The Heretic Queen

“Plenty! And all of them speak worse Egyptian than I do!”

Ramesses and I both laughed, while Asha and Iset stood quietly.

“But I believe you wanted to know about Pharaoh’s victory in Kadesh,” I said. I told him what I had learned while at the temple. When I was finished, Kikkuli looked humbled.

“Thank you, my lady. I had no idea that anyone in the court of Egypt spoke such fluent Hurrian.”

“Many royals study your language,” I flattered. “And we greatly admire the captive kingdom of Mitanni.”

Kikkuli’s eyes widened. “I shall be certain to report such warm feelings to my people.”

“Yes, please do,” Ramesses said. “For Egypt hopes to remain great friends with Mitanni, and we trust that your governor would send word if ever your invaders planned an attack against us.”

Kikkuli bobbed his head like an ibis. “If the Hittites should dare to march south through Aleppo, or even Nuzi, you have our word that Egypt will know of it.”

Ramesses smiled, but Kikkuli only had eyes for me. “Your princess is exceptional,” he complimented.

Ramesses met my gaze. Although he didn’t reply, his eyes said more than his words ever could, and I knew that I had made him proud.

“What? What did he say?” Asha asked.

Next to him, Iset had gone still and hard as stone. Her beauty might fascinate men, but it was difficult to charm them when she stood mute as an obelisk.

“He said he would bring back the news of how powerful Egypt’s army has become to his people,” I translated.

Next to Kikkuli, the emissary from Assyria cleared his throat. “And if the Hittites try to reclaim Kadesh?”

Ramesses shook his head. “I apologize, but your Akkadian is one language I cannot speak.”

“He is asking what will happen if the Hittites try to reclaim Kadesh,” I relayed, and turned to the emissary. “Then Egypt will march north with the might of twenty thousand men,” I promised, “and take it back for a second time.”

Ramesses stared at me. “Since when have you spoken Akkadian?”

“Since I’ve been at the Temple of Hathor.”

Ramesses regarded me with deep admiration, and Iset announced, “Look, it’s your aunt!”

I caught Woserit’s gaze across the courtyard, and I knew what was about to happen. When she smiled at Ramesses, my heart raced. “Enjoying the Feast of Wag?” she asked him. “I’m sure you were surprised to see Nefertari.”

“Yes,” he said, and his eyes lingered on mine. Standing beside him, I was aware of how fighting had sculpted him into a man. “Well, Nefertari,” Woserit said. “I believe you still have to visit the mortuary temple in Djamet tonight. Are you ready?”

“Perhaps we can go with you,” Ramesses offered.

But Woserit shook her head. “Nefertari should pay her respects alone.”

Ramesses and Asha both looked at me, as if I could offer them some reversal, but I understood Woserit perfectly. “Ramesses, Asha.” I smiled at each of them. “I very much enjoyed seeing you tonight. Iset,” I acknowledged.

“Will you bid us farewell at the procession?” Ramesses asked quietly.

“What do you mean?” I looked to Asha. “Pharaoh’s army just returned from Kadesh! You’re not going to war again?”

“The Nubians are rebelling. Ramesses is going to teach them a lesson.”

Ramesses nodded, and his eyes were fixed on mine.

“Then we shall see when the time comes whether Nefertari will be there,” Woserit said. “Until then, or perhaps until the next Feast of Wag, wish Nefertari well on the path she has chosen.”

This time, Iset’s smile was real. I followed Woserit dutifully beyond the courtyard, where Merit was waiting with chariots for hire. “Take the princess and her nurse to Horemheb’s mortuary temple in Djamet,” Woserit said.

The young man helped me into the chariot, and as the horses pulled away, I looked behind us. The court had left the mortuary temple, and Ramesses was gone.

“Well, what did he say?” Merit asked.

“I . . . I don’t know,” I said breathlessly. “But he looked different. Older.”

“But what did he say?” she repeated.

“He asked me to speak with the emissary from Mitanni.” I looked at Merit as we sped through the night and wondered aloud, “What if he only values me for my talent?”

“Would it matter, my lady, as long as he’s interested? Your goal is to become Chief Wife.”

“No.” I shook my head in realization. “It’s not. I want him to love me.”

We had reached Djamet, and Horemheb’s temple rose from a vast plateau of sand. Its wide black gates were thrown open, for pilgrims who wished to remember the Pharaoh who had eradicated the Heretic King’s influence. Only members of Seti’s court could visit the temple at any time, but on the first night of Wag the doors of every temple were opened to anyone. Merit brushed the dust from my cloak, then paid the boy who had driven us through the night. Her steps slowed as we approached the heavy gates. On every Feast of Wag, I entered the temple alone, while Merit left to pay obeisance at the small shrine her father had built nearby. “Shall I leave you here?” she asked quietly.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Of course, you will not talk with anyone,” she warned. “And raise your hood.” She handed me my bowl. “Can you see where you are going?”

“There are reed torches inside. I have good eyes.”

I watched as Merit disappeared into the darkness, then I passed through the gates of Horemheb’s temple. I tried not to think of how it had once been the exclusive shrine to my akhu. It had been built by my grandfather, Pharaoh Ay, but all that was left of him now were the paintings in his tomb, somewhere deep within the Valley of the Kings.

Ahead of me, I heard voices. They might have been descendants of Horemheb’s, or commoners who had come to gape at the paintings. In the light of the torches, the old general’s eyes watched my progress through the halls. In every image he had been painted tall and fit, wearing the khepresh crown that had once belonged to my grandfather. Ay had died an old man, with no heir to take his throne. Only my mother had been left, and General Horemheb took her by force as his wife. Had I been a son, he would have claimed me as his own. But my mother had died in childbirth with only a girl to survive her.

I reached the end of the hall and touched the only painting that remained of my mother. A great deal of care had been taken to portray her. She was tall and thin, with green eyes that shone like emeralds from her long, dark face. She was the opposite of me in every way, but for her eyes. “Mawat,” I whispered. Hers was the only painting that Horemheb had kept from Ay’s temple. He had ordered the others chiseled away, and with each stroke of the mallet they had erased my family from Egypt’s past.

“What a shame that this is all that’s left of her now.”

I felt my heart drop, for I knew the voice behind me. And before I could stop myself, I asked angrily, “What are you doing here?”

Henuttawy stepped out of the darkness into the light of the torches. She smiled. “Not happy to see me? I shouldn’t think you have anything to worry about. You’re not acting foolishly enough for me to slap you again. Although I should think that’s just a matter of time.”

I pushed back my hood, so she wouldn’t think I was hiding. Her eyes grew wide in mock surprise. “So the little princess has grown up.” She swept her gaze over my body and studied the way I filled out my tunic. “I’m guessing that’s Woserit’s cloak? You don’t have enough sense to dress yourself properly for a drunken revel, let alone the Feast of Wag.”

“Why have you come here?”

Henuttawy took a step forward to see if she could frighten me, but I didn’t move.

“Like a cat standing its ground. Or maybe you’re just too scared to move.” She looked up at the painting of my mother. “A pair of green-eyed little kittens, and just as curious.”

“I think you’ve come because you knew you’d find me in my family’s temple.”

Henuttawy narrowed her eyes, and her beauty looked cold and hard in the torchlight. “It’s no wonder Woserit took you in. She’s always taken pity on fools. It will come as a great surprise to know that the court doesn’t revolve around what Princess Nefertari is doing. But it may interest you to know I’ve come for Iset.” She opened her cloak and took out a small silver jar. “Of course, I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but since you’ve been such a good little friend to Ramesses, you might as well know.” She leaned close and whispered, “His wife is carrying the heir to the throne.”

I tried to hide my shock while Henuttawy placed Iset’s silver jar on the shrine below my mother and Horemheb’s image.

“Even Ramesses hasn’t been told,” she said with delight, “but when he finds out, there is no one at court who will doubt that he will make her queen. In light of such good fortune, it is only natural that Iset would want to thank her akhu. As a queen, she’ll want everyone to remember that her grandmother was Horemheb’s harem wife. So, you see, this was your family’s temple.” Henuttawy looked up and placed her hand on my mother’s cheek. “But when Iset is crowned, I wouldn’t be surprised if she changes a few of the paintings to remind the gods of her grandmother’s importance at court.”

She turned, and as she disappeared through the doors of the temple, I looked up to the painting of my mother and gasped. “Henuttawy!” I screamed, and two children who had come to gawk at the paintings inside the temple ran away in fear. I put my hand on my mother’s cheek, where Henuttawy had scraped her fingernail along the side of her face. My mother’s beauty was marred. I felt the kind of blinding hatred that whole kingdoms must have for invading armies. As my voice echoed through the corridors of the temple, Merit hurried in with a reed torch before her.

“My lady, what is it?” she cried.

I pointed to my mother’s cheek. “Henuttawy,” I said between clenched teeth. “She’s ruined it!”

“We will tell Pharaoh Seti!” she vowed.

“And who will he believe? You saw her tonight. She wears him like a cloak!”

The tears coursed down my cheeks, and Merit placed her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry, my lady. We will hire a painter to fix it.”

“But this is all that I have of her,” I sobbed. “And even if a painter comes, what does it matter when her entire image is going to be erased?”

“Says who?” Merit cried.

“That’s why Henuttawy was here. She came to tell me that Iset is pregnant with Ramesses’s child. And if Iset is made queen, she’ll take this temple for her akhu.”

Merit narrowed her eyes. “She’s seen tonight that you are competition and wants to frighten you away. By telling you this, she imagines you’ll have no incentive to return to the palace.”

“Then she is wrong!” I swore. And suddenly, I could see the future clearly. I was going to be relegated to a temple in the Fayyum, just as Woserit had predicted. I would never be allowed at court, and if I was, Henuttawy and Iset would be there to make life miserable for me. Ramesses would make Iset Chief Wife, and when he shared a joke with her, Iset’s laugh would ring hollow as a reed. But no matter. She would be his queen and mother to the crown prince, and he would tolerate her ignorance for her great beauty. If ever he thought of me, it would be only to wonder where I had gone and why I had chosen never to come back. And my closest friend would be lost to me forever. I looked at Merit beneath the moonlight and repeated, “Then Henuttawy is very, very wrong.”

I had every incentive to return.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PRAY TO SEKHMET

IN THE TEMPLE of Hathor, Aloli pressed me for details on what happened that night. For several days, I avoided her questions, until finally I blurted, “She’s already pregnant!”

Aloli stood up her harp, and frowned. “Who’s pregnant?”

“Iset.” I blinked away tears. “With Ramesses’s first child.”

Aloli’s look was compassionate. “It might be a girl,” she said helpfully. “Or she might not even carry it to term. What’s most important is what he said. Had he missed you?”

I thought of the way Ramesses’s cheeks had reddened when he looked at my beaded dress, and I nodded. “Yes. Woserit thinks that by the time he returns from battle, he’ll have made his decision about who will be Chief Wife. If the army is victorious, she wants me to attend his procession.”

Aloli clapped her hands. “That’s excellent news!” She searched my face. “So why aren’t you happy? You were his closest friend when you were children. And now you are a woman. A beautiful woman. What more could he want from a queen?”

“A child.”

“So who’s to say you won’t give him one?”

“Aloli,” I said miserably, “my mother died in childbirth with me.”

She sat back and her jewels caught the light of the oil lamps. “And you think the gods won’t watch over a princess of Egypt?”

“My mother was a queen, and they didn’t watch over her! Besides, what if I don’t want a child?”

Aloli sucked in her breath. “Every woman wants one.”

“Even you?”

She waved her hand, as if swatting at one of her loose curls. “Who cares about me? I’ll never become queen.”

“But would you risk childbirth?” I persisted.

“I suppose that if I ever find a man who can afford to keep me in necklaces and jewels,” she said lightly, “then yes. I will want to have children with him.” She saw my look and swore earnestly, “I’m not lying! When I dream at night, I never see just a man. It’s always a family.” She frowned. “Why? What do you dream about?”

I flushed.

“You dream about Pharaoh!” she exclaimed.

“But there are never any children! It’s always just the two of us.”

“Alone? In bed together?”

I knew my cheeks were red, but I nodded.

“And are you practicing what we’ve been talking about?” she asked swiftly.

“Aloli!”

“This is important!” she cried.

“Yes. Since Ramesses left with the army, I can’t stop thinking about him. In the baths, at the shrine, even here in the eastern sanctuary.”

“Then if you are dreaming of him every night,” she said eagerly, “he must be dreaming of you!”

I stared at her. “How can you possibly know that?” I demanded.

“Because you’ve caught his eye.” She smiled widely. “Trust me, Princess. And when he returns, he’ll be looking to make those dreams come to life.”

I wondered if Ramesses’s dreams were like mine, and whether he could smell the scent of my hair the way I could smell the scent of his skin when I closed my eyes. Did he imagine us lying alone together, with only the warm summer’s air between us? Or tumbling on his bed between the soft linen sheets perfumed with lavender? I thought of everything Aloli had taught me, about where to kiss tenderly and places where my kisses could bring him to tears, and soon my dreams became more vivid. In the night, I lay in his imaginary arms, and in the day I worried about what was happening in the south, and whether he would ever come back to Thebes.

ONE MORNING in the beginning of Aythyr, Paser asked, “Have you been practicing your Akkadian at all?”

“How can I practice,” I asked him, “when Ramesses might be killed in this Nubian rebellion?”

Paser took a long look at me from across Woserit’s table. “If you are worried about Ramesses in Nubia,” he said, “then you will be spending the rest of your life without sleep. To be a Pharaoh is to fight against the enemies who would like to make your kingdom theirs. And when a Pharaoh isn’t fighting invaders, he is settling rebellions. Even the Heretic King held on to the territory of Nubia, with its gold mines and electrum. I wouldn’t expect Pharaoh Ramesses to return until the uprising is crushed completely. There is nothing for you to do—”

“But there is,” I interrupted. “I can go with him.”

Paser looked at me as if an ibis had suddenly perched on my head. “And what do you think you would do?” he demanded. “Pharaoh Ramesses has trained for war since he was a child. There would be bloodshed, and death, and men crying in the night—”

“Women go to tend the sick,” I argued.

“Have you ever seen a man’s arm taken off by an enemy’s blade?”

I forced myself not to blanch. “No.”

“How about the sight of a soldier’s intestines gouged by an arrow?”

“No. But I have seen the chariot races in the Arena, where soldiers have been crushed by wheels and by horses.”

“Battle is not a game, and it is certainly not a sport!” Paser sighed with a great deal of exasperation. “What do you think would happen to you if Pharaoh was killed in battle? You would be taken by the enemy and abused,” he answered himself. “And the rest of Egypt would be thrown into chaos. Who would become coregent? Who would succeed Pharaoh Seti on the throne? There would be civil war, and every wise person with gold would flee.”

“But you said there was no danger in Nubia. You said he would return—”

“Perhaps not in Nubia, but what about Hatti, or Assyria, or Kadesh? War is no place for a princess. If you want to help Pharaoh, then pray to Sekhmet that he will be safe, and that the goddess of war will bring him home. Now study your Akkadian.”

But I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even eat. Merit ordered tempting bowls from the kitchens, roasted goose in garlic and honeyed nut cakes, but my appetite was gone. “You cannot continue like this!” she exclaimed. “You will shrink away to nothing. Already, look at you.” She held up my arm. “You will disappear!”

Finally, when the army had been gone for almost three months, Woserit came in to my chamber and said, “Merit tells me you are not eating. Do you want to look like a mangy cat next to Iset when Ramesses returns from Nubia?”

I stared at her in horror from the edge of my bed. “Of course not!”

“Then I will send to the cooks for several bowls,” she said sternly. “And you will eat from all of them.” She turned to leave, then hesitated at the door. “Messengers arrived this morning. Pharaoh’s army has crushed the rebellion.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

FIRST VICTORY

WHEN A PHARAOH comes home victorious from battle it means the gods are not only watching us, but have extended their hands to our kingdom in aid. Throughout the city of Thebes, crowds celebrated in the streets, eating the honeyed cakes being sold by vendors and washing them down with pomegranate wine. The men wore long kilts to protect them from the cold, and I was shielded against the wind by the soft fur of Woserit’s cloak. I stood with the court on the Avenue of Sphinxes by the Amun temple, and Woserit whispered nervously, “Remember what I taught you.”

“That Ramesses must come to me first,” I repeated.

“You must not run to him like a fish-starved cat. But if he wants a private audience with you, then you may give him one.”

I looked up in surprise, since Woserit had never said this before.

“Men are like iwiw,” she explained, making me think of Queen Tuya’s pampered dog. “Give them a good meal and they’ll come around wanting it again. But you will make sure he understands that meals don’t come free,” she said sternly, and I wondered why she sounded more nervous than I was. “Make him understand that you will return to the temple if he doesn’t decide.” Woserit’s gaze flicked across my golden diadem and the lined cloak that was opened to reveal my diaphanous sheath. “I’d be very surprised . . .”

But her words were cut off by the sound of trumpets and the cheers of the crowd heralding the approaching army.

Above us, on the temple’s steps, Pharaoh Seti and Queen Tuya waited proudly for their son’s return, surrounded by the most important men at court. But of everyone who stood above us, dressed in gold bangles and heavy wigs, Iset appeared the most triumphant. Her five-month belly curved beautifully beneath her cloak, and across her chest a servant had powdered the skin with crushed mother-of-pearl.

By stepping forward and craning my neck with the crowd, I could see the war chariots with their polished wheels and gilded sides. The scent of horses intermingled with incense and roses. As the army approached, the cheers of the crowds reached a feverish pitch, and I felt a pair of hands push me forward. I looked back and saw Aloli’s brazen smile from among the priestesses of Hathor.

“You want him to notice, don’t you?” she demanded.

Merit tugged at my shoulder. “She also wants to avoid being crushed by the chariots.”

At the end of the Avenue I recognized Ramesses’s khepresh crown of war. He was sharing a chariot with Asha, and both of them absorbed the adoration of the people. As Asha reined in a pair of sleek black horses, Ramesses searched the crowd, and when he found me, I felt a strange heat under my cloak despite the chill in the wind. Then Pharaoh Seti spread his arms in a gesture of welcome, and Ramesses tore his gaze away from my face. He dismounted at the steps of the temple to bow before his parents, then he slowly withdrew his sword from its sheath. Around us, the cheering grew even more frenzied as Ramesses prepared to give his sword of victory to Iset. To be presented with this is the greatest honor any person can receive. I arranged a smile on my face; then I noticed that Asha was staring in our direction.

“Who is that?” Aloli whispered.

“Asha? He’s the commander of Ramesses’s charioteers.”

“So why is he staring at us?”

“Probably because he’s never seen anyone like you before.” Aloli was the only priestess of Hathor whose hair outshone Ramesses’s. She wore a heavy turquoise cloak that brought out the vivid blue of her eyes, and the sheath beneath it was spun from a linen so fine it was nearly transparent. When Iset accepted the sword and the ceremony was finished, Aloli stepped forward to make sure that Asha didn’t miss her.

“Don’t bother,” I said as the army made its way to the palace. “Pharaoh Seti calls him Asha the Cautious.”

“Then perhaps what he needs is a woman with spirit.”

I laughed, but Aloli’s voice was earnest. “This will be my first celebration in the palace, and I don’t plan to sleep at all,” she admitted.

Because it was Choiak, it was growing too cool to feast in the courtyard of Malkata. The victory celebration would be held in the warmth of the Great Hall, where cinnamon would burn all night on the braziers and the doors would be shut against the wind. That afternoon, when I entered the chamber, it wasn’t the number of soldiers that surprised me, or that Ramesses’s horses had been brought into the hall and decorated with flowers. It was the long, polished table on the dais, with four thrones in the middle and two dozen chairs around them.

Woserit saw the direction of my gaze, and nodded. “You haven’t been inside the Great Hall since Ramesses changed court tradition. The most important members of the court no longer eat below the dais.”

“They eat on top? In front of everyone? Why?”

“You can’t guess?” she asked. “Iset’s conversation isn’t as interesting as he had hoped. What could he possibly have to talk about with her and his parents, night after night?”

Now he had his viziers and emissaries from foreign kingdoms on the dais. So while the rest of the court ate below, Pharaoh’s closest advisers and friends would be eating on the highest step. Ramesses had not yet taken his throne. I imagined that he was probably in his chamber, changing from his armor to a long kilt and thick cloak. He would probably put on his blue and gold nemes crown, since the khepresh was tall and burdensome. And then what would he do? My heart raced. Would he speak with me at the table? Or would he have eyes only for his pregnant wife?

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Aloli murmured. I had forgotten that it was her first time in the Great Hall. Harpists played in all corners of the room, and the rich scents of roasted beef and wine filled the warm chamber. Every woman had come attired in her best jewels, and at night, their thick collars of gold would reflect in the light of the oil lamps. In the polished glaze of the tiles I could already see a thousand sandaled feet reflected, walking and dancing and secretly touching under the tables.

As we moved through the crowded hall toward the dais, someone approached from behind a column and touched my shoulder. I turned, and there was Ramesses, dressed in a long linen kilt, trimmed with gold thread and painted with images of charioteers at war. His belt was wide, and beneath the gold pectoral on his chest was a fresh scar where he’d been hurt in battle. I opened my mouth to exclaim about the wound, but Ramesses put a finger to his lips. I glanced at Woserit, who took Aloli’s arm and escorted her toward the dais. Ramesses never stopped looking at me.

“It’s true,” he whispered.

Suddenly, I was aware of how close we were standing, so close I could touch the square of his jaw or the chiseled planes of his face. “What’s true?”

“You are as beautiful as I remembered. Nefer,” he said, and his breath came quickly. “Perhaps you want to simply remain my friend, but when I was gone, all I could think about was you. When I was supposed to be thinking about the rebellion, or how my men would find fresh water in the desert, all I could think of was how you wanted to be hidden away in the Temple of Hathor. Nefer,” he said passionately, “you can’t be a priestess.”

I wanted to close my eyes and step into the shelter of his embrace, but beyond the column the entire court was gathering. “But if I’m not to be a priestess,” I asked him, “where will my place be in Thebes?” I held my breath, waiting for the right answer to come, willing it into his heart. Then he took me in his arms and brushed his lips against mine.

“With me,” he said firmly. “As my queen.”

LEAVING BEHIND the entire court, now feasting in the Great Hall, we headed directly to his chamber, and Ramesses immediately barred the door. His room was neatly kept, and the blue and green tiles of the floor had been polished for his arrival. Cuneiform tablets were stacked on a low table, and a Senet board that could not have been used in many months was ready to be played. He took my hand and led me to the bed, stopping only to whisper, “And you are sure you want me the way I want you?”

I didn’t respond. I simply brushed my lips against his, then kissed him the way I had imagined kissing him all of those nights when he had been gone in Nubia. We fell together on his pillows, and the victory feast might as well have been in another kingdom.

“Nefer.” Ramesses pressed his hands against the bed so that his muscular arms were on either side of my face. I reached up and stroked him the way Aloli had told me I should. He closed his eyes, allowing me to trace my finger along his shaft.

“Let me taste you,” I whispered.

He rolled so that his back was against the pillows, and I began with the inside of his thighs, licking my way up to his chest and the tender flesh around his new scar. He cupped my breasts in his hands, feeling the nipples harden beneath my sheath, and he groaned as I licked my way back down to the hardness between his legs.

“Undress for me,” he begged.

I knelt above him, slowly unfastening the cloak, then my sheath, and finally taking off my wig so that my nakedness was covered only by my hair.

“You are even more beautiful than I thought.” Ramesses sighed. I’m sure that I flushed at being called so. Henuttawy was beautiful. Iset was beautiful. But as I straddled him in the position that Aloli promised would increase fertility, I wondered for the first time if it might be true. His breath was ragged, and as I balanced above him, he thrust his hips forward in his eagerness to be inside of me.

I had dreamed of what it would be like with Ramesses a hundred different times. Yet when the moment came, everything that Aloli had taught me flew out of my head and I knew nothing but the feel of his body against mine, the taste of his skin, and the burning sensation that began as pain and soon became pleasure. When it was done, and Ramesses had spent himself inside of me, I looked down at the linens. I was no longer a virgin.

In the amber light of a setting sun, Ramesses caressed my cheek. Our reverie was only broken when a heavy fist pounded on the door outside of his chamber. He looked at me, and then both of us were rushing to find our clothes.

“Your Majesty,” someone called from without. “The feast has begun and Pharaoh wishes to know where you are!”

“How long has he been knocking?” I exclaimed.

“Probably for a while!” Ramesses laughed, then took me in his arms. “You must move back into your chamber,” he said. “No more of the temple.”

“I shall have to ask Woserit,” I said coyly.

“Forget Woserit! If I make you my wife, she can’t take you back. I need you here.” He cupped my breast in his palm. “I want you here.”

“And they want you in the Great Hall,” I said teasingly.

EVERY NIGHT since he had been married, Ramesses had entered the Great Hall with Iset. But that night, on the celebration of his first victory as leader of Pharaoh’s army, he would enter with me and everyone would know where he had been. From the table on the dais, Henuttawy would see us, and Iset would turn to her ladies from the harem and unleash a storm.

Be brave, I told myself. Iset is the granddaughter of a harem wife but I am the daughter of a queen. We left the royal courtyard as the chill of evening had settled over the palace. I sheltered beneath Ramesses’s strong arm, and as we passed through the halls the whispering began. I heard my name behind me and I shivered.

“You’ll grow used to it,” Ramesses promised.

“The whispering or the cold?”

He laughed, but as we approached the Great Hall and the herald who would announce our presence, my stomach clenched. I could already hear the murmur of surprise from within.

“Pharaoh Ramesses II,” the herald declared, “Lord of the Two Lands and son of Pharaoh Seti.”

Ramesses stepped forward and waited for me.

“Princesses Nefertari, daughter of Queen Mutnodjmet and General Nakhtmin.”

Ramesses took my arm, and as we moved through the hall a horrified murmur passed through the court, that on this night—of all nights—Ramesses should appear with me instead of his wife, who would bear his child. I caught my name several times before we reached the royal thrones, and at the table on the dais, a servant hastily added a chair between Pharaoh Seti and Ramesses. Iset’s eyes narrowed into tiny slits, and next to her, Queen Tuya’s face became hard as stone. Her iwiw, Adjo, sniffed at the air, and though there was no one else in Thebes he seemed to dislike he raised his lips in a silent growl as I passed.

I took my seat in the uncomfortable silence, and it was Queen Tuya who finally spoke. “How nice of you to escort the princess Nefertari into the Great Hall. I would have thought you might have chosen to escort your wife.”

Woserit caught my gaze across the table, and I knew that she was willing her strength into me. I kept a smile on my face and replied, “I’m afraid it is my fault, Your Highness.”

“What does it matter?” Seti demanded. “My son is returned from war, and the Nubians are crushed!” He raised his cup, and the rest of the table did the same. “So Nefertari,” Pharaoh Seti exclaimed with mock surprise. “Not so little anymore.”

I lowered my head bashfully. “No, Your Highness.”

“Well, we have missed your smile in Malkata. My son, especially, I believe.” He glanced at Iset, who was sulking next to the queen. The pair of them looked like Tuya’s long-faced iwiw.

“It’s true,” Ramesses replied, meeting my gaze. I knew there was more he wanted to say.

“So tell me, Nefertari.” Henuttawy lowered her cup. “What was it that you and my nephew discussed? He must have told some very exciting tales to have taken all afternoon. Why don’t you share one with the table?”

I’m sure my face turned as red as the cinnamon burning in the braziers, and Ramesses said firmly, “We spent our time discussing how Nefertari will be returning to the palace.”

Henuttawy exchanged a look with the High Priest, Rahotep. “Really?Was her time at my sister’s temple so unbearable?”

“Of course not.” Ramesses’s voice became stern. “But she is of greater use here than in the Temple of Hathor.”

I looked across the table at Woserit. Was it true? Did he want me simply because he thought I was useful to him? But Woserit avoided my gaze.

“So you have decided not to become a priestess?” Pharaoh Seti confirmed.

I nodded. “My wish is to return to the palace of Malkata as soon as possible.”

Pharaoh Seti sat back. “Then perhaps you will be here for my announcement in the Audience Chamber tomorrow. In a few days, my court will be leaving for Avaris.”

I glanced at the queen, whose face was still drawn. “Permanently?”

Pharaoh Seti nodded and began to cough. “I shall make Avaris the capital of Lower Egypt,” he said, “and be closer to our northern border. I want to keep an eye on the kingdom of Hatti.”

In that moment I realized how difficult it must have been for him to watch his son lead the army into Nubia. He still wants to protect Egypt and watch over her enemies, even if he can’t join his son on the battlefield. When he continued to wheeze, Ramesses scowled.

“It will also be better for his health to be away from the heat and disease of a large city like Thebes. That is the most important reason.”

But Pharaoh Seti waved Ramesses’s concern away. “I will be taking a few of the viziers with me. And half of the army. We want to sail before the weather turns.” His kind eyes rested on me. “I hope you will be able to bid us farewell when we leave.”

Ramesses placed his open palm on my knee, and I smiled. “Of course, Your Highness.”

ON THE boat ride back to the temple, I told Woserit what Ramesses had said before we left his chamber. “We will pack tonight to be ready for the Audience Chamber in the morning,” she said, sounding pleased. “Shall I assume that you—”

“Of course they did!” Aloli cried over the splashing of the oars. “Look at her face. You did, didn’t you?”

I nodded, and Merit stifled a gasp. “This afternoon, my lady?”

“There is no point in leaving love up to the gods,” Woserit said. “He wants her now, and we had to put her in front of him so that he knows what he’ll be fighting for.”

I tried to make out Woserit’s expression in the dark, but there was only a single oil lamp in our boat. “Fight?”

“It will certainly be a fight. And not just between my brother and Queen Tuya. While we were on the dais, Aloli was sitting among the court. She heard their whispers.”

“About me? What did they say?”

Aloli nodded. “Things I shouldn’t repeat, my lady.”

“And you saw Henuttawy’s reaction tonight,” Woserit went on. “The High Priest’s response will be even worse if Ramesses asks to marry you. Especially if the gossip is true and Rahotep has been visiting my sister’s chamber. But my brother loves Ramesses and rarely denies him. I doubt he will now.”

“But Henuttawy can be persuasive,” I said.

“Not as persuasive as a man in love.”

“But what if he’s not in love with me? You heard what Ramesses said at the feast—that I’m more useful in the palace than in the temple.”

Woserit gave me a long look from beneath her cloak. “He will say what he must to convince his father. Pharaoh Seti may see you as a daughter, but thinking that you are a good choice for a wife is something different.”

I turned my face to the river, so that no one would see my hurt.

Aloli added gently, “You’ll know if he loves you by how long he’s willing to fight.”

“And if he gives up the fight, he’ll have decided I’m not worth it,” I said as the boat approached the quay.

“So make sure you are,” Woserit remarked.

We passed through the gates of Hathor’s temple, and Woserit sent an army of servants to help pack my belongings. In my chamber, Merit ordered hot water for my bath.

“At this hour?” one of the servants questioned.

“Of course, at this hour. Do you think I want it for the morning?” Merit chided.

When the hot water came, I lay back in the tub and tried to remember everything that had happened in Ramesses’s chamber. I wanted to go over it again and again so there was no detail I would ever forget. As Merit scrubbed at my back, I told her what had happened from beginning to end, and when I was finished, she let out a huge sigh and wept, “Oh, my lady, you are a woman now! And soon . . .” She sniffed. “Soon, you will belong to Ramesses.”

“Oh, mawat, don’t cry. I will never leave you. Not for a hundred Pharaohs.”

Merit blinked and raised her chin. “I’m crying tears of joy, not sorrow,” she promised. “It is what I always imagined. Queen Nefertari. Mother to the future King of Egypt.”

I lay in the warm water and sighed. “And we wouldn’t be afraid of anyone,” I said. “Not the High Priest or Henuttawy. Even Iset couldn’t touch us if I were queen.” I stood from the water and Merit handed me a heavy linen. I wrapped myself in its length and shivered. “But what if I can’t have children?” I worried.

“Who would say such a thing?” Merit hissed. “Why wouldn’t you be able to have children?” she demanded.

“I am small.”

“Many women are small.”

“Not as small as I am, and my mother died giving birth to me,” I whispered.

“You will have plenty of children,” Merit blustered. “As many as you wish.”

I put on a sheath. Outside the robing room I could hear the servants moving baskets and placing my belongings into the many chests I had returned with from Malkata. I passed through the bustle and stood on the balcony overlooking the groves. The sycamores were bent like old women in the moonlight, thin and twisted, and I wondered when I would see them again. I shivered in my linen, and when Merit saw me she gave a sharp cry.

“My lady! What are you doing outside?”

“This will be the last night I look out over this,” I said.

She marched onto the balcony and took my arm. “And it will be your last night in Egypt if you catch sick and die. Get yourself into bed. You must sleep for tomorrow!”

But I looked behind me to catch a last glimpse of Hathor’s groves. These will be my last moments of peace, I thought. From now on, my love for Ramesses will bring nothing but chaos.

“My lady is sleeping now,” Merit announced to the servants in the chamber. “We will finish in the morning.” When the servants disappeared, she shut the heavy doors and came to my bedside. “You are a woman,” she marveled again, looking down at me.

Tefer curled against my pillow, and I laughed. “I have been a woman for two years.”

“But a woman is not really a woman until . . . Perhaps in a few months we will be preparing the birthing chamber for you,” she said proudly.

When Merit left, I lay in my bed and looked up at the painted ceiling. I had probably seen that painting a hundred times, but do you think that I can recall it now? This is how memories are; what seems so clear and unforgettable at one moment vanishes like steam the next. I didn’t want this to happen to the afternoon that Ramesses and I had shared together, so I imagined it again and again in my mind, committing to memory the look in his eyes, the smell of his skin, the feel of his strong legs between mine. I felt a deep longing to be with him, and I wondered whether he was thinking of me in the palace, too.

I slept fitfully that night, worried that in the morning I would awake and find it all to have been a dream. But when the milky sun filtered through the reed mats, I opened my eyes and saw that the servants were already packing. Merit smiled at me over a handful of linens.

“I wondered if you were planning to get up at all, my lady.”

I scrambled from my bed. “Are we leaving?”

“As soon as you’ve dressed and braided your hair. Then I expect that Woserit will want to speak with you.”

I had become skilled at dressing quickly in the cold, and by the time Merit had finished with my hair, Woserit came in to survey the chamber. The servants had removed my bottles and heavy chests. Even my sheaths, and robes, and beaded gowns had been folded into baskets and whisked away. The chamber looked large and empty, and the glazed tile walls and high ceilings echoed with our voices.

“They have done well,” Woserit said approvingly. “Are you prepared to leave?”

I felt a rising panic in my chest. The temple was not my home, but it was where I had become a woman and learned to be a princess. “I would like to say farewell to Aloli first,” I said. “And some of the other priestesses.”

“There will be time for that.” Woserit took a seat and motioned for me to do the same. I sat, and Woserit made a face. “I shall hope you don’t take your throne that way! Like some weary petitioner who’s stood outside the court all day and is willing to throw herself on the first available surface for relief.”

I tried again, standing and then slowly seating myself. I pressed my knees together and straightened my back. I folded my hands over my lap and looked at her.

“Much better. The way you take your chair this morning will say as much about you as the words that come out of your mouth.” She motioned with her hand. “Let’s get Tefer into a basket and make your farewells. This will be a busy day. If Ramesses does plan to make you his wife, he will have to fight for you in the Audience Chamber. Do you recall what Paser told you about being inside?”

“That it’s like the Great Hall, but instead there’s only one table with petitioners.”

“And on the dais, there will be four thrones.”

“For Ramesses, Pharaoh Seti, Queen Tuya, and Iset.”

“And if Ramesses makes you his queen, you will take Iset’s place. She will not be welcome in the Great Hall after that.”

I pressed my lips together and acknowledged the gravity of displacing Iset.

“Of course, Ramesses must never know that you want to be Chief Wife. Let him come to that decision on his own. But even if he makes you queen, he will divide his time between you and Iset.” Woserit saw my expression and added, “If you love Ramesses, you will not make it difficult for him. Heirs for the throne of Egypt are more important than any wife’s petty jealousy.”

I felt stung, but nodded in agreement. “I will be pleasant at all times,” I promised her.

“And cheerful,” she added, “and welcoming.”

Eventually, we made our way out of the temple and reached the quay, where all of my belongings were being carried in cedar chests onto Hathor’s ship. While Merit supervised the move, I bade my farewells to the priestesses of Hathor. Aloli was particularly sad to see me go.

“Who will I share my secrets with now?” she complained.

“You’ll find some innocent priestess to lead astray,” I teased. “But truly,” I said, and my words were in earnest, “thank you. For everything.” I gave her a farewell embrace, and Merit brought a mewling Tefer onto the boat as the last of our belongings. I stood on the stern of Hathor’s ship, surrounded by baskets and heavy chests, and waved to the priestesses on the shore.

CHAPTER NINE

SIMPLY A MARRIAGE

WHEN WE ARRIVED in Malkata, the quay was filled with the towering prows of Pharaoh Seti’s ships. Their blue and gold pennants snapped in the wind, while below them an army of servants was packing the royal belongings for a journey north. There was the royal statuary wrapped carefully in linen, and chests so large that four men shouldered poles simply to carry them. Chamberlains, scribes, fan bearers, sandal bearers, even emissaries were rushing to pack for Avaris, where Seti would rule Lower Egypt while Ramesses governed the upper kingdom from Thebes.

“I thought Pharaoh was going to announce his move today?” I asked.

“Officially, yes,” Woserit replied.

“But the court already knows?”

“Certainly. But the rest of Egypt must be told. My brother will make his announcement in the Audience Chamber, and his scribes will post the news at the door of every temple.”

Woserit instructed the boatsmen to carry my chests into the royal courtyard, and Merit passed the basket with Tefer to a young girl who promised to take him to the chamber that Woserit had given me. As we walked through the towering gates of Malkata, Merit whispered, “Stop fidgeting.” I was twisting the linen edges of my belt. “There’s nothing you can do now,” she added. “It’s in the hands of the gods.”

In the palace, there was a tense energy, as if the court knew what Ramesses was about to request, and how the viziers and High Priestess of Isis would respond. Courtiers darted furtive glances at me, and a young serving girl lowered her heavy linen basket to watch us pass. In the golden hall before the Audience Chamber, Woserit said firmly, “Stay here with Merit until the herald calls for you.”

We seated ourselves on an ebony bench whose legs had been carved into the heads of swans. “Are there petitioners inside?”

“No. They have been dismissed. Today is for my brother’s private business.”

“And Iset?” I asked quickly.

Woserit sniffed. “Without the petitioners, there’s no reason for her to be here. She’s probably hennaing her toenails in the baths.” She pulled open one of the heavy bronze doors, and as she entered, she left it wide open behind her. I glanced at Merit.

“This is why we arrived late,” she whispered.

So that Woserit could be the last in the chamber and leave the door open for us to listen. I looked up at the guards, but both of their faces were expressionless, and I wondered if they had been paid to cooperate. I leaned forward on the bench and looked in. The Audience Chamber was as wide and impressive as both Paser and Woserit had described it. A forest of columns held up the painted ceiling, and from the high windows you could see the crests of the western hills. Ramesses was seated between his parents. Below him, at a table for viziers and dignitaries, I recognized Henuttawy by the red of her cloak. Her back was to us, and only those who were sitting on the dais could look down the long aisle of the Audience Chamber and see that the door had been left open. But today no one would be interested in what was happening outside.

At first, there were too many voices from within to make out anything clearly. Then I heard Pharaoh’s golden crook strike the dais, and suddenly there was silence. The announcement was made that he and Queen Tuya would leave for Avaris in two days on the thirteenth of Choiak.

We listened as Pharaoh Seti told his court sculptor what sort of image should be carved on the Wall of Proclamation outside of Karnak to let visitors know his court had moved to Avaris. He wanted a painting of a fleet of ships, with him and the queen standing on a prow in their golden crowns. In the next scene, he imagined himself standing on the quay in Avaris. There was a moment of silence as the sculptor took notes, then I heard Paser’s voice addressing Pharaoh Seti. “There is something His Highness Ramesses would like to request.”

Courtiers shifted uncomfortably, and their gold bangles clinked loudly in the uneasy silence. The court knew what Ramesses was going to ask, and Henuttawy had made certain to be in the Audience Chamber for the announcement. Next to her I could see the leopard cloak of the High Priest. Although I couldn’t see his face, I could imagine Rahotep’s carnelian eye moving as he followed the proceedings, and how his lips were stretched into his grotesque hyena’s grin.

Ramesses stood from his throne. “Father,” he said formally, “in two days you will make the journey from the palace of Malkata to your father’s palace of Pi-Ramesses. But before you leave, I would like your permission to marry the princess Nefertari.”

Whispered murmurs rippled through the court, and I imagined Henuttawy’s beautiful face frozen like a funerary mask. I supposed that Ramesses glanced at her when he said, “I have made Iset a princess and wife to me. Although I love her, I love Nefertari as well.” He argued, “Princess Nefertari is well studied. She can speak eight languages and will be a valuable asset in this chamber. She is—”

“The niece of a Heretic King?” Henuttawy offered.

Ramesses replied with heat, “That was many years ago.”

“Not so many that the people don’t remember.” The Vizier Nebamun stepped forward and blocked my view of Henuttawy. “Your Highnesses, love alone does not make a good wife.”

“Which is why we are fortunate that Nefertari is also wise enough to serve in this chamber,” Ramesses said.

Courtiers began talking over one another, and Pharaoh Seti raised his crook and struck it twice on the base of the dais. “Nebamun and Henuttawy, we have heard what you both have to say. Vizier Anemro?”

Vizier Anemro stood from a table at the base of the dais, and I could hear him address Pharaoh Seti politely before saying, “I agree with the High Priestess of Isis. Looking to the future, to make the princess Nefertari Chief Wife would be dangerous to His Highness’s reign.”

Beneath the dais, Rahotep remained silent. Ramesses asked sternly, “Vizier Paser?”

Paser stood, and his was the first voice raised in my defense. “I do not see any harm or danger in making Princess Nefertari queen.”

“Nor I,” Woserit said firmly.

The High Priest of Amun finally spoke. “Even though her family murdered my father and abolished Egypt’s gods?” he spat. “Has that already been forgotten? The blood of heretics runs through her veins!”

Pharaoh Seti struck his crook on the dais and declared, “Princess Nefertari is a daughter to me. I do not care what blood runs in her veins.”

“But the people will,” Henuttawy snapped. She understood that Seti was going to allow Ramesses to wed and added quickly, “At least wait until after the marriage to choose a Chief Wife.” I could see her face now. She turned to Ramesses. “Wait to see how the people will react. For the sake of peace throughout your long reign, wait until the ceremony is finished.”

“I fear a rebellion,” Rahotep warned.

“Wait,” Henuttawy suggested. “Then, if you still want to make her queen over Iset—”

“I wouldn’t call it over Iset,” Ramesses said quickly.

“Instead of Iset,” Henuttawy corrected, coarsely. “Then there will be two feasts to celebrate.”

Pharaoh Seti sighed. “The decision of Chief Wife will wait. But what does Nefertari have to say about this? I hope you haven’t pressured her into marriage.”

“Bring her in,” Ramesses answered. “She can tell you herself.”

I looked at Merit, who rushed to straighten my wig. When the herald discovered the open door, he glanced at the guards, then at us. We both stood quickly.

“You are wanted in the Audience Chamber,” he said.

We followed him through the great doors of carved bronze, and I was shocked by how large the room really was once I was inside of it. Not even Paser’s careful model had captured the true grandeur of the hall. This is where my mother sat with Nefertiti when she was my age, I realized, and where she ruled alongside Pharaoh Horemheb. I studied the long expanse of polished tiles and the vaulted roof of gold. The limestone columns depicted scenes of previous kings in their triumphs. Ebony chairs with ivory inlay were clustered around Senet boards throughout the chamber. I imagined that courtiers usually filled those seats, laughing together and ready to entertain Pharaoh whenever he grew bored.

Henuttawy and Woserit watched our entrance, and as we reached the thrones, the heated whispers between the viziers increased. Courtiers gathered like thick clusters of grapes around the dais while we held out our arms in obeisance and bowed. When I arose, Ramesses met my gaze.

“Princess Nefertari.” Pharaoh Seti smiled. “You have returned to Malkata to be married to Ramesses. But tell me.” He leaned forward. “Is this what you wish?”

I closed my eyes briefly and nodded. “More than anything,” I whispered.

“And you are certain of this? My son can be very persuasive. If you’re afraid to hurt his feelings, he’ll recover.”

“There is nothing for him to recover from except my excessive love,” I said.

“Very pretty.” Henuttawy clapped. “If the Passion Plays of Osiris are missing an actress we will know who to send them.”

“It’s not an act,” I said simply, and something in my voice prompted Pharaoh Seti to sit back. He regarded me for a moment, and I hoped he could see the earnestness in my stare.

“Let them be wed,” Seti pronounced with a wave, and I exhaled.

Ramesses stepped down from the dais and took my hand firmly. It was real. We were going to be married.

“Think of what the people will say,” Henuttawy shrieked. “Brother, think of what you are doing!”

“There will not be a coronation. Yet,” he conceded. “Simply a marriage.”

From behind the table, Woserit asked lightly, “What is it that you have against this princess, Henuttawy?”

Henuttawy replied with terrifying sweetness. “I suppose it’s that she’s so ambitious and clever,” she said. “Clever Nefertari, who began life as a worm and emerged as a butterfly.”

“Enough!” Pharaoh Seti warned. He looked to the High Priest. “I wish to see them joined in marriage before my court leaves for Avaris. Arrange a royal wedding.”

The hyena stepped forward, and his bald head reflected the late afternoon light. “Within two days?” he questioned. “Perhaps it would be better if His Highness waited until the auspicious month of Pharmuthi.”

When Iset will give birth, I thought.

“We will marry tomorrow,” Ramesses swore. “If it’s not possible to ready the Temple of Amun, I’m sure that Hathor or Isis can be readied.”

Rahotep’s face lost some of its color. “Amun’s temple can be ready, Your Highness.”

Henuttawy and the other viziers made to speak, but Pharaoh Seti stood and pounded his crook on the dais. “The proclamation will read as such: Tomorrow, there shall be a wedding between Pharaoh Ramesses and Princess Nefertari.”

For the first time, Queen Tuya spoke. “I don’t understand why it has to be so soon.”

“Because if not tomorrow, then when?” Seti asked. “How do you know when the gods will bring us back to Thebes? Or do you propose to miss our son’s Marriage Feast?”

Tuya’s hand tightened around her iwiw’s leash. “I am sure he will have many Feasts of Marriage we will miss.”

“Perhaps. But none to a princess of Egypt.”

Queen Tuya settled unhappily back into her throne, and when her hand rested lightly on Adjo’s head, the iwiw wagged his tail contentedly.

“So will she greet the people?” Henuttawy demanded. “If she’s going to be queen, she should walk through Thebes and meet her subjects.”

Woserit glanced at her brother. “Nefertari doesn’t need to go among them yet.”

“Why not?” Pharaoh Seti frowned. “Let them become accustomed to seeing her with Ramesses.”

I was too full of my own joy to see then what Henuttawy had done.

Court business being concluded, we left the chamber and Ramesses took me in his arms. “By tomorrow, you will be at my side in the Audience Chamber, and there’s no one who will dare to say a word against you.”

And of course, because I was naïve and hopeful, I allowed myself to believe him—even though I knew what the courtiers thought. They believed I had my aunt’s blood and that I’d be the new Heretic Queen. Merit came to my side and her face was as bright as an oil lamp.

“Congratulations, Your Highness. It is a union sure to be blessed by Amun.”

“Thank you, Nurse. I was hoping Nefertari would join me in the Arena. Do you think that will be possible?”

“With a dozen things to do and arrange before tomorrow?” Merit cried.

Ramesses laughed, and I knew he hadn’t really expected her to say yes.

“There is the matter of a dress to arrange,” she said, “and a wig and malachite paint . . .”

“I believe she’s saying no,” I told Ramesses, and he put his arms around my waist.

“Then may I come to you tonight?” he asked quietly.

Courtiers were watching us and I forced myself not to look back at them. They will always be watching us, I reminded myself. I will never enjoy a private kiss. There will always be eyes upon me, and I must simply get used to it. That was the price for loving a Pharaoh. “Of course you can come to me.”

A hundred pairs of eyes followed my walk through the halls with Woserit and Merit, and one of them was Henuttawy’s. I smiled widely. If I had been a commoner about to marry some farmer’s son, the women of my house would never have allowed my husband to climb into my bed before he had carried me over the threshold of his home. But Ramesses was Pharaoh. He could do as he pleased. By coming to my room before our wedding, he was telling the court that a single night couldn’t be wasted in trying to create an heir with me.

CHAPTER TEN

A PHARAOH’S MARRIAGE BEGINS ON THE WATER

IN THE GREAT Hall that evening, the whole court appeared to see the worm that had turned into a butterfly. Everyone was eager to see the niece of the Heretic Queen, whom Ramesses was going to take to wife.

At the long, polished table on the dais, a servant led me to my seat between Ramesses and Woserit, while Iset had been placed at the side of Queen Tuya. I felt sorry for Iset, who didn’t have the sense to laugh and pretend to be joyful. Though she should have felt triumphant in knowing that she was carrying Ramesses’s first child, her face was as sour as a tamarind. I wondered if it was because he had not turned out to be the husband she’d imagined. I knew she enjoyed the exquisite jewels and fur-lined cloaks, but what did she and Ramesses have in common? But if Iset appeared dark and glowering, then across from her, Henuttawy was at her best. The viziers were laughing at her jokes, and when she saw me, she announced brightly to the table, “The butterfly emerges.”

But Ramesses heard the edge in her voice. “She is like a butterfly,” he said. “Hidden away for a year, and emerging more beautiful and talented than ever.”

“When she told me she was not going to become a priestess of Hathor, I was worried she would not find a place in Thebes.” Woserit turned to her sister. “But it seems that she has found a place on the highest step of all.”

Henuttawy’s smile vanished, and Rahotep’s face looked immensely pained.

“Come,” Woserit said cheerfully, “let us raise our cups.” She lifted her wine and the rest of the table did the same. “To the princess Nefertari,” she said.

“To the princess,” Vizier Anemro repeated, though I wondered which princess he meant.

“And let us all hope that the curse of the Heretic King does not run in her veins.”

Henuttawy had gone too far. Pharaoh Seti clenched his cup in his hand. “Nefertari is no more of a heretic than you are. I trust that she will make good decisions in the Audience Chamber. She may not be popular yet, but she’s certainly no fool.”

Everyone at the table knew who he meant, but no one dared to look in Iset’s direction.

Queen Tuya shook her head, and Ramesses added indignantly, “She’s also my wife.” But Pharaoh Seti remained silent, and soon steaming bowls of roasted duck were brought from the kitchens.

Ramesses turned to me. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

I smiled the way Woserit had taught me to smile in the face of disappointment. “I believe the court is waiting for your blessing.”

Ramesses looked to his father, who nodded, then stood from his throne while the room fell silent. “We dedicate this feast to Pharaoh Seti the Great, beloved of Amun and Reconquerer of a dozen lands.” A loud cheer went up in the hall and Ramesses proclaimed, “May the gods watch over your journey to Avaris, and may they watch over the joyous union tomorrow that shall precede it.”

The court’s cheers reverberated beneath the columns, because it would have been foolish to do otherwise. But I wondered how many of them were like the High Priest of Amun, who had fathers and grandfathers murdered by Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

As the cheers still echoed, Seti leaned over and whispered to me, “I am allowing you to put yourself in danger at this court. But there is no one else in the kingdom of Egypt I would rather see on the throne with my son than you. . . . Did you know that if Pili was alive, this would have been the year of her marriage as well? You would have been like two sisters in your bridal boats.” He patted my hand, and I saw in that moment why his care for me had always been so tender.

I took my free hand and placed it over Pharaoh’s. “Thank you,” I told him. “I will try never to disappoint you.”

He smiled, but not at me. His look was far away, and only later would I understand how a son’s marriage can be both happy and sad. Of course, a father is hopeful for all of the events in the future, but he is also reminded of the family members who are not there to celebrate with him. And when a son begins producing heirs, spinning Khnum’s potter wheel of creation faster and faster, he must begin to imagine his own potter’s wheel slowing down. But I was too young to understand this then.

IN THE tiled hall outside my chamber, Asha was waiting. His arms were folded over his chest, and in the light of the torches, I searched his face to see if he was angry. As soon as he saw us, he straightened, and Woserit was discreet enough to join Merit inside my room.

“Asha,” I said cautiously. “I’m sorry I missed you in the Great Hall tonight.”

“You were surrounded by courtiers. I’ll have to grow used to that now.” I felt as though a heavy stone had been lifted from my chest, and when he stepped forward to embrace me, I did the same. “I’m very happy for you,” he said.

“But you told me—”

He nodded. “That was before I knew how much Ramesses needed you.”

I flinched at the word. Did he need me, or love me?

“But I still think you’ve chosen a dangerous road. Tomorrow, Pharaoh wants you to meet the people. He wants Ramesses to see their reaction before he makes a choice about Chief Wife. There are many other women in the harem.”

“If you have come here to insult me—”

Asha grabbed my arm. “Nefertari, I’m only trying to tell you the truth. Pharaoh Seti and Ramesses live their lives sheltered inside this palace. I see the people on the streets. I hear what they say, and you need to be careful tomorrow.”

I saw the concern in his eyes and nodded. “We will take guards,” I assured him.

“Make sure there are enough. At least two dozen, no matter what Ramesses says.”

“Do you think they’ll be that angry?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. There are many people who still remember . . .” But he didn’t finish. “This will be the fourth year that the Nile has been low, and there’s talk that in the poorer sections of Thebes people are already starving. If the river doesn’t flood its banks by the end of this month, famine will spread, and the people will want someone to blame.”

I felt the color drain from my face. “Not me?”

“Just be prepared.”

“I will,” I promised. We parted and I entered my chamber. In the light of the brazier, Woserit’s face appeared sharp and beautiful.

“How is Asha?”

“Concerned about what might happen tomorrow,” I told her.

“Then he’s a good friend to have. I will not always be in the palace to help you, Nefertari, so you must learn to recognize who can be trusted and who cannot. Once you marry Ramesses, there is no one in Malkata who will tell you the truth.”

“Merit,” I protested.

“Yes, Merit. She will be able to hear the whispers in the halls of the palace, but who will tell you about the conspiracies closer to your throne? Those conspiracies inside the Audience Chamber?”

I thought of Seti’s words about the dangerous road I had chosen. “On the evenings that Ramesses is with Iset,” she suggested, “meet Paser in his chamber. You may trust him to tell you what is truly happening in Thebes. And whenever I can, I will be there as well.” The flames of the brazier illuminated the paintings in her old room, and as I stood there in her rich cloak, I wondered again why Woserit was doing so much for me. She reached into her linen belt and produced a small statue of Hathor. “For tonight. Place it under your pillow and she will bring you fertility.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. I brushed the goddess’s face with my thumb. She had been carved from ebony and wore the tall modius headdress that Woserit did, with its small horns and sun disc.

“All will be well tomorrow,” she promised. “Be strong of heart.” Woserit embraced me, and as the door clicked shut behind her, Merit burst from her chamber next to mine.

“Have you decided which oil you want for your hair?”

I shook my head.

“Then what cream shall we use?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, hurry, my lady! Pharaoh is coming!”

Inside the robing room, I slipped from my sheath, and Merit filled the basin with hot water. “What’s the matter, my lady? Tomorrow you marry and it will be done!” She tested the surface with her hand, and beckoned me in.

“Asha just told me I should be prepared for anything,” I confided. Rainbows swirled over the surface of the water as light from the lamps filtered onto my bath. As I stepped into the tub, I could smell the lotus oil that Merit had added to keep my skin smooth.

“And what is anything?” Merit scrubbed at my hair.

“This is the fourth year the Nile has been low . . . what if they blame me?”

“Why would you say such a thing? You are a princess of Egypt, not some all-powerful goddess. I’m sure the people know the difference.”

When my bath was finished, Merit dried my legs and handed me a fresh sheath. I sat before the mirror, studying my reflection while she combed my hair. I opened the lowest drawer of my chest and took out the cream Merit had gone to the farthest market in Thebes to purchase. I rubbed it over my arms, then down my legs.

There was a knock at the door. Merit’s chin wobbled furiously. “Hurry!”

I rushed to prop myself up against the pillows, allowing my hair to spill onto the white linen, and when Merit opened the door I held my breath just in case it was a dream.

But she bowed very low. “Your Highness.”

“Nurse Merit,” Ramesses said in greeting.

“The princess Nefertari is waiting for you.” She gestured toward me on the bed, and when she reached the door to her chamber, said loudly. “Good night, my lady.”

When the door swung shut, Ramesses looked at me, and both of us laughed. “She’ll be waiting on the other side of the door all night,” I whispered.

“As a good nurse should,” he teased. “In case you should scream and want to run away.” He approached the bed, and I slipped the nemes crown from his brow, running my fingers through his hair. “As you did once before,” Ramesses said quietly.

The pain in his eyes wrenched at my heart. “But now I am here,” I promised, and let the sheath I was wearing fall from one of my shoulders. “Here with you for eternity.”

“And this time I won’t let you run away.”

WHEN RAMESSES and I emerged from his chamber the next morning, we walked together to the lakeside, and the cheers from the courtiers who were waiting for our arrival must have reached the ears of the gods themselves. Ramesses took my hand in his, and the viziers of Seti’s court surrounded us, talking and smiling as though they had supported my marriage all along. Although Iset had claimed an indisposition and remained inside Malkata, the rest of the court was in attendance. Even Queen Tuya spared a smile for me. Her iwiw bared his fangs, and a low growl rumbled in his skinny throat.

“Hello, Adjo,” I said cheerfully.

I smiled at the thought that I might never have to see him again. Tonight, there would be a feast of both celebration and farewell, and tomorrow Pharaoh Seti would sail with his half of the royal court to the palace in Avaris. Ramesses had been fully trained in the Audience Chamber; now he would rule Upper Egypt on his own. His father, in his advancing age, would reign in the capital of Lower Egypt, where less would be required of him. This move had been planned for many years, yet even though Ramesses had always known it was coming, I saw his lips turn down in sorrow when he gazed across the lake. The eastern horizon was obscured by his father’s towering ships. They floated like pregnant herons on the water, their decks filled with some of the most valuable treasures in Thebes: ebony statues and granite tables, rare sedan chairs with wide lion’s-paw feet. While some kings were content to remain in the same city as their coregents, governing from the very same Audience Chamber, Pharaoh Seti now wanted a simpler life. Once he reached Avaris, there would not be so many petitioners, and in his summer palace closer to the sea, there would never be the kind of heat that sucked the life from the air as it did nearly every month in Thebes.

The court had assembled itself on the quay, while a small golden vessel was rowed to the shore. It would fit only three people: myself, Merit, and a ferryman. Once Pharaoh Seti gave his permission, we would be rowed the short distance to the Temple of Karnak. Behind us, Ramesses would sail in his own golden bark, accompanied by his parents and rowed by a single soldier from Pharaoh’s army: Asha. Behind them the court would follow in a flotilla of brightly painted boats. When I asked Merit once why a Pharaoh’s marriage begins on the water instead of the land, she told me that it was because Egypt had been born from the Watery Waste of Nun, and if such a fertile land could be birthed from the water, a fertile marriage would as well.

I stood on the quayside, separated from Ramesses by hundreds of courtiers in their whitest linens and finest gold, waiting for Pharaoh Seti to give his blessing. When the piercing sounds of several trumpets blared, Pharaoh Seti said something I couldn’t hear. But he must have given his blessing to set sail, for Merit took my arm and led me to the boat, helping me inside and arranging my cloak so that it fanned out around my legs like a lotus blossom. She seated herself next to me, as straight and serious as Paser. When I opened my mouth to speak, she shook her head firmly. I was meant to be a silent bride, timorously approaching my fate, even though inside my heart was soaring. I knew that I shouldn’t turn around. I didn’t want to appear like a goose craning its neck to see what was happening in every direction, so I looked ahead as our boat left the lake in front of the palace, and entered the main current of the River Nile itself. Thousands of people stood on the banks, crushed together to see the spectacle of the court sailing beneath Pharaoh’s golden pennants. They had chanted eagerly for Iset when she had been married, yet now there was silence.

I glanced at Merit, and she returned my uneasy gaze. It was as if someone had taken a heavy sheet of linen and draped it across the people on the shore. Only the muffled sound of children crying reached us on the river, and Merit turned her sharp eyes on the ferryman.

“What is the talk in Thebes?” she demanded.

“In Thebes?” he repeated.

“Yes! What are they saying about her? She already knows she’s the Heretic’s niece. There’s nothing you can say that will shock her. Just tell us the truth so we can be prepared.”

The man looked at me, and his face was sorrowful. “Since Pharaoh Ramesses announced his intention to marry the princess yesterday, my lady, there is talk that she may be the reason for the famine all of these years.” The ferryman’s voice shook. “They think she has brought bad luck to the city. Her akhu angered the gods so deeply that once Pharaoh makes her his wife, they will turn away from Egypt completely. I’m sorry, Princess.”

I held on to the sides of the boat so that my sudden dizziness would not overwhelm me, and I looked ahead at the unwelcoming faces of the people on the riverbank. Their silence was terrifying. What were they waiting for? That Ramesses might change his mind?

When we reached the quay in front of the temple, a young priest reached down to help me up. A crowd of priestesses circled around us, chanting and shaking their long bronze sistrums. They led us through the gates of Karnak, and we followed their loud jangling to the inner sanctum, where I ascended the dais and waited for Ramesses. When he arrived, his eyes met mine. Then all I could see was the High Priest in front of me. He took a vessel of oil from the altar, and as he raised it above my head he intoned, “In the name of Amun, Princess Nefertari, daughter of Queen Mutnodjmet and General Nakhtmin, is bound together with Pharaoh Ramesses.”

I stole a glance at the throngs of courtiers who filled the inner sanctum. The High Priest approached Ramesses. “In the name of Amun, Pharaoh Ramesses, son of Pharaoh Seti and Queen Tuya, is bound together with Princess Nefertari.”

Ramesses held his breath as the oil poured over his nemes crown. There was one symbolic gesture left to make. Rahotep produced a golden ring from his robes. Ramesses slipped the band on to my fourth finger, since a vein travels from this finger to the heart. Now, I wore two rings. One bore the insignia of my family, the other bore Ramesses’s name in hieroglyphics. Ramesses’s ring was gold with an ebony stone, and by placing it on my finger, he had “captured” my heart. Like a shen, a design with no beginning and no end, we were joined for eternity. The High Priest announced, “United and blessed before Amun.”

Ramesses held my hand above the cheering courtiers of the inner sanctum, who would have forced themselves to look happy even if he’d been marrying his mother’s iwiw. “Are you ready?” he asked. We would walk from the temple through the city, then sail from the quay in front of the marketplace. Only newly crowned royalty made such a walk. When I nodded, he took my hand firmly in his and pressed forward.

The noise of the procession grew deafening. The priestesses of Isis were playing their tambourines and Hathor’s women were singing as we passed through the magnificent halls of Karnak into the city. Thousands of people filled the streets, but I saw with a rising sense of alarm that only a handful of them waved palm branches or cheered. We passed through the marketplace, and the noise of our procession made an awkward contrast to the continuing silence of the people. Ramesses raised his hand in mine and shouted jubilantly, “Princess Nefertari!”

Behind us, the court echoed his cry, but in the streets the old women watched me with their arms across their breasts. At the end of the market an old woman shouted, “Another Heretic Queen!” and then the people of the marketplace began to chant.

“HER-E-TIC. HER-E-TIC.”

“Stop them!” Ramesses shouted angrily. His guards formed a tighter circle around us, but the people’s chanting was quickly building to a feverish pitch. Even children, who didn’t know what they were shouting, squinted into my face and yelled, “Another Heretic Queen!”

The songs of the priestesses grew louder to drown out the people’s chants, but soon it became impossible. Ramesses might have ordered violence on the surging mob. But there were old women and children, so instead he called, “Get back to the boats!”

ONCE WE had cast off from the quay, Ramesses took me in his arms, soothing me while I shook. The faces of the women were terrible to see. Many of the young girls were weeping into their hands. Henuttawy asked, “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

Queen Tuya used a linen to dab her eyes, and a sob escaped from her lips.

I looked up into Ramesses’s face, and I was the one who spoke the embarrassing truth first. “You won’t be able to make me queen.”

“They’ll change their minds,” he vowed. “Once they know you . . .” But he looked at his father, and entire conversations were conveyed in that glance.

“Let us proceed to the feast,” Woserit announced. “This is still a celebration.” But her good cheer rang hollow, and the courtiers who sailed with us did so in silence.

In the Great Hall, the cheerful laughter of the servants and the comforting crackle of the fires contrasted with the mood of the court. The rich smell of wine and roasted duck filled the chamber, and musicians began to play as we appeared. Pharaoh Seti ascended the dais as if nothing had happened, and I took my place next to Ramesses at the table. Because the court knew its purpose, there was suddenly merrymaking and dance. Even the young girls had dried their eyes and repainted their cheeks, now that the scare was over.

Pharaoh Seti took my hand. “There is nothing you could have done differently,” he said. “They don’t know that you are as much my daughter as Ramesses is my son.”

I lowered my head in shame. It was Seti’s final day of rule in the palace, and instead of leaving Thebes in triumph, he would depart wondering if the next time he returned it might be to rebellion. Then I noticed that while others were taking their seats, our table on the dais remained empty. “Where are Woserit and Henuttawy?” I asked.

Ramesses followed my gaze. “And where are the viziers?” He stood from his throne and appealed to his father. “They are meeting without us!”

Pharaoh Seti shook his head. “Tomorrow, this will become your city,” he challenged. “What will you do?”

Ramesses pulled me with him, and we rushed down the dais, crossing the Great Hall as courtiers scrambled to move out of our way. Ramesses flung open the doors to the Audience Chamber. Inside, the conversation immediately stopped. At the base of the dais, Asha was standing with his father. The viziers and generals of Egypt were present, and so were Woserit and Henuttawy. Woserit passed me a warning look.

“What is this?” Ramesses demanded.

“Your Highness,” Rahotep began, “I think you know why we are meeting here.”

“Behind my back?” Ramesses challenged, and glared at Asha.

“The people,” Henuttawy spoke sharply, “are against Nefertari, as I warned you—”

“And who rules this kingdom?” Ramesses asked angrily. “The people, or me?”

“Did the people rise against Iset when you married her?” Henuttawy spoke swiftly. “Did they shout Heretic Queen in the streets?”

“Iset wasn’t taken through the city,” Woserit rejoined. “In fact, I believe that idea was yours.”

Henuttawy turned on her sister, and it was like watching a lioness attack one of its own pride. “Are you saying I planned this?”

“I don’t know,” Woserit said calmly. “How many temple offerings would you need to sell in order to buy the people?”

Paser stepped forward. “Give the people time. They haven’t seen the princess in the Audience Chamber. She is wise and just.”

Henuttawy smiled sweetly, and I knew that something vicious was coming. “Vizier Paser is willing to say and do whatever pleases my sister,” she said bitterly. “Listen to reason!”

I put my hand on Ramesses’s arm. “It’s true.” Everyone turned in shock, and Woserit watched me with a strange expression. But I thought of the hatred I had seen in the streets. Even if Henuttawy had paid the women to chant, they had been angry enough to risk their lives by raising their voices against a Pharaoh. “Remember what happened under Akhenaten,” I said.

“Wait to choose a queen,” Rahotep suggested. “There is no harm in waiting.”

“For how long?” Ramesses demanded.

Asha’s father, General Anhuri, had been listening, and now he stepped forward. “If Pharaoh doesn’t choose a Chief Wife, how will the thrones be arranged on the dais? Who will the petitioners see?”

“There can be two thrones flanking Pharaoh,” Rahotep said. The other viziers immediately raised their voices in displeasure.

“Two thrones on each side of Pharaoh?” Woserit exclaimed. “And they will both wear the diadem of a princess? Neither will be queen?”

“The people were outraged to see me at Ramesses’s side,” I said, feeling pained. I couldn’t meet Woserit’s gaze.

“Give your decision time,” Henuttawy suggested, taking the advantage. “Place three thrones on the dais. In the Audience Chamber, let the petitioners be divided between the two princesses.”

“Then who will be Pharaoh’s heirs?” Woserit asked. “The children of Iset or Nefertari?”

“Nefertari, of course.” Ramesses’s voice was adamant.

“If the people accept her,” Henuttawy said.

Ramesses looked to me. I made no motion to protest, and he said quietly, “We will wait. But this court knows who will make the better queen for Egypt.”

“YOU DID what was right,” Merit said quietly.

I watched while the servants filled my bath with hot water. When the women left, I crouched in the tub, putting my arms around my knees. “You should have seen their faces,” I whispered.

“I did, my lady. It was not so terrible as you think.”

“But from the front of the procession,” I told her, and my eyes welled with tears, “their faces were so full of hate.”

There was a brief knock on the door. It was the quiet tap of a servant, and I answered carelessly, “Come in.” Neither of us turned. “You know as well as I do that the only reason I am in Paser’s favor is because of Woserit.”

“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.”

Merit and I both spun, and Woserit emerged from the darkness of the doorway. “Even if Paser wasn’t in love with me, I don’t believe he’d want to see a fool like Iset in the Audience Chamber.” Woserit laughed at the shock apparent on Merit’s face. “It was never a secret.”

I stood from my bath, wrapping myself in a long linen robe before joining Woserit at the brazier.

“Nefertari asked why I was willing to help her become Chief Wife.” Woserit seated herself on the largest chair. “I told her that I was doing it for myself as much as for her. Not only do I fear a city where Henuttawy is as wealthy as she wishes to be, I am also afraid of what my sister might do out of jealousy.”

“But what can she have to be jealous of?” Merit asked.

“That I was the first to be asked for in marriage.”

I took a seat and named the man to whom she was referring. “Vizier Paser?”

Woserit nodded. “Paser asked my father if we could marry. We were seventeen and had studied together in the edduba. He was being groomed for the job of vizier. But when Henuttawy heard he wanted to marry me, she flew into a rage. There were a hundred men at her door, but she couldn’t stand the thought that there was one at mine. She went to our father and begged him not to shame her by letting me marry before she did. He asked Henuttawy if there was someone she wanted to marry. She said there was. Paser.”

“She could have asked for anyone!” I cried. “Even the prince of a foreign nation.”

“Egypt never gives away her princesses,” Merit corrected me.

“Then another vizier’s son,” I said. “Or a wealthy merchant. Or a prince willing to live in Egypt.”

“It’s true. My sister’s beauty was as tempting then as it is now. When Henuttawy said she wanted Paser, my father summoned him to the Audience Chamber to see which sister he would choose.”

“And Paser chose you.”

“Yes. And when he told Pharaoh this, Henuttawy vowed that she would never take a husband.”

“So that you could never marry.”

Merit clucked her tongue. “How cruel.”

“If Iset becomes Chief Wife with Henuttawy whispering in her ear, then there is little hope for Paser and me. But now you are here, and the risk is worth taking . . .”

I flinched at the callousness of her statement. I was a Senet piece that she had polished and moved across the board for her own benefit.

Woserit saw the betrayal on my face. “If I did not like you, I would never suggest you to Ramesses as Chief Wife, whatever the reward for myself. There are things more important than whether or not I marry. Stability in the kingdom and a wise queen for the throne. You are getting what you want, and perhaps someday I will get what I want. And if we can help each other to that end—”

“But your father is gone,” I protested. “Can’t you marry now?”

“And leave the Temple of Hathor?” Woserit asked. “For what? If Iset becomes queen and I marry Paser, what will happen to him once my brother is gone?”

“Henuttawy and Iset will drive him from court, and he’ll lose everything.”

Woserit nodded.

“But why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

“Because there are enough burdens resting on your shoulders,” she said. “You don’t need the weight of my destiny on you as well. Your first responsibility is to Ramesses, and then the people.”

I glanced at Merit, who knew what I was going to ask. “Do you think those people will rebel because of me?”

Woserit was honest. “Anything might happen,” she replied. “Especially when the Nile runs low. What does Ramesses say?”

“He is horrified,” I whispered.

“Good. And you will never mention becoming Chief Wife. He has made his decision to wait. Let Iset complain and drive him away. You will be silent and long-suffering and he will love you even more.”

“And his decision?” Merit asked.

“It all depends on how soon Nefertari can change the people’s minds—by being wise and judicious in the Audience Chamber. Tomorrow, Pharaoh Seti will be gone, and there will only be Pharaoh Ramesses to rule in Thebes. She must build her reputation as the clever princess.”

“I am a danger to Ramesses’s crown,” I said. “Did I do what was right in the Audience Chamber today?”

Woserit hesitated. “You stopped him when his rashness might have made you queen tonight. You placed the kingdom of Egypt and Ramesses’s welfare before your own.” She smiled sadly. “You love him.”

I nodded. I did, and in the end, I knew such love might prove costly.

LATER THAT night, when Ramesses came into my chamber, Merit disappeared into her own room. There was nothing that Ramesses needed to say. He embraced me, stroking my hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again and again. “I’m sorry for what happened.”

“It’s fine,” I told him, but we both knew it wasn’t. On a day that Egypt should have been celebrating, the people couldn’t have been angrier. They had risen up against Pharaoh’s guards, something that had not happened since the reign of Akhenaten.

“Tomorrow,” Ramesses promised, “things will be different. You don’t belong in the streets of Thebes. You belong with me, in the Audience Chamber.” He guided me to the edge of my bed and drew a cloth-wrapped object from inside his cloak. “For you,” he said softly.

The linen wrapping had been painted with images of Seshat, the goddess of learning. When I unveiled the gift within, I thought my heart would stop in my chest. I held the heavy scroll up to the oil lamps, slowly unrolling the papyrus, as light illuminated the painted text. “Ramesses, where did you find this?” I asked. It was a history of every major kingdom in the world, from Hatti to Cyprus, written first in hieroglyphics and then in the language of each country. Not even Paser owned such a book.

“The scribes have been compiling it for you for more than a year.”

“A year? But I was in the Temple of Hathor—”

I stopped, realizing what he meant. Every misery of the afternoon disappeared. It didn’t matter that the people hated me. We fell onto the bed and thought only of each other that night.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER

WHAT SHOULD HAVE been Pharaoh’s triumphant departure from Thebes became instead a quiet lakeside farewell. I wondered if the court members were as angry with Seti as they were with me. He had allowed my marriage to Ramesses to proceed, and he knew that if there was plague, or further drought in Thebes, the blame would likely fall on me. Tuya held back tears while she embraced her only son, and Ramesses’s face was solemn. No one knew what might happen once Seti’s ships left, and over the crying of the gulls I heard him remind Ramesses, “Half of my army stays with you. If there is any talk of rebellion—”

“There won’t be rebellion.”

But Seti wasn’t placated. “Have your men watch over the city. Four viziers are staying behind. Send one of them to walk the streets and listen to what the people are saying. This is your capital now.” Behind him, the white palace of Malkata gleamed like a pearl against the darkening sky. “Its glory will reflect your reign. You should begin rebuilding the Temple of Luxor, and let the people see that there is nothing more important to you than honoring the gods.”

Seti beckoned to me with a jeweled finger. “Little Nefertari.” I embraced him as tightly as I could. “I want you to be careful on the eastern bank,” he cautioned. “Be patient with the people.”

“I will,” I promised.

Then Seti took my arm and led me aside. I felt certain that he was going to say something about what had happened in the streets the day before. But instead, he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “I also want you to take care of my son. Ramesses is rash, and he needs a head with reason—”

I flushed. “I think you should be talking to Asha . . .”

“Asha will keep my son from trouble on the battlefield. It’s trouble at court I’m worried about. Not everyone lives their life according to the rules of Ma’at, and I suspect that behind those pretty green eyes you have a good understanding of this.”

Seti stepped back, and as I reached forward to embrace Tuya farewell, Adjo strained at his leash and snapped angrily at the air.

“That’s enough!” Tuya reprimanded. She gave me a long look from beneath her wide Nubian wig. “He never barks at anyone else.”

The trumpets blared, and the clanging of sistrums filled the air. Seti and Tuya went on board and soon waved from the prow of their ship. As Ramesses and I waved back, Iset appeared beside us and asked, “What does it feel like to be the Pharaoh of all of Thebes?”

Ramesses looked at her as if to ask how she could wonder such a thing. “Lonely,” he replied.

An hour remained until the Audience Chamber, so as the court returned to the palace, Ramesses took my hand and it became clear to everyone where he intended to be. After all, we had only been married for a day.

By the time Merit knocked on our door and told us that the petitioners had arrived, Ramesses was not feeling so lonely. I took his arm, and we walked together into the Audience Chamber where the herald grandly announced our presence. Inside, the entire court had gathered. Courtiers rolled knucklebones next to the warmth of the braziers, and musicians huddled around the dais, performing on their double flutes and lyres. Women laughed at the back of the room, and a few old noblemen in warm furs were playing Senet. It looked more like a feast in the Great Hall than a place for the affairs of state. I was shocked. “Is it always so merry?”

Ramesses laughed at my surprise. “Until the business begins.”

“And then where do all of these people go?”

“Oh, most of them will remain. But the musicians will leave, and the courtiers will keep quiet.”

In the middle of the Audience Chamber, the viziers were already seated at their tables. They stood as we passed, and I nodded briefly to Paser. “Your Majesty,” they murmured. “Princess Nefertari.” I caught the bloodied eye of Rahotep and thought, He will send me all of the difficult petitioners. He will try to embarrass me.

On the dais, Iset was already seated at her throne. She was dressed in a wide collar I had never seen on her before, and she had left the front of her heavy cloak open to remind the court of her swelling belly. Five months, with only four to go, I thought. If she births a son, and a Chief Wife has not been announced, her child will be the heir to Egypt’s throne until Ramesses declares otherwise. I knew that everyone was watching me, and I was careful as I ascended the steps. The thrones had been set close enough together so that if Ramesses wanted, he could stretch his arms from the center of the dais and touch both of his wives. In the history of Egypt, there had never been two thrones for dueling princesses.

“Are you ready?” Ramesses asked both of us, and I nodded. He struck his crook on the dais and declared, “Bring forth the petitioners!”

Courtiers sprang into action. The wide doors leading to the courtyard of Malkata were thrown open, and the first petitioners were led inside. Three men approached the viziers’ table, and all of them bore scrolls that they handed to the viziers. I watched while Paser, Rahotep, and Anemro read the petitions, then took out their reed pens and signed a name on the bottom of each scroll. Then all three men approached the dais, and the oldest one held his petition out to me with a bow.

“For the princess Nefertari,” he said. My family’s seal had been drawn on the scroll, but it wasn’t in Paser’s hand. The old man watched me with plain distrust. “I asked to see the princess Iset, but the High Priest sent me to you. I specifically requested—”

“Whatever you specifically requested,” I snapped, “I will be the one who reads your petition.” Woserit had warned that if I allowed a single petitioner to treat me as though I was less important than Iset, he would leave the palace and tell of my timidity to the others still waiting in line. I looked at the open scroll. The man had come to request entry into the Temple of Amun at Karnak. Commoners were not allowed inside, yet he was requesting a special dispensation to see the High Priest. “What is this for?” I asked him quietly.

“My daughter is sick, and the offerings I’ve placed at our shrines have not been enough.” The old man narrowed his eyes. He watched me pick up the reed pen from the small table at my side, then write across the bottom of his scroll. “You may enter the temple,” I said.

The old man stepped back as if to see me better. “I was alive during the time of Amarna,” he said. “I saw the Heretic break the statues of Amun and murder the god’s priests.”

I tightened my fist around his petition. “And what does that have to do with me?”

The man squinted up into my face. “You look like your aunt.”

I suppressed the strong desire to ask him how. Was it my nose, my lips, my high cheekbones, my build? But I knew what he was trying to imply, and instead, I shoved the scroll at him and said darkly, “Go. Go before I change my mind!”

Ramesses glanced at me instead of paying attention to his own petitioner, and his look was one of pity, not admiration. I felt the fire in my stomach spread.

“Next!” Whatever happens, keep smiling, Woserit had warned. A farmer came forward and I smiled beautifully. “Your petition?” He held out his scroll. I read it, then looked down at the man. His kilt had been neatly pressed for the occasion, and he was wearing leather sandals instead of papyrus. “You come from Thebes and wish to claim access to your neighbor’s well? And why should your neighbor grant you this access?”

“Because I have given his cows grazing in my fields! I have no water on my land and I want something in return.”

“So if he will not give you water, stop giving his cows feed.”

“My son would let the beasts starve! And he would do it to spite me!”

I sat back on my throne. “Your neighbor is your son?”

“I gave him a piece of my land when he married, and now he won’t give me access to my well because of his wife!”

“What’s wrong with his wife?”

“She is against me!” he cried. “When I told my son I didn’t want a harlot like her for a daughter, he married her anyway. And now the girl wants to ruin me,” he raged.

The viziers stopped to watch us, but I resisted the temptation to see which had sent the farmer to me. “And what has your daughter-in-law done to make you think that she is unfaithful?”

“She has slept with half of Thebes. She knows it as well as Ma’at! My son’s heirs might be any man’s children, and now she won’t even give me access to my land!”

“Did you deed your son the land?” I asked him.

“I gave him my word.”

“But not the deed?” The man clearly didn’t understand. “It is not enough to give your word,” I explained. “It must be set down in writing.”

The farmer smiled widely. “I have not given anything in writing.”

“Then it is your well to use,” I said firmly, “and she will have to live with it until you’ve signed away your deed or your son finds his own land.”

The old man’s face was a picture of shock. I took up my reed pen and wrote the verdict on the bottom of his papyrus. When I handed him the scroll, he watched me with a guarded look. “You . . . you are not like they say.”

Every day will be like this, I thought. Every morning for the rest of my life I will be treated as the Heretic’s niece. If I don’t change their opinion of me, I will never escape it. My back stiffened as a third petitioner made his way to me. He held out a scroll and I read the contents quickly.

“Give me the whole story,” I said, but the young man shook his head.

“I ask to see Pharaoh, who speak my language, but Vizier Paser send me you,” he stumbled in a heavy accent.

“And is there something wrong with me?” I demanded in Hurrian.

The foreigner stepped back. “You speak Hurrian,” he whispered.

“Well, what have you come for?” I demanded.

For every petitioner who watched me with mistrust, there was another from Babylon, Assyria, or Nubia whose language I could speak. Before the day was finished I could see the interested glances that courtiers made in my direction. I sat straighter on my throne. Even without the signature at the bottom of each scroll, I could guess where each petition had come from. Foreigners from kingdoms whose languages I could speak were sent by Paser. The angriest and most contentious men were from Rahotep.

When a trumpet sounded in the distance, there was a sudden shifting in the room. A table was brought and placed at the base of the dais, and servants began positioning chairs with large arms and padded cushions.

I turned to Ramesses. “What are they preparing for?”

“Obviously, we’re done with petitions,” Iset replied.

Ramesses ignored her and said quietly, “At noon we finish and move on to private business.”

The remaining petitioners were led away, and from a small door on the side of the room a group of women entered the chamber. Although Henuttawy and Woserit were among them, they never looked at each other. Like a pair of horses wearing blinders, I thought. As they seated themselves around the table, Ramesses struck his crook against the dais.

“We are ready to begin the business of the court,” he declared. “Bring in the architect Penre.”

The doors of the Audience Chamber were thrown open and Penre appeared. He was a strapping man, with a lean jaw and a straight nose that would have been too large on any other man’s face. His long kilt was banded with yellow, and his golden pectoral had been a gift from Pharaoh Seti. He looked more like a warrior than an architect to me. “Your Majesties.” He bowed efficiently, then wasted no time unfurling his scroll. “You have requested an undertaking that no other architect has ever accomplished. A courtyard in the Temple of Luxor, with obelisks so tall that the gods themselves can touch them. So I have drawn for Your Highness one vision of what might be built.” He offered up a scroll and produced another two from the bag that hung at his side. These, he gave to myself and Iset.

I unfurled the papyrus and saw that the changes to Luxor that Penre had drawn were magnificent. Dark limestone pillars rose from pink sands, decorated with reliefs and hieroglyphics.

“What is this?” Iset demanded haughtily. She looked at Ramesses. “I thought your first act would be to build on to the palace.”

Ramesses shook his head, and the nemes head cloth brushed against his wide shoulders. “You heard my father request that we rebuild the Temple of Luxor.”

“But we’re living in the palace, not the temple,” Iset whined. “And what about a birthing pavilion for our heir?”

Ramesses sighed. “There is a pavilion already built. The people must see that Pharaoh’s first project is for Amun, not us.”

“We all know what happened when another Pharaoh built only for himself,” Rahotep reminded.

Iset glanced at the bottom of the dais to where Henuttawy was sitting. “Then perhaps we should rebuild the Temple of Isis?”

Ramesses didn’t understand her persistence. “The Temple of Isis was rebuilt by my grandfather!”

“That was many years ago. And since then Hathor’s temple has been made new. Don’t we want the people to know that Pharaoh values Isis as much as Hathor?”

Rahotep nodded, and I sensed an unspoken message in the glance he flashed at Iset.

But her persistence seemed only to baffle Ramesses.

“There is only so much time and gold,” he said shortly. “I would rebuild every temple from here to Memphis if I could, but Amun must come first.”

Iset saw that she had lost. “The Temple of Luxor then,” she said. “And think . . .” She touched Ramesses’s arm with her hand, and the brush of her fingertips seemed sensual. “If the temple can be completed by Thoth, your father will be able to see it when he arrives for the next Feast of Wag.”

This was what Ramesses wanted to hear. He straightened. “Are there changes you think should be made?”

He was asking us both. Iset said swiftly, “I wouldn’t change anything.”

“I would.”

The court turned to me, expectantly. Penre’s design was skillful. In his vision, two towering granite obelisks guarded the gates, piercing the sky in magnificent testaments to Ramesses’s reign. But there was nowhere to remind the people of Ramesses’s deeds. In a hundred years, how would the people know what he had done if there was nowhere to record it? Time might rot the gates of the palace, but Amun’s stone temples would be forever.

“I think there should be a pylon,” I said. “Outside the Temple at Karnak is the Wall of Proclamation.” On this wall, images are carved and erased with every new triumph. “So why not outside of Luxor as well?”

Ramesses looked to Penre. “Could you erect a pylon?”

“Certainly, Your Majesty. And you may use it as a Wall of Proclamation as well.”

Ramesses glanced approvingly at me, but Iset was not to be outdone. “Then what about a hall?” she suggested. “A columned hall in front of the temple?”

“What purpose would that serve?” I asked.

“It doesn’t need a purpose! There should be a hall, shouldn’t there, Ramesses?”

Ramesses looked between us, then down at Penre. “Can a hall be constructed?” he asked wearily.

“Of course. Whatever Your Highness would like.”

THAT EVENING, only a day after our own wedding, Ramesses began his ten nights with Iset. And even though I understood that every king in the history of Egypt had divided his nights equally between his most important wives, I sat in front of my bronze mirror and wondered if he had left me because he loved her more.

“Nonsense,” Merit said with absolute conviction. “You told me yourself what she did in the Audience Chamber. Nothing but whine.”

“But not in bed,” I said, and I imagined her naked in front of Ramesses, rubbing lotus oil over her breasts. “I’ll bet Henuttawy taught her every trick she knows. She’s beautiful, Merit. Everyone sees it.”

The pouch beneath my nurse’s neck grew rigid. “And how long is beauty entertaining for? An hour? Two hours? Stop complaining, or you’ll be just as bad as she is.”

“But if I can’t whine to you, then who can I whine to?”

Merit looked across the chamber to my mother’s wooden naos, with its tall statue of the feline goddess Mut. “Go tell her. Maybe she’ll want to listen.”

I folded my arms across my chest. Even though I felt like sitting in my robing room and complaining to Merit, I had promised Woserit that each evening Ramesses spent away from me, I would meet with Paser. So I made my way through the dimly lit halls around the royal courtyard, and when Paser’s body servant opened his door, I saw my former tutor sitting with Woserit at his brazier. At once, they moved apart, but the scene had been so intimate that I stepped back. Paser’s long hair was loosened from its braid, and in the firelight it gleamed like a raven’s wings. He is beautiful, I realized. I immediately thought the same of Woserit, whose face seemed suddenly younger. She was only twenty-five, but the weight of life at court had etched thin lines between her brows.

“Princess Nefertari,” Paser said, and stood to greet me. His chamber was large, painted with murals and decorated with expensive hangings from Mitanni. Above the bed were carvings from Assyria, sphinxes whose tightly curled beards gave away their origin. And at the entrance to his robing room, the carved wooden faces of Babylonian gods stared back. Has he been to all of these lands? I wondered.

It was cold, and Woserit was wearing her heaviest cloak. “You did well today,” she said while I took an empty seat. “Especially with your entrance. There was no one in that chamber who couldn’t tell that you were a princess, born and bred.”

“And you judged wisely,” Paser added.

“Then I must thank you for sending me all of your simplest petitions.”

Paser raised his brows. “Those foreign petitioners wouldn’t have been simple for Iset. Once the court begins to recognize your talent for languages, perhaps we’ll start sending those cases to her instead.” He smiled at Woserit. “If Rahotep thinks he’s the only one who can play this game, then he’ll discover very quickly that he’s wrong.”

“What were your impressions of the Audience Chamber?” Woserit asked.

I looked between them, wondering what she wanted me to say. “It was filled with interesting people,” I said carefully.

“Did you find it tiresome?” Paser asked.

“With so many petitioners to talk to?” I exclaimed. “No.”

Paser glanced at Woserit. “She’s not another Iset,” he said thankfully, then turned to me. “When the people see how valuable you are, the tide of love for Iset may change.”

“Especially if you are pregnant,” Woserit added.

We both looked down at my tunic, with its amber studded belt emphasizing the smallness of my waist. They both knew the story of my mother. It was a legend now at court, how she had been poisoned by the Heretic King and lost her first child. She had been tall, with wide hips for childbearing, but it was years before Tawaret blessed her womb again with my brother. Yet she’d wanted more children, and I could only imagine how she must have felt when her third had come into the world robbed of its breath. And then, while she had been pregnant with me, there was the fire in the royal courtyard. I shuddered to think of her gentle heart having to bear the news that everyone she had ever loved—her mother and father, her son and husband, both of Nefertiti’s remaining daughters—was gone. Was it any wonder that after my birth, she had no more energy left for living?

“We are not always our mother’s daughters.” Woserit read my mind. “Your aunt gave Pharaoh six healthy girls.”

“Then I should hope to be more like the Heretic Queen?” I whispered.

“In this regard, yes.”

I was silent for a moment, then asked, “And if I never become pregnant?”

“Why would you say such a thing?” Woserit shot Paser a look, and he said warningly, “Nefertari, a Chief Wife’s duty is to give Pharaoh a son.”

“My aunt never gave her husband a son!”

“But she gave him children,” Woserit said sternly. “Six princesses to marry any prince. Ramesses married you for the children you will bring him.”

“He married me for love!”

“And sons,” Paser said. “Do not mistake him.”

I stood from my chair. “And he would rather have a son than a wife?” I demanded.

There was silence in the chamber, and the crackle of the fire in the brazier seemed unnaturally loud. Paser gave a heavy sigh, and Woserit reached out to touch my hand. “No man ever thinks of childbirth as a choice between his children and his wife. Every husband hopes for both.”

Woserit stood from her stool and wrapped me in her arms. “You are not fated to die in childbirth, Nefertari.”

“How do you know?” I pulled back to look at her face.

“Instinct.” She shrugged. “You are meant to have a very long reign. If you give Ramesses a prince. And if he makes you Chief Wife.”

“And he would never make me Chief Wife without a son.”

Woserit shook her head. “He cannot.”

When I returned to my chamber, I went to the balcony and watched the moon drift behind thin wisps of cloud. Even though the wind was cool, there was still no dusty scent of rain in the air. No relief from the drought and the rising hunger. Already, there were reports of men stealing the food offerings from mortuary temples to feed their families. And when a group of these thieves had been brought before their elders, the old men had pardoned them with the belief that it is better to feed the living than the dead. But how long would it be before the gods grew angry, or even the wealthy began to starve and the people rebelled? Then, what would it matter if I was pregnant? Had I seven sons, the people would still blame me.

“You have had a very long day, my lady. You must eat something,” Merit chided. Her squat body was framed by the doorway, and she held up the cooked perch for me to see. I left the balcony and she handed me the bowl, slamming the wooden doors shut behind us. “Standing out in the dark and the wind,” she grumbled. “Don’t you have any sense?”

“It’s beautiful,” I objected. “It’s how Amun must have felt when he emerged from the dark waters at the beginning of time, when everything was possible.”

“Was it possible for him to get sick as well? Because that’s what you’re about to do, my lady. Sit next to that fire.”

I did as I was told, and Merit took a blanket from the wooden chest and draped it over my shoulders. “Did you know there’s already talk about you in the palace?”

I lowered the bowl. “What kind of talk?”

“First, you must eat!” She crossed her arms over her chest, and when I’d taken a bite of perch to satisfy her, she smiled. “The kind you want,” she revealed. “It was about the Audience Chamber. You must have done very well today. There was surprise in the palace that someone so young could command so many languages and deal so justly. I heard it in the baths, and in the kitchens as well.”

I put down the bowl of fish. “But those are just servants.”

Merit passed me a long look. “And what kind of gossip do you think the people trust? Gossip from the mouths of cooks, or courtiers?”

“Do you think it’s possible to change the people’s hearts?”

“It might be easier,” she said quietly, “if the River Nile would overflow its banks.”

I went to my mother’s shrine and looked into the face of the feline goddess. In the firelight, it was impossible to see that she’d once been broken.

“Mut watches over you,” Merit whispered. “But there is nothing she can do if your body is not strong!” She thrust the half-eaten perch at me again. “Eat!”

I looked over her shoulder and gasped with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

Ramesses stood in the door. Merit inhaled so sharply at the sight of him that her pelican’s pouch disappeared. “Your Highness!” She rushed across the room to get him a proper chair. I looked at Ramesses in his short kilt and bedroom sandals and repeated my question. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I would come here tonight.” He added sheepishly, “If you don’t mind? Iset is going to sleep, and I want to be with you.”

I could see that Merit was shocked, but she excused herself at once. I sat across from Ramesses at the brazier.

“Your first Audience Chamber, and all of Thebes is talking about you. You have a great talent, Nefer. And I was thinking that perhaps . . . although, of course, you don’t have to . . . but I was hoping that you would look over the reports from Egypt’s spies.”

I hid my disappointment. Was this why he had come to me? “You don’t trust the viziers’ translations?” I asked quietly.

Ramesses shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Bribery is a strong temptation. How do I know what the viziers are giving me is accurate? Or that there isn’t more to these reports they are missing or concealing? My court is full of spies.”

“Among your viziers? They’d be jeopardizing their ka to lie to a Pharaoh,” I said sternly.

“You can’t see your ka. But you can see a chest full of Babylonian gold. I could work all day and still not finish reading what is sent to me. I must trust my viziers and their scribes. But the most important messages, from Hatti and Kadesh—I’d like you to read them.”

This was an opportunity—a chance to make myself more valuable than Iset. “Of course.” I smiled. “If you’d like, you can bring them every night.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

A HUNGRY PEOPLE

THE ENTIRE COURT knew that it was Iset’s time with Pharaoh, so when Ramesses arrived in the Audience Chamber with me on his arm, there was a stiffening of backs among the viziers. Iset wore a look of deep disgust, but it wasn’t her sneer that caught my attention. It was the fact that there wasn’t a single petitioner in the chamber.

“Where is everyone?” Ramesses questioned. As we reached the viziers’ table, Paser rose.

“I have dismissed the petitioners for the day, Your Highness. There is something more important.”

Ramesses looked to Vizier Anemro, who rose as well and began to wring his hands. “As you know, Your Highness, the Nile hasn’t overflowed its banks in four years. The granaries in Aswan are already empty. And this morning . . .” He glanced uncertainly at Paser. “This morning, the scribes have told us that our Theban stores may only last until Pachons. Six months at the most.”

“So little?” Ramesses exclaimed. “That isn’t possible. My father said there was enough for another dry season!”

Paser shook his head. “That was before Your Highness’s victory feast, and your marriage, and the extra rations of grain that the Theban people received for every celebration.”

I saw the blood drain from Ramesses’s face. “The scribes gave out extra rations of grain every time?”

Anemro swallowed. “It is the custom, Your Highness.”

“And no one thought to stop this custom when the Nile has run low for four years?” he shouted. “Our season of overflow is nearly over. If the river doesn’t overflow by next month, crops will fail. Come summer there will be famine within this city. And no one can predict how long it might continue. Or what its consequences might be!”

The river’s load of black earth gave Egypt not just its name, but its very life as well. I squeezed Ramesses’s hand in mine and asked calmly, “So what can be done?”

Paser spread his palms. “I would like to suggest we use this time to address the situation.”

“Arrange several tables beneath the dais,” Ramesses instructed. “I want everyone in this chamber to offer their suggestions. Nefertari, Iset, you too.”

When the servants arranged the viziers’ tables beneath the dais, Rahotep spoke first. “I suggest that Your Highness visit each of the granaries, to be certain this is true.”

Ramesses turned to Anemro. “Have you verified that the granaries are nearly empty?”

Vizier Anemro nodded swiftly. “Yes, Your Highness. The scribes have not lied. Outside of Thebes, in the city of Nekheb, some of the granaries have lain empty since Thoth, and families are already experiencing famine. Soon, people will be taking to the streets. Murder and theft will increase,” he warned fearfully.

“We need a solution before Inundation is over and Harvest arrives,” Paser said.

“And what do you suggest we do?” Rahotep demanded.

There was silence in the chamber while everyone waited, then Paser said thoughtfully, “The people of Nekheb must be given food. Begin emptying the temple granaries,” he said. “And when those are finished, look to the army’s.”

“The temple’s granaries?” Rahotep exclaimed. “And starve the priests?”

Even Vizier Anemro was shocked. Behind him, courtiers began speaking nervously among themselves.

“In every city the temples have nearly six months of surplus grain,” Paser replied. “And here in Thebes, the army has at least three months.”

“That is a fool’s idea,” Rahotep pronounced. “What happens when the army has nothing to feed itself with?” he demanded. “What will be more dangerous?” he asked. “A hungry rabble, or a hungry army?”

Ramesses looked to Paser. “We need to be sure that when the granaries are emptied this summer, new grain is coming in. This court will need to discover a fail-safe way to be sure that the Nile overflows with enough time to plant and harvest. Or if it doesn’t overflow,” Ramesses said slowly, “that enough water can be taken from the river to irrigate the land.”

“So what will Your Highness have the people do?” Rahotep asked. “Carry water from the river back to their fields?”

“Even if a hundred people worked on every farm,” Anemro objected, “it would be impossible!”

“What if we built more canals going from the river to farmers’ lands?” Ramesses asked.

“There are already hundreds of them,” Rahotep dismissed. “But when the Nile doesn’t flood its banks, they don’t flow. No number of men with water jars will change that.”

“There has to be a way!” Ramesses said. There was a defeated silence in the Audience Chamber, and he looked to me. “Speak. What would you do?”

“Until a method is discovered of bringing water up from the river into the canals, I would do as Paser suggests.”

“And if none is ever discovered?” Rahotep raged. I wondered how Henuttawy could bear to look into his deformed eye at night. “How many Pharaohs have endured such years of drought?”

“And how many have brought the greatest minds in Egypt together in order to search for an answer?” Ramesses gripped his father’s crook in his hand.

“I am sure the farmers have searched for an answer,” Anemro replied feebly. “And with all respect, Your Highness, how do we know that one will be found in two months? Because that’s all that’s left before it’s too late to plant.”

Ramesses looked to Paser. “A solution must be found by Mechyr. Summon General Anhuri and Asha. We will release grain from the temples of Nekheb today.”

“Your Highness!” Rahotep rose in desperation. “Is this wise? If you are doing this because you are afraid that the people will blame the princess Nefertari—”

There was a gasp across the Audience Chamber. Ramesses shouted, “I am not afraid of anything!” The viziers beneath the dais grew still. “We have no other choice but to feed the people. Would you have them starve when there’s perfectly good grain?”

“Why don’t we ask the princess Iset?” Rahotep suggested. “You have asked for the princess Nefertari’s opinion; what does the princess Iset have to say?”

Iset shifted uncomfortably on her throne. Ramesses asked her, “Is there anything you would like to add?”

She glanced at Rahotep. “In three thousand years,” she repeated his argument, “no way has ever been found to bring water up from a low river.”

“That is certainly true.” Ramesses nodded. “But now my viziers and I have two months to find one.”

“And if we don’t?” Anemro asked.

“Then we will all starve!” Ramesses said angrily. “Not just the people, but the priests and generals with them!” At this, the doors of the Audience Chamber swung open, and Asha approached the dais with his father.

Ramesses stood from his throne to address General Anhuri. “We are opening the temple granaries in Nekheb,” he announced. “You and Asha will inform the other generals of this, and notices will be posted on every temple door so the people know what to expect.” He turned, then looked between me and Iset. “The largest granary in Nekheb belongs to the Temple of Amun and will require the greatest supervision. Would either of you like to oversee its grain distribution?” His eyes lingered on mine, and I realized what he was doing.

“Yes,” I said at once.

“Out there in the dirt?” Iset recoiled. “With all of those people?”

“You are right. Stay here where it is calm,” Ramesses said. “I would not want you to risk the child. Asha, take Princess Nefertari to the Temple of Amun. Paser, summon my father’s architect, Penre, and every other architect in Thebes. We will not see petitioners until we find a way of flooding the canals.”

IN THE city of Nekheb, I stood between Asha and his father while a swelling crowd filled the temple courtyard, shouting for food. Behind us, three dozen soldiers with spears and shields at the ready guarded unopened bags of grain.

“Don’t bring the heretic to the Temple of Amun!” one of the women shrieked. Another cried, “She’ll anger the gods and bring us more hunger!”

Asha glanced at me, but I understood what needed to be done, and I observed the crowd’s growing rage without flinching.

“You are brave,” Asha whispered.

“I have no other choice. And until Ramesses finds a solution, I will stand here every day.”

But the crowds looked at me with loathing. I was the reason for their suffering, the reason their crops had failed in the dry earth and the waters of the River Nile had not flooded their fields.

General Anhuri held up a proclamation. “Under the orders of Pharaoh Ramesses and Princess Nefertari, the granaries of Amun are to be opened to you. Every morning, when the sun begins to rise, a cup of grain will be given to every family that lives between here and the Temple of Isis. Children may not receive cups themselves unless they are orphans. Anyone found to have joined the line twice will forfeit their grain for seven days.” There was a rush of questions and exclamations, and over the rising din General Anhuri shouted, “Silence! You will form a line!”

I stood with the soldiers who were passing out grain and, like a common scribe, tallied the number of cups being given. But as the morning wore on, the faces in line grew less and less hostile. By the afternoon, a woman muttered, “Amun bless you, Princess.”

Asha smiled at me.

“She is only one woman,” I reminded him.

“How else does it start? And that’s what Ramesses wants, isn’t it? To change their opinion?” Asha seated himself on a bag of grain. “I wonder how he and Penre are doing.”

I had been thinking the same thing since I had left the palace, but in the Great Hall that evening, Ramesses was not at the table on the dais, and the architect was missing as well.

“So I hear you are counting grain now,” Henuttawy said, as she and Woserit took their places. “From princess to peasant. I must admit, you are capable of the most astonishing transformations, Nefertari.”

“I should think that your nephew knows exactly what he’s doing,” Rahotep remarked, “sending her to the temple to pass out grain. Associating her with food and plenty. I’m sure that’s obvious to everyone here.”

“Really?” Woserit asked. “It seems to me Nefertari has agreed to help in order to be kind.”

Henuttawy looked across the table at Iset. “Then perhaps Iset should be displaying her kindness.”

“I’m not mingling with those dirty crowds at Nekheb!”

Vizier Anemro frowned. “There are plenty of soldiers present to protect you.”

“I don’t care if there’s an entire battalion,” Iset snapped. “Let Nefertari go, and when the people riot, they can tear her to pieces.”

Vizier Anemro stiffened at the rebuke, and Henuttawy lost her smile. “The people like to see kindness in their leaders,” she warned.

“And I am almost six months pregnant!” Iset shot back, heatedly. “What if some hungry peasant attacks me and hurts the child?”

There was a dark gleam in Henuttawy’s eyes. “Ramesses would never forgive himself.”

Iset grew enraged. “You would happily see me dead as long as I convinced Ramesses to rebuild your temple first! It’s not enough that I have to sit in the Audience Chamber day after day so that Ramesses will pick me instead of that dwarf. It’s not enough that I lost Ashai. Now you would have me lose my life as well!”

I glanced at Woserit; Ashai wasn’t an Egyptian name. Perhaps it was Habiru?

“Be quiet,” Henuttawy hissed. She lunged forward, and for a moment I thought she might strike Iset. Then she remembered her place. Next to her, Vizier Anemro’s eyes had grown wide. “I think you should remember where you are,” Henuttawy suggested.

Iset realized what she had done, and I could see her mind race to catch up with her tongue. “Princess Nefertari wouldn’t dare to speak a word against me,” she blurted. “If she did, I would make sure that Ramesses knew she was trying to ruin my good name just to pave her own way to the dais.”

“Vizier Anemro here isn’t deaf,” I said sharply.

“No, just impotent.” Iset smiled. “He knows he’s the least important vizier. If he were to utter the name Ashai, he would disappear from court the moment I give Egypt a son.”

“You have great confidence it will be a son. What if it’s a girl?” Woserit asked.

“Then I will have a son next! What does it matter? Ramesses will never choose Nefertari for Chief Wife. If he was going to, he would already have done it!”

“Then why is he sending her to pass out grain?” Woserit asked archly.

“He asked me as well, but I wasn’t enough of a fool to say yes!” Iset turned her wrath on me. “Do you think the viziers don’t know the real reason that Ramesses goes running off to your chamber? He wants someone who will inspect their work, and busy little Nefertari with her skill at languages is willing to spy over their shoulders.”

“You are supposed to be supporting Ramesses as well,” I hissed.

“I do,” Iset said, placing her hand over her belly.

“And if you truly loved Ramesses, you would never ask him to make you his queen,” Henuttawy added. “You are placing his crown in jeopardy.”

Woserit put her arm through mine. It was unlikely that Ramesses would come that night, and we both stood up. “Vizier Anemro, Paser, I wish you a pleasant evening,” she said, and we descended the stairs. At the bottom of the dais, she whispered, “So he returned to your chamber after lying with Iset. Was it truly to translate messages for him?”

“Yes,” I told her as we crossed the hall. “From the kingdoms of Hatti and Assyria.”

“And he also has you overseeing the grain.” Woserit gave me a look as we reached the doors. “If all Ramesses wanted were your skills at translation he could hire you as a scribe,” she said wryly. “There is only one reason he’s sending a princess to do a soldier’s work at Nakheb.”

It was as though someone had tugged on the ends of a string and loosened the knot in my stomach. “So who is Ashai?”

We passed through the doors, and before Woserit could reply, Ramesses saw us emerge from the Great Hall. “Nefertari!” he called. “Where are you going?”

“She wanted to find you,” Woserit answered, “to tell you about the temple.”

Ramesses searched my face. “It wasn’t chaos, I hope?”

“No. Asha and his father would never have allowed that.”

“But the people?” he asked worriedly.

“They were happy to receive the grain. In fact, some of them even thanked me.”

Ramesses exhaled, and I could see the immense relief in his eyes. “Good.” He placed his hands on my shoulders. “Good,” he repeated, and in the light of the oil lamps, the flaps of his nemes crown framed his face like a lion’s golden mane.

“It was a wise idea to send Nefertari to Nekheb,” Woserit complimented him. “But tell us what happened in the Audience Chamber while she was gone.”

Ramesses glanced warily at the door to the Great Hall, then took my arm and led us away from the prying ears of the palace guards. In the shadow of an alcove, Woserit and I both leaned forward.

“My father’s architect, Penre, thinks he may be able to find a solution.”

Woserit frowned. “In one day?” she asked in disbelief. “After farmers have suffered for so many years—”

“But they haven’t suffered. Not in Assyria. Or Babylon. Or Amarna.”

This time, it was Woserit who glanced back at the guards. “What do you mean they didn’t suffer in Amarna?”

Amarna was the city that my aunt, Queen Nefertiti, had built with her husband. From the time of her murder it had been abandoned. When General Horemheb made himself Pharaoh, he used the building blocks of her city as rubble for his projects all across Thebes. I had heard people say there was nothing now left of what my aunt and the Heretic King Akhenaten had built.

Ramesses lowered his voice. “I mean that at least one farmer in Amarna knew how to take water from the River Nile, even when it didn’t overflow into their canals. Think of it,” he said quickly. “The Heretic King invited emissaries from every kingdom to Amarna. The Hittites may have brought the plague, but perhaps the Assyrians brought knowledge. Paser checked the records, and in the year of the Heretic’s greatest celebration there was drought. The next year, under Pharaoh Nefertiti, the silos belonging to the High Priest of Meryra were bursting with grain. Perhaps the Assyrians saw the dried-out fields and knew they could help.”

“Even if they helped,” Woserit said shrewdly, “there’s nothing left of Amarna. The city is buried beneath the sands, and what hasn’t been buried has been looted or destroyed.”

“Not the tombs.” Ramesses smiled widely. “When Penre was a boy, he helped his father with the tomb of Meryra in the northern cliffs of Amarna. He swears he can remember his father painting an image of a basket attached to a pole, lifting water out of the Nile. It was unlike anything he’d seen before, and his father told him that this was the device that had made Meryra the wealthiest priest in Egypt.”

“Ramesses,” Woserit said in a tone I had heard Merit use with me many times. “There are only two months left before it’s too late to plant. To place all of your hopes in a painting this architect may or may not remember correctly—”

“Of course we will keep searching for a solution. But this is better than what we had, which was nothing!”

“And what does he plan to do?” I asked. “Return to Meryra’s tomb in Amarna?”

“Yes,” Ramesses said. “I have given my permission.”

I covered my mouth, and Woserit stepped back.

“The tomb was never finished!” Ramesses exclaimed. “We’re not disturbing his rest or offending his akhu. The tomb was abandoned when the Heretic Queen returned to Thebes. And if Penre can find this image—”

“If,” Woserit whispered, and Ramesses turned up his palms.

“You’re right. It’s not certain. But there is a chance, and it’s the best we have. Amarna is closer than any city in Assyria.”

“And what about traders? Or Assyrian emissaries?”

“How long before they would arrive in Thebes? Two months? Three? We don’t have that kind of time.” Ramesses turned to me. “No one shall know but us. If Penre returns with an image, we’ll say it’s something that he created. We won’t reveal that it’s from Amarna.”

The heavy double doors of the Great Hall swung open, and Henuttawy appeared.

“He can’t go alone,” I said quickly. “What if something happens in those hills? You need someone else you can trust.”

Ramesses nodded. “You’re right. I’ll send Asha with him.”

NIGHT AFTER night Ramesses came into my chamber, regardless of whether it was his time with Iset, but instead of translating foreign petitions with me, he sat at the brazier and studied strange sketches made on papyrus. Knowing that he still wanted to come to me, even when there was nothing I could translate for him, filled my heart with such intense love I thought it would burst. Iset is wrong, I thought fervently. He’s not waiting for her to have a son. He’s waiting for the people to accept me as his wife before declaring a queen.

But even though I was happy, I grew afraid for Ramesses’s health. In the middle of the night he would crawl from my bed, searching through sketches his architects had submitted, hoping to find something that looked promising. He’d hunch over the low flames of the brazier and wouldn’t move until the sun rose in the sky and his eyes looked as red as the High Priest of Amun’s.

When Penre had been gone for a month, I wrapped my arms around Ramesses’s shoulders and whispered, “Let yourself rest. Without sleep, how can your thoughts be clear?”

“There’s only a month before it will be too late to plant. Why didn’t my father search for a solution? Or his father? Or Pharaoh Horemheb?”

I ran a soothing hand through Ramesses’s hair. “Because the Nile never ran so low.”

“But my father knew!”

“How could he have predicted that the Nile wouldn’t overflow for four years? He was busy planning war in Nubia and Kadesh.”

Ramesses shook his head in frustration. “If there was more time we could have sent emissaries to Assyria. We could have asked the farmers—”

I took his hand. “Come to bed. Stop for tonight.”

Ramesses let himself be led away, but in bed, I knew he wasn’t sleeping. He tossed beneath the linens, and I closed my eyes, willing him to be still. Then I heard three soft knocks outside our chamber. Ramesses looked across at me, and in the warm glow of the brazier, I saw his eyes widen. He rushed to the door, and Penre, the architect who had traveled to Amarna to find and unseal the tomb of Meryra, was standing with sheaves of papyrus in his hand. Behind him, Asha was dressed in a traveling cloak, his long braid arranged in a neat loop at the back of his neck. I scrambled from the bed and put on a robe to cover the thin linen sheath I was wearing.

“Asha! Penre!” Ramesses cried.

Asha stepped inside to embrace Ramesses like a brother. Penre bowed deeply at the waist. I took Asha’s arm and led him to the brazier. “It’s good to have you home,” I said truthfully. “Ramesses hasn’t slept for weeks.”

Asha laughed. “Neither have we,” and I noticed the dark circles under his eyes.

“Your Highness, our ship arrived in Gebtu this evening. We took a chariot the rest of the way, knowing that what we found couldn’t wait.”

“Everything. Tell me everything!” Ramesses exclaimed. Without his nemes crown, his hair fell over his shoulders like brilliant sheets of copper. He guided Penre and Asha to carved wooden chairs, then leaned forward to hear what his father’s architect would say.

“It was just as I remembered,” Penre revealed. “The very spot.”

Ramesses glanced at Asha. “And only you went with him?”

“Of course,” Asha replied. “No one else knows.”

I looked into Penre’s hard gray eyes and knew he would be as trustworthy as Asha. Whether the design he brought back failed or succeeded, no one would ever learn that it came from the Heretic’s city and had once been used by a High Priest of Aten. I wondered what my aunt’s capital looked like now. Though her name had been chiseled from the walls of Amarna when Horemheb became Pharaoh, perhaps images of her had remained beneath the earth.

“The tomb was in the northern hills,” Penre began. “We placed an offering of incense at the door, and inside, this is what we found.” He held out an image drawn on a papyrus. The drawing looked like the wooden toy that children play on, with a post in the middle and seats at each end. But instead of seats, the long end had a clay bucket, and the other a heavy stone.

“It’s so simple . . . with a fulcrum in the middle.” Ramesses passed the drawing to me, then looked at Penre in shock. “Do you think it can work?”

“Yes. With a large reed basket sealed with bitumen, it could do the work of hundreds of men. In fact . . . with a heavy enough stone, it might be able to lift five thousand des a day.”

Ramesses inhaled sharply. “Are you certain?”

“I’ve been making the calculations.” He shuffled the other sheaves of papyrus and gave one to Ramesses. I didn’t understand what was written, but both Ramesses and Asha were nodding in agreement.

“It’s unlike anything else in Egypt,” Asha promised. “In the tomb . . . dozens of images of the Heretic King.” His eyes found mine, but it was Ramesses who spoke.

“And did you find—”

Asha nodded briefly. “Yes.”

Ramesses stood from his chair and addressed Penre. “We will tell the court of your invention tomorrow. You will have your pick of the men for construction. If the first one built works, I will ask you to build them all along the banks of Thebes. You have done a great service to me,” Ramesses complimented. “I would not have trusted anyone else.”

Penre inclined his head to show that he was humbled. As Ramesses led him to the door, Asha held out a folded sheet of papyrus. “For you,” he said quietly.

I glanced at Ramesses, then carefully unfolded the page. Instead of a drawing, there was a small fragment of plaster painted with an image of a woman in a chariot. Her skin was dark, and even if the artist hadn’t taken the time to color her eyes, I would have known her name. I pressed my lips together to keep them from trembling.

“Ramesses wanted you to have it,” Asha said tenderly. “You are the only star in his sky.”

I blinked rapidly. “How did he know—”

“He didn’t. But he knew there were dozens of paintings of Amarna’s court. I would have brought back an image of your aunt, too, but . . .”

I nodded so he wouldn’t have to say the words himself. “They were destroyed.”

“But Horemheb left the images of your mother and father.”

I pressed the small painting into my palm. I felt somehow that by holding it I could reach the ka of my parents. Of the many gifts Ramesses had given me, this was by far the most precious.

I waited until Asha and Penre were both gone before placing the painting inside my mother’s naos. And when Ramesses asked what I was thinking, I didn’t tell him with words.

THE NEXT day, Meryra’s design was announced in the Audience Chamber. At first, there was silence. Then the court erupted into exclamations of astonishment and joy. But the village elders, who had been invited from surrounding farms for the occasion, looked at one another in confusion.

“If this device succeeds,” Penre promised, “there will be harvest this year and every year thereafter!”

I leaned over to Ramesses. “Why aren’t the farmers rejoicing?” I whispered.

“They are wary. They’ll want to see it working first.”

“Well, they should be appreciative,” I said. “No Pharaoh in the history of Egypt will have changed the lives of so many people.”

But in Paser’s chamber later, even Woserit was cautious.

“Why doesn’t everyone see what Penre has achieved?” I cried.

“Because it has to work first,” Woserit said flatly. Although a large fire warmed the brazier, she was dressed in a heavy blue sheath. “There is still the matter of Iset,” she said quietly. “In two months she will be the mother to Ramesses’s eldest child.”

I felt my throat tighten at my own failure.

“Have you taken mandrakes?” Woserit pressed.

“Of course!” I flushed. “Merit gathers them for me.”

“And have you made the right offerings?”

I nodded, ashamed, because it meant that the gods were not listening. What if Tawaret, the goddess of childbirth, could not distinguish my plea among the thousands she received? Why should she? I was one of two wives, and the niece of a heretic who had abandoned the gods.

Woserit sighed. “At least the news is not all bad.”

“Your performance in the Audience Chamber is still inspiring a great deal of talk in Thebes,” Paser said. “I no longer have to direct foreign emissaries to see you. They ask for you now.”

“It is a great honor,” Woserit clarified. “No emissary ever seeks out Iset.”

“They will if she becomes Chief Wife,” I said, seeing into the future. “The people rarely smile at me. I could have passed out grain from now until Thoth, and it wouldn’t have mattered.”

Paser said firmly, “You cannot help who your family was.”

“Then why am I cursed to live in their shadow?” I asked.

“Because they were giants,” Woserit said, “and their shadows loom large. But you are creating another path for yourself. You are becoming a partner and adviser to Ramesses. And if you can give Egypt an heir, there will be less reason for the people to want Iset.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WEIGH EACH HEART ALONE

“MY LADY!” Merit cried. “My lady, it’s happening!”

I glanced at Woserit, and when Paser opened his chamber door, Merit’s face was flushed. “Vizier. My lady,” she acknowledged briefly, then stepped inside. “The princess Iset is having her child!”

I stood quickly, but Woserit held out her hand. “Go—dress carefully. You want him to see that while Iset is sweating like a heifer, you are young and fresh.”

My heart beat faster. There was always the possibility that Iset wouldn’t survive the birth. But I knew I shouldn’t let Tawaret hear such thoughts. The goddess would punish unkindness and spite.

“None of us can predict when Anubis will come. Not even for Iset. But if she lives,” Woserit added firmly, “don’t expect Ramesses to see you at night the way he has these past months. He will follow tradition and spend ten days with her.”

“With a crying infant?”

“Of course not,” Merit said. “The baby will sleep with its nurse.”

I returned to my chamber to put on my best sheath and most elaborate wig. But as Merit began to paint my eyes, bells rang in the courtyards of Malkata.

“Three times if it’s a son,” Merit whispered.

We held our breath and waited. The bells pealed three times, then there was a pause while the priestesses waited, and rang their bells three times again. I jumped from my stool and ran.

“Your cloak!” Merit cried after me. “It’s cold!”

But I couldn’t feel the early morning mist. How would fatherhood change Ramesses? Would he come to me less and stay in Iset’s chamber more? I rushed through the polished halls toward the very birthing pavilion that had been built by my grandfather. But I stopped when I saw the crowd of courtiers huddled outside the heavy wooden doors. No one was to be allowed within.

Henuttawy saw me and smiled. “Princess Nefertari.” She took in the careful beading of my sheath with a quick, calculating glance. “My sister polished you into a little queen and thought to place you next to the king as Chief Wife. But that is not going to happen now.”

I met her gaze. “How would you know? No one truly believes that you’re the mouth of Isis.”

She tensed, then saw Woserit coming toward us and whispered triumphantly, “I know because Iset has just given Ramesses a son. A healthy prince of Egypt. Ramesses would be a fool not to make her queen now.”

“Ah, Henuttawy!” Woserit said. “You must be happy to hear that Iset has given Ramesses a boy. After all, this child might have been the son of Ashai if not for you.”

Henuttawy’s red lips formed a dark, thin line, and I realized why Woserit had not mentioned the name of Ashai since Iset had first spoken it in anger. She had been waiting, gathering information. Now she turned to me, and her eyes were very bright.

“You see, Nefertari, before she married Ramesses, Iset was in love with a young Habiru named Ashai. Unfortunately, he was only an artist, and when Iset’s grandmother discovered them together in her chamber, she threatened to disinherit her. But Iset didn’t care. She was in love, and when my sweet sister heard of this, she saw an opportunity: a beautiful harem daughter the same age as Ramesses who had entered into a secret romance. So easy to manipulate! Knowing my sister, she probably sent someone else to scare off Ashai.”

Henuttawy swore angrily, “Still shaming Hathor with your lies!”

“Maybe it was a servant, or perhaps someone more powerful, like the High Priest of Amun. Imagine,” Woserit continued in her most conspiratorial voice. “You’re a young Habiru artist and the High Priest arrives in his leopard robes and tells you that the woman you love is destined for the prince. Any man would have enough sense to leave her alone. So Ashai left Iset for a Habiru girl, and the path was clear to push Iset toward the dais. All my sister would ask for in exchange would be patronage for her temple. Of course, Iset still believes that Ashai simply lost interest in her. Imagine how she would feel if she knew what my sister had done!”

I didn’t know where Woserit had come by her information, but she had placed it like an offering at my feet.

“Nefertari would be a fool to open her mouth. If she ever speaks such nonsense to Ramesses,” Henuttawy threatened, “I would turn every priest in Thebes against her.”

Woserit shrugged. “They’re already against her. You don’t think we know that if you had the opportunity to ruin Nefertari, you would have already done so?”

The door to the birthing pavilion swung open. A delighted Ramesses emerged, and I felt a sharp stab of disappointment knowing that Iset had been the one to make him so happy. He saw me, and Woserit whispered, “Put a smile on your face.”

“Nefertari!” Ramesses shouted from across the courtyard, and I wondered selfishly if Iset could hear him calling my name from inside the pavilion. He was striding toward us, brushing past the courtiers’ bows. “Did you hear?” he asked joyously.

“Yes.” I smiled, though I’m sure it looked more like the grimace of Bes. “A son.”

“And Iset is healthy! She’s already asked for a harp to be moved into the pavilion. Have you ever heard of such a swift recovery?”

“No.” I swallowed my pain and added, “The gods must be watching over Malkata.”

This was what Ramesses wanted to hear. A breath of wind brushed the blue and gold flaps of his nemes crown behind his shoulders, and even in the gray of morning he appeared radiant. I had never seen him so proud, and again wished I had been the one to cause it.

“A feast must be prepared,” he said. “Tell the viziers that all of Thebes should celebrate. Every worker will have the day off.”

THE REED mats were lowered in Paser’s chamber, while outside the priestesses continued to toll their bells.

“What have they named him?” Woserit asked grimly.

“Akori,” Paser replied. “But just because it’s a son doesn’t mean he’ll be made heir to the throne. He’s simply a prince.”

“The eldest prince,” I reminded, “and if Ramesses doesn’t choose—”

“And he’s never mentioned making you Chief Wife?”

I shook my head sadly at Paser’s question. “No.”

“Not even at night when he goes to your chamber?” Woserit pressed.

“Never.”

“So what is he waiting for?” she demanded.

“Maybe he’s waiting to see if Nefertari can give him an heir.”

We all looked down at my belly, and although my nipples had recently darkened and Merit thought that it might be a sign of a child, I looked the same as I had the month before. Then a heavy knock resounded through Paser’s chamber, and my heart pounded in my chest.

“My nurse,” I whispered. “She promised she’d come with any news.” I rushed from my stool, and outside, Merit was wringing her hands.

“Something’s happening in the birthing pavilion.”

Woserit rose quickly. “How do you know?”

“Three physicians entered and haven’t come out. Do you want me to go and deliver the princess fresh linens?”

“You mean spy?” I exclaimed.

“Of course, my lady! We don’t know what’s going on in there. What if she tempts him to make her Chief Wife?”

Then we’ll want to be the first to know, I thought, but stopped myself. “But if it’s not in Ramesses’s heart to make me queen—”

“Forget such foolishness!” Woserit said. “We all know it’s in his heart. But Iset will try to tempt his reason. The entire court will be there telling him that he is eighteen and that a Chief Wife must be chosen. Go,” she said eagerly. “Go and find out what’s happening.” Woserit turned to me. “You should be in your own chamber. In case Ramesses comes looking for you. If there is something wrong with Iset, you want it to be your shoulder that he weeps on.”

I sat in my chamber and waited for news from the birthing pavilion. When the afternoon passed and there was still no word from anyone, I motioned to a passing servant in the hall. Tefer arched his body against my leg, curious to know what was happening as well.

“Do you know what’s happening in the birthing pavilion?”

The young girl lowered her reed basket to make the proper obeisance to me, but I waved it away. “Just tell me what you know.”

“The princess Iset has just had a son!”

“I know that! But why have the bells stopped ringing?”

She looked at me with wide, uncomprehending eyes. “Perhaps because the priestesses grew tired?”

I sighed in frustration, then made my way out toward the Great Hall, where the court was already celebrating. In a corner with the High Priest of Amun, Henuttawy was laughing. The clink of her bangles, the way she placed her delicate hand on his knee—it was like seeing a swan trying to mate with a hyena. But there was no sign of Woserit or Paser, and Merit was not there either. Platters of duck in roasted onion had been served, and barrels of the kitchen’s best wine had been opened. But the servants were watching one another nervously. I approached the cook, who saw me coming and desperately tried to make himself busy. But I caught his eye before he could take a handful of empty bowls from the table.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him. “Why isn’t anyone preparing for tonight?”

Nervous sweat appeared at the top of his heavy brow. “There are great preparations happening, my lady. There is meat and wine—”

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” I told him. “What have you heard?”

The cook cleared his throat and placed the bowls back on the table. He exchanged a glance with his two assistants, who quickly disappeared. Lowering his voice, for fear the gossip might reach Henuttawy’s ears, he continued. “The prince, my lady. There is talk among the servants that the Birth Feast might not take place tonight.”

I stepped forward. “Why?”

“Because the young prince is not as well as they thought. There is news he might—” He wouldn’t go on, for fear of calling Anubis to a place where new life had just entered.

“Thank you,” I told him and went back to my chamber to wait. I kneeled on my reed mat, then lit a cone of incense beneath Mut’s feet. I imagined the pain of having my own child taken from me and pleaded for the ka of the little boy who might never feel his father’s embrace. “He’s too young,” I beseeched Tawaret. “And Ramesses has just become a father. I know you have never heard Akori’s name, but he is my husband’s child and hasn’t lived long enough to offend anyone in this life.”

The door to my chamber opened, and Merit came in, followed by Woserit.

“I heard,” I said solemnly, and stood. “A cook in the Great Hall told me.”

Woserit sniffed the air and regarded me with a strange expression. “And you were praying for the princess’s son?” Woserit shook her head. “Then you can save your incense,” she said plainly. “The prince has already died.”

“And the woman you were praying for just now,” Merit added, “has accused you of stealing her child’s ka and killing him!”

“What? Who did she say this to?” I cried. “When?”

“To everyone in the birthing pavilion,” Woserit replied.

I thought I might faint. Merit rushed to bring me a stool, while Woserit said something about everyone in Thebes hearing Iset’s accusation by nightfall.

“And Ramesses?” I breathed deeply. “What did Ramesses say?”

“I’m sure he didn’t believe her,” Merit vowed. “Who would believe her?”

“Other grieving mothers! Egyptians who already think the Heretic’s niece has powers of persuasion and magic like her aunt.” I looked at Woserit. “I never even saw the prince! She can’t believe I stole her child’s ka.”

“She’s the superstitious granddaughter of a peasant who was plucked from the river by Horemheb. Of course she believes it.”

“How will I convince the people that I haven’t done this?” I whispered.

“You won’t.” Woserit shook her head. “The people will believe what they want to believe. But it won’t matter what they say if you have a prince in your womb. Keep by Ramesses’s side.”

I wept into my hand. “Oh, Ramesses—he’s lost his first child!”

“Which will pave the way for one of your own,” Woserit said roundly.

I stared at her in horror.

I KNEW that Ramesses wouldn’t come to me that night. It would have been wrong to creep away and visit my chamber with Iset still lying in the birthing pavilion, childless. When news spread across Malkata that the prince had died, festivities were quickly abandoned to pay tribute at the Temple of Amun. This time, I didn’t light a cone of incense. Instead, I stood on my balcony, inhaling the bitter air and letting the wind snap at my cloak. Not even Merit dared to call me inside. Why? I thought. What have I done to anger you, Amun? It was my akhu who turned from you! Not me! The wind grew more violent, and all at once, like stars appearing in the night’s sky, a stream of lights began twinkling on the road to the palace gates. At first, they were pinpricks in the distance, but as they grew closer I could recognize an unmistakable chant and understood what the blazing river signified.

“Merit!” I shouted.

She rushed onto the balcony, and I pointed fearfully into the darkness.

Thousands of torchlights wavered in front of the palace gates, and the chanting of “Heretic” grew so loud that it drowned out the wind. A pair of soldiers burst into my chamber, and Ramesses was behind them. His face was as pale as the summer’s moon. One of the guards stepped forward.

“My lady, we must take you to a place of safety at once. There are crowds of people chanting at the gates.” The soldier stole an uneasy glance at Ramesses. “Some believe that Princess Nefertari has had something to do—”

“With the prince’s death?” I asked with dread.

Ramesses regarded me with uncertainty. “I’m sure you didn’t, Nefer. You never saw the prince.”

“Even if I had seen him,” I cried, “do you really believe—”

“But he was such a healthy child!” There were tears in Ramesses’s eyes.

Slowly, I backed away from him. “You don’t really think I could . . .”

“N-no.” Ramesses stumbled over his words. “No. Of course not!”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because there are thousands of people at the gates, and there are only a hundred guards on duty tonight. I have sent Asha to call up the army.”

I turned to his two soldiers; gray-heads, who had probably seen battle from Assyria to Kadesh, yet there was fear in their eyes. The people of Thebes had been angry enough to cross the river in their boats by night.

“If they break through the gates,” the tallest soldier explained, “we cannot assure your safety, Highness. We can take you to the treasury. There is no stronger building in the palace.”

I looked out over the balcony. The chant of “Heretic” was as loud as before. I could hear the bronze gates being drummed by angry fists, and the palace guards warning the people to stand back. “No,” I said firmly. “I will confront them. There is no way to stop them from believing the unbelievable except to face them myself.”

“They will kill you, Highness!” one of the soldiers exclaimed.

But Ramesses looked at me with rash admiration. “I will come with you.”

Merit pleaded, “My lady, no! Don’t do this!” But we rushed through the halls while Merit simpered behind us. I turned and told her to wait in my chamber. Her eyes were wide with fear, and I knew that what we were doing was unwise. It was the kind of foolish thing that Pharaoh Seti had warned me against.

We hurried along the corridors, while on either side courtiers were locking themselves in their chambers for fear of what was to come. Unless the army was roused quickly, thousands of commoners could break the gates and loot the palace. When we reached the courtyard, the two soldiers who accompanied us stood back in fear, their eyes focused warily on the gates, which shook with the pounding fists of the mob. At the top of the ramparts, archers watched the angry crowd with their bows at the ready. Ramesses held on to my hand as tightly as he could without crushing it, and the sound of my heartbeat was even louder in my ears than the chanting or the wind. We approached the steps leading up the palace walls, and Ramesses’s voice cut through the chaos.

“Stand back!” he shouted to his own men, who crowded the stairs leading to the ramparts. “Stand back!” As the guards recognized his nemes crown, they moved away.

The men watched us with incredulous eyes as we climbed. For a moment, when we reached the top of the palace walls, I thought the mountains were on fire. Instead, a sea of thousands of torches burned below us in the crisp Pharmuthi night. When the people nearest the gates recognized the crown of a Pharaoh above them, the chanting suddenly grew hesitant and seemed muted by his presence.

I marveled at Ramesses’s bravery as he raised his arms and addressed the angry mob. “You have come here chanting for a heretic’s blood,” he cried above the storm. “But I have come here to tell you that no heretic exists!”

There were angry exclamations in the crowd, and voices rose in protest.

“I am the father of the prince who has died. No one wishes to have an heir more than me. Therefore, if I come to you saying that there was no magic involved in his death, should you not believe me?”

An unsettled murmur passed through the mob, and Ramesses continued. “This is the woman you are calling heretic. The princess Nefertari! Does she look to you like a woman who practices magic? Does she look like a heretic?”

“She looks like Nefertiti!” an old man shouted, and the people behind him raised their torches in approbation. There was a sudden push against the gates. Ramesses took my hand and stood firmly in his place. The chant of “Heretic” was taken up again, and Ramesses’s voice grew fiercer so he could be heard above the cry.

“And who here thinks their Pharaoh would take a heretic for his wife?” he challenged. “Who here believes that the son of the Reconquerer would risk the wrath of the gods?”

This was clever, for no one would accuse Pharaoh himself of purposefully angering Amun. The angry chant died away again, and Ramesses turned to me.

“It’s true!” I shouted. “I am the niece of a heretic. But if you are not responsible for your grandfather’s crimes, why should I be? Who in this crowd has chosen their akhu? If that were possible, wouldn’t we all be born into Pharaoh’s family?”

There was a surprised murmur in the crowd, and Ramesses’s grip on my hand relaxed.

“Weigh each heart on its own,” I shouted, “for how many of us would pass into the Afterlife if Osiris weighed our hearts with those of our akhu?”

Ramesses looked at me in shock. There was silence beyond the gates. It seemed as if nobody moved, as if no one was breathing. “Return to your homes!” he cried. “Let the palace of Malkata mourn in peace.” He stood motionless, watching as the human sea beneath his feet began to ebb.

Slowly, the crowd began to disperse. Some of the women still shouted “Heretic,” and a few made vows to return, but the immediate danger was over. After some minutes of silence, Ramesses turned to take my hand. Inside the palace, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” he whispered.

“Thank you,” I told him. Yet secretly I knew better. One day, she will convince him that I really am a heretic, and nothing I do will ever be able to change his mind.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ANOTHER LIFE IN RETURN

ALTHOUGH FOR TWO nights Ramesses did not visit, new light still found its way into the darkness of my chamber. By the second of Pachons my body gave me confirmation of what Merit had suspected for a month. I whispered it to Woserit and Paser, and when Merit heard, she sent up such a whoop of joy that Tefer scampered fearfully from the bed.

“A child?” she exclaimed. “You must tell Pharaoh Ramesses! When he hears—”

“He will think of Prince Akori and wonder if Iset was right.”

Merit stepped away from me. “You must never repeat that.”

“Iset accused me of stealing her child’s ka, and now I’m pregnant with my own.”

“Pharaoh could never think such a thing! The princess is a superstitious fool. You must tell him.”

“If he comes.”

“He will, my lady. Give him time.”

But several days passed, and on the fifth night, when it was clear he wasn’t coming, I wept into my pillow, emptying all of my sorrows into the linen as Merit stroked my hair. It wasn’t just loneliness. It was the sadness that hung over the palace like a shroud. I saw Ramesses every morning in the Audience Chamber, but he never laughed, and even when the viziers brought news that the farmers were finding success with his invention, his face was still grim. In the Great Hall, courtiers watched me with suspicion, and even Woserit had very little to say. I begged her to let me tell Ramesses that I was pregnant, but she made me swear not to reveal anything to him until he visited me on his own.

So I waited, and on the seventh of Pachons, Ramesses arrived as the sun rose. He came to the very edge of my bed, and when I sat up to embrace him, tears stained his cheeks. It was as if all of his joy and rash optimism in life had been drained away.

“The priests tell me it was the will of the gods,” he whispered, “but how could it be their will that a child of Pharaoh, his first son, should be stolen by Anubis?”

He held his nemes crown in his lap, and I caressed his hair. “I can’t pretend to understand,” I told him. “But perhaps when the gods saw your terrible loss, they gave you another life in return.” I took his hand and placed it on my stomach, and his breath caught in his throat. “A child?”

I smiled cautiously. “Yes.”

Ramesses stood and crushed my hands in his. “Amun has not abandoned us!” he cried. “A child, Nefer!” and he kept repeating it. “Another child!” He pulled me up with him, then searched my face. “You know that night on the balcony—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said quickly.

“But I never really believed—”

I placed my finger on his lips. “I know you didn’t,” I lied. “Those are peasants’ superstitions.”

“Yes. She comes from superstitious people. And without Akori she’s become irrational. And inconsolable,” he admitted. “I promised to begin a mortuary temple in Thebes for the prince—for all of us—but it isn’t enough. Even the flowers at the gates mean nothing to her.”

“What . . . what flowers?”

Ramesses glanced away. But when I pushed back the long linen curtains of the balcony and saw the tribute that women had left for Iset, I brought my hand to my mouth. The heavy bronze bars were twined with flowers, and lilies, the symbol of rebirth, stretched as far as the eye could see beyond the gates. “They love her so much,” I whispered, hoping Ramesses wouldn’t see how much it hurt me.

“And they will love you,” Ramesses swore. “You are to be mother to Pharaoh’s eldest child now.” Ramesses strode to the door that led to Merit’s chamber, calling her out and instructing her to let the palace know that a second child was on its way.

There were to be no petitioners in the Audience Chamber that day. The viziers watched from a large table in front of the dais as Ramesses and I entered together, and only Paser looked happy to see me. Everyone now knew that I was with child. I saw Iset on her throne, and I thought, Henuttawy has instructed her to be here today. Her face appeared sunken and hollow; as we ascended the steps her eyes never moved from an invisible spot on the floor.

“Iset.” Ramesses gently took her hands. “Why are you here? Did you get enough rest?”

“How can I rest,” she asked tonelessly, “when someone has stolen the lifeblood of our prince? The midwives say that he was healthy and screaming when he came.”

Ramesses glanced at me. “There was every protection in the birthing pavilion. Tawaret and Bes—”

“And do Tawaret or Bes prevent the evil eye?” she cried, so that even the old men in the back of the Audience Chamber looked up from their Senet games. “Can they stop a charm from stealing a prince’s ka? There is only one woman who would want to take our child!”

Rahotep rushed forward from the viziers’ table. “The princess Iset is not well,” the High Priest said quickly. “Let me take her to her chamber.”

“I’m perfectly fine!” Iset shrieked. “I’m fine!” But the front of her gown where Akori should have been nursing was wet, and her eyes darted wildly across the chamber.

Ramesses placed a steady hand on her arm. “Iset, go and rest. Penre is coming with designs for a temple. As soon as we are finished, I will come to you.” But her chest rose and fell with her heavy breaths, and she didn’t move. “Even though it’s your time with Nefertari?” she challenged.

I heard the hesitation in Ramesses’s voice before he answered, “Yes.”

Iset shifted her gaze to mine, and I saw fear in her eyes. She truly believes I stole her child’s ka. She thinks I’m a murderess. She composed herself, moving gracefully across the chamber, and as she reached the doors I heard a courtier murmur, “It’s only her first child. There are sure to be others.”

When the doors swung shut, the viziers watched me, and courtiers whispered.

I tried to keep my voice from trembling. “Shall we summon Penre?”

We waited in silence while he was sent for, a silence unbroken until the herald announced grandly, “The architect Penre, son of Irsu and Keeper of the King’s Great Works.”

A triumphant Penre entered the chamber, beaming conspicuously. In a single month, his design, based on the painting in Meryra’s tomb, had spread up and down the Nile. By the end of Shemu, there would be the first real harvest in four years, and offerings of grain could be placed in the completed Temple of Luxor. Now, Penre would undertake the construction of the greatest mortuary temple in Egypt. Two scribes followed in his wake, carrying a heavy clay model on a large board between them. A linen cloth obscured the details of the model. Penre stretched his arms out in obeisance.

“Your Majesty,” he announced. “The Ramesseum.” He swept the linen cover away, and a row of viziers murmured their appreciation. “It will be the largest mortuary temple in Thebes,” Penre explained, “built next to the Temple of Seti the Reconquerer.” He pointed out the intricate details. “Two rows of pylons, towering as large and thick as the pylons at Luxor, will lead one after the other into a courtyard.” Chairs scraped on tiles as the court pressed forward to get a better look. “Beyond the second courtyard, a covered hall with forty-eight columns will enclose the inner sanctuary.” Another murmur of awe from the viziers’ table. “And inside . . .” Penre removed the ceiling, showing the court the blue sky with scattered gold stars that he had painted. “Inside, three rooms that will stand for a million years as a shrine to Ramesses the Great and his reign.”

There was a moment of shock in the Audience Chamber. No one dared to give Pharaoh a title; he always chose it for himself. The court looked to Ramesses, to see his reaction.

“Ramesses the Great,” he repeated, “and his million-year Ramesseum.”

Penre squared his shoulders with confidence. “And to the north of the hall with its forty-eight columns, a temple for the most beautiful princesses in Egypt.”

I saw statues of myself and Iset, both equal in height and width. I should have been flattered, but I was worried. The mortuary temple was an undertaking that would require years, and a great deal of the treasury’s gold. Before Ramesses went to Iset’s chamber that night, he came to mine and I asked him, “Where will the deben come from to build all of this?”

“My father accepts tribute from more than a dozen nations. I’ve seen the accounts from the treasury. There’s enough to build three Ramesseums,” he said. “It is what our descendants will remember of us.” He looked at my stomach and drew me close to him. “Our little kings,” he added lovingly.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AHMOSES OF CHALDEA

FOR TWO MONTHS, the gates of Malkata Palace were strewn with flowers, so that whenever we rode out to see the progress of the Ramesseum, the guards had to clear a path for the horses. Iset would descend from her chariot, and no one would speak as she chose the prettiest flower for her hair, reminding everyone that she had borne and lost the first prince of Egypt.

In Paser’s chamber, Woserit paced the tiles and demanded, “When will this be over? Every day flowers are burying the gates and women are weeping in the Temple of Hathor. She lost an infant, not twin eighteen-year-old princes!”

“And now there’s news that she’s with child again,” I revealed. “Merit heard it in the baths.”

Woserit turned to Paser, “Before Iset has another child,” she said irritably, “we must make the people understand that Nefertari is Ramesses’s choice for queen. What’s wrong with them? She speaks eight languages and has impressed every emissary from Assyria to Rhodes.”

“They still remember the Heretic King,” Paser replied. “They hear their grandparents speak of the days when the gods were banished and Amun turned his back on Egypt by bringing us plague. But I have intercepted messages from Nubia that speak of a second rebellion. And if Pharaoh Ramesses leaves with his army, Nefertari will be left to rule in his stead.”

“It will be your opportunity to show the people how you would govern,” Woserit said eagerly.

“No!”

Paser and Woserit both stared at me.

“Ramesses promised to take me on his next campaign. Who will be of more help to him?” I demanded. “A Nubian translator or me?”

“You are carrying Ramesses’s child,” Woserit said. “Are you willing to risk his likely heir? There would be no litters. You would travel through the desert entirely by chariot, and water would be scarce. This rebellion may be your only chance to prove at court that you will not be another Heretic Queen.”

I looked down at the small swell of my stomach. If Ramesses left me in Thebes, would I be able to change the people’s hearts, or would they call my child a heretic as well?

Paser sat forward in his carved wooden chair. “Do not suggest that you go with him. There’s nothing more important than the health of this child.”

“And Iset?” I asked quietly. “If Ramesses doesn’t declare a Chief Wife, would we both rule jointly in the Audience Chamber?”

Woserit raised her sharp brows. “Yes. Which would be very interesting.”

THAT NIGHT, Ramesses crept away from Iset, bringing me the scrolls that Paser had seized from a captured Nubian merchant. We sat together on the balcony, and I translated letter after careless letter detailing a rebellion that was planned for the first of Mesore, when the heat was so brutal that Egypt’s soldiers were unlikely to travel very far south.

“They have more than a thousand men,” I confirmed, “who are willing to overtake the palace and kill the Egyptian viceroy.”

“So Paser was correct.” Ramesses stood from his chair and looked out over the balcony. An early summer’s breeze bore the scent of lavender, and the chirp of insects from the dark gardens below. If Ramesses left, there was no telling when he might return, or what might happen in his absence.

“I must write to my father and speak with my generals,” he announced. “In a month, I will lead Egypt’s charioteers into Napata and remind Nubia to whom she owes her allegiance.” When he saw the look on my face, his voice faltered. “You could come.” He hesitated, and we both looked down at my three-month belly.

“No. It would be too dangerous,” I said, rising to join him. But we both knew what I wanted. Ramesses took my hand and we stared into the night, listening to the wind as it eased through the boughs of the sycamore trees.

“I will return to you safely,” he promised. “And if I ever leave again, you will come. Even if it’s to the farthest reaches of Assyria.”

I laughed miserably. “And how would I survive?”

“I would have the army carry you by litter. They would bear you across the desert like Amun’s shrine.” When my laughter was genuine, he smiled. “While I’m gone, I want you to oversee the building. Luxor is finished, but there is Nubian gold and shiploads of ebony bound for the Ramesseum. There’s no one else I trust.”

“What about Iset?”

“She can’t oversee the Ramesseum,” he dismissed. “Perhaps the Feast of Wag. But in the Audience Chamber, if there’s something she doesn’t understand, Nefer, you will help her, won’t you? I don’t want foreign emissaries to think she’s a fool.”

Too late, I thought sharply, holding my smile. “Of course I will.”

IN THE hours before dawn, a flotilla of ships crowded the bay, while Asha ushered the charioteers aboard. A month had passed since Ramesses had learned of the plot for rebellion in Nubia, and now two thousand men, with their weapons and horses, shouted farewells from the vessels to their wives and children. On the quay, Ramesses cupped my chin in his palm.

“Sometimes, I forget how small you are,” he said tenderly. “Promise that you’ll let Merit take care of you. Listen to what she tells you while I’m gone, even if you don’t like it. There are two of you now to watch over.”

I looked down at my small stomach and wondered if Tawaret would abandon me in childbirth the way she had abandoned my mother. Perhaps if I lit incense every day and reminded her that I was the Heretic’s niece, not the Heretic’s daughter, she would forgive the crimes of my akhu. Or would my prayers only attract their attention, and bring Anubis back to stalk the palace once more? “I will listen,” I assured him.

The sound of trumpets pierced the morning air, and the priestesses of Hathor joined with Isis in shaking their sistrums and singing a hymn to Sekhmet, the lion-goddess of war.

Ramesses made his way to Iset and kissed her briefly, then he came back to me. “I will return before the month is over,” he swore.

We watched the fleet as it worked its way through the channel, and then slowly upstream. When the last pennant had disappeared, Woserit took my arm and led me through the doors of the palace. In the Audience Chamber, the court took its place while musicians played “The Song of Sekhmet.” I had thought I was prepared for Ramesses to leave, but at the sight of his empty throne on the dais, I drew an uneven breath.

“This is an opportunity,” Woserit said bracingly as we crossed the chamber.

“What if the people return?” I worried. “What if they shout Heretic at the gates?”

“Then four hundred guards will be here to protect you. The greater threat is in the Temple of Isis. Think of what my sister could do if her temple became the largest in Thebes! Pilgrims from all across Egypt would leave their gold at her shrines. If Henuttawy and Rahotep were to use their resources collectively, they would be wealthy enough to tell Ramesses which wars should be waged and which monuments should be built. Why do you think the Heretic abolished the priestship of Amun? He was willing to risk the wrath of the gods to destroy such rivals to his power.”

“Why doesn’t Ramesses see what Henuttawy is after?”

“Why should he? My sister is his beloved aunt. The one who taught him how to balance the khepresh crown on his head and to write his name in hieroglyphics as a child. Would he believe me if I told him what she really wants?”

With that, she left the Audience Chamber, her long blue robes swishing across the tiled floor. The turquoise jewels of the goddess Hathor encircled her arms, and I wished I looked so tall and splendid. Like Henuttawy and Iset, she commanded the chamber, but as the heavy doors swung shut in her wake, I noticed that the room was nearly empty. “Where is everyone?” I exclaimed.

Rahotep turned in his chair. “Who is everyone?”

My neck grew hot beneath my wig. “Where is Iset? Where is the rest of the court?”

“Preparing for the Feast of Wag,” he said dismissively.

“Doesn’t she plan to hear the petitioners?” I demanded.

Rahotep raised his brow. “I suppose she will come when she is ready.”

The musicians kept playing. They would play until the herald announced the petitioners. I sat on my throne and felt the heat creep from my neck into my cheeks. The entire court was attending Iset; the only courtiers who had remained with me were the old men playing Senet in the back of the chamber. Gone was the pretty laughter of noblemen’s daughters. Even the girls from the edduba, who had never liked Iset, were missing. They all believe she is the future of Egypt.

I struck Ramesses’s golden crook on the dais. “Bring forth the petitioners,” I announced.

Three men approached the viziers’ table, but only two held out written petitions. The third gripped a wooden staff in his hands. His long beard was the milky color of moringa blossoms. I tried to guess what his language might be, as only foreigners wear hair on their faces.

“Where is your petition?” Paser demanded.

The bearded man shook his head. “It is for the princess Nefertari alone.”

“And while the princess may eventually read your petition, it will go through me first.” Paser held out his hand, but the old man was firm.

“It is for the princess Nefertari alone,” he repeated.

Paser exhaled impatiently. “Send this man away!”

But when several guards stepped forward, the old man shouted, “Wait! Wait! My name is Ahmoses.”

“That means nothing to me,” Paser remarked sharply.

“Ahmoses of the kingdom of Chaldea.”

Paser held up his hand, and the guards backed away. “There is no such kingdom,” he challenged. “It was conquered by the Babylonian King Hammurabi, and then the Hittites.”

The bearded man nodded. “When the Hittites came, my people fled to Canaan. And when Egypt conquered Canaan, my mother was taken as a prisoner to Thebes.”

Even across the chamber, I could hear Paser’s breath catch. “Then you are a Habiru?”

Rahotep trained his red eye on the old man, and the courtiers at their Senet tables stopped what they were doing. The Habiru were heretics, dangerous men who dwelled in desert tents, not cities. But Ahmoses of Chaldea nodded. “Yes. I am a Habiru,” he replied, “and my petition is for the princess Nefertari.”

He needs help with some runaway daughter, I thought, and he is too embarrassed to tell the truth. “Bring him to me,” I called across the chamber.

“My lady, this man is a Habiru,” Paser warned.

“And if he has a petition, I will see him,” I announced. I knew the fact that I was willing to listen to a heretic’s plea would scandalize the few members of court who were present. But I was the one who was pregnant with Ramesses’s eldest child now. I was the one he’d wanted to bring to Nubia. And what if someone had denied my mother in her time of need because they’d thought she was a heretic?

Ahmoses reached a mottled hand into his robes, and produced a scroll. The guards retreated to their positions near the doors, but watched the old man with deep suspicion. As the Habiru moved slowly across the chamber, I saw that the carved staff he held close was not just a means of protection, but an aid to help him walk. Rahotep turned fully in his chair to stare across the chamber at me, and I wondered if I had made a grave mistake.

The old man stopped before the dais, but unlike every other petitioner, he did not extend his arms in obeisance. My back straightened against my throne. “Tell me,” I demanded. “Why am I the only one who can read your petition?”

“Because it was your grandfather who brought my people into Egypt,” he replied in Canaanite, “and forced them to become soldiers in his army.”

I glanced at the viziers to see if any of them had understood. “How did you know I speak the language of Canaan?”

“All of Thebes knows of your skill at languages, my lady.” We watched each other in silence for a moment, then he held out his petition. “For the princess Nefertari, daughter of Queen Mutnodjmet and General Nakhtmin.” The harpists strummed softly while the old men in the back of the chamber returned to their games, laughing when somebody threw the knucklebones to their advantage. I unrolled the Habiru’s scroll and felt the blood drain slowly from my face. I glanced up to see if Rahotep was watching and saw his red eye focused on me still.

“You want what?” I whispered under the babble of petitioners.

“I want Pharaoh to release the Habiru from his service,” he replied, “so that my people may return to the land of Canaan.”

“And in what way are they yours and not Pharaoh’s?” I demanded.

“Because I am their leader. Among the Habiru of Thebes, I am the one who brings them closer to their god.”

“So you are heretics.”

“If that means we do not worship as the Egyptians do.”

“It means you do not worship Amun,” I said harshly, and I looked over the top of the scroll at the rest of the court. But new petitioners were distracting Rahotep and Paser.

“We worship a single god,” he explained, “and we wish to return to the land of Canaan.”

“Canaan is Egyptian land,” I said, raising my voice only loud enough to show the old man my displeasure. “Why would the Habiru want to leave Thebes for an unsettled land that Egypt’s already conquered?”

Ahmoses regarded me with piercing eyes. I wondered if Paser had found them as unsettling as I did. “Because you know what it is to be treated like a heretic and threatened in the streets. This is why only you can grant this petition. In Canaan there are no Egyptian temples, and we may worship as we wish.”

I realized in that instant that I would never escape my akhu. I looked down at the scroll and felt a sudden rage at the old man. “Did Henuttawy send you to remind me that my akhu were heretics?” I demanded.

“Your akhu were not heretics,” Ahmoses replied. “They were shown a vision of the truth and they corrupted it by greed.”

“What vision of the truth?” I challenged.

“The truth of one god. Pharaoh Akhenaten called him Aten—”

“And you believe in Aten?”

“The Habiru worship by a different name. It was only Pharaoh who called him Aten, and covetousness led to his ruin.”