if I could shield my child from this terror. I looked at my father. “And what about you?”
“Akhenaten won’t leave,” my father’s voice was solemn. “We stay with Nefertiti.”
“And mother?”
My mother took my father’s arm for support. “We stay together. It’s unlikely that plague will come into the palace.” But her eyes remained uncertain. No one knew why plague came, to what house, to what person.
I looked at Nakhtmin, and he already knew the choice I would make, the choice I would always make. He nodded in understanding, taking my hand. “It could be in Thebes as well.”
We gathered quietly in the Audience Chamber. Every foreign dignitary, whether from Rhodes or Mitanni, had been turned onto the streets, and only three hundred people took shelter beneath the massive columns. Kiya and her ladies hovered in a corner while Panahesi whispered into Pharaoh’s ear. Few people stirred. Nobody talked. We looked like prisoners waiting to be summoned to our execution.
I looked at the weeping servants. A scribe I had seen many times in the corridors of the Per Medjat was without his wife. I wondered where she had been when Pharaoh decided to seal the palace without warning. Perhaps she’d been away at the temple giving thanks or at home visiting with her elderly mother. Now they would wait out the plague in separate houses and hope that both were passed by Anubis. That, or they would reunite in the Afterlife. I squeezed Nakhtmin’s hand and he squeezed back tenderly, looking into my face.
“Are you frightened?” I asked.
“No. The palace is the safest place in Amarna. It’s above the city and apart from the workers’ houses. The plague will have to come through two walls to find us.”
“Do you think it would have been better in Thebes?”
He hesitated. “It’s possible the plague has spread to Thebes as well.”
I thought of Ipu and Djedi. They could be sick even now, boarded up in their own home with no one to bring them food or drink. And what of young Kamoses? Nakhtmin squeezed my shoulder.
“We will take your herbs and protect ourselves the best we can. I am sure that Ipu and Djedi are safe.”
“And Bastet.”
“And Bastet,” he promised.
“Did the Hittites really bring this?” I whispered.
Nakhtmin’s look was hard. “On the wings of Pharaoh’s pride.”
As thousands outside the palace were dying, I was taken early to my birthing chamber.
The pavilion my sister had used was outside, so women rushed to fill a room with protective images of the sun, and as the pains began Nefertiti slipped an image of Tawaret into my hand, to hide beneath the pillows while I screamed. The midwives called for kheper-wer and basil to help me push, and I knew later when they shouted for clove that this child had been a gift from Tawaret and there would probably be no more.
“He’s coming!” the midwives cried, “He’s coming!” and I arched my back to give a final push. When my son finally decided to enter the world, the sun was nearly set. Nothing about his birth was auspicious. He was a child of death, a child of the waning sun, a child born into the midst of chaos as outside the revelers of Pharaoh’s Durbar died in the streets, first smelling the scent of honey on their breaths, then discovering a swelling in their armpits and groins, lumps that would turn black and ooze. But inside, the midwives pushed my child into my arms, crying, “A boy! A healthy boy, my lady!” He wailed loud enough to disturb Osiris, and my sister rushed out of the birthing chamber to tell my husband and my father that we’d both survived.
I caressed the thatch of dark hair on my son’s head and pressed it to my lips. He was soft as down.
“What will you call him?” my mother asked, and as Nakhtmin burst into the birthing chamber I said, “Baraka.” Unexpected Blessing.
For two days, I knew only the bliss of motherhood and nothing else. Nakhtmin was a constant companion at my side, watching over me in case I should show the first signs of fever or little Baraka should begin to cough. He went so far as to forbid any servants from having contact with us, in case they should be carrying plague. On the third day, when he thought we were well enough to be let out of our bed, he ordered us moved back into our room where he could protect us from the comings and goings of palace well-wishers.
The specter of Anubis was on every face. The servants crept around the halls of the palace in silence, and only the wail of Baraka pierced the stillness of the guest chambers. Nefertiti had ordered our room to be decorated in golden beads, the color of my son’s bright skin, and the ladies of the court had collected beads from their hair and strung them together. It was something to occupy their time while we were prisoners inside the palace. Meritaten, Meketaten, and Ankhesenpaaten had painted happy images on the bottom of the walls with their pallets. Beads hung from every corner and across the wooden beams. Myrrh had been scattered on the braziers throughout the palace, and its heady scent filled the room when I entered it for the first time. My sister looked down at Baraka, and I thought I caught a glimmer of resentment in her eyes, but when she saw that I was watching her she flashed her brightest smile. “I have already found you a milk nurse who can milk him when your three days are finished.”
“Who is she?” I asked warily. I had thought I would feed him myself.
“Heqet, the wife of an Aten priest.”
“And you’re sure she isn’t carrying plague?”
“Of course I am.”
“But how do I know her milk is good?”
“You aren’t thinking of milking him yourself?” Nefertiti demanded. “Do you want your breasts to hang to your navel by the time he is three?”
I looked down at my son, at his puckered lips and deep contentment. He was my only child, and there would probably only ever be one. Why shouldn’t I feed him, at least until the plague was over? Who knew what the milk nurse could be carrying inside of her when so many were dying? But there was something else to think of. If I spent myself giving him milk, what if the plague should come into the palace and I was too weary to fight it? Baraka would be motherless. Nakhtmin would be widowed to raise a son alone. Nefertiti was watching me. “Bring Heqet,” I said. “I will stop feeding Baraka in two days.” I traced his small nose with my fingertip and smiled. “I can see why you did this five times, Nefertiti.”
My sister wrinkled her brow. “You enjoy it more than I did, then.”
I glanced up from my bed. “But you were always happy,” I protested.
“Because I had survived,” Nefertiti said bluntly. “And I would live to try again for a son.” Her eyes flickered over Baraka. “But now I will never need one. I am Pharaoh and Meri will be Pharaoh after me.”
I sat up on my cushions, eliciting a sharp cry from Baraka. “Does Father know this?”
“Of course. Who else would he want it to be? Nebnefer?”
I thought of Kiya and Nebnefer on the other side of the palace. The entire court of Amarna—sculptors, priests, dancers, tailors—had flocked to the palace for shelter. Now they were crowded in the rooms around the Audience Chamber. Anyone who had influence or a job in the palace had been allowed to stay, but food was not infinite.
“What will we do if the plague outlasts supplies?” I asked slowly.
“We’ll send for more,” Nefertiti said lightly.
“You don’t have to lie to protect me. I know there can’t be many servants willing to leave the palace. Nakhtmin told me that a messenger came to the window last night to report the deaths of three hundred workers. Three hundred,” I repeated. “That’s two thousand people since the Durbar.”
Nefertiti shifted uneasily. “You shouldn’t think about this, Mutnodjmet. You have a child—”
“And I won’t be able to protect him if I don’t know the truth.” I sat straighter on my cushions. “What’s happening, Nefertiti?”
She sat on a chair near my bedside. Her cheeks lost their color. “They are rioting in the streets.”
I sucked in my breath, shifting Baraka in my arms until he cried.
“And there is nothing to stop them charging the prison and releasing Horemheb,” she said. “The army is quarantined. There are only a few soldiers—”
“There’ll be plague within the prisons. If there is plague at the tombs—”
“But they could break him free if he hasn’t succumbed. And he would lead a revolt against our family. We would all be lost.” She hesitated. “Except you. Nakhtmin would save you.”
“Never, Nefertiti. The gods are with you. That would never happen.”
She smiled wryly, and I knew she was thinking of the plague following so closely on the heels of the Durbar and her ascent to the ultimate throne in the land. If the gods had been with her, why was there plague?
“So what will we do?” I looked down at Baraka. His tiny, innocent life could be over before it even began. But why would the gods do that? Give me a child after so long only to take him away? “What does Father think we should do?”
“He thinks we should send messengers to Memphis and Thebes. To warn them.”
“You haven’t warned them?” I cried.
“We’ve stopped up the ports,” she countered. “No one can leave. The gates are shut. If we send messengers to Thebes, what will the people think so soon after a Durbar?”
I stared at the boarded windows. “It’s against all the laws of Ma’at not to warn them,” I said.
“Akhenaten won’t do it.”
“Then you must,” I told her. “You are Pharaoh now.”
Six men from the palace were paid in gold to carry messages to Memphis and Thebes, warning them of Amarna’s plight: The Hittites had carried plague to Pharaoh’s Durbar, and it had already claimed two thousand lives.
There were not enough tombs cut to hold all the dead; even the wealthy were tossed into mass graves, anonymous for eternity. Some risked death to place amulets with their loved ones in the earth so that Osiris could identify them. I had nightmares about these graves at night, and when I’d wake up crying, Nakhtmin would ask what was haunting me in my dreams.
“I dreamed Osiris couldn’t find me, that I’d been lost to eternity, that no one cared enough to write my name on my tomb.” My husband caressed my hair and swore it wouldn’t happen, that he’d risk everything to press an amulet into my palm before I was buried. “Swear you wouldn’t do that,” I begged him. “Swear that if I were to die of plague, you would let them take my body, amulet or no.”
His arms tightened protectively around me. “Of course they wouldn’t take you without evidence for the gods. I would never let that happen.”
“But you would have to let me go. Because if I were to die and you were to sicken, who would Baraka have to watch over him?”
“Don’t speak this way.”
“All of Amarna is dying, Nakhtmin. Why should the palace be immune?”
“Because we are protected! By your herbs, by our position on a hill. We are above the plague,” he tried to convince me.
“And if the people were to break into the palace and bring it with them?”
He was surprised by my mistrust. “Then the soldiers would fight them because they’re protected here and fed.” Baraka’s wail pierced the morning stillness, and Nakhtmin rose to get him. He looked tenderly at his son, placing him carefully at my breast. Tomorrow, our son would have a milk nurse.
“Nefertiti has sent word to Memphis and Thebes that there is a plague,” I told him.
Nakhtmin watched me carefully. “Akhenaten will learn of it, once the plague has passed.”
“How do you know it will pass?”
“Because it always does. It’s simply a matter of how many Anubis will take with him before he goes.”
I shuddered. “Nefertiti said they are rioting in the streets.”
Nakhtmin looked sharply at me. “Why did she tell you this?”
“Because I wanted to know. Because I have never lied to her, and she knows I would want the same courtesy. You should have told me.”
“For what good?” he protested.
“Imagine my shock if they broke into the palace. I wouldn’t know what was happening. I might not know enough to hide our son.”
“They won’t break into the palace,” Nakhtmin said sternly. “Pharaoh’s army is just outside. They’re eating the same food that we are and wearing the same herbs. For all of Akhenaten’s foolishness, he knows better than to risk losing his army or his Nubian guards. We are safe,” he promised. “And even if they came, I would protect you.”
“What if they came with Horemheb?” I asked, and by his expression I could see it was something he had thought of, too.
“Then Horemheb would instruct them not to touch you.”
“Because he is your friend?”
Nakhtmin set his jaw. He didn’t like this line of questioning. “Yes.”
“And Nefertiti?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
My voice dropped. “And my nieces?”
He still didn’t answer. Instead, a messenger knocked and requested our presence in the Audience Chamber.
“More Senet,” Nakhtmin guessed, but it wasn’t this time. My father had called us to report that three thousand Egyptians were dead.
“From now on, begin stocking bread in your room,” he told those gathered in the chamber. “And water in vessels. The plague will outlast our supplies.”
In the hall, my father looked back at the unoccupied thrones and the ebony tables. In an hour, the chamber would be filled with dancing, and Akhenaten would command the emissaries to play Senet. “An empty husk,” he said quietly. “They kissed his sandals just as he wished, and now his people will lie dead at his feet.”
We knew Black Death had entered Riverside Palace when the cook ran screaming into the Audience Chamber, sweat beading on his face. “Two apprentices are sick,” he cried. “There is death in the kitchens. Five rats and the wife of the baker are dead.”
The Senet games stopped, and the harpist’s fingers froze in horror at the fat man’s labored words.
He might as well have unleashed Anubis in the palace.
Nakhtmin grabbed my shoulders. “Get back into our chamber. Bring Heqet and her child, then seal the door and let no one in until you hear my voice. I’m going for fresh water.”
Women ran and men rushed to get away. Nefertiti met my glance, and I could feel her horror as Amarna slipped from her grasp. If there was plague in the palace, it was a death sentence for everyone inside. Akhenaten stood from his throne and summoned his guards, screaming that no one must leave him. But there was no controlling the panic as it spread. He turned to Maya at the bottom of the dais. “You will stay,” he commanded.
Maya’s face turned gray. His city, their city, once a tribute to life, was now monument to death. Amid the panic, someone ordered the children to the nursery. Every child under the age of sixteen was to be protected in the most secluded chamber of the palace.
“Who will watch them? Someone must watch them,” my father shouted. But the chaos was too loud. No guard stepped forward. Then Tiye appeared, her face ashen but calm.
“I will watch over the nursery.”
My father nodded. “Order the guards to reseal the windows,” he instructed Nefertiti. “Kill anyone who attempts to break free. They are risking our lives.”
“What does it matter?” a woman shrieked. “There is already plague in the palace.”
“In the kitchens,” my father snapped. “It can be contained.”
But no one believed him.
“You!” Akhenaten shouted, pointing to a noblewoman who had pushed her child to freedom through a broken window and was herself preparing to break free. He grabbed one of his guards’ bow and arrows. “Step farther and you will die.”
The woman looked between herself and her child. Then she moved to bring the child back into the palace and an arrow twanged. There was a collective gasp, then silence in the Audience Chamber as the woman slumped forward and her child screamed. Akhenaten lowered his bow. “No one leaves the palace!” he shouted. Akhenaten drew back a second arrow and pointed into the midst of the suddenly silent crowd. Nefertiti came up beside him, lowering the weapon.
“No one else is leaving,” she promised.
The people watched her with wide, frightened eyes.
Akhenaten stopped in front of one of the priests, who fell to the floor in obeisance. “Anyone who opens a window or slips a message under a door to the outside will be sent to the kitchens to die. Guards!” he commanded. “Kill every cook and baker’s apprentice. Keep no one in the kitchens alive. Not even the cats.” He looked for the man who’d delivered the news of plague and pointed. “Begin with him.”
The guards were swift. The man was taken screaming through the doors of the Audience Chamber before he could even beg for his life. Our family looked as one to Nefertiti.
“Everyone return to their chamber,” she said. “Anyone with sign of the plague is instructed to take charcoal from their brazier and mark the Eye of Horus upon their door. Meals will come once a day.” She saw my father’s approving nod, and her voice grew louder and more confident. “The servants will take food from the cellars, not the kitchens. And no one is to venture beyond their chambers until the palace is free from plague for a fortnight.”
Panahesi stepped forward, eager to put himself in the center of things. “We should make a sacrifice,” he announced.
Akhenaten agreed. “A platter of meat and a bowl of Amarna’s best wine outside of every door,” he declared.
“No!” I moved quickly forward to the dais. “We should hang garlands of mint and rue outside of every door. But that is all.”
Akhenaten turned on me. “The Sister of Pharaoh thinks she knows more than the High Priest of Aten?”
Nefertiti’s look was fierce. “She is wise with herbs and she suggests rue, not rotting meat.”
Akhenaten’s voice grew suspicious. “And how do you know she isn’t trying to rid herself of a sister and brother-in-law? She could take the throne for herself and her son.”
“Every door will have a garland of mint and rue,” Nefertiti commanded.
“And the sacrifice?” Panahesi pressed the two Pharaohs of Egypt.
Akhenaten straightened. “For every chamber that wants protection from Aten,” he said loudly. “Those who wish the great god’s wrath”—his eyes found mine—“will go without.”
The exit from the Audience Chamber was subdued. As the crowd broke up, Nefertiti touched my hand. “What will you do?”
“Go back to Baraka, then seal the door and let no one inside.”
“Because we can’t all be together, can we?” she asked. “To put all of our family in one chamber would be to risk everything.” There was fear in her voice, and it occurred to me that this was the first time she would have only Akhenaten and no one else. Our parents would go to their chambers while Tiye watched over the children.
I reached out and touched her hand. “We may all survive this separately,” I said.
“But how do you know? You could be dead of plague and I wouldn’t discover it until a servant reported the Eye of Horus. And my daughters—” Her slight body seemed to grow even smaller. “I will be all alone.”
It was her greatest fear, and I took her hand and placed it on my heart. “We will all be well,” I promised, “and I shall see you in a fortnight.”
It was the only time I ever lied to her.
While Black Death swept through the palace, Panahesi placed offerings of salted meat at the doors of those who wished for Aten’s blessing. In his leopard robes and heaviest golden rings, he moved through the halls, followed by young priests singing praises in their high, sweet voices to Aten. And while the young boys sang, Anubis ravaged.
When Panahesi came to our door, Heqet ordered him away.
“Wait!” I flung the door open to confront him. Both Nakhtmin and the milk nurse cried out. “I will hold a sprig of rue before me,” I promised, then faced Panahesi. “Are you placing an offering at the nursery?” I asked.
He tossed aside his leopard cloak and moved to the next door.
“Are you placing an offering at the nursery?” I demanded.
He looked at me with condescension. “Of course I am.”
“Don’t do it. Don’t place an offering there. I will give you whatever you want,” I said desperately.
Panahesi looked me up and down. “And what would I want from the Sister of the King’s Chief Wife?”
“The sister of Pharaoh,” I replied.
His lips curled. “My own grandson sleeps in the nursery. Do you think I would poison Egypt’s hope for the throne to kill six meaningless girls? Then you are as foolish as I thought you were.”
“Close the door!” Heqet cried from behind me. “Close the door,” she begged, holding my son with hers. I watched Panahesi disappear down the hall with his bowls full of meat, then I closed us back inside, shoving springs of rue and mint beneath the door and sealing up the crack.
Two days passed, and there was no sign of the Black Death in the halls of the palace, no charcoal eyes of death on any door. Then, on the third night, just as we had begun to believe that the palace would be protected, Anubis paused to eat at every chamber that had an offering to Aten.
A servant girl’s screams pierced the silent halls at dawn. She ran by the royal chambers, shouting about the Eye of Horus. “A boy next to the kitchens,” she screamed, terrified. “And the Master of the Horse. Everyone who placed an offering to Aten! Two ambassadors from Abydos. And one from Rhodes. We can smell it from their chambers!”
“What now?” I whispered from behind our closed door.
Nakhtmin replied, “Now we wait and see, and hope death only visits those who placed offerings to Aten.”
But when the people of Amarna saw the death carts rolling toward the palace, fury swept through the city. If Pharaoh’s god wouldn’t protect Amarna’s palace, why would he protect its people? Despite the risk, Egyptians took to the streets, chanting to Amun and shattering Aten’s images. They pressed against the palace gates and demanded to know if the Heretic Pharaoh was still alive. I moved closer to our boarded-up windows and heard the cries. “Do you hear what they’re calling him?” I whispered.
Heqet’s eyes were wide with fear. She replied, “The Heretic King.”
“And do you hear what they are chanting?”
We listened to the sound of shattered stone and hammers. They were defacing Akhenaten’s statues and chanting for the destruction of Amarna itself. “BURN IT DOWN! BURN IT DOWN!”
I took Baraka and held him to my chest.
When food came at noon, Nakhtmin opened the door and stepped back in shock. A different servant was carrying our food, trembling and crying.
“What is it?” Nakhtmin demanded.
“The nursery,” the girl gasped.
I handed my son to Heqet and ran toward the door. “What about it?”
“They’ve all been touched,” she cried, holding a basket out for us. “All the children have been touched!”
“Who? Who has been touched?” I shouted.
“The children. The twin princesses are gone. The Princess Meketaten is taken. And Nebnefer, my lady…” She covered her mouth, as if the words that would fall out must be held back in.
Nakhtmin gripped the girl’s arm. “Died?”
The servant’s knees grew weak. “No. But sick with plague.”
“Give us our food and shut the door,” he said quickly.
“Wait!” I pleaded. “Nefertiti and my parents. Do they have the Eye of Horus?”
“No,” the girl whispered, “but our Pharaoh will wish she was dead when she hears that her six princesses are reduced to three.”
I recoiled in horror. “She hasn’t been told?”
The girl pressed her lips together. The tears came harder and she shook her head. “No one has been told but you, my lady. The servants are afraid of him.”
Of Akhenaten. I steadied myself against the door: three princesses and soon the Prince of Egypt. And if there was plague in the nursery, what of Tiye? Of Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten? Nakhtmin bolted the door and Heqet was on her feet at once.
“We shouldn’t eat the food.”
“It’s not carried by food,” Nakhtmin replied. “If it was, we’d all be dead by now.”
“Someone must rescue the survivors,” I said.
Nakhtmin stared fixedly into the room where our son was lying.
“Someone must rescue the queen and Meritaten,” I repeated. “Ankhesenpaaten—”
“Is lost.” My husband’s eyes were grim.
“But she’s still alive!” I protested.
“And there is nothing we can do for her. For any of them. If three princesses have already died, the nursery must be quarantined.”
“But we can separate the healthy. We can place them in separate chambers and give them a chance.”
Nakhtmin was shaking his head. “Pharaoh damned their chances by inviting the Hittites and listening to Panahesi.”
We all knew when the news arrived that the twin princesses were gone, and the two-year-old Neferuaten and five-year-old Meketaten had also been taken.
Bells tolled in the courtyards and there were screams in the palace. Women were weeping and calling on Aten to lift the curse that had descended over the palace of Amarna. A servant came and told us that Nubian guards had been sent to rescue the remaining princesses and the queen, but that for Nebnefer it had been too late. I shut the door, and we listened to the chanting beyond the walls of palace. It had never been so loud.
“They know there’s plague within the palace,” Nakhtmin said, “and they think that if Pharaoh’s own children have been taken, then it must be because of something he’s done.”
For three days, the chanting never stopped. We could hear angry Egyptians calling for mercy in the name of Amun and cursing the Heretic Pharaoh who had brought them plague. I stood near the window and pressed my face against the wood, closing my eyes and listening to the rhythm of the cries. “He will never be known as Akhenaten the Builder. They will call him the Heretic Pharaoh until eternity.” I thought of Nefertiti alone in her chamber, hearing the news that four of her children had died, and whenever I looked at my son at Heqet’s breast my eyes stung with tears. He was so young. Much too small to fight off something so great, and I held him to me at night and tried to be thankful for the time I had with him.
In the day, we listened to the roll of the death carts outside the palace. We stopped our quiet games of Senet when the wagons went by, wondering whose body was to be stripped and buried anonymously for eternity, without any cartouche to tell Osiris who they had been when he returned to earth. I begged the servants who delivered our food to bring us more rue, but they all said there was none left in the palace.
“Have you checked the cellars? It could be stored amid the wine. Look at the barrels and read the names.”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot read, my lady.”
I took a reed pen and ink from my box and wrote the name of the herb on the back of one of my medical papyri. I hesitated before tearing it off, then took the strip to the woman in the hall, pressing it into her hand. “This is the herb. Look for this name amid the barrels. If you can find it, take some and put it under your door. Bring as much as you can carry to my sister and to my parents. Bring the rest to us. If there is a second barrel, pass it out among the survivors.”
She nodded, but before she left I asked her, “What do they give you to walk among these halls of death?”
She turned back to me and her eyes were haunted. “Gold. Every day they pay me in gold, and I keep the rings in my chamber. If I survive, I will give it to my son to be trained as a scribe. If I catch the Black Death, he will do with it as he pleases.”
I thought of Baraka and felt my throat begin to close. “And where is your son?”
The heavy lines around her eyes seemed to soften. “In Thebes. He is only seven years old. We sent him away when there was news of the death.”
I hesitated. “Did many servants send their children to Thebes?”
“Yes, my lady. We all thought you would have, too, and the queen—” But she stopped at the look on my face, wondering if she had said too much.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “If you find the rue, bring it at once.”
She came the next day with a basket of herbs. “My lady?” She knocked eagerly and Nakhtmin opened the door just enough to see her face. “Will you tell my lady I found the herbs and did just as she said. I placed some under my door and brought a basketful to Vizier Ay.”
Nakhtmin beckoned me with his hand and I took his place at the door, leaving it open only a crack. “And the queen?”
The woman hesitated. “Pharaoh Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti?”
“Yes. Did she take it?”
The woman lowered her head and I guessed at once. “Pharaoh Akhenaten answered. I want you to go back and place it above their door.”
The woman gasped. “What if someone sees me?”
“If anyone asks, tell them you place it on my sister’s orders. Pharaoh will be locked inside. He’ll never know.” The woman backed away and I touched her arm. “No one shall say otherwise,” I promised. “And if he asks the queen, she will know it was me and she’ll say she commanded it.”
But the woman still hesitated, and I realized what she was waiting for.
I frowned sharply. “I have nothing to give you.”
She looked down at the bracelet I was wearing. It wasn’t gold, but it was made of turquoise stones, a gift from Nefertiti. I took it off and pressed it roughly into her hands. “You will hang it everywhere,” I made her swear. “You will twine it into garlands.”
She placed the bracelet into her basket. “Of course, my lady.”
I didn’t see the servant again for seven days. I had to trust she’d done what I’d paid her to do, while the cries in the palace halls grew more urgent. I could hear women in sandals running down the tiled halls. Some beat on locked doors in their delirium, and I could imagine their terror. But we kept our doors locked and didn’t leave our chambers. On the eighth night after the servant appeared, a woman whose child had died beat on our door in delirium and cried desperately for us to open it to her.
“She doesn’t want to die alone,” I realized, and began holding Baraka closer to my chest, knowing that our time together was short.
“You can’t press him so tightly. You will hurt him,” Heqet remonstrated.
But my panic rose. “The food won’t last. We will die of hunger if we don’t die of plague. And our tomb is not finished! A sarcophagus hasn’t even been carved for Baraka.”
Heqet’s eyes grew wide. “Or my son,” she whispered. “If we die, we will all die nameless in here.”
Nakhtmin shook his head furiously. “I won’t let it happen. I won’t let it happen to you. To either of you.”
I looked down at our son. “We should pray to Amun.”
Heqet gasped. “In Pharaoh’s palace?”
I closed my eyes. “Yes. In Pharaoh’s palace.”
When the sun rose the next morning, there were no new signs of plague, no fresh Eyes of Horus. We waited another day, then two, and slowly, when seven days had passed and all we had left to eat was stale bread, courtiers began to emerge from their chambers.
I saw the servant who had risked her life for gold.
She had survived the Black Death. She would send her son to school to become a scribe. But so many others were not so lucky. Broken mothers came stumbling out of their chambers, and fathers who’d lost their only sons. I saw Maya, bent and frailer than he’d ever looked. The light had gone out of his eyes. As we emerged, there were whispers that the Pharaoh of Egypt was ill.
“With plague?”
“No, my lady,” the woman who’d placed rue over my sister’s door said quietly. “With an illness of the mind.”
Bells tolled in the palace, calling viziers and courtiers and all the servants that were left back into the Audience Chamber. Now, in the room where hundreds had once stood, only a handful remained. Immediately, I searched the chamber for my parents.
“Mawat!” I rushed into my mother’s arms and she wept over Baraka, pressing him to her chest until he let out a cry. Nefertiti looked down from her throne at us. I could not read the expression on her face, but she held Akhenaten’s hand in hers. Below them sat Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten. Their family of eight had been reduced to four, and even young Ankhesenpaaten sat still and silent, muted by what she must have seen in the nursery while her sisters lay dying.
“We should leave Amarna,” my mother whispered. “We should leave this palace for the palace in Thebes. Terrible things have happened here.” I thought she meant the curse of the plague, but when my father clenched his jaw, I realized that they were referring to something more.
I looked between them. “What do you mean?”
We moved away from the dais so we wouldn’t be overheard. “On the seventh day of quarantine, Pharaoh insulted the king of Assyria.”
“The king?” Nakhtmin repeated.
“Yes. The king of Assyria sent a messenger with a request for three ebony thrones. When the messenger came, he saw that there was plague and hesitated. But he had orders from his king and he came into the city, traveling all the way to the palace.”
“Then guards called on Pharaoh instead of your father and Akhenaten sent him away,” my mother blurted. “With a gift.”
Nakhtmin heard the ominous timbre of my mother’s voice and glanced at my father. “What kind of gift?”
My father closed his eyes. “A child’s arm riddled with plague. From the nursery.”
I stepped back; Nakhtmin’s face became grave. “The Assyrians have thousands of troops,” he warned darkly.
My father nodded. His tone was certain. “They will move against Egypt.”
“It’s too dangerous to be here,” Nakhtmin stated, and I knew that it was no longer my decision to stay. We had lived through Black Death. Amun would not be so generous when the Assyrians fell upon Egypt. He looked at me. “There’s nothing more we can do.”
“Wait for the funeral. Please,” Nefertiti begged.
“We are going tonight. The Assyrians will be on Egypt’s doorstep and your army is not prepared to stop them.”
“But there will be a funeral tonight,” she said desperately. “Stay with me,” she whispered. “They are my children. Your nieces.”
I hesitated at the look in her eyes. I asked quietly, “What have they done with the bodies?”
Nefertiti trembled. “Prepared them for burning.”
I covered my mouth. “No burial?”
“They were victims of plague,” she said savagely, but her rage was not directed at me. I thought of Meketaten and little Neferuaten, the flames rising around them as they burned on a pyre. Princesses of Egypt.
“But we will leave for Thebes immediately after,” I said sternly. “And if our parents are wise, they will take Tiye and come with us.” Our aunt was still sick, but not with the plague. It was a sickening of the heart. She’d watched over the nursery where Anubis had struck. She’d seen her grandchildren sicken and die. Meketaten, Neferuaten, Nebnefer. And there’d been others: the sons and daughters of wealthy merchantmen and scribes. When I went to see her, my eyes burned with tears. “Stay with us,” I’d begged her. “Don’t you want to stay to plant in your garden?” She’d shaken her head and grasped my hand. “Soon, I will plant in the gardens of eternity.”
Nefertiti was shaking her head at me now. “Father’s not going anywhere,” she said. “He wouldn’t leave me.”
“The people are angry,” I warned. “They are dying of plague, and they blame it on their Pharaohs. They believe Aten has turned his back on them.”
“I can’t hear this. I can’t hear it now,” she swore.
“Then you will hear it when it is too late!”
“I can fix it!”
“How? When the king of Assyria unwraps his gift, what will you do? Do you think the kingdoms of the East haven’t heard of Akhenaten’s rashness? Why do you think they write to Father and not to him?”
“He has visions…Visions of greatness, Mutnodjmet. He wants to be loved…so much.”
“The way you do.”
“It’s not the same.”
“No, because he will do anything for it. And you are rational. You are our father’s daughter, which is why he likes you best.” She started to speak, but I carried on. “Which is why he will stay here with you, even if the city falls down around him. Even if all of us were to die. But is it worth it?” I demanded. “Is immortality worth this price?”
She didn’t answer. I shook my head sadly and walked away. I found Nakhtmin with Baraka in the hall leading to our chamber.
“Heqet will come with us,” he said. “There are no barges going in or out of Amarna. We can go by horse, then find a barge outside the city. We will go nowhere near the workers’ houses. We’ll ride straight for the gates and the men will let us through,” he said confidently.
“But we can’t go until night,” I told him. “There will be a funeral. I know what you are about to say, but she can’t face it alone. She can’t.”
“It will be a funeral pyre, then?” he asked.
I nodded. “Little Neferuaten…” My lips trembled, looking at Baraka in his father’s strong arms. “I don’t know how she stands it.”
“She stands it because she is strong and there is nothing else to do. Your sister is no fool, for all that she supports Akhenaten. And she is no weakling.”
“I could not bear it,” I said, and he put his hand under my chin, raising my eyes to his.
“You will never have to. I am taking you away from here, whether you want it or no.”
“After the funeral.”
Bells tolled when the sky had grown dark, and the priests of Aten who had lived through the plague gathered in the courtyard in the palace of Amarna. We all wore garlands of rue. A pyre had been built by nervous servants—plague could be lurking in any stone—but we gathered together, veils covering our faces, and the women cried. My mother leaned against my shoulder for support, while my father stood beside Nefertiti, the two of them defiant towers of strength. The sound of weeping from Kiya was unbearable to hear. She was heavily pregnant, and I was surprised that in her weakened state she had survived the plague.
But then, little Baraka had survived it, too.
I watched her deep, heart-wrenching sobs, and I thought of how cruel it was that no one was with her but the few women she had left. Panahesi stood near the pyre in his robes of office, while Nefertiti held on to Akhenaten’s hand, afraid to let it go.
“Do you think they are with Aten?” Ankhesenpaaten asked. She was a different child now, sullen and withdrawn.
“I think they are with Aten.” I pressed my lips together at the lie. “Yes.”
She turned her face back to the flames, which had begun on the farthest side of the pyre. The bodies had been wrapped in sheets of linen, sprinkled with rue. The flames leaped toward the sky, engulfing the princesses in fire. Flesh cracked and sizzled and the smell was acrid. Then Prince Nebnefer’s clothes caught flame and the shroud around his body disintegrated, revealing his face. A scream split the courtyard and Panahesi grabbed Kiya. Akhenaten looked between his grieving wives and something in him broke.
“This is the fault of Amun worshippers,” he shouted. “We have been betrayed. This is Aten’s punishment,” he cried, his sanity breaking. “Find me a chariot!” His Nubian guards stood back. “A chariot!” he shouted. “I will go to every home and break down their doors in search of their false gods. They are worshipping Amun in my city. In Aten’s city!”
He was mad. The rage showed in his face.
Nefertiti gripped his arm. “Stop!” she cried.
“I will tear apart the families whose houses have false gods,” he swore. He wrenched his arm away from her, throwing back his cloak and jumping into the chariot that had been brought. The two horses whinnied nervously and he raised the whips. “Guards!” he commanded, but they stood back, afraid. There was plague in the city, and no one wanted to risk their life. When Akhenaten saw that no one would join him, he commanded the gates to be opened regardless.
“You will keep them shut!” Nefertiti’s voice boomed.
The guards looked between the Pharaohs, wondering whom to obey. Then Akhenaten galloped toward the heavy wooden gates and Nefertiti shrieked, “Open them! Open the gates!” before he crashed.
Akhenaten never stopped. The gates swung open in time to let the rider and his wild chariot through. Then the Pharaoh of Egypt disappeared into the night as the flames rose higher in the courtyard, engulfing the bodies of his children.
Nefertiti stepped forward into the light. The crook and flail of power were in her right hand. She clenched the left. “Bring him back to me!”
The guards hesitated.
“I am the Pharaoh of Egypt. Bring him back”—her voice rose—“before Amarna is destroyed!”
A servant rushed out from the palace weeping, and the courtyard seemed to turn as one.
The girl fell before Nefertiti. “Your Highness, the Dowager Queen has passed.”
The keening in the courtyard now grew to hysteria, and my father moved to Nefertiti’s side, speaking quickly. “If he returns, it could be with plague. We must release the inhabitants of the palace. Find barges and get them outside the city. The servants will remain. Your children—”
“Must go,” Nefertiti said selflessly. “Mutnodjmet can take them.”
I was shocked.
“No!” Meritaten cried. “I won’t leave you, mawat. I won’t leave Amarna without you.”
My father assessed Meritaten’s will.
“I won’t leave the palace,” Meritaten swore.
He nodded. “Send Ankhesenpaaten with Mutnodjmet, then. They can stay in Thebes until Akhenaten regains control.” My father looked toward the palace. He closed his eyes briefly, the only respite he was allowed. “Now I must see my sister,” he said.
I could see the physical toll that power had taken on my family. My father’s eyes appeared sunken in his face, and Nefertiti seemed to shrink beneath the weight of so much loss. And now the woman who had brought us to power was gone. I would never see her sharp eyes again, or listen to her breathy laugh in my garden. She would never look at me with the power to see my thoughts, as if she was reading them as plainly as a scroll. The woman who had reigned at the side of the Elder, Amunhotep the Magnificent, and taken his role when he was too tired to want to rule, had passed into the Afterlife.
“May Osiris bless your passage, Tiye,” I whispered.
Women were shrieking and children ran scampering down the halls to the Audience Chamber. “Pharaoh has fled! Pharaoh has fled!” a servant cried, and the call was echoed inside the servants’ quarters and throughout the halls. I saw women running past open windows, shouting to one another, carrying armfuls of clothing and jewelry. “The gods have abandoned Amarna!” someone shouted. “Even Pharaoh has left!” Women pushed children through the acrid smoke of the courtyard so they could reach the docks. They took chests filled with their clothes while the men carried the remainders of family possessions. Servants were fleeing with courtiers and emissaries. It was madness.
My family rushed into the palace, but Nakhtmin stopped me before we reached the Audience Chamber. “We can’t leave your family in this state,” he said. “Pharaoh is gone. When the people outside the palace discover that he’s disappeared, your family will be in danger.”
“We will be in danger if he returns,” I said desperately. “He could return with plague.”
“Then we will quarantine him.”
“The Pharaoh of Egypt?”
“Without your father’s approval, I would not have you,” he explained. “We owe him this. Stay with Baraka and Heqet and be ready to leave at a word’s notice. Take Ankhesenpaaten, too. I’m going to find your sister. She must be ready to quarantine him if he returns.”
When the guards stumbled in with the half-conscious king, bloodied and singed from fires he had set to his own people’s homes, what remained of the court sprang into action.
“Place him in the remotest chamber and lock the door! Give him food for seven days and let no one in. On the threat of death, no one shall let him out.” My father supervised the quarantine while next to him Vizier Panahesi was silent. “Do not go to him,” my father warned.
“Of course not,” Panahesi snapped.
When Akhenaten realized what was happening to him, the doors had already been locked and sealed. His screams could be heard throughout the palace, demanding his release, calling for Nefertiti, then finally begging for Kiya.
“Is somebody watching Kiya?” my sister demanded.
Guards were set upon Kiya, who wept when she learned that Akhenaten had been confined to his chambers like a prisoner. On the second day, she was the one who let the palace know with her shrieks of terror that Akhenaten was coughing blood, and that the scents the guards smelled from beneath the king’s door were sweet, like honey and sugar. By the third day, the coughing had stilled. By the fourth, there was silence.
Six days passed before anyone would confirm what we already knew.
The Heretic Pharaoh had been brought before Anubis.
When Nefertiti was brought the news, she went to weep in our mother’s arms. Then she came to me. He had been a selfish king, a flawed ruler, but he had been her husband and her partner in all things. And he was the father of her children.
“We must abandon this city,” my father said, entering the chamber with Nakhtmin on his heels.
Nefertiti glanced up at him and her grief was untouchable. “It is the end of Amarna,” she whispered to me. “When we’re dead, it’s all we’ll have to speak for us, Mutny, and it’s crumbling.” Her dream, her vision of immortality and greatness, was to be covered in sand and left to the desert. She closed her eyes, and I wondered what she saw there. Her city in ruins? Her husband, ravaged by plague? She had heard the reports of men in the streets, burning their own houses in protest of Akhenaten. His image was being shattered across the city and defaced on temple walls. At first sign of the plague, Nefertiti had commanded Thutmose to close his workshop and flee. It was the one selfless thing she had done. But there was nothing left to build in Amarna. It had been built, and now it was being destroyed.
My father warned sharply, “They are burning their houses, and the palace will be next if the army flees. We must bury Akhenaten.”
Nefertiti sobbed.
“But Panahesi took Akhenaten’s body to the temple,” I said. “He is giving him a burial now.”
Nakhtmin froze. “He did what?”
I glanced between my husband and my father. “He took the body to the temple,” I repeated.
Nakhtmin looked at my father.
“Find Panahesi!” my father shouted to cluster of soldiers in the hall. “Don’t let him leave the palace.”
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“The treasury is next to the temple. Panahesi hasn’t gone to bury Akhenaten,” Nakhtmin said. “He’s gone to take the gold and challenge your sister’s reign.” My husband turned to my sister. “You must release Horemheb from prison. Release the general and the men will follow him, or you can risk Panahesi getting to the army first with Aten’s gold. And if Kiya has a son in her womb, all of Egypt will be lost.”
Nefertiti stared, and it was as if she wasn’t seeing us anymore. Tears marked her cheeks and she closed her eyes. “I don’t care what happens,” she said. “I don’t care.”
But Nakhtmin walked briskly to her, taking her by the shoulders. “Your Highness, Pharaoh Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, your country is under siege and your crown is being threatened. If you remain here, you will die.”
Her eyes were open, but they were lifeless.
“They will kill Meritaten or marry her to Panahesi, and Ankhesenpaaten’s life will be forfeit,” Nakhtmin said.
Nefertiti’s face lifted, almost imperceptibly. Then her eyes grew hard. “Release him from prison.”
Nakhtmin nodded, then disappeared down the hall and out into the darkness.
My father turned to me. “Do you trust your husband?”
I stared at him. Nakhtmin could release Horemheb from prison and together they could take the crown. “He would never do that,” I promised.
Rebellion swept through the streets. Egyptians were taking up pitchforks and scythes, gathering whatever weapons they could. Every hour a servant ran into the Audience Chamber with news: They had attacked the Temple of Aten in the hills. They were marching on the palace, demanding the return of their gods, a return to Thebes, and the burning of Amarna.
Kiya sat in a chair below the dais, her face a mask of agony. I tried to imagine what she felt. She was the Second Wife to a dead king. Her child would have no father. And when the child came, if it was a son, he would be a threat to Nefertiti’s crown.
Only Panahesi could salvage her destiny.
The doors of the Audience Chamber opened and Nakhtmin entered with Horemheb behind him. Prison had not been kind to the general. His hair had grown past his shoulders and a dark beard shadowed his jaw. But there was fire in his eyes, a crazed determination that I had never seen in any man before. My father stood up. “What is the news?”
Horemheb advanced. “The people stormed the Temple of Aten. The body of Pharaoh was burned beyond salvation.”
My father looked to Nakhtmin, who added, “The people have stormed the treasury as well. The gold is secure, but seven guards were killed. As well as Vizier Panahesi.”
There was a chilling scream. Kiya stood from her chair, her thighs red with blood. But Horemheb was advancing upon the throne. “I have been in prison on order of your husband, Your Majesty.”
“And I am reinstating you, General,” Nefertiti said swiftly, ignoring Kiya’s screams. There was no time for anything but the throne. “You shall take control of the army with General Nakhtmin.” She returned my husband’s position. But Kiya’s blood was coming thick and fast.
“My box!” I shouted. “Someone bring me my yarrow!”
“And how do I know you will not betray me?” Horemheb demanded of her.
“How do I know you will not betray me?” Nefertiti asked.
I called for servants to find water and linen.
“The reign of Aten is done,” Nefertiti added. “I will compensate you for what you have lost. Bring me to my people so that I may tell them that a new reign has come upon us.”
“And the Hittites?” Horemheb demanded.
“We will fight,” she swore, gripping the crook and flail. “We will wipe them from the face of the East!”
I rushed to make a pillow out of a linen robe for Kiya. “Breathe,” I told her. When I looked around the Audience Chamber, I saw that we had been abandoned. Only seven servants remained, the loyal few who had not fled to Thebes. “We must get her to another room!” I cried, and the servants helped me to carry her.
“Please don’t let her kill my child,” she whispered. Kiya gripped my hand with such fury that I was forced to look into her eyes. “Please.”
I realized of whom she was speaking. “She would never…” The words died on my lips.
The servants took her into a guest chamber and laid her on the bed, placing pillows behind her.
“We don’t have a birthing chair,” I said. “I won’t—”
Kiya screamed, digging her nails into my flesh. “Raise my child,” she begged.
“No. You will survive this,” I promised. “You will get well.” But even as I said this, I knew she would not. She was too pale, the child was coming too early. Beads of sweat lined her brow.
“Swear you will raise him,” she pleaded. “Only you can protect him from her. Please.” And in a gush of water, the screaming child came. A prince. A Prince of Egypt. Kiya looked down at her son, his lusty wails piercing an empty guest chamber without any amulets or images of Tawaret, and her eyes filled with tears. A knife was brought and the cord was cut. Kiya fell back against the cushions. “Name him Tutankhaten,” she said, grasping my fingers as if we’d never been enemies. Then she closed her eyes, and the peace on her face was gentle and soft. She exhaled, and her body grew rigid.
A servant washed the child and wrapped him in linen, pressing the tiny bundle into my arms, and I looked down at the boy who was to become my son, the child of my sister’s most bitter rival. I lay him on his mother, so he could know the feel of her breast and that she’d loved him. Then tears welled in my eyes and I cried. I cried for Kiya, for Nefertiti and her children, for Tiye, and for the infant Tutankhaten, who would never know his mother’s kiss. Then I cried for Egypt, because in my heart I knew we had abandoned our gods and brought this death upon us.
It looked as though a windstorm had swept through the palace.
Within days, the hangings were torn down, the cabinets emptied, the storage rooms picked clean. Whatever didn’t fit in our caravan of ships would remain in Amarna, to be collected later by servants or by the sands of time. Beer remained in the depths of the cellars, as well as bottles of Akhenaten’s favorite wine. I took some of the oldest reds for Ipu and stored them with my herbs. The rest would remain until someone broke into the palace and pillaged its stores, or the guards left behind grew desperate enough to raid Pharaoh’s cellar. After all, no one would check, and who knew if we’d ever return.
There was no formal good-bye as we stood at the quay. All that mattered to my father was that we moved swiftly. Nefertiti’s grip on the crook and flail of Egypt could be broken by a usurper in the army, or a High Priest of Aten, or an angry follower of Amun. Anything might happen, and everything depended on the people’s support. The people no longer believed in Amarna. They wanted a return to the old gods, and my father and Nefertiti would give it to them. As we sailed for Thebes, no one thought of what we were leaving behind.
On the prow, Nefertiti looked toward Thebes as she had once done as a girl.
“There will have to be a ceremony,” my father said, coming to stand by her. There was a chill in the air. The breeze on the water was crisp.
“A ceremony?” Nefertiti asked numbly.
“A renaming ceremony,” my father explained. “The princesses must no longer use Aten in their name. We must show the people we have forgotten Aten and have returned to Amun.”
“Forgotten?” Nefertiti’s voice broke. “He was my husband. He was a visionary.” I saw true affection for him as she closed her eyes. He’d made her Pharaoh of all of Egypt. He’d given her six children. “I will never forget.”
“Nevertheless, it must be done.”