The Heretic Queen

“Heresy led to his ruin,” I said scathingly. But Ahmoses would not be dissuaded by my anger. His eyes were like the still waters of a lake on a windless afternoon, and there was nothing I said that disturbed them. “You said he was shown a vision of the truth,” I said. There was no reason for me to be entertaining his petition further, but his certainty disturbed me. “So who showed him that vision?”

Ahmoses bowed his head. “I did,” he said quietly. “I was Pharaoh Akhenaten’s tutor when he was a young boy in the city of Memphis.”

If Ahmoses had said that he had been an acrobat in his earlier life, I would have been less shocked. Here was the man who had planted the seeds of my family’s ruin, asking me to do him a favor! Without him, the Heretic King would never have happened on the idea of a single god, or convinced Nefertiti to join him in ridding Egypt of Amun. She would never have been murdered by the priests of Aten, who grew angry when she wished to return to the old gods . . . And if my father’s life hadn’t been taken in those flames, who knew what might have happened at my birth? Perhaps my mother’s will to live might have been stronger. I looked down at him. “You ruined my family,” I whispered harshly.

The old man clearly understood the impact of his words. “The truth that there is one god can be used for healing or for harm. It was your akhu who chose harm, starving the land of Egypt to feed their own glory.”

“It was Akhenaten who betrayed Egypt, not my mother! Not my father!” The Audience Chamber had ceased to exist for me. While the business of the day carried on, it was as if only Ahmoses and I existed in that room. “Why are you telling me this?” I hissed, and it was a struggle to control my voice. “You could have come with your petition without telling me anything.”

“But I wish to tell you who I am. More important, I wish to tell you who I am not. I am not a worshipper of gold, like the Pharaoh Akhenaten.” When I flinched at my uncle’s name spoken aloud, Ahmoses raised his brows. “He was sent to me in Memphis when all of Egypt believed it was his brother who would take the crown. He was a second son, a younger prince sent away to become a priest. A bitter child. Angry and resentful of his older brother’s fortune. I thought the god of the Habiru could save him,” he admitted.

“And now you would have me dismiss every Habiru from Pharaoh’s service?”

Ahmoses met my gaze, and he was firm. “From the tombs, from the temples, from this palace where women work as body servants . . .”

“They are already free to go!”

“And the Habiru in Pharaoh’s army?” Ahmoses challenged. “Every able-bodied man who was captured in Canaan was made to fight for Egypt, and under Pharaoh Akhenaten when the army was used to build cities in the desert, the Habiru toiled like beasts. He promised our people freedom once the city of Amarna was built, but three kings have since taken the throne of Egypt. The Habiru soldiers have still not been given permission to leave Pharaoh’s army.”

“They are paid like every other soldier.”

“But unlike every other soldier the Habiru cannot leave until they are too old to carry a weapon. If that is not slavery, then what are we?”

“You are Egyptians,” I said hotly.

Ahmoses shook his head firmly. “No. We are Habiru and we want our freedom.”

I sat back and regarded Ahmoses in shock. “My reputation is in danger simply by speaking with you. You, who brought a curse onto all of my akhu. The people already believe I am a heretic like my aunt!”

“Because there are men in this room who would have them believe that.” Ahmoses’s eyes traveled to the High Priest Rahotep.

“No.” But even as I said the word I understood he was speaking the truth. I had always thought Henuttawy had bribed the market vendors to chant against me on the day of my marriage. But the anger in the streets had been too real. Those women with eyes as hard as onyx had not been paid; someone with words more persuasive than deben had spoken to them, someone with more power over their souls than even Henuttawy. I had been a fool not to see it before.

Ahmoses used his staff to lean across the dais. “I have seen him in the streets,” he said quietly, casting a glance behind him. But Rahotep was still berating his petitioner. “He was rousing the men to rebellion even before your marriage. The people revere him as the mouth of Amun. But you can convince them of his lies by setting the Habiru free. By telling the people that you are expelling the remaining heretics from Egypt. You wish to appear as a follower of Amun, and I wish to return my people to Canaan. So banish the heretical Habiru from Thebes and we both may profit.”

For a moment, I thought of nothing but myself, imagining how the people would react to the final banishment of all heretics from Egypt. They would cheer me in the streets, shaking sistrums as I walked. Ramesses’s face would fill with pride as he declared me queen. Then I thought of my husband’s army, and how a sixth of the men were Habiru. “You and I may profit,” I told him, “but how will Pharaoh profit? To our north the Hittites are waiting, to the east the Assyrians threaten to invade. You think I am willing to win my reputation at the expense of my husband?” I leaned forward on my throne. “Then you have petitioned the wrong wife.”

Only then did Ahmoses’s eyes blaze. “You know what persecution is! You know what it’s like to be called a heretic. Imagine how the Habiru feel, worshipping for a hundred years in private, wondering if we’ll be slaughtered like the followers of Aten for what we believe! All we ask for is the freedom to move from Thebes to Egypt’s lands in the north—”

“And I cannot grant that without Pharaoh’s consent,” I said just as hotly.

“Then when he returns victorious from Nubia, I will come back with my petition.” His eyes traveled to my thickening waist. “The Habiru’s wishes are the same as yours. All we desire is a future for our children.”

He turned away, but his words lingered with me like an upsetting dream.

I FOUND Merit in my chamber, folding my linens neatly into piles and placing them in chests. She looked up in surprise when she heard me arrive.

“Merit,” I said sternly. She knew from the sound of my voice that something was wrong. I shut the door behind me, checking to see that it was locked, then advanced across the chamber. “Merit,” I repeated, “what do you know about the High Priest Rahotep?”

She stood, searching my face to measure the strength of my demand.

“You knew him when Nefertiti was Pharaoh. You said he was against my being raised in this palace and that you convinced him to keep me here. But I spoke to a man in the Audience Chamber today. A Habiru who says he was Akhenaten’s tutor.”

Some of the color drained from Merit’s face.

“He said the High Priest has been turning the people against me. Not Iset. Not Henuttawy. Rahotep! So how did you convince him to keep me here? He hates my akhu. He hates me.” My voice rose. “What do you know about him, Merit? He wouldn’t have allowed Horemheb to keep me at court unless you knew something. What is it?” I demanded.

Merit crossed to a chair next to the brazier. She sat, took a small fan from the nearest table, and began to cool herself vigorously. “My lady—”

“I want to know!” I shouted, and perhaps the anger in my voice broke the spell of silence she had kept for so many years.

“He was the High Priest of Aten,” she whispered. “When your aunt saw that she must either return the gods to Egypt or face rebellion, she began to rebuild the temples of Amun. The priests of Aten were stripped of their power.”

“Including Rahotep?”

“Especially him. He lost everything to her.”

“The priests of Aten were given the chance to join the priesthood of Amun,” I challenged. “He could have saved his position.”

“Perhaps he didn’t believe we would return so eagerly to our true gods. But he lived embittered and in poverty for many years. Your akhu were not interested in helping him. He reminded your grandfather of heresy and ruin.”

“Do you think it was he who set the fire?” I asked. “Is that what you know?”

Merit looked down at the fan in her lap, and the strength to keep hidden what she had concealed for so long seeped out of her like water from a cracked bowl. “It may have been him. I would not be surprised. He is the Aten priest who helped to kill Pharaoh Nefertiti and her daughter.” She raised her eyes. “Before their murders, I saw him enter the passageway leading to the Window of Appearances.”

“Where she was killed?” I whispered.

“Yes. He was with another priest. I thought she had summoned them. She was always feeling sorry for the priests . . .”

“Nefertiti?”

Merit nodded sadly. “She was not always cruel. I know this is what they taught you in the edduba, but there were many times when she was kind.”

“Were you there when they killed her?”

“I wasn’t far away,” Merit admitted. “I heard her screams and saw the priests walking calmly through the hall. Rahotep looked at me, and his hand was covering one eye.”

“Because she fought back!”

“Yes, but I didn’t know it then.”

“So you didn’t say anything?”

“Of course I did! I told your father! He searched for both of them, but they had disappeared. There are many places to hide in Egypt. When your mother died, Rahotep returned to court searching for a new position.”

“Giving up his belief in Aten?” I was shocked.

“He is a believer in gold.” Merit snorted. “And, of course, I recognized him. I would have turned him over to the army for murder, but when the viziers wanted to send you from this court, I warned Rahotep that if he spoke against you as well, all of Egypt would know how he came by that eye. So when Pharaoh Horemheb asked for his advice, he swore that you were of no harm to anyone. This bargain is why you remained here.”

I studied Merit’s face and marveled that she had kept such a heavy secret to herself for so long. For more than twenty years she had kept the memory inside. “Why did you never tell me this?” I asked quietly.

“What would be the purpose?”

“I would know my enemies!”

“I know your enemies, my lady, and that is enough. There’s no reason to let the corruption of the court make you as old as I am.”

I realized she was not talking about the wrinkles on her face. She meant a different kind of old, the kind that had made Iset bitter because she had lost Ashai and learned that love is not easy. She was speaking about an aging of the soul, when a person’s ka is a thousand years older than her body. “Does Woserit know all of this?” I asked softly.

“Yes. Otherwise, if something happened to me,” she explained, “these secrets would be buried in the tombs. And in a tomb, there’s nothing I could do to protect you, my lady.”

“Then if Woserit knows, Paser must know as well.”

“You are safe from Rahotep,” she promised. “He will not speak openly against you in the temple, and I will not tell Egypt that he is the murderer of a Pharaoh.”

“And probably two!” I cried, but Merit sat back in her chair.

“We don’t know that.”

“If he could murder Nefertiti,” I said heatedly, “then he could have started the fire that killed my family. Why shouldn’t I tell Ramesses what he’s done? What power does he have?”

Merit laughed, sharp and full of warning. “The kind of power you have not yet seen because he’s never used it against you. Thanks to his friend Horemheb, he is the mouth of Amun. The people trust him the way they trust Pharaoh.”

“Not if he is a murderer.”

“And would the people believe that? Or would they believe him when he says that the niece of heretics is spreading lies?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither does he. So we are silent, and he is silent, and the arrangement holds.”

“No, it doesn’t! He is still turning the people of Thebes against me.”

“And you are winning them back with every petitioner and foreign emissary.”

I remained standing, looking down at Merit, and something occurred to me. “When Henuttawy lets him into her bed at night, she thinks she is convincing him to stand against me. But he already is!”

“Snakes can deceive snakes. But they also slither into unexpected places,” she warned.

IN THE Great Hall that evening, Iset arranged Nubian dancers for the court’s entertainment. Beneath papyrus bud columns twined with blossoms, perfumed women fluttered between tables, laughing behind their heavy golden cups as the generals told stories of their adventures abroad. Sermet beer flowed from open barrels, and bowls were filled with roasted goose in rich pomegranate paste and wine.

“While Ramesses is marching toward rebellion,” I seethed under my breath to Woserit, “they are drinking and dancing!”

On the dais, Henuttawy raised a cup of wine. “To Iset,” she announced cheerfully. “And to her second child who will one day rule Thebes!” The table raised their cups to Iset, and the few women who hadn’t heard the pregnancy rumors now squealed in delight. When I refused to raise my cup, Henuttawy asked, “What’s the matter, Nefertari? Not enjoying the feast?”

The viziers looked at me, studying my carefully hennaed breasts and the wide silver belt around my waist. Merit had taken extra care with my kohl, extending the line out to my temples and shading my eyelids with malachite. But all of the paint in Egypt could not cover my disgust.

“Does she look as if she’s enjoying the feast?” Rahotep asked. “Everyone at court abandoned her today to be with Iset.”

Henuttawy gave an exaggerated gasp. “Everyone?” she repeated. “I’m sure it wasn’t everyone.”

“You’re right,” Rahotep corrected himself. “There were a few courtiers who wished to play Senet.” The emissaries around the table laughed. “But the princess wasn’t idle,” he revealed. “While Iset was preparing for the Feast of Wag, Nefertiti was listening to a petition from the greatest heretic in Thebes. He asked for her by name.”

There was a shocked murmur around the table, and Woserit darted a questioning look at me. But Henuttawy clapped her hands with delight. “Well, you know what they say. Ravens will flock with ravens.”

“And scorpions will nest with scorpions,” I replied, looking between her and the High Priest of Amun. I stood from my throne, and Woserit stood with me.

“Leaving so early?” Henuttawy called, but Woserit and I ignored her taunt.

Outside the Great Hall, Woserit turned to me. “What happened in the Audience Chamber?” she demanded. But the doors of the Great Hall swung open, and Paser joined us in the courtyard. Woserit hissed at him, “You allowed a heretic to see Nefertari?”

I rested my hand on the swell of my stomach and tried to fight back a sudden nausea. “He wouldn’t give his petition to anyone else,” I explained. “His name was Ahmoses; he was a Habiru.”

“But tell her what he wanted.” Paser’s look was riotous.

I realized he had heard more than I’d thought in the Audience Chamber. “For me to free the Habiru from the military.”

“Every Habiru?” Woserit exclaimed.

“Yes. He calls himself the leader of his people. He wishes to take the Habiru back to Canaan where they may worship as they please.”

“Canaan is still Egyptian land,” Woserit said angrily.

Paser shook his head. “Only in name. There are no temples to Amun or shrines to Isis. He clearly thinks that the Habiru would be free to worship whom they wish in the land of Sargon.”

I recalled the ancient myth Paser had taught us in the edduba, about the high priestess in the east who secretly gave birth to a son despite her vow of chastity. She had placed her newborn infant in a basket made tight with reeds and set it adrift in the River Euphrates where the child was found by Aqqi, the water bearer. The boy was given the name of Sargon, and he grew up to be a powerful king, conquering the lands of Gutium and Canaan. And now, Ahmoses wished to return to the land that Sargon had made fruitful.

Woserit exchanged a look with Paser. “Why did he request to see Nefertari, and not Iset?” she asked suspiciously.

“Because Princess Nefertari has a reason to grant his request,” Paser guessed. “He knows that she could win favor with the people by telling them she is expelling the heretics from Thebes.”

Woserit looked at me. “It could turn the people in your favor. There would never again be any question of your faith in Amun.”

“You can’t seriously consider it!” I exclaimed.

“A sixth of Egypt’s army is Habiru,” Paser warned. “Someday, the Hittites—”

But the seed had been planted in Woserit’s mind. “She could finally win over the people, Paser . . .”

“I’ll win them some other way,” I said. “Ramesses can’t risk Egypt’s safety for me.”

“He could increase the army’s pay,” she protested. “More men would join.”

“With what gold?” Paser asked wryly.

“He could increase taxes on the land.”

“And have the people resent him instead? Think of what you are saying,” Paser said. He placed a tender hand on her shoulder. “There are other ways for her to win the people’s love.”

“And Rahotep?” she asked. “Did he hear all of this?”

“No. He was listening to petitioners. But Merit has told me what he did,” I said darkly.

Woserit sighed heavily. “I know it was a terrible thing to learn. Especially the fire—”

“You knew he set the fire?” I cried.

“No one knows for certain,” Paser said quietly.

“But everyone believes it?”

Neither Paser nor Woserit denied it.

“You must never speak a word of this to anyone,” Woserit cautioned. “No matter how your heart bleeds, let only the gods hear its cries. Do not weep on anyone’s shoulder. Not even Ramesses’s.”

I pressed my lips together, and Paser added emphatically, “Especially not Ramesses.”

“The truth does not stay buried forever,” Woserit promised. “Eventually the winds blow away the sand and expose what’s beneath. But don’t think of this now,” she advised. “The most important thing is the child. You don’t want him to feed off bitterness and anger. Have Merit send for food and heat you a bath.”

I nodded my consent, but how could I stop myself from being angry? I watched Woserit and Paser leave, then listened to them as they whispered in the dark corridors of the palace, their silhouettes bent together like two sycamore trees, and I felt a deep longing to speak with Ramesses. If he had been in Thebes, we would be lying in my bed, talking about the Habiru Ahmoses, and I would have told him the painful story of how my uncle had come upon the idea of a single god. But out there in the darkness to the south, Ramesses was traveling on toward Nubia.

Instead of returning to Merit, I kept walking through the halls. The palace was silent. Every servant who wasn’t in the Great Hall with Iset had gone to bed, and I made my way through the corridors to a door that no one ever opened. Once, that door had been guarded by four men in polished breastplates, and my family had used it to reach the royal courtyard. But that courtyard and all of its chambers had burned. I had not seen the charred remains since Merit had taken me as a little girl. There had been nothing to see then except weeds and ashes, but now I wanted to see with a woman’s eyes the destruction that Rahotep had brought on my family.

I stepped through the door, and in the moonlight the scene looked like a shipwreck that had been washed onto a black and desolate shore. Charred timbers lay where they had fallen, surrounded by rocks and thickly growing vines. I moved through the courtyard, swatting at an insect that had made the devastation its home. I could see where a bed would have stood once, although all that was left was part of its frame. It might have been the one my mother shared with my father, but of course, there was no way of knowing. Smudged tiles supported its blackened legs, and I used the edge of my sandal to scrap away a few layers of dirt, uncovering more burnt tiles. No one had thought to take them away. The damage was so complete that Horemheb had left the chambers for nature to reclaim.

I picked up one of the broken tiles and smoothed away the ash with my palm. Although Merit would be furious, I used the sleeve of my robe to reveal the image, then held up the tile to the silvery light. It was nothing like what Asha had brought back from Amarna. Just a blue glaze where the fire hadn’t melted the paint. But my mother’s foot had probably touched it once. I pressed my hand to the cool surface and thought of how much Rahotep had taken from me. And yet the power of rebellion rested in his hands. My heart felt sick knowing I would have to keep his secret from Ramesses. I wanted to tell all of Egypt what the High Priest had done to my akhu. I wanted him to suffer the way I had suffered. I wanted him to know loneliness, and fear, and despair. Without Ramesses and Merit, whom did I have in the palace of Malkata? I looked down at my swelling stomach and thought that at least I would always have my children, and I was aware of the irony—that I was standing in a place of ruin and death while inside of me, new life was growing. I wrapped the tile in a fold of my robe, then cast a last glance across the shipwreck that had swallowed my family, pitching me alone into the waves of palace life. Merit would say that they were still watching me; that your akhu never leave you except in body. I hoped that this was true. I wanted to imagine my mother looking down at me from the realm of Aaru, the starry sky that separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. And I hoped that in Aaru she was sitting at Ma’at’s table, whispering into the goddess’s ear all the terrible things that needed to be set right on earth.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AMUN WAS WATCHING US

IN THE WORST heat of Mesore, a messenger ran ahead of the army and declared that Ramesses had been victorious. “An uprising in Nubia has been averted and the rebels have been crushed!” the herald exclaimed. “The army is already approaching Thebes!”

There was elation in the Audience Chamber, and I shouted over the noise from my throne. “The dead! Where is the list of the dead?”

“There is no list!” The messenger was jubilant. He knew this news would bring him a dozen deben. “Pharaoh Ramesses has been completely triumphant.”

I fought my way through the crush of bodies hurrying to leave the Audience Chamber, and Merit found me in the hall. “Hurry, my lady, or we’ll be late! There’s a ship already waiting.”

“But did you hear? Not a single officer killed!”

“And all of it accomplished in only a month! The gods have protected him.” She touched the ankh at her neck and murmured a quick prayer of thanks. Then she took my arm and pressed forward. “Move for the princess Nefertari!” she shouted. “Move aside!” Dozens of courtiers stepped back, as we emerged onto the quay, where Iset was already waiting aboard Amun’s Blessing, shielded from the sun by a canopy of painted linen.

I settled into a shaded chair next to Merit, and when I put my fingers to my lips in excitement, Merit pushed them down.

“You’re not a child!”

“But I feel like one.” I giggled. “It feels like the first time I saw Ramesses, after being hidden away at the Temple of Hathor.”

When the ship reached the eastern bank, armed guards led us down the Avenue of Sphinxes so we could greet Ramesses beneath the freshly raised columns of Luxor. Thousands of Thebans swelled in the streets, so filled with joy that the women even shouted blessings to me. Then they began chanting Ramesses’s name and breaking off palm branches to shade him as his army went by. Heat billowed up in a shimmering haze from the sandy streets, and as we passed through the market I could taste the scent of cumin in the air. When we reached the gates of Luxor, I was amazed once more by the towering statues of Ramesses. Woserit took my hand and led me to the steps of the temple, beside Iset in her best sheath and crown. She looked stunningly beautiful, carrying the weight of her coming child in her swelling breasts and rounded hips. What if Ramesses gives her his sword? I worried.

There was a loud call of trumpets as the army appeared on the Avenue of Sphinxes with Ramesses at its head. He was wearing the khepresh crown of war, and his hair streamed behind him like wisps of fire. He was the tallest of any of the men and bronzed from the sun. In his kilt, with the golden pectoral of Sekhmet, there was no more beautiful man in Egypt. He met my gaze and slowly withdrew his sword. I could feel the rush of blood in my ears. Then Iset stepped forward, and Ramesses lowered the blade back into its sheath.

“Ramesses!” She rushed down the temple steps and flung herself gracefully into his arms. A deafening cheer went up around the temple, and she placed his hand on her slightly swelling stomach so that everyone might see him blessing her child.

Merit nudged me painfully in the side. “Go! Don’t let her steal this chance,” she hissed.

I moved carefully down the steps, and Ramesses let go of Iset. Immediately, the cheers of the people faltered. “Nefertari,” he breathed. He swept me into his embrace and inhaled the scent of my perfume, my hair, the warm sun on my skin. “Nefertari, look at you!” he exclaimed. My profile was like a willow stick attached to a heavy ball.

“Five months,” I told him. I didn’t add that for the past month I had been sick every night.

“Gods, how I missed you in Nubia,” he admitted. Then he reached for his sword and Iset immediately stepped closer to us.

“The entire court has been waiting for you,” she said quickly. “There is a magnificent feast planned for the Great Hall tonight.”

Ramesses smiled. “I am looking forward to it.”

“Are you looking forward to visiting my chamber as well?”

He glanced at me, and when she realized where he meant to spend the night, her voice became urgent. “But I have something for you. A gift in celebration of your triumph.”

At last, Ramesses let go of his sword, and I knew that he wouldn’t present it to either one of us. I could feel the anger darkening my cheeks as Ramesses promised, “I’ll come to see you before the feast.”

Then the High Priest of Amun walked down the temple’s steps. I felt my stomach turn. From his position on the lowest step, he smiled at Iset before announcing, “Night after night we have spent our time at the feet of Amun, praying for Pharaoh’s safe and triumphant return.”

I sucked in my breath at his lie. Night after night he had been in the Audience Chamber, drinking and eating and plotting with Henuttawy.

“Now it is Mesore,” Rahotep went on, raising his arms like two hollow reeds. “And in this last month of the Season of Harvest, Amun has granted Pharaoh a harvest of his own. A victory over rebellious Nubia!”

The courtiers cheered, and the priestesses shook their long bronze sistrums. Then the army sailed to the palace in a spectacle of blue and gold pennants. While Ramesses shared a ship with his men, I sat next to Merit on the deck of Amun’s Blessing and was too angry even to speak.

“He was going to present you with the sword,” Merit swore. “I saw him reach for it.”

“And, as always, Iset was there to stop it! And now he’s going to her chamber before the feast so that she can give him a gift.”

Merit sat back on the cushion chair and fumed. “And she will tell him she prayed for his safety every night when you were the one lighting incense at Amun’s feet. I will let Pharaoh know what really happened!”

I sat forward. “No! He will think I have sent you out of jealousy. He won’t believe you.”

“Then he can confirm it with someone else.”

“Who? Who will be brave enough to tell him the truth?”

The feast in the Great Hall lasted all night, but when the food had been served and the musicians began a victory song, Ramesses found me out on the balcony.

“Nefertari.” He had grown dark after long marches in the sun. The white of his sheath shone against the bronze of his skin and the blue of his eyes was like turquoise. “I have been waiting to find you alone.” He took me in his arms, and when I saw the new golden bangle on his wrist, I wanted to be angry with him. What kind of a fool couldn’t see the game that Iset was playing? But his kisses were urgent and I felt a need beneath his kilt. He pressed his hand to my belly. “I thought of you every day,” he whispered. “There were a thousand times when I wanted to send back a message to you, but I was afraid it might be intercepted,” he admitted. “I want to know everything. Tell me everything.”

We went to my chamber, leaving the feast and the musicians behind, but it was a long time before we spoke. We fell into the bed and Ramesses took me in his arms, slipping the sheath from my shoulders. We were gentle together, so we wouldn’t hurt the child, but that night our embraces grew more urgent until finally Ramesses swore, “I never want to leave this bed again, Nefer. I never want to go on a campaign without you.”

As the music echoed in the courtyard, we shared our secrets together. Every night I had lit incense at the feet of Amun, praying for his safety, and now I wondered how I could have feared he wouldn’t come home. He was tall and strong, with hands that were capable of anything.

“While you were gone, I was so worried,” I admitted.

Ramesses laughed, then saw the trembling of my lip and hesitated. “Oh, Nefer.” He held me against his chest. “You and I are bronze and gold,” he promised. “We will last for eternity.”

“In name,” I said. “Not in body. Not like this.”

“It will always be like this,” Ramesses swore. I wondered if victory had made him more rash. How could he be so certain? “We will live together in the Afterlife,” he added, “and eat with the gods. They have heard all of our prayers. Amun was with me in Nubia. You should have seen how easy it was to surround the palace and find the men who were plotting rebellion. We slaughtered them like cattle.”

When I shuddered, Ramesses said forcefully, “They were disloyal to Egypt. They betrayed us, after we built everything for them! A clean city, a citadel taller than any in Nubia, protection from the Assyrians.” There was a conviction in Ramesses’s eyes that I had never seen before, and I wondered what he would do if he knew how Iset had truly acted in his absence. “But Amun was watching us,” he said seriously. “How else could it have gone so well? Next time, you will come with me, Nefer. When our son is born—”

“What if it’s a daughter?”

“It will be a son,” he said confidently. “Amun has heard my prayers and he will give us an heir.”

My heartbeat quickened, and the fear of childbirth welled up inside of me again. What if I didn’t bring him a son, or worse, didn’t survive to see my child grow?

“But tell me about Thebes,” he said gently. “Tell me what’s happened while I’ve been away. Paser says a Habiru came to visit you.”

“Yes, Ahmoses of Chaldea,” I said, and Ramesses heard the hesitation in my voice when I added, “He came to the Audience Chamber with a petition for me.”

Ramesses frowned. “Specifically for you? And what did he want?”

“For me to release the Habiru from your army.”

He sat up in the bed. “All of the Habiru?” he exclaimed. “And what did you tell him?”

“That his petition must go to you, of course!”

“The Habiru cannot be released! Every year there is talk of a Hittite invasion from the north, and someday it will happen. Why did he think you would grant such a thing?”

“Because it was my grandfather who brought his people to Egypt. And under the Heretic King,” I explained, “the Habiru were used as slaves.”

“The entire army was used as slaves.”

“But it was the Habiru that the Heretic King promised to set free. He lied.”

“So this Ahmoses of Chaldea came hoping that you would honor the promise of your akhu?”

I looked across my chamber to the burned tile I had placed next to the painting from Meryra’s tomb. Though the edges were blackened, the center was still a vivid blue. I thought of the fires that had destroyed my family and marveled at how destiny had brought back the man who had first kindled them. Why was I telling Ramesses his story? Why did I care what Ahmoses wanted when he had risked my reputation by approaching me? But I looked across the bed into Ramesses’s eyes and replied, “Yes, that was his hope.”

Ramesses laughed. “And where does he think so many people would go?”

“North. To make the land of Canaan their own.”

“Canaan is Egyptian land!” His curiosity turned to anger. “Who is this man?”

I twisted the bed linens in my hands. “The same man who taught the Heretic King that there is only one god. The leader of the Habiru.”

Ramesses sat up on the pillows, shocked. “His teacher?”

“And he didn’t come simply because he thought I would honor the vows of my akhu,” I admitted slowly. “He came with the idea that there was profit in it for me as well. That if I released the Habiru from the army, I could tell the people I was expelling the heretics from Thebes and win their approval.”

“So he is clever.”

“I would never have said yes. Not at the expense of Egypt.”

Ramesses took my hand, pulling me toward him. “Enough of this Habiru from Chaldea. Let Paser deal with him.”

“So there isn’t anything we can do?”

“For the Habiru?” Ramesses was genuinely surprised. “Not when they’re a sixth of my father’s army. Why? Do you think we should risk—”

“No,” I said quickly. “When he comes, you will have to refuse him as well.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FOR WHOM DO YOU WAIT?

Thebes, 1281 BC

WHEN THE NEW year arrived, so did Seti’s court from Avaris, and although it was supposed to be the solemn Feast of Wag, Iset had planned a merry celebration to welcome him back. All of Thebes came to see the royal flotilla of ships sail into Malkata’s lake. The masts were festooned with blue and gold pennants, and trumpets blared as Seti and Tuya stepped onto the quay. The courtyard in front of the palace was filled with drinking courtiers, and the doors were decorated with swaths of gold cloth and rich blue linen.

“The princess must think she’s planning a marriage, not the Feast of Wag,” Merit snapped from where we stood on the quayside. “What if there’s another war?” she demanded. “Where will the deben come from to pay the army if it’s all been spent on acrobats, wine, and musicians?” She turned to me. “What does Pharaoh say about this?”

I looked at Ramesses, who was greeting his father at the end of the quay. They both wore the blue and gold nemes crown, but no two men could have been more different. One was young and bronzed from his time in the south, the other was old, and thin, and weary. But neither of them seemed to mind that the somber Feast of Wag had been turned into a festival. “Ramesses indulges her,” I replied. “He wants to make her happy.”

“Little Nefertari!” Pharaoh Seti called out. He crossed the quay, and courtiers parted to make a path for him. The queen pointedly remained with Iset. But when Adjo caught sight of me, his lips curled back in a threatening growl. “Oh, be quiet,” Pharaoh Seti demanded, and when he reached me, he took me proudly in his arms. “Even with a child you’re as slight as a reed! So tell me, when does the little prince come?”

“Only two months left.”

He glanced behind him to where Iset and Henuttawy were watching us. “And the other one?” he whispered.

“Not too long after.”

“So this must be a son.”

“Yes. I’ve been praying to Bes every night, and Nurse Merit has prepared a special offering for my akhu.”

“And the people?”

“I am trying.”

“Because there is always danger in the north. If Ramesses ever takes the army to face Emperor Muwatallis, he cannot leave a foolish queen behind to sit on his throne. He needs a partner in the Audience Chamber whom he can trust. And that the people will accept . . .”

“Then Paser will have to watch the Audience Chamber. If Ramesses goes to war, I want to go with him. I want to be a partner to him wherever he is, even if that’s in battle.”

Pharaoh Seti stared at me, then a smile started at the edges of his lips. “Tonight, when you visit your akhu,” he said quietly, “thank them for bringing you to my son.”

That evening, I entered Horemheb’s mortuary temple in Djamet and knelt in front of my mother’s image. I lit a cone of kyphi that Merit had procured in the markets at great expense, and as the smoke made a shroud across my mother’s face, I traced the scar that Henuttawy had cut across her cheek.

“Mawat,” I said heavily, and already felt the burning in my eyes. “You don’t know how sick I’ve been this past month. Merit gives me mint but it never helps. She says it’s a sign that I’m carrying a son, but what if it’s not? What if I never stop feeling ill?” My hand lingered on her cheek, and I wondered what her real skin had felt like. Had it been soft, the way I imagined it to be? “If you were here, you would know what to do,” I whispered. Her image flickered in the lamplight. I heard a rustle of sandals and tensed.

“You miss her,” a voice said softly.

I nodded, and Woserit stood at my shoulder.

“When the gods return, she will be resurrected and you will walk hand in hand with her in Egypt.”

I glanced at Woserit and reminded myself of the further truth she was withholding. Without the status of Chief Wife, my mother would never return to Egypt. As Chief Wife, my lineage would be written on every temple from Memphis to Thebes, and the gods would remember my akhu until eternity. But without that title my ancestors would remain erased from history. It wasn’t just for me that I had to become queen. It was for my mother. And her mother. And now my child. I looked down at my belly. “But what if it’s not a son?”

“I have placed an offering to Hathor every evening in your name.”

And if Iset has a prince as well? Without the crown, my child would become a second prince, sent away to Memphis to become a priest the way Akhenaten had been spurned as a child. I stood and, looking up at my mother’s damaged face, felt a deep inner rage. “Egypt knows she never worshipped Aten. It was Akhenaten who was the Heretic King. It was Akhenaten who wanted to erase Egypt’s gods, not my mother. So why couldn’t they just destroy him?”

“Because people are easy to convince.” Woserit sighed. “And Horemheb convinced them that all of your family was corrupted.”

“But he married my mother!”

“Because he knew that she never worshipped Aten. No amount of royal blood would have convinced him to marry her if he’d thought otherwise. And although she may not have wanted that marriage, it saved her from the same fate as your aunt. The fate of being completely erased from Egypt, your name chipped from all the monuments of Thebes as if you had never lived. At least you can come to see her here.”

“In one painting?” I asked. “One?” I watched the cone of incense burn itself into ashes. “I miss her.” My eyes blurred with tears, and the embers became a smear of red in my vision.

“I know,” she said softly. “We all wait for someone to return.”

I heard the gravity in Woserit’s voice and looked up. Her eyes seemed nearly transparent in the lamplight, and her long blue robe hung almost black. “Who are you waiting for?”

“I lost a mother, too. And a father, who was very kind to me. I was blessed that they both saw me grow. They both knew that I was to become the High Priestess of Hathor.”

I blinked away my tears and felt my resolution harden. “I will make my mother proud. I will follow Ramesses into every battle. No one will ever say I’m like the Heretic Queen, only interested in my palace and my gold. And I will become Chief Wife, Woserit. Whether this is a daughter or a son, I will become Chief Wife.”

A MONTH after the Feast of Wag, Pharaoh Seti returned with Queen Tuya to Avaris. Although there was a lavish farewell in the Great Hall, I was too sick to attend. My stomach felt too large for my body, and even walking from my bed to the robing room felt dangerous.

On the eleventh of Choiak I awoke from my sleep in a sweat. Although it was only morning, my hair was wet and clung to my neck. As soon as Ramesses saw my face, he sprang from the bed in search of Merit.

Merit rushed into the room and tore back the covers. The bed beneath me was wet. “It’s happening, my lady! You’re having the child!”

I looked at Ramesses. Merit hurried into the hall and the entire palace was awakened by her loud instructions. Messengers were sent north to Avaris to tell Pharaoh Seti that his grandchild was coming, and half a dozen servants rushed to take me to the birthing pavilion.

“Is there anything you need?” Ramesses pressed. “How are you feeling?”

“Well,” I told him from my litter, but I was lying. The fear in my mouth tasted like an iron blade. By tomorrow, I could be dead in childbirth like my mother. I might never live to hear my baby cry or see the expression on Ramesses’s face when he held our first child. And I was afraid of what might follow if I lived, and it wasn’t a son.

The bearers rushed me through the halls, and Merit held open the door of the birthing pavilion. I glimpsed its blue tiled floor before a dozen hands eased me onto the bed. The dwarf god Bes grimaced down at me from the wall, and from the wooden post hung silver amulets that would help to bring an easy birth. A statue of Hathor stared benevolently from the ledge of a window, but when the midwives brought in the birthing chair, I felt a rising terror. I stared at the high leather back, then at the hole in the middle of the seat where the child would drop into the arms of a waiting nurse. The carved wooden sides had been painted with scenes of every protective goddess, but I had never thought to ask whether I would be using the same chair that had failed to protect my mother. I looked across the room and saw that Ramesses was gone.

“Where’s Ramesses?” I asked fearfully. “Where did he go?”

“Shh.” Merit wiped the hair from my face. “He is waiting outside—he’s not allowed into the pavilion until you’ve given birth. These women will watch over you, my lady.”

I looked up at the midwives. Their breasts were hennaed and their hands had been washed in sacred oil. But how much did they really know about birthing? My mother had attended dozens of births too, yet she had died giving life to me.

“Calm yourself,” Merit said soothingly. “The baby will come easier if you’re calm.”

My pains lasted throughout the day, and in the afternoon armed guards allowed Woserit into the birthing pavilion. Immediately, she ordered the reed mats to be lowered and more fan bearers to be brought. “This is a princess of Egypt!” she barked. “Someone bring a wet linen for her forehead and find her some shedeh.”

The midwife’s apprentice scurried out, and when the door opened, I glimpsed Ramesses’s face in the hall. He looked sick with worry. I felt a tightness in my belly and cried out. I saw him rush to the door before Merit blocked his entry.

“Your Highness, this is a birthing pavilion!” she exclaimed.

Ramesses pushed past her, and the midwives gasped at this breach of tradition. But Woserit nodded solemnly, and Ramesses pulled up a stool to sit at my side. He took my hand and didn’t flinch at my complexion.

“Nefer, you’re going to do well today. The gods are watching over us.”

I felt a strain in my back and my breath came in gasps. “It hurts,” I told him.

He squeezed my hand. “What have they given you?”

“Kheper-wer, water of carob, and honey.”

“To speed the delivery,” Woserit explained.

“But what for the pain?”

I smiled grimly. “They’ve put saffron and beer on my stomach.”

The paste glistened in the low light of the room. All I was wearing was a simple kilt, without paint or even a necklace, but Ramesses didn’t look away. Instead, he held my hand tighter.

“If the pain is too much, just look at me.” He made me promise. “Squeeze my arm.”

A sharp pain wracked my body and I arched my back. The midwives rushed to the bed and one of them cried, “It’s coming!” They eased me onto the birthing chair, and my terror grew so strong I could barely contain it. The child would drop through the hole into Merit’s waiting arms. If it was a son, the priestesses would do for me what they had done for Iset. They would ring their bells three times throughout Thebes to tell the people that I had given Ramesses an heir. If it was a girl, they would only ring the bells twice.

A bowl of steaming water was placed under the chair to ease the delivery, and while Merit crouched, Woserit and Ramesses stood at my side. I held Ramesses’s hand, and it was in this moment that I loved his rashness most. It didn’t matter that a Pharaoh had never before witnessed a royal birth. If something should happen to me, he wanted his face to be the last one I saw, and he knew that this is what I would want as well. We looked into each other’s eyes as the midwives chanted, “Push, my lady! Push!”

I strained against the chair and felt the hard wood press into my back. Then my body shuddered and one of the women cried, “It’s coming!” Merit opened her arms and I felt my body relieve itself of its burden. In a rush of blood the child appeared. Merit held it in the air to inspect its hands and feet, and I heard Ramesses cry, “A son! A prince of Egypt!”

But I was in too much pain to celebrate my triumph. I gripped the arms of the chair and felt a tremendous pressure between my legs. Then Woserit pointed beneath me and cried sharply. She took my son from Merit’s arms, and my nurse held out her hands as another head appeared, then a body. There was an intake of breath in the birthing chamber, then the sharp piercing cry of another living child.

“Twin sons!” Merit cried, and the entire chamber rejoiced. I am sure that the courtiers who pressed outside the doors could hear the cries of the midwives as they thanked Hathor and Bes for twin princes. “Sons!” they repeated. “Two sons!”

The message was passed through the windows of the pavilion, and I heard a woman shout, “The princess Nefertari is beloved by the gods.”

I looked at my sons in the arms of their nurses. Even with blood still covering their heads they were incredibly beautiful. My knees felt weak, and there was a pulsing ache between my thighs, but I was alive. I had survived the birth of not one, but two sons, and now I was a mother. I wanted to hold my princes in my arms, and stroke their heads, and learn the color of their eyes and the soft contours of their bodies. I wanted to press them to my chest and never let them go where harm might come to them. These children carried the blood of all of my akhu and Ramesses’s akhu with them.

I was helped through the back door to the baths. While Merit washed and perfumed me with jasmine, she hummed an elated hymn to Hathor. Then she guided me to a long stone bench where she packed my womb with linen. I shut my eyes tightly against the pain, and Merit said softly, “These next few days are vital, my lady. You will need to be kept completely dry and rested.” Many women survived childbirth only to succumb to disease a few days later. And my sons would have to be kept tightly wrapped, so that not even their little arms could move, in case they should accidentally reach out and beckon the shadow of Anubis.

I sat while Merit brushed my hair, and a servant brought me tea. Then I returned to the birthing pavilion. I could hear the priestesses in the courtyard ringing their bells six times each, and I imagined the people’s confusion. Thrice for a son, twice for a daughter. When they learned what six meant . . .

Ramesses sat on a leather stool at my side and held my hand again. “How do you feel?”

I smiled, and for the first time I looked with a mother’s eyes at the images of children painted across the wide walls of the pavilion. It was a large chamber, with long windows that faced the rising sun and soft linen curtains that blew gently with every breeze. It had been built to make a new mother feel at ease, for in every scene a woman sat smiling while her children were at play, at work, or asleep. I took Ramesses’s hand and squeezed it tenderly. “I am feeling well.”

His eyes filled with tears, and he moved from the stool to my bed. “I was frightened for you, Nefer. When I saw all the blood, I was scared of what I had done to you.”

“Ramesses,” I said softly, “you gave me a son. Two sons.” I looked at my children suckling at their milk nurses’ breasts. They had been bathed in lavender water and their small heads had been rubbed with oil. Without the oil, I was sure that their hair would be as red-gold as their father’s, and I felt the overwhelming need to hold them and look into their eyes.

“And just as Ahmoses predicted,” Ramesses whispered.

I looked up in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“He came this morning to the Audience Chamber. After Paser told him that the Habiru would remain with the army, he wished you well in the birth of our two sons.”

I sat straighter in my bed. “He said two sons?”

“He said twins.”

“But how could he have known?”

“Perhaps he guessed. Or perhaps he thought . . .”

“Of Nefertiti?” In my joy, I hadn’t considered this, but now I could see how the people could view my sons as a link to the Heretic Queen, who had also borne twins. Was every blessing destined to be seen as a curse? I clutched my stomach, and the pain between my legs suddenly sharpened.

“What is it?” Ramesses worried. “Is there something you need?”

I winced, and Merit was at my side at once.

“I will bring my lady some ginger and tea. It will ease the pain in her womb, Your Highness.”

I sat back on my cushions, and Ramesses’s eyes were dark and full of worry.

“I’ll be fine,” I promised. “But I can’t bear to think—”

“Then don’t. You are the mother to the first princes of Egypt, Nefer.” He kissed my hand gently. “So what shall we name them?”

I looked at our children, wrapped in the very finest linen, and their little chests moved up and down with small, contented breaths. “I want to hold them first.”

Merit disturbed their feeding to bring them to me, and Woserit and Ramesses stood back as my sons were placed in my arms. Their bodies fit snugly against mine, and I nuzzled their soft cheeks and downy heads. It was true. Both of my children had thin wisps of auburn hair and eyes the color of turquoise. In fourteen days they would be taken to the Temple of Amun and introduced to the gods. But before then I would have to announce their names.

I studied their small features; both of them had delicate faces, with hands so small they could barely fit around a river reed. They were tiny gifts from Amun, a sign from the gods that was undeniable. “Our first will be Amunher,” I announced, and the midwives who were cleansing the chamber murmured happily, for Amunher meant “Amun is with him.” “And the second . . .” I looked at Amunher’s brother. His gaze was as curious and bright as Re. “And our second son shall be Prehir.”

“Re watches over him,” Ramesses repeated, and the women in the chamber sighed. “Woserit, tell the priestesses to make a special offering. Then let the people know that Nefertari is as healthy and strong as ever. Tonight, there will be a feast in the Great Hall.”

Merit returned my sons to the pair of young milk nurses who sat in the pavilion’s only private chamber. Although the pavilion was wide, the chamber door had been left open so that I could see my sons resting in the young women’s arms. For most of the afternoon I slept, and as the sun dropped lower in the sky, Woserit bowed politely and left. As she parted, I could hear the excited chatter in the hall as courtiers peered inside to catch a glimpse of the princes. Then Henuttawy entered the pavilion. She wore the seshed circlet on her brow, and the cobra’s golden hood gleamed from her dark hair as though it were ready to strike. Behind her was Iset, her eyes wide with fear. She hadn’t been inside the birthing pavilion since her own son had died, and I knew it was Henuttawy who’d insisted she come.

“We have all heard the wonderful news,” Henuttawy announced grandly. “Not one child, but twins, just like Nefertiti.” She looked at me, and her eyes were as cold and hard as granite. “Congratulations, Nefertari. Although it’s hard to imagine that a girl of your size could produce two children at once.” I felt the pain between my legs increase, and she glanced up from under her lashes at Ramesses. “Are you sure they are hers?” she asked teasingly.

“Of course,” Ramesses said sharply.

Henuttawy dismissed the remark with a laugh, as if she hadn’t meant anything by it. “So what has our little princess named them?” she asked.

“Amunher and Prehir,” I answered. I noticed that Ramesses was watching his aunt with a curious expression.

“Iset is thinking of Ramessu for her son. Ramessu the Great, just like his father.”

“And if it’s a girl?” I asked from my bed.

Iset put her hand over her large belly. “Why should it be a girl?” she whispered. “Ramesses has given his wives only sons.”

“That’s right,” Henuttawy said brightly, then hooked Ramesses’s arm in hers. And before I could protest, she led him away from me and into the midwives’ chamber. Merit quickly took a bundle of linens and began folding them near Henuttawy.

But Iset remained next to my bed, and she looked across the chamber at my newborn sons with longing. They were nestled into their milk nurses’ bosoms. I told her softly, “Henuttawy should not have brought you here. She doesn’t care about you.”

“Then who does?” she hissed. Her arm was wrapped around her belly, and I knew it was to protect it from the evil eye. “Do you think that Ramesses cares?” she demanded.

I was stunned. “Of course.”

She smiled bitterly. “The way he cares about you?”

“There is nothing you owe Henuttawy. No payment—”

“And what would you know about payment? A princess by birth who never had to pay for anything in her life.”

Ramesses emerged from the chamber ahead of Henuttawy, and his expression was taut, like leather stretched too tightly over a drum.

“Shall we prepare a feast for tonight?” Iset asked eagerly. She offered Ramesses her arm, but he turned his strained expression to me and asked, “Nefertari, what would you like?”

The smile froze on Iset’s face.

“I’d like to summon Penre to tell him what to paint on the Wall of Proclamation,” I said. “I want to let Amun know that two princes of Egypt have been born.”

“And the feast?” Iset repeated. “Shall we go and plan the feast?”

But Ramesses walked back toward the milk nurses’ chamber. “Why don’t you plan the feast with Henuttawy?” he said.

Iset blinked away tears but didn’t refuse his request. “Of course.” She took Henuttawy’s arm, and on their way out of the pavilion they met Woserit, who was returning.

“Such a happy day,” Woserit said cheerfully. “Don’t you think?”

Neither Henuttawy nor Iset replied. Woserit came to my bed, and I glanced at Ramesses, who was humming softly to his sons. He had taken off his nemes crown so that his auburn hair curled about his neck, and the little princes looked like miniature versions of their father. “Henuttawy was talking to him,” I whispered. “Alone. But Merit might have overheard.”

Woserit stood and went straight to Merit. I watched the pair of them speak in the alcove by the window. When Woserit came back to me, her look was grave. “Someone has spread the word in Thebes that your sons are not really yours, that they were born to a palace servant.”

“Someone?” I hissed, nearly choking on my rage. “Someone? Who could it be but Henuttawy and Rahotep? Ammit will devour their souls,” I vowed. “They will never pass into the Afterlife! When the time comes for their hearts to be weighed against the truth, the scales will sink to the ground and Ammit will destroy them!” Woserit put her hand on mine. I wouldn’t be calmed, but I lowered my voice. “So what does this mean?” I demanded. “In fourteen days when my sons are brought before the altar of Amun, will I be declared Chief Wife?”

“The viziers will all tell Ramesses to wait and see what the people believe.”

“You mean wait and see if Iset has a son.” I could barely contain my rage. Across the wide birthing pavilion, Ramesses still hummed softly to the princes. I closed my eyes. “And Paser?”

“Of course Paser will speak for you! And Ramesses himself witnessed the birth. When the people see two red-haired princes with the same bright eyes and dimpled cheeks as Pharaoh, who do you think they will believe?” Woserit asked. “Though we must leave nothing to chance,” she quickly amended. “Henuttawy’s name is respected in Thebes. The people don’t know what she really is.”

“A viper,” I said.

Ramesses smiled at us from the corner of the pavilion where he was watching our sons, and Woserit added quickly, “Iset doesn’t know yet that it was Henuttawy who chased Ashai away. The moment has come,” she said firmly. “You have kept my sister’s secret long enough.”

“And Rahotep?” I asked, imagining the High Priest’s sickening grin as he helped spread Henuttawy’s lie among the people.

“Kill the viper first. Snakes may be immune to their own kind’s venom, but you have become something more powerful than a snake today.”

I followed her eyes to the image of a queen painted above the door. The golden wings of the woman’s vulture crown swept down her hair. As Chief Wife, I would wear a similar headdress, for the vulture is the most powerful symbol in Egypt. It is more powerful even than the cobra, for its flight brings it closer to the gods.

“Enjoy these next few days, Nefertari. There will be a Birth Feast tomorrow,” Woserit said. “But when the right time comes . . .”

When the right times comes, I thought, then the viper will see what a vulture can do.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A TRUTH MADE WHOLE

I TOOK WOSERIT’S advice and waited, savoring the days I had with my sons before I would have to return to the Audience Chamber and be parted from them. After the Birth Feast, I lay in the pavilion for fourteen days, reading to Amunher and Prehir, and singing to them the hymns of Amun that my mother would have sung to me if she had lived. There was nothing in the world so beautiful as watching them sleep, studying the steady rise and fall of their little chests, and listening to the small noises they made when they were hungry, or tired, or in need of being held in their own mother’s arms. Of course, I was not allowed to suckle them, so Merit bound my breasts with linen and I watched while my sons fed from their milk nurses, cheerful women who had recently given birth themselves.

As my fourteen days passed, Ramesses came to me every afternoon to tell me the news of the Audience Chamber, bringing me presents of honeyed dates and pomegranate wine. At night, when the nurses had wrapped our sons in blankets and placed them in the pavilion’s private chamber, Ramesses lit the oil lamps and climbed into my bed. And there, surrounded by gifts from foreign kingdoms, we studied the day’s petitions together.

For a short while, I knew the perfect life. I wasn’t in the Great Hall to hear the gossip about me, and I didn’t have to see Rahotep’s frightening grin. But the world could not be kept at bay forever, and the news that came into our happy pavilion and disturbed me the most was not about myself, but about Egypt’s security.

“I won’t let this go on!” Ramesses raged on my last night in the birthing pavilion. He pointed to the pile of growing petitions from Memphis. “Sherden pirates attacking our ships along the River Nile. Sherden pirates attacking our ships in Kadesh!”

“The same pirates who overtook the Mycenaean King’s ship and stole the gifts that were meant for little Amunher and Prehir,” I reminded, and Ramesses’s face reddened.

“We won’t let it continue. We will wait until Tybi,” he said decisively. He wouldn’t risk leaving Iset before she delivered her child, not knowing whether she lived or died. “And if these Sherden attack another Egyptian ship, or even a ship that’s bound for Egypt, they’ll be humbled by what will be waiting for them.”

In the Audience Chamber the next day, the viziers crowded around the base of the dais, greeting me with unusually low bows as I took my seat. But when Rahotep smiled strangely at me, I felt the sudden urge to hold my sons. I knew that they were safe, yet as Ramesses struck his crook on the floor of the dais, and as the viziers took their seats, I had to remind myself that there was no better nurse in Egypt than Merit.

“Bring forth the petitioners,” Ramesses announced. The doors swung open, and a figure crossed the tiles of the chamber. I recognized Ahmoses and his shepherd’s staff at once. He didn’t stop at the table where the viziers were waiting but came straight toward me. When the soldiers stepped forward to pull him back, I raised my hand to let them know that the Habiru should come forth.

“Princess Nefertari.” Unlike our previous meeting, Ahmoses bowed briefly before my throne. I wondered if this was because Ramesses was present. No one in Egypt would dare to come before a Pharaoh without bowing. I didn’t wait for him to rise. “How did you know I would have twin sons?”

“Because Queen Nefertiti gave Pharaoh Akhenaten twins,” he replied, meeting my gaze. “I said nothing about sons.”

Though we were speaking in Canaanite, I still glanced at Ramesses. He was watching us with a peculiar expression. “You are never to mention the names of the Heretic Rulers in Thebes,” I said harshly.

“The Heretic Rulers?” Ahmoses frowned. “Akhenaten, yes. But your aunt . . .” He shook his head.

“Are you saying,” I demanded, “that she didn’t worship Aten?”

“She only worshipped Aten while her husband still lived. Otherwise, she allowed shrines to be built to the gods that her husband had abandoned.”

Now both Ramesses and Iset had stopped listening to petitions. Both of them were watching me. “What are you saying?” I grew flustered.

“I am saying that Queen Nefertiti never stopping praying to Amun. She was not a heretic, as Pharaoh Horemheb called her.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I saw her shrines, and I watched your mother accompany the queen to the hidden temples of Tawaret. There was great danger in what your aunt was doing. If her husband had discovered it, he would have cast her off and taken Princess Kiya as Chief Wife instead.”

I was aware that even though we were speaking Canaanite, the entire chamber had become my audience. “You have been to the palace of Malkata three times,” I said angrily. “What is your purpose?”

“To remind you that your aunt suffered in the name of her gods. She wasn’t free to worship as she wished. Instead, she had to bow to Aten, and your mother—”

“My mother never bowed to Aten!”

“But there were times when she wondered if she should, when the pressure was so great she would have done anything to escape it. Your family suffered like the Habiru are suffering—”

“Pharaoh will not set the Habiru free!” I swore. “They are a part of his army.”

Ahmoses searched my face, to see if I might change my mind, and when he saw that I wouldn’t, he shook his head and turned away. I watched him make his way across the chamber. When he reached the guards, I heard myself exclaim, “Wait!”

He turned slowly to face me, and I stood from my throne.

“What are you doing?” Ramesses asked. But I walked beyond the viziers’ tables and met Ahmoses at the heavy bronze doors. The courtiers had stopped playing Senet to listen, but even if they could understand Canaanite, I lowered my voice so that only Ahmoses would hear. “Come again in Thoth,” I told him.

“Will the Habiru be set free with the next new year?”

I hesitated. Because Ramesses trusted me, it was possible that I could persuade him. But was I willing to risk the safety of Egypt because one Habiru had revealed to me the truth about my ancestors? “I . . . I don’t know. In eight months, a great deal can change.”

“You mean perhaps, by then, you will be queen?”

I felt the eyes of the entire court boring into my back and whispered, “Have you heard what the people are saying about my sons?”

Ahmoses didn’t flinch or look away. And he didn’t lie, as one of the courtiers might have. “Your mother was known for her honesty at court, and I believe the same of her daughter,” he said. “I have told the Habiru that Prince Amunher and Prince Prehir are royal sons.”

I closed my eyes briefly. “My husband thinks he can threaten gossip away. He swears that anyone speaking such things will be sent to the quarries, but you and I know . . . Will you tell the rest of the people?” I asked, and I was aware of how desperate I had become that I was asking a favor from a heretic. “Will you spread the word in eastern Thebes?” I repeated.

Ahmoses regarded me for a moment, and instead of naming a price, as I thought he might, simply nodded his assent.

LATER THAT evening, before Ramesses visited my chamber, I told Merit what had happened. “He told me she never worshipped Aten.”

Merit stood from the brazier where she was setting aloe wood to flame. Poorer households used cow dung and river reeds for their fires, but the scent of aloe has a calming effect, and through the open door to Merit’s chamber I could see that my sons were already asleep. Her brows drew together until they formed a dark line.

“Well, you were there!” I said passionately. “Is it true?”

Merit sat on the edge of the bed with me. “I saw her worship Aten, my lady.”

“Because she had to?”

Merit spread her palms. “Perhaps.”

“But did you see her go to other shrines as well? Did she secretly worship Tawaret, or Amun?”

“Yes, when it pleased her,” she admitted.

“And when was that?”

“When she wasn’t worshipping herself,” Merit said with brutal honesty.

It was as though a heavy stone had been lifted from my chest. Perhaps she had been selfish, and greedy, and vain. Perhaps these things all went against the laws of Ma’at. But there was nothing worse than heresy. And she had not been a heretic.

The door of my chamber opened. Ramesses came inside and Merit stood to bow. As soon as she left, I joined Ramesses on the long leather bench near the fire and told him what Ahmoses had said. For several moments he was silent, then he placed the scrolls he had brought with him on a low table next to the brazier, and said, “I knew that what they taught in the edduba wasn’t true. How could anyone related to you be a heretic, Nefer? Look at your mother; look at you!” His voice rose in excitement. “And what does Merit say?”

“The same as Ahmoses. She had seen my aunt worshipping at Tawaret’s shrine.” I held my breath, wondering if this was the moment he would decide to make me Chief Wife. If I could have silently willed the decision into his heart, I would have then.

He took my hands and swore, “The people may not know the truth, Nefertari, but we do. And someday, I will resurrect the names of your akhu in Egypt.”

I was disappointed. “Until then?”

Color tinged Ramesses’s cheeks. Surely he knew what I’d been hoping for. “Until then, we will try to change the people’s hearts.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SEKHMET’S CLAWS

IN THE DAYS after Ahmoses’s visit, I thought a great deal about my family and wished for things that could never be. I wished I could have gone with Asha to Amarna and seen the crumbling walls and abandoned remains of the city that Nefertiti had built. I longed to tear down every statue to Horemheb the way he tore down the statues of Ay and Tutankhamun, or wipe his name from the scrolls just as he tried to wipe away theirs. To avoid being consumed with vengeance, I spent my time thinking about my sons. I tried not to love them as much as I did; I knew that half of all children born never reached the age of three. But every day with my sons was an adventure, and neither Ramesses nor I could help but take them into our arms whenever our time in the Audience Chamber was finished. We laughed over the new faces they made when they were happy, or tired, or frustrated, or sad. By Tybi, they had their own little personalities, so that at night when I heard them crying from Merit’s chamber, I could tell their cries apart. Even after a long day of petitioners, I would sit up, and Ramesses would follow me to Merit’s door. “Go to sleep,” I’d tell him, but he wanted to be awake with me. So he would take Prehir, and I would take Amunher, and we would rock them by the light of the moon and smile at each other on those clear late-autumn nights.

“Can you imagine the day they’re old enough to hunt with us?” Ramesses asked one evening.

I laughed. “Hunting? Merit probably won’t even allow them to go swimming!”

Ramesses grinned. “She’s a good nurse, isn’t she?”

I looked down at Prehir’s contented face in my arms, and nodded. During the day, I doubted if our sons even noticed we were gone. They ate and slept under Merit’s supervision, and she was the perfect mawat, watching over them with a lioness’s ferocity.

“In a month, Iset will be going into the birthing pavilion,” Ramesses said quietly. “I’m going to take the army north before she gives birth.”

“To fight the pirates?”

“Yes. And I’ve been thinking, Nefer. What if you came with me?” My heart raced in my chest, and when I didn’t say anything Ramesses added, “What better way to convince the people that you’re beloved of Amun than to let them see you at my side when I defeat the Sherden? You would remain in the cabin surrounded by guards. There would be no danger—”

“Yes.”

Ramesses peered through the darkness at me. “Yes . . .”

“I will go with you. To the north . . . to the south . . . to the farthest ends of the desert.”

ON THE fifteenth of Tybi, good news came to Ramesses with the bad. Iset had been taken early to the birthing pavilion, and in the Northern Sea the Sherden pirates had attacked another Egyptian ship carrying five thousand deben worth of palace oil to Mycenae. Ramesses dismissed the day’s petitioners, shouting that the Audience Chamber must be cleared at once. Even Woserit and Henuttawy couldn’t calm him.

“There is nothing you can do today,” Henuttawy reminded, but Ramesses ignored her.

“Guards!” he demanded, as the viziers gathered nervously around the steps of the dais. “Summon Asha and his father, General Anhuri. Bring General Kofu in as well!”

“What will you do?” Henuttawy asked. “The army isn’t supposed to leave for ten days.”

“I’ll prepare a small fleet of ships tonight, and we will leave as soon as Iset has given birth.”

“But what if it’s a son?” Henuttawy asked. “How will Amun know that an heir has been born if no Birth Feast has been held?” Rahotep spread his hands in question, and the viziers looked at one another, waiting for Ramesses to make a decision.

“I will stay for the feast,” Ramesses conceded. “But only so that Amun knows this child. I won’t sit in Thebes while a band of thieving Sherden make fools of Egypt!”

I picked up the list that Paser had made, reading off the number of goods that Egypt had lost to the pirates. “A grove of potted myrrh trees for ointment, three golden collars from Crete, leather armor from Mycenae, chariots plated in gold and electrum, fifty barrels of olive oil, and twenty barrels of wine from Troy. The sooner we leave the better,” I said cunningly.

Henuttawy and Rahotep turned. “We?” Henuttawy said, and her eyes grew so narrow they looked like they had been painted on with the thinnest stroke of a reed brush. “Where do you think you’re going, Princess?”

“With me,” Ramesses said firmly.

“You are taking the mother of your sons,” Henuttawy asked calmly, “to war with the Sherden?”

“I wouldn’t call it war.” Ramesses glanced at me. “More like a battle.”

But Henuttawy wasn’t concerned about me; she was concerned that while Iset was recovering in the birthing pavilion, I would be riding into battle at Ramesses’s side, like the lion goddess Sekhmet, who avenged men’s evil deeds through war.

“It is kind of you to be concerned, Henuttawy,” I said, noting silently how much she resembled the viper she wore on her brow. “But I have no fear when I am with Ramesses. I know he’ll protect me.”

The doors to the Audience Chamber swung open and Asha arrived with his father, General Anhuri, and a second officer. The viziers stepped back to allow them through. “Your Majesty.” The men bowed.

“Have you heard?” Ramesses demanded.

“Sherden,” Anhuri replied. He was tall, like Asha, but with darker skin and harder eyes. I thought, as I often had, that he looked like he had spent many days in the desert without water or shade, and that neither had bothered him. “We have waited long enough to deal with these pirates,” Anhuri said. “Every day they’ll grow bolder until ships no longer come to Egypt from the Northern Sea.”

“We will wait until my wife has given birth,” Ramesses said. “But make ready a fleet.”

“Of how many ships?” General Kofu asked. “The Sherden use two ships to attack. Both ships work together.”

“Then ready ten. We’ll send one ship to lie in wait for them,” Ramesses plotted. “And we’ll stock it to look like a merchant ship. The soldiers will dress as sailors, and when the Sherden come to attack—”

“They’ll become prey themselves!” Asha finished. His eyes were bright with expectation. A baited merchant ship could dock at a bend in the river, while around the bend, nine of Pharaoh’s best ships could be waiting. When both of the pirate ships were lured in, Pharaoh’s ships would surround them. “But the Sherden are no fools,” he said cautiously. “They will be wary now of a ship moving slowly on the river.”

“Then we can dock and pretend to be unloading barrels,” Ramesses said.

“They have grown fat on their thievery,” General Anhuri warned.

“They will want something more than barrels of oil. Perhaps a ship they believe is carrying gold . . .”

“What if we sail the ship with Pharaoh’s pennant?” General Kofu suggested.

“No. They may not trust that,” Anhuri said.

“Then what if it’s a princess’s ship, sailing for Mycenae?” I asked.

“They may still be suspicious,” Anhuri warned.

“And what if the princess was on board, wearing gold that would reflect far enough for them to see? I could walk the decks and there would be no doubt of it being a royal barge.”

The generals looked at Ramesses.

“We’re not using you as bait,” he said. “It’s too great a risk.”

“But the idea is good,” Anhuri admitted. “And we could just as easily dress up a boy. It might lure in the Sherden.”

A messenger entered the chamber and bowed before the dais. Henuttawy demanded, “Has she given birth yet?”

I flinched at her callousness and wondered who was sitting with Iset while we clustered in the Audience Chamber.

“Not yet, my lady. But she will deliver His Majesty’s next heir at any moment.”

Ramesses stood from his throne. “Have the proper midwives been summoned?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” The messenger bowed. “They are ready.”

We rushed through the palace, and I wondered what Ramesses was hoping for. I never dared to discuss it with him at night, but if it was a son, the will of the gods would be unclear. However, if it was a daughter . . .

We reached the birthing pavilion, and behind us the courtiers halted to wait at the chamber’s entrance. I hesitated in front of the doors. “I . . . I shouldn’t. She already thinks I stole the ka of her last child!”

Ramesses scowled. “Then she will have to get over such superstitious nonsense.”

I passed a look to Woserit, who followed us across the threshold of the pavilion. Inside the chamber, the wall hangings and reed mats had all been changed. Even the color of the linens was different. I heard the sharp intake of breath as Iset saw Ramesses cross the room, and I knew she was afraid that his presence might incur the wrath of Tawaret. From her bed, she cried out in pain, and the midwives lifted her up, a woman under each arm, until she was seated on the birthing chair. Her lap was covered by a wide strip of linen and her hair had been pulled back in elaborate braids. She was perfectly beautiful even in childbirth. I knew I had not looked so well kempt during my own time in the pavilion.

I went to the statue of Tawaret and lit one of the cones of incense. Most had been burned by the midwives, and a pile of ashes smoldered at the feet of the hippopotamus goddess. I closed my eyes and whispered obediently, “May you bless Iset with the strength of a lioness. May you give her an easy birth . . .”

Iset shrieked; Henuttawy pointed to me and cried, “Nefertari, take back that terrible prayer!”

I blanched. Even the midwives turned.

“I heard what she prayed for,” Woserit said. “She was praying for Iset’s health.”

“Get her out!” Iset cried, gripping the arms of her chair.

“Nefertari is my wife,” Ramesses said sharply. “She has prayed for your health—”

“She stole the ka of my son and now she wants another!”

I turned from the shrine. When Ramesses reached out his hand to stop me, I shook my head firmly. “No!” I pushed the door open with Woserit following close behind, as the waiting crowd shifted to catch a glimpse inside. Paser separated himself from the group of viziers expectantly. “Has she given birth?”

“No.” Woserit scowled. “But she ordered us from the pavilion. Henuttawy accused Nefertari of praying for Iset’s death.”

Moments later, the heavy wooden doors opened again, and this time it was a midwife. The entire hall went silent, and I found myself holding my breath. I tried to read the woman’s face, but she was keeping her own counsel to heighten the suspense. Finally, someone shouted, “What is it?” and the midwife let herself grin. “A healthy son!” she cried jubilantly. “Prince Ramessu!”

My heart fell like a stone in my chest. Woserit squeezed my hand and said quickly, “He’s still younger, and she hasn’t given him two.”

Ramesses emerged from the birthing pavilion, and his eyes sought mine in the cheering crowds. He motioned to me and Woserit, and when we joined him on the steps of the pavilion, he took my arm. “Go back in to see her. Please don’t take offense at what she said. She was in pain—”

“Was my sister in pain, too?” Woserit asked sharply. “She accused your wife of praying for your own child’s death.”

“She is punishing Nefertari for being your friend, and I have spoken to her about this.”

“And what did she say?” I demanded.

Ramesses appeared tired, as if the conversation had taken a great deal out of him. “I’m sure you can imagine. But she’s my father’s sister.”

We went into the pavilion, and in the milk nurse’s private chamber, a crowd of midwives were gathered around Prince Ramessu. As the women parted, I felt a selfish thrill that his hair was as dark as his mother’s. This child was bigger than the last, and he was feeding greedily from his milk nurse’s breast. She carried him to a chair nearest the windows, so he could rest in the healthy light of the sun, and Ramesses stroked the downy curve of his head. Noblewomen fussed over the color of Ramessu’s skin, his eyes, his little mouth, while across the pavilion, Iset sat in her bed, waiting for the traditional line of well-wishers. When I approached, she shrank into the pillows.

“Congratulations on a healthy son,” I said.

“What are you doing back here?” she hissed.

“Enough of your peasant’s superstitions,” Woserit snapped, appearing at my side. “Even my nephew is tired of them.”

“There are amulets all over this chamber,” Iset warned us. “The milk nurse used to be a priestess of Isis.”

“You are a fool if you think I can perform magic,” I told her.

“Then who killed my son?” she whispered harshly. Her eyes brimmed with tears as Woserit stepped forward. “You are a young and foolish girl. Nefertari cannot conjure magic any more than you can. Learn to accept that the gods asked Akori to return from this world. If you’re looking to blame someone, then blame Henuttawy.”

“And why should I do that?”

Woserit looked at me, and I understood what she wanted me to say.

“Because if Henuttawy hadn’t threatened Ashai to stay away, he might have been Ramessu’s father instead,” I replied.

Iset started. “Who told you this?” When I glanced away, her whisper became bitter. “You don’t know what you’re saying! Ashai left me to care for his father in Memphis.”

“Is that what Henuttawy told you?” Woserit raised her brows. “No, Ashai is an artist in Thebes. He works on the Ramesseum, and he married a pretty Habiru girl. Of course, now that you have a son, perhaps you don’t care about any of this.”

But even as Woserit said the words, we both saw it wasn’t true.

Iset’s face had fallen like a heavy sail deprived of wind.

“We will light a cone of incense at the temple,” Woserit said, “and thank Amun for a safe delivery.”

Once we were outside the birthing pavilion, I turned to Woserit. “We shouldn’t have told her that right after she gave birth,” I worried.

“It was the right time for the truth. While Ramesses is gone, Iset will confront Henuttawy. My sister knew that Iset was a poor match for Ramesses, yet she still pushed her toward the dais. She has condemned her to a life of loneliness. But don’t feel sorry for her,” Woserit warned. “She chose this path. Just as you are choosing yours tomorrow.”

THAT EVENING, I sat at the mirror while Merit painted my eyes. She placed a turquoise pectoral around my neck, and when she fitted a golden diadem on my brow, I stood so that I could admire the way the cobra reared up, its garnet eyes like twin flames against the blackness of my hair.

“You are in a good mood,” Merit remarked, “given what’s happened.”

“I am about to set sail for the greatest adventure of my life, Merit.” My heart ached at the thought of leaving Amunher and Prehir, but I knew that this journey would be recorded on the monuments of Thebes. The gods would see my dedication to Egypt, and the people would recognize my importance to their Pharaoh. “We are going to crush the Sherden pirates and remind the north that Egypt will never bow to thievery!”

“A battle is not an adventure!” Merit scolded. “You have no idea what might happen.”

“Whatever happens, I will be with Ramesses. And Iset is not going to be made Chief Wife.”

Merit put down a perfume jar to study me. “Did Pharaoh say something?” she asked eagerly. “Has he told you this?”

“No. He will attend the Birth Feast tonight, and he will pay Iset every respect. But we are leaving, Merit. He’s going into battle a day after she’s given birth.”

Merit realized what this meant. “He spent every one of your fourteen nights in the birthing pavilion with you.”

Merit followed me into her chamber and we stood, watching my sons sleeping. Amulets hung from their cradles to keep away Anubis, and protective spells had been written on small scraps of papyrus and placed around their necks in silver pendants. When I journeyed north with Ramesses, I would feel safe knowing that both Merit and the gods were watching my sons.

The two milk nurses watched me from their chairs, feeding their own daughters while Amunher and Prehir slept. I had told the women to move their daughters’ cradles next to Merit’s chamber. Merit had snapped that the children of milk nurses should not be allowed to sleep beside princes. But Ramesses didn’t mind, and I could imagine my own heartache if my job was to feed other children all day, while someone else watched over my own. After the first year, they would stop feeding them milk from their breasts and begin to use the clay bottles that potters make in the markets. I suspected that Merit’s complaint had less to do with lowly birth than with having four children crying in the next chamber.

BY THE time we reached the Great Hall, the singing and feasting had begun. Dancers, naked except for silver belts around their slender waists, moved their hips to the high trills of flutes, invoking the presence of the dwarf god Bes, who would look over Malkata and protect Prince Ramessu. Normally, Ramesses would watch these girls with rapt attention, and later in the night he would take me in his arms and his love would be even more passionate than usual. But that night, all we could think about was the Sherden. What if they had added more ships to their fleet? Or if they didn’t fall for our ruse? The Birth Feast was to go on until morning, and when Ramesses and I both stood to leave, Iset reached for him from her throne.

“We must rest before we sail north tomorrow,” he said. He kissed her hand, but Iset withdrew it in a fury.

“We?” Iset turned an accusatory look at me. “Nefertari is going with you?”

“She speaks the language of the Sherden.”

“And doesn’t Paser?”

“Yes, but if he comes, who will be watching my kingdom?”

Iset stood shakily from her throne, and her face was desperate. “But when will I see you? How will you know how Prince Ramessu is doing? What if something happens to your ship?”

I could see Ramesses softening under Iset’s need. “Nothing will happen to my ship,” he promised. “And Ramessu has the best nurses in Egypt.”

“On your way to the Northern Sea, you will be sailing past Avaris,” Henuttawy pointed out. “Will you stop to see your father?”

“Yes. On our return.”

“Then why not have us meet you there? We can greet your triumphant return together, with my brother.”

I wondered what Henuttawy was playing at, but Ramesses warmed to the idea at once.

“Yes,” he said eagerly, “come to Avaris.” Iset hesitated, but Ramesses took her hand and squeezed it lightly. “Sail for Avaris as soon as you can. Henuttawy will go with you.”

He waited until the tears cleared from her eyes and she assented. Then we descended the dais, and the court stood from their chairs as we walked the length of the Great Hall together. Courtiers bowed at the neck, sweeping their arms before them in obeisance. A pair of guards opened the heavy wooden doors into the hall, and I thought, they know that I am the future of Egypt now.

In Merit’s chamber, Ramesses stood with me over our sons’ cradles. I felt my eyes burn, and Ramesses put his arm across my shoulders.

“I will care for them like my own sons,” Merit swore, and I knew that she would. She would guard them with her life. But I also knew that all the spells in Egypt couldn’t protect my princes from Anubis if the jackal-headed god of death set his sights on them. When sons live to see five years of age, it is a cause for rejoicing, and their heads are shaved but for a single forelock that is tightly braided and curled at the end. We have a saying in Thebes that a son is his father’s staff in old age. Amunher and Prehir would be more than that; they would be the heirs to their father’s throne if I were made queen. They would be the jewels in his crown.

Merit said solemnly, “You don’t have to worry about them, Your Majesty. I raised Nefertari—”

“That’s what I’m worried about.” Ramesses laughed.

Merit crossed her arms over her chest and raised her chin. “I raised Nefertari, who was never sick and never in want of anything. She may have turned out wild”—her lower lip trembled—“but that is no doing of mine.”

“And you did very well, mawat.” I embraced Merit and her sharp gaze softened.

“I would like to think so, Your Highness.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

ON THE NORTHERN SEA

IN THE GOLDEN mist of early morning, ten ships lay at anchor, clustered around the stone steps of the quay that abutted the palace. The largest was Amun’s Blessing, and fifty soldiers who were dressed as merchants heaved and rolled barrels filled with sand up its gangplank. The ship looked like its sisters, except that from the masts, the blue and gold pennants of royalty moved quietly in the breeze. A young boy had been found to dress as a princess and walk the deck. He stood with Asha, examining a jeweled knife that he had been given. When the fighting began, he would be secured in the ship’s cabin.

Senior members of the court stood on the quay, waiting for the ships to finally set sail so that they could return to the warmth of the palace and eat their morning meal. As the last barrel was loaded, Iset flung herself at Ramesses once more.

“She’s wasting time,” I said reproachfully.

But Woserit smiled. “Let the viziers see her making a fool of herself while you stand here, ready for battle.”

Iset wept on Ramesses’s shoulder, and kohl streaked down her cheeks in thick black lines. For the first time in all of the years I had known her, she looked neither alluring nor beautiful, and the stiffness of her walk told me she was suffering from yesterday’s birth. “What if something happens to Ramessu?” she cried. “How will you know?”

“I will see you in Avaris,” Ramesses promised gently. He pried Iset from his shoulder and glanced uneasily at Asha.

“But what if something happens to you?” Her voice rose, and Ramesses was about to smile kindly until she made the error of asking, “What would Ramessu’s place be in the palace?” At once, she saw she had made a mistake. “I . . . I mean how would Ramessu know his place without a father to guide him?”

But it was too late. Iset had given herself away, and Ramesses’s voice was cold when he replied, “Then it’s a good thing the gods watch over kings, and our son will never have to be raised fatherless.”

I strode ahead, meeting Ramesses at the edge of the quay, and in front of the viziers he asked, “Is the Warrior Queen of Egypt ready?”

I lifted my head with its heavy diadem. “Ready to show the Sherden pirates that Egypt will never suffer thieves to steal her riches.”

Long clouds trailed across the sky, and ibis birds called to one another in the growing light. It was a good day for sailing. We boarded Amun’s Blessing, and from the deck of the ship I saw Henuttawy whisper something into Iset’s ear. But whatever plan Henuttawy was hatching, Woserit and Paser would be there to stop it. I waved to Woserit until the fleet slipped from the lagoon on its journey to the sea, and all I could see were her turquoise robes and dark head leaning against Paser.

Ramesses stood at my side while Amun’s Blessing moved swiftly down the River Nile, its blue and gold pennants unfurling behind her like a woman’s hair. “Woserit has been in love with Paser for as long as I can remember,” he remarked. “Do you ever wonder why they haven’t married?”

I wrapped a cloak tighter against the mist, choosing my words carefully. “Probably because she’s afraid of angering Henuttawy.”

“Henuttawy can have any man,” Ramesses said dismissively. “Surely she wouldn’t object if Woserit marries first.”

“She would if Woserit is marrying the man that Henuttawy wants.”

Ramesses stared at me. “Paser?”

I nodded.

“How long have you known this?” he exclaimed.

“Woserit told me.” I walked with him into the ship’s royal cabin. A bed had been placed beneath painted images of Sekhmet slashing her enemies.

“What else did she tell you?”

I searched Ramesses’s face and determined to roll the knucklebones. “Woserit believes that Henuttawy wants Paser because he’s the one man who won’t have her.”

We took chairs that had been arranged around a Senet board. “I am wary of Henuttawy,” Ramesses confided. “She’s beautiful, but under that beauty is something dark. Don’t you think?”

I had to stop myself from telling him everything I knew about Henuttawy’s darkness, from reaching across the table and shaking him awake, imploring him to see what his aunt truly was. Instead I replied, “I would be very careful before trusting her advice.”

WE SAILED along the river for three days, stopping at night to cook on the shore and drink barrels of shedeh from Malkata’s winery. I was the only woman in the fleet, and if not for the boy who would play the role of princess when we reached the Northern Sea, I would have been the youngest as well. We sang and ate roasted duck in bowls from the palace, and the fat from the meat dripped off the soldiers’ fingers as they sat around the fires.

On the fourth night, Ramesses announced, “We have asked the locals and there is word that the Sherden were here a few nights ago. They have raided a ship bound for my father’s palace in Avaris.”

The men around the fires began to grumble their indignation.

“Tomorrow, we will send a scout,” Asha said. In the silvery light of the moon, he looked older than his nineteen years. When we were students in the edduba, he had broken the hearts of all the girls; I wondered now if he had met anyone yet, and whether he would marry. “The scout will go by land,” he went on, “and when the Sherden have been spotted, we will send out Amun’s Blessing and follow close behind. The fleet will wait at the bend in the river, and the scout will go out a second time. When he signals that the Sherden have approached our merchant ship, we will sail and attack!” Asha sprang to his feet for emphasis, and the cheers of the men rang out along the deserted stretch of riverbank.

Late that night, Ramesses stood behind me in our cabin and caressed my shoulders. We breathed together in the darkness, naked except for my long kilt. He removed the linen slowly, letting it fall in a pool at my feet. I shivered from his touch and he took me in his arms, carrying me to the ebony bed. He pressed his body against mine, inhaling the oil of jasmine from my skin. Over the sound of the ship groaning against its moorings, there was no one who could hear us, and when we finally fell asleep, it was in each other’s arms.

A SHRIEK pierced the morning’s stillness. Ramesses and I sat up in our bed, shaken from deepest sleep. I couldn’t tell what it was. A child, an animal?

When it sounded again, we rushed to find our sheaths, and on the shore we saw the boy, who was dressed in a woman’s wig and heavy bangles, weeping into his hands. A large soldier was shaking him by the shoulders.

“Leave him!” I cried, and the boy gaped up at me as if I had saved him from a tutor’s merciless beating. When I reached the shore, he ran and clung to my leg, refusing to let go.

“He won’t do it, Your Majesty!” the soldier shouted. “He is too afraid. We promised his father, the Stable Master, seven gold deben for his son to walk the decks, and he swore to us that his child was no coward!”

The boy began to cry loudly again, pathetic wails, and I pressed my hand softly to his cheek. “Shh, nothing terrible will happen to you.”

“But what of us, Your Majesty!” the soldier protested. “What will we do with the Sherden so close? A young girl may not have any breasts, but if we use a man, how will we explain . . .”

“Maybe a soldier can wear the disguise,” I suggested, “and he can stand with his back to the ship’s railing?”

The man snorted. “And if the spies glimpse the muscles in his shoulders? We need someone who can pass for a woman. We need a princess’s dowry ship that will lure them out!” He turned in supplication to Ramesses. “Please, tell me. What shall we do, Your Highness?”

I wondered if fatherhood had changed Ramesses, for instead of growing impatient with the child, he was watching him with pity. When the boy began to whimper again, I pried him from my kilt and said firmly, “I should go.”

Ramesses looked at me, and concern was etched upon his face. “You understand this is dangerous, Nefer. You would need to carry a weapon.”

“I can strap a knife to my thigh.”

The soldier fumbled for his words. “But . . . but you’re a woman!” he exclaimed. “You’re a princess. Your life would be at risk—”

“And what is our alternative?” I demanded. “To waste days and let these Sherden slip away?”

His cheeks flared like a cobra’s. “For this child to put on a wig and do as he’s told! You realize, boy, that your father will be expecting his gold deben?” The little boy looked up with wide, frightened eyes and began to tremble. “He will be angry when you return without it!”

“Then I will give him the deben,” I said. “And walk the decks instead. Then, when the Sherden arrive, I will lock myself in the cabin just as he was going to.”

The soldier looked at Ramesses. “Your Highness, this is your wife!”

“And that’s why I trust her to act responsibly. We shall keep her close.”

The soldier stared at us, shocked beyond words, as we returned to the ship. Then the scout who had left in the night appeared with news. The Sherden had been spotted only a short distance away, in the channels and passages leading to the Northern Sea. Immediately, Amun’s Blessing weighed anchor, and I sat in the cabin watching the soldiers in their merchants’ clothes, laughing at one another and relishing their new roles.

“I want you to use the crossbar when we arrive.” Ramesses indicated the lock on the cabin’s door and added, “I’ll post soldiers outside and two within. No matter what happens, Nefer, whatever you think you hear outside, you’re not to come out.”

“We don’t even know that we will find them today—”

“We don’t have to worry about finding them,” he said darkly.

“Their spies along the shore will find us once we dock in Tamiat and unload the barrels.”

“How do you think they will send word to their ships?”

“Polished bronze mirrors . . . light signals,” he guessed, and stood. “As I said before—do not come out of this cabin. Not even if you think I’ve been wounded. This isn’t a game. These are men who haven’t seen a woman in a very long time. They live on the water and eat what they catch. A glimpse of you and they will be beating down this door.”

Listening to the seriousness in his voice, I felt real fear. “But if you’re wounded, you will take shelter in this cabin. You won’t fight if you’re wounded.”

“I will fight until the Sherden have been defeated!” he swore, and I was afraid of where his rashness might lead. He cupped my chin in his hand. “You are the bravest woman I have ever known. But if something were to happen to you—”

“It won’t. I won’t open the door. I’ll lock myself in, and the guards will protect me.”

For the rest of the morning, we prepared. Ramesses watched me dress first, telling me which wig he preferred, and which bangles—though I had brought them for the boy—would catch the light best. I took extra care in applying my paint, making the lines both dark and bold so that even from far away it was clear that my lips had been reddened. When I was finished, only my throat remained bare, and as Ramesses fastened my golden pectoral, I could feel his breath warm and fast on my neck. I turned, and though I wanted to run my hands over his chest, I slowly fastened his leather armor. He had strapped a hidden dagger to his thigh, and when he knelt to do the same for me, I realized, “Your hair. Merchants wear their hair in single braids, not loops.”

Though we hadn’t washed properly in several days, his hair still smelled of lavender from the baths of Malkata, and when I stepped back to look at him, I sighed. “I wonder if there has ever been a Pharaoh who has looked this beautiful before battle?”

Ramesses laughed. “I’ll need a steady arm far more than beauty before these days are over.”

AT MIDDAY, we emerged from the soil-laden channels of the Nile, and an endless expanse of blue stretched before us. The Northern Sea.

Our ship arrived at the port of Tamiat that afternoon, and Ramesses took my hand. “We’re here. The soldiers will start unloading the barrels on the quay.” He smiled at me, but I could see apprehension in his eyes. “Are you ready?”

I checked my image in the polished brass. My breasts were still heavy from childbirth, and my Nubian wig fell across my shoulders in small, perfect braids. My earrings were turquoise, and even my sandals were encrusted with precious stones. There was no one who would mistake me for a commoner, and certainly not for a man.

I followed Ramesses onto the deck, and Asha teased him. “That kilt becomes you, Ramesses!” It was threadbare and worn, taken from a merchant outside Malkata, and he looked like he belonged washing the decks. Only his sandals, which were thick heeled and well made, gave him away.

“Laugh,” Ramesses rejoined, “but I’m not the one who smells of fish.”

Asha smelled himself; the cloak he was wearing was repugnant, and I wondered who he had taken it from. Then both men turned to me, and Ramesses asked, “You know what to do?”

I nodded. Seven soldiers disguised as merchants had tethered us to the quay and began unloading the sand-filled barrels. I stood on the prow, letting the pale sunlight reflect from my jewels, and inhaled the scent of sea air and brine. The ocean was nothing like the waters of the Nile. Frothy waves spilled onto the beach, surging shoreward, then back again as though they’d been caught in a fisherman’s net and hauled out to sea.

Then a pair of tall ships appeared to windward, and the men working around me grew tense. I looked at Ramesses, who was waiting on the prow with a polished mirror, and from the stern a soldier cried eagerly, “It’s the Sherden! I can see it from their pennants, Your Highness!”

Ramesses held the polished mirror above his head, and the three scouts who waited in the distance to give word to the other ships disappeared.

Asha turned to me. “Get yourself into the cabin. Lock the door!”

When Ramesses rushed to my side, I made him promise, “Don’t worry about me. Just remind the Sherden that Egypt will never tolerate thieves!”

I locked the door of my cabin and sat on my bed. Though guards stood on either side of the Senet board, armed with swords and javelins, the taste of fear was bitter in my mouth. I couldn’t stop my hands from giving me away. I tucked them beneath my legs to keep them from shaking. After all, servants weren’t the only ones who gossiped.

There was the thump of another vessel pulling up to the quay, then shouting as strangers began to board our ship. A scuffle resounded outside my door, then it seemed as if Anubis himself had been unleashed on the deck of Amun’s Blessing. Men shouted in foreign voices, and I imagined the moment that Ramesses’s soldiers must have torn off their cloaks and revealed their weapons. I heard the clash of metal on metal, and when a heavy object crashed against the door I cried out. But neither of my two guards moved. The gray-haired one said calmly to me, “They won’t come in.”

My voice came out in a gasp. “How do you know?”

“Because this was once a treasury ship,” the soldier replied. “There isn’t a door in the navy that’s stronger than this one.”

The shouting grew louder and more intense. Then a voice cried exultantly, “The ships have arrived!” I heard the panic of the Sherden as they realized that their own two ships had been surrounded, but even then the fighting continued.

The sun was still high when Ramesses called to me, his voice filled with triumph. I flung open the cabin door, and he spun me in his arms.

“More than a hundred Sherden are our prisoners,” he declared. “There will be no more pirates haunting the quays of Tamiat. No more Sherden pillaging from Egypt or Crete or Mycenae. Come!”

He led me from the cabin onto the prow, and I became aware of the blood on his kilt as the soldiers cheered, holding up their swords in honor of our victory. “To Ramesses the Great and his Warrior Queen,” one man shouted and hundreds joined in the chant. The words echoed over the waters and from the encircling warships, where the Sherden were being bound in chains. Ramesses led me to the quay, where chests filled with precious metals and ivory gleamed in the sun. In a happy reversal, our soldiers were unloading the Sherden ships, it appeared that the stolen treasures were endless: turquoise amulets and silver bowls from ships that had once been bound for Crete. There was red leather armor and alabaster jars engraved with strange scenes of a horse from a battle at Troy. Next emerged a golden litter adorned with carnelian and blue glass beads.

Ramesses put his arm around my waist. “The soldiers are all talking about you. It was incredibly brave . . .”

I waved away his compliment. “What? To walk the deck of a ship?”

“So many captives!” Asha interrupted. “We’ve had to place them on two separate ships. What do you want to do with them?” he asked. “They’re shouting for something, but I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

I separated myself from Ramesses. “What language do they speak?”

“Something I’ve never heard,” Asha admitted. “But one man was speaking Hittite.”

“They probably all speak some Hittite,” I guessed. “They may have learned it in Troy, along with Greek. What do you want me to tell them?”

“That they are prisoners of Egypt,” Ramesses said, then repeated what I had told him. “And that Egypt will never tolerate thieves.”

I smiled.

“And will you show yourself to them?” Asha asked.

It was a risk. Ramesses wouldn’t want the Sherden to think they were so important that the Pharaoh of Egypt himself had come to dispose of them. But if Ramesses appeared in his nemes crown with his crook and flail, they would be reminded of whom they had dared to anger, and that none could cross Pharaoh and remain unpunished.

Ramesses looked around the quay with its piles of looted treasure, and I saw his cheeks redden. “Yes, I will come.”

A soldier ran to fetch Ramesses’s crown, and Asha, forever cautious, said to me, “These men are pirates. Be careful. They are vicious, and if one of them should break loose—”

“Then I will have you and Ramesses there to protect me.”

We boarded the first ship where the captives were being held, and almost at once I was overwhelmed by the stench. Blood and urine soaked the decks, and I put the sleeve of my cloak to my nose. I prepared myself for the sight of men in chains, bleeding and angry. But the wounded had been taken to a separate ship, and the fifty men who sat blinking into the sun were unbowed. They didn’t wear beards on their chins like the Hittites, and their long yellow hair was a sight to behold. I paused to stare at them, and when they recognized Ramesses’s crown, they shook their chains and shouted. I commanded in Hittite, “Calm yourselves!”

Many of the men passed looks between one another. Some leered so that I would know what they were thinking, but I refused to be unsettled. “I am Princess Nefertari,” I addressed them, “daughter of Queen Mutnodjmet and wife of Pharaoh Ramesses. You have looted Pharaoh’s ships, taken Pharaoh’s goods, and murdered Pharaoh’s soldiers. You will now repay your debt to Pharaoh by serving in his army.” The men raised their voices, and next to me, Ramesses and Asha tensed. I saw Ramesses reach for the hilt of his sword, and I shouted over the outburst, “You may serve in Pharaoh’s army where you will be given training, outfitted with clothes, perhaps earn a command as an officer. Or you may rebel, and be sent to a certain grave toiling in Pharaoh’s quarries.”

There was a sudden silence, as the men realized that they were not to be put to death but trained and fed.

Ramesses looked at me. “You know that their leaders will have to be executed.”

I nodded solemnly. “But the rest of them—”

“May serve a better purpose.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

PI-RAMESSES

Avaris

NEWS OF THE Sherden conquest traveled quickly up the River Nile. As we sailed toward the city of Avaris, people along the shore chanted triumphantly, “PHARAOH! PHARAOH!” Then the soldiers in the fleet took up the cry of, “WARRIOR QUEEN,” which the people on the shore returned without knowing why. And yet, I felt unease—for I wondered what Henuttawy would do when she heard that chant repeated.

Three days after the Sherden were defeated, we stood on the deck of Amun’s Blessing as the ship sailed into port. Because war and rebellion had stolen recent summers, the court in Thebes had not made its progress to Avaris since Ramesses had been crowned, and I was shocked by how much the city had changed. In the years I had been away, it was as if someone had taken a painting and left it out in the sun, allowing it to fade, then crack, and finally peel. I turned to Asha.

“What happened?” he gasped.

We both looked at Ramesses, and although he should have been basking in the adoration of the people who crowded the shore shouting his name, his face was stricken. “Look at the quay! Half of it’s falling to pieces!” Entire boards were rotten, and there appeared to be no system for washing away the grime, which clung to the women’s robes and feet. Merchants had dropped fish heads to rot where they lay, not bothering to kick them back into the river. “And the litters!” He pointed to the faded canopies resting atop chipped carrying poles.

“It’s like Pharaoh Seti hasn’t stepped outside of his palace in years,” Asha murmured.

“But he came to Thebes for the Feast of Wag. He must know about this! He had to have seen . . .”

We disembarked with twenty soldiers who would accompany us to the palace of Pi-Ramesses, and the clapping mobs were too happy to notice Ramesses’s distress. They ran before the litter he was sharing with me, throwing lotus petals into the air and passing the soldiers tall cups of barley beer. And even though he waved, I knew what Ramesses was thinking. Large holes in the main road had gone ignored, when all they would have required was dirt and stone to fill them in. The streets were littered with half-eaten pomegranates, sewage, and discarded papyrus. There was the unmistakable look of abandonment in Avaris, as if the city had been left to rule itself and no one much cared what happened to it.

When we reached the palace, heavily armed guards opened the gates. As Ramesses descended from the litter, he shook his head fearfully. “Something has happened. Something terrible has happened in there.”

The gardens had been allowed to grow untended, and on a carpet of weeds the towering statues of Amun stood cracked and dirtied. Every house in Egypt kept a courtyard of tile or dirt at its front where no snakes would be able to hide, but weeds and grass had been allowed to grow right up to the steps of Pi-Ramesses. We reached the heavy wooden doors, and when Ramesses saw how worn they had become, he snapped angrily, “Is this my father’s palace or the ruins of Amarna?” Even the tiles underfoot were cracked and broken. He turned to me. “I don’t understand this—what could be more important than maintaining this palace? My grandfather built Pi-Ramesses. If it’s crumbling now, what will happen in a hundred years? What will be left for our family to be remembered by?”

The doors swung open, and when there was no one in the hall to greet our arrival, the soldiers escorting us grew nervous. A figure emerged from the shadows, and as it grew closer I could hear a dozen swords being drawn from their sheaths. Then the light fell across Woserit’s face, and she was weeping.

“Ramesses, your father has taken ill. He’s lying in his chamber, waiting for you.”

The color drained from Ramesses’s cheeks. “When?” he cried. “When did this happen?”

“After we arrived. Just yesterday.”

Ramesses dismissed his soldiers with a wave of his hand, and Asha knew to settle them in the Great Hall with food and drink. I followed behind Ramesses and Woserit, and because I had never seen her cry, the sound frightened me. Her turquoise cloak trailed before me, and I tried to concentrate on its beaded hem rather than allow myself to feel the horror of what was happening. Seti was ill, but that didn’t explain why the city had been allowed to deteriorate; or why the palace, besides the few servants peering nervously between the columns, seemed to be an empty husk.

When we entered Seti’s chamber, several guards parted their spears to allow us through. But the man in the bed was not the same man I had seen during the Feast of Wag. Not even the linens they had covered him with could conceal how slight he was, or how pale he had grown since I’d last seen him.

“Father!” Ramesses cried.

Queen Tuya, Iset, and Henuttawy already stood in a circle around him. Paser sat on a wooden stool nearby, and Woserit joined him. Pharaoh Seti opened his eyes, but he seemed to know his son more by his voice than by sight. “Ramesses,” he whispered, and coughed.

“Iset will find you more juice,” Henuttawy said. “Is that what you’d like?”

Seti nodded painfully, and she took Iset and quickly left the chamber.

Ramesses knelt at his father’s bed. “What is it, abi?” He used the intimate word for father. I had never heard him use it before. There was heartbreak in his voice.

Pharaoh Seti let out a heavy sigh, and Queen Tuya began weeping. Her iwiw lay with his muzzle between his paws, looking almost as sick at heart as his mistress. He didn’t even raise his head to offer me his customary growl. “I have been sick for many months now, Ramesses. Anubis is following me.”

“No, abi. Please, not yet!”

Seti coughed again and bent his finger for Ramesses to come closer. “I want you to repair Pi-Ramesses for me. She has fallen into ruin.” Seti groaned, grasping the heavy linen covers in his hands. “For a hundred years, the Hittites have threatened to invade. They think to rule Egypt when I am gone. All of the treasury’s gold has gone to the stables. To my charioteers. Now the Hittites will become your problem . . .”

“We have just tasted victory over the Sherden! We have brought them here as prisoners to train with your army—”

Pharaoh Seti struggled to sit up. It was difficult for me to believe that this was the same man who had picked me up and sat me on his knee when I was a child. Eyes, voice, flesh: everything about him appeared shrunken, as if he was turning into the mummified Osiris before us. “I am past care, Ramesses. The physicians say it is a condition of the heart. The heart is weak,” he wheezed.

Ramesses opened his mouth to argue, but Seti raised his hand. “There’s not enough time. Bring me the maps.” His watery eyes fell on a low-lying table. “My projects.” Pharaoh Seti breathed heavily. “These are what you must finish for me.”

That very morning, we had been celebrating our triumph. Now I realized we might be mourning Seti’s death before the day ended. It occurred to me that the gods held life on Ma’at’s silver scales. Great happiness must be balanced by great sorrow.

“There is my tomb in the Valley,” Seti said. “The paintings are done. All that is left is to carry my sarcophagus into its chamber.” A violent sob escaped from Tuya, and I pressed my lips together so that I wouldn’t sob as well. But Pharaoh Seti carried on. “And this palace.” His breathing became labored. “Be certain to restore this palace, Ramesses. Make it your capital so that you can be closer to Hatti. If you can defend the city of Avaris, Egypt will never fall.”

“Egypt will never be conquered while I am Pharaoh—”

“Then you must not let the Hittites take back Kadesh. Without her, our lands are vulnerable.” Pharaoh Seti sighed. “And Nefer.”

Ramesses glanced at me. “Do you want to speak with her?”

“No!”

He was vehement, and I pressed my back to the door.

“Let her remember me as I was. Nefer—” His voice began to fail. “Nefertari is the mother of your eldest sons. A clever princess . . . but the people still don’t want her.”

“Who told you this?” Ramesses demanded. Woserit looked across the chamber at me, and we both knew at once: Henuttawy.

“It doesn’t matter who told me this. I have heard. The people are what’s important, Ramesses. You know what happened to Nefertiti. The people killed her—”

“The priests killed her,” Ramesses argued.

“And the priests are the mouths of the people. Akhenaten—”Pharaoh Seti grasped the covers, and I imagined that I could hear his heart rattling in his shrunken chest. “Wait at least another year before you choose your Chief Wife.”

“Abi,” Ramesses protested. “It’s already been a year.”

“Do not risk what this family has built! Wait at least another year. Promise me.”

I held my breath and waited for Ramesses to make the promise. But Ramesses didn’t speak.

“Promise!” Pharaoh Seti exclaimed, and Ramesses whispered, “I promise.”

I closed my eyes and slipped quietly out the door, shutting it behind me. The pain in my chest felt as if it burned with flame, and I ran to the Audience Chamber to be alone. The door was slightly ajar. As I stepped inside I almost cried out, but for the sound of voices from behind a pillar. I crept along the wall toward the front of the chamber, listening.

“I have bought you a year, and you will wipe that ugly scowl from your face and look me in the eye,” whispered Henuttawy.

“The gods will see what you’ve done—” Iset swore.

“What we’ve done.” Henuttawy’s voice was calm. “Every servant in Avaris saw you with that cup last night.”

“Because you gave it to me!”

“And who was there to see that? And anyway, all we did was speed his interminable passing. The longer we wait, the stronger Nefertari will grow. No one may ever question this,” she said, “but if I should remind them—” Henuttawy glanced over her shoulder at the empty chamber before continuing in a harsh whisper. “You shall find a way to repay me, or as I am bound to Isis, I will take back everything I have ever given you! If he makes that girl queen, she’ll have him banish us to Mi-Wer, and don’t think I won’t sacrifice you to save—”

There was noise outside the Audience Chamber, and their conversation fell silent. I escaped through the door and steadied myself with several deep breaths in case they should see me. Woserit appeared in the hall with Paser, followed by Ramesses and Queen Tuya.

Ramesses looked as pale as alabaster. “He’s gone, Nefer.” He shook his head and was not ashamed to weep. “Gone to Osiris.”

I took him in my arms as Henuttawy and Iset appeared with cups of shedeh.

Seeing our tears, Henuttawy cried out, and Iset placed her hand across her mouth.

I buried my face in Ramesses’s chest so that no one could see how sick the sight of them made me. Ramesses removed himself from my embrace. “Letters will have to be drafted . . .”

“With Your Highness’s permission, I will take care of the letters,” Paser said.

Your Highness.

The words struck Ramesses a visible blow. There would only be one Pharaoh of Egypt now.

“And what would you like me to do?” Henuttawy asked.

I wanted to shout that murdering the King of Egypt was sufficient, but the words stuck in my mouth and the burning in my chest increased.

“Go with Iset and Woserit,” Ramesses said. “They will take my mother to the Temple of Amun where she will let the gods know . . .” He hesitated, since the truth was too terrible to speak. “She will let the gods know that my father is coming.”

When everyone turned to leave, I motioned for Paser, and he saw me hovering near the door to the Audience Chamber.

“Nefertari, what are you doing?” he demanded.

“He should never have died!” I whispered fiercely.

Paser looked behind him, but the hall had cleared.

“When I left the chamber I heard Henuttawy speaking with Iset. They were talking about a cup,” I said frantically. “Henuttawy told Iset that she had bought another year. Another year,” I repeated.

“We all saw Iset pass Pharaoh a cup last night . . .” Paser replied.

“But it was Henuttawy who gave it to her! And now she has a secret she can use to ruin Iset if Iset won’t give her whatever she wants. And what she wants is to banish Woserit to the farthest temple in the Fayyum, then rebuild the Temple of Isis so that she’ll control the largest treasury in Egypt.”

“This only comes to pass if Iset becomes queen—”

“And now she has another year to try! You heard Ramesses’s promise, and even if he doesn’t honor it . . . if Henuttawy could kill her own brother . . .”

For the first time, I saw fear in Paser’s eyes. “The physicians said it was Pharaoh’s heart. No one suspected poison.” He looked at me. “Who else has heard this?”

“No one,” I promised.

“Then keep your own counsel. I will tell Woserit—”

“And Ramesses? Pharaoh Seti was his father!”

But Paser shook his head. “And there is no proof of what you’ve heard.”

“A physician can determine if it was poison.”

“Or he might determine that it was his heart, and you will have wrongly accused the High Priestess of Isis. Keep your silence. Ramesses may believe you; he may even summon a physician, but how will we know he’s not in the pay of Henuttawy? There are politics in everything, Nefertari.”

“So Seti’s death will go unpunished?” I clenched my fists to keep the rage from shaking my whole body.

“No evil deed ever goes unpunished.” He raised his eyes to a mural of the goddess Ma’at, who was weighing a heart against the feather of truth. Because the heart had been honest in life, it was equal in weight to the feather, and in the painting, the man was smiling. His ka would not be devoured by the crocodile god. His soul would go on to live for eternity.

“Henuttawy’s heart will outweigh the feather,” I swore.

Paser looked suddenly sad when he replied, “Yes. It probably will. Eat nothing that Merit hasn’t prepared for you, Nefertari.”

Paser left me standing alone in the hall. I had birthed two sons, I had gone with Ramesses into battle against the Sherden, and I thought selfishly of how all of those triumphs would be forgotten now that Pharaoh Seti was dead. The words that the soldiers had chanted this very morning would become songs of mourning by tomorrow. In the nearby Temple of Amun, Henuttawy and Iset were already weeping false tears with the queen, tears for my truest protector at court. It was as if everything I touched turned into ash.

That evening, dinner in the Great Hall was solemn, and Ramesses left his father’s chair empty on the dais. When Iset suggested that he take his place in it, he asked sharply, “Why?”

The court knew enough to be silent after that.

Later that night, in the privacy of my chamber, I bit my lip to keep from telling Ramesses what I’d heard. He sat on the gold and ebony bed I had slept in during every childhood summer in Avaris. Raised on a platform in the middle of the room, it overlooked the gardens that Seti had let grow untended. Layers of scum stretched unbroken over the pools, and I wondered if the fish had survived such neglect.

“Have you seen my father’s stables?” he asked quietly. He didn’t want to speak about his father’s death. He will carry it with him like a heavy chain around a prisoner’s waist, I thought. “They are massive,” he said, though his voice was distant. “Five thousand warhorses in all.”

I pressed the covers to my chest. Even the fires in the braziers did nothing to warm me. “That’s more than all of Thebes.”

“And they are well kept,” he said, a flicker of life in his eyes. “He had weaponry for more than ten thousand men, and four thousand chariots are polished and ready. He was serious about war with the Hittites, Nefer.”

“The Hittites have threatened war for generations—”

“Not like this. Look around. Do you see the disrepair? All of the treasury’s gold has gone to preparation for this! Since the Hittite emperor conquered Mitanni, there remains no buffer between ourselves and Hatti. My father recognized how dangerous that was. He knew it was only a matter of time. Paser says that Muwatallis will move as soon as he hears of my father’s death.”

“Another battle?” We had just returned from victory over the Sherden. There was a funeral to plan. Too much sorrow had fallen on us.

Ramesses gazed into the brazier ruefully. “No, not another battle, Nefer. A war.”

ON THE deck of Amun’s Blessing the next morning, Pharaoh Seti’s body was wrapped in linen and placed on a small dais surrounded by myrrh. His lips were curved in a gentle smile, released now from his watch on Egypt’s northern wall. In twenty days we would arrive in Thebes, and after seventy days of mummification, Seti would sleep in the tomb he had chosen, among Egypt’s greatest kings.

Ramesses stood at the prow, and a single flag painted with an image of the mummified Osiris flapped solemnly in the breeze. Women lined the quay dressed in their long white robes of mourning. They floated lotus blossoms ahead of the ship and beat their chests with their hands so the gods would know of our plight. All along our passage south, I watched villagers and fishermen kneel on the shore in honor of their Pharaoh. If only they knew the truth of his passing, how many of them would be content to quietly bow and weep?

When we reached the palace of Malkata, Woserit warned, “Do not let your sons from your sight. Not even to bathe.”

“And Merit?”

“You may tell her what you heard.” There were deep half-moons beneath Woserit’s eyes, and I wondered if Paser had comforted her through the nights the way I had tried to comfort Ramesses.

Inside my chamber, Merit greeted me. I felt guilty over the pleasure I took in seeing my children while the rest of Egypt was in mourning. The milk nurses stood and watched as my sons raised their hands to me. “Look how they’ve grown!” I cried. We had been gone for a month, and my sons were nearly unrecognizable. They smiled when I called each of them by name, and I marveled at how clever they already were. “And their hair!” My sons’ heads were like crowns of the finest gold.

“Like the king himself,” Merit replied, but as soon as she said his name, she thought of Seti’s death and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was sorry to hear of Pharaoh, my lady.”

“It happened as soon as we arrived in Avaris.”

“We heard that the Sherden had been conquered, then news came that Pharaoh was ill, but no one could believe it. They said it was his heart—”

“It was poison,” I said harshly.

Merit covered her mouth. She waved the milk nurses back into their chamber, and when they had shut the doors, I told Merit the full story.

“I can’t understand . . .” Merit cried. “What happened to his tasters?”

“He dismissed almost all the palace servants,” I said. “To pay for war with the Hittites, and to buy armor from Crete.”

Merit pressed her fingers to her lips. “Henuttawy has given up her ka to make Iset queen. She will come for you,” she said with certainty. “You must hire a taster of your own.”

I recoiled from the idea, but Merit persisted.

“Ramesses has tasters.”

“Because he is Pharaoh.”

“And you will be queen! If you use a taster, Henuttawy will know, and she will never risk poison. Think of your sons! What would become of them if something were to happen to you? Do you think that Iset would keep me in this palace to watch over them? I would be sent with Woserit to the farthest temple in Egypt, while they lay here, defenseless.”

I felt my limbs grow cold. It was true. I looked at my children, beautiful princes of Egypt who might someday be kings. “Hire a taster,” I said.

“And if Pharaoh asks?”

“I will tell him . . .”

“That you are afraid of Hittite spies?” Merit said helpfully.

Henuttawy and Iset were liars. I didn’t want to lie to Ramesses as well. I should tell him the truth, I thought: that I am afraid his own aunt will kill me with a cup of wine or sip of shedeh.

There was a knock at the door, and before Merit received it, she turned to me. “Another year, my lady . . . Do you think he will keep his promise?” she asked.

I tried to ignore the hurt of Pharaoh Seti’s request. “He has never broken a promise,” I said.

“Even when Pharaoh Ramesses knows he made it to honor a lie? The people in Thebes heard from the messengers what happened to the pirates. They are starting to call you the Warrior Queen. They are saying that you risked your life for Egypt.”

But I repeated, “Ramesses has never broken a promise.”

Her shoulders sagged and she answered the door. “Your Highness!” She was startled in the doorway, quickly straightening her wig. “You have never knocked before . . .”

“I heard voices and thought Nefer might be telling you what happened in Avaris.” Ramesses entered my chamber and saw me with our sons. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“I am sorry for what happened to your father. He was like a father to my lady as well. Always kind, always gentle.”

“Thank you, Merit. We will all be moving down to my father’s court at Avaris as soon as his funeral has been held.”

“The entire palace?” she cried.

“Even Tefer.” Ramesses looked down, and Tefer responded with a plaintive cry. The cat had been sleeping beneath our sons’ cradles and appeared in no hurry to abandon his post. “It will take seventy days to prepare my father’s body. But once he is buried in the Valley of the Sleeping Kings, the court will move with us to Pi-Ramesses.”

I could already see Merit cataloguing the work that would have to be done. She excused herself with a bow, and Ramesses stood next to me.

“My father loved you, Nefer.”

“I’d like to believe that,” I said softly.

“You must believe that. I know you heard what he made me promise. He feared for my crown. He wanted to see you made queen, but someone misguided him.”

“I don’t think he was misguided,” I said carefully. “I think he was lied to.”

Ramesses watched me, and I wondered whether he was thinking of Iset and Henuttawy. I could not be the one to tell him the truth. It would have to be something he came to on his own. At last, his look of concentration faded, and he put his arm around my waist. “I will protect you. I will always protect you, Nefer.”

I closed my eyes and prayed to Amun, Just let him discover whom to protect me from.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

IN THE VALLEY OF THE

SLEEPING KINGS

Thebes

WHEN THE SEVENTY days of mummification were complete, Pharaoh Seti’s body was placed in a golden bark and carried on the shoulders of twenty priests into the Western Valley. Assuming that his heart was as light as Ma’at’s feather of truth and he was allowed to pass into the fields of Aaru, he would need this boat to travel with the sun on its daily journey around the world. Thousands of Thebans had crossed the River Nile to follow the winding funerary procession, and as the sun began to sink beneath the hills, the scent of sage baked all day by the sun was carried down on the cool evening wind. Adjo raised his muzzle to sniff at the air, and though I walked next to him with the rest of Seti’s closest family, the iwiw remained strangely subdued. I wonder if he knows that his mistress’s life has been changed forever? Now Tuya had become a Dowager Queen, and although she’d remain in Avaris when we arrived, she would probably retire to a quiet room in the palace, leaving the court’s politics and festivities to Ramesses. I had never seen her smile at children or laugh at their antics when they scampered through the halls. Some widows settled into contented lives as grandmothers, but I imagined Tuya’s days would be spent alone with Adjo, and that pampering him would become the sole purpose of her remaining years. She leaned heavily on Ramesses’s arm as she walked. In front of them the High Priest of Amun strode purposefully across the sands, following Penre and a small group of viziers whose job was to guide Seti’s golden bark to its rest.

I looked behind us at the priestesses of Isis, and even from a distance I could see the red figure of Henuttawy. She had chosen to walk among her priestesses instead of accompanying her family at the front, and she took no pains to preserve a solemn silence.

“She’s enjoying the attention,” I whispered harshly.

“And Amun will punish her,” Merit vowed. “Her heart will tell its tale.”

“When it’s too late, and she has destroyed everyone we love.” I thought of Amunher and Prehir, sleeping in the palace. I’d warned the milk nurses not to leave their side.

Merit read my look and promised, “I trust them. They will not leave the chamber, or I would not have left it myself.” She looked beyond the dunes to where the hills rose steep and jagged in the fading light. “Do you think his tomb is far?”

“Yes. I think it is high in the cliffs,” I said, then added bravely, “but there’s nothing to fear.”

“Only jackals,” Merit whispered.

“And the High Priest of Amun.” I glanced ahead at Rahotep, who lingered near Seti’s body like an animal hovering over one of its kills. With his hunched shoulders and his mirthless grin, he looked as remorseful as a hyena that has chased a lioness from her prey. This night belonged to him. He was the one leading the royal family into the Valley, and he would be the one to seal Seti in his innermost chamber, with everything Pharaoh would need in the Afterlife.

I had last been inside a tomb for the burial of Princess Pili. I was six then, but I still remember the walls inside, covered with directions for navigating the Afterlife. Questions that the gods ask of the dead would be answered, so that when Seti’s ka traveled down the final corridors of this world, it would be able to memorize the answers for passage into the next. Assuming he was able to pass these tests, he would need everything he had once used in this life. This was why Seti would need a mask, so that his soul would have a face in the land of Aaru. Surrounding his sarcophagus would be hundreds of ushabti, small statues of servants that would come to life in the next world to toil for their master. And so that none of these important things were besmirched, servants would place pinches of salt in their lamps, preventing any black smoke from rising.

I watched Iset and the High Priest of Amun—in profile they were the very image of two hyenas, sniffing about to see what they might scavenge. In the sharp light of sunset, with half of Rahotep’s frightening grin cast in shadow, I was suddenly struck by the resemblance between them. They walked side by side, and it seemed strange that I had missed how similar they were—not just in the animal grace of their movements, but in the way their noses grew straight and their cheekbones sat high on their narrow faces as they squinted into the sun’s last rays. Iset’s mother could have married whomever she wished . . . yet no one seemed to know who had fathered Iset. What if Rahotep’s interest in making Iset queen wasn’t solely out of hatred for my akhu? With Iset as Chief Wife, would he be grandfather to the future Pharaoh? The High Priest looked in my direction, and when Iset saw that I was watching them, she quickly moved from his side.

I guarded my thoughts, for now we entered the Valley and the road narrowed. The thousands of mourners remained behind. Only the highest-ranking members of the court were allowed to know the location of Seti’s tomb. Everyone else would wait for our return, holding their oil lamps on the rim of the cliffs to light our way back to the river. The sun had already passed the horizon, and the deep burning color of the sky silhouetted the hills. Each night, the sun god would leave his position in the sky completely and pass through the Underworld to defeat the snake god of darkness, Apep. When the snake was crushed, Ra would emerge in the east, the revealer of all things, riding on his solar barge to bring light back to the earth. Pharaoh Seti would never see the sun again, and if the order of things could be so upset in Egypt, I wondered, why couldn’t it be upset in the Underworld, too? What if tonight Ra was overcome, and tomorrow there rose no more sun? I banished such thoughts, and reminded myself that the sun had always risen. Ra had always been victorious. Just as I will be.

We began to climb the limestone cliffs, and even over the grunting of the priests who carried Seti’s barge on their backs, I could hear Iset’s breathing grow ragged. She was afraid of the darkness, and once, when a jackal sounded in the distance, she let out a frightened cry.

“Anubis,” I said. “The jackal-headed god of death. Perhaps he’s coming for the guilty.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Rahotep said sharply.

But I challenged the High Priest, “How do you know it’s not Anubis? Where else would he be if not in this Valley?”

“Be silent!” Henuttawy snapped. Her voice echoed over the cliffs, and from the front of the procession, near the sarcophagus, Ramesses turned to see the cause of the commotion. Henuttawy lowered her voice. “Be silent,” she threatened.

“Does the idea of Anubis stalking through these hills frighten you? I’m not afraid of death. When he comes for me, there is nothing I have to hide.”

Behind me, Merit sucked in her breath.

Henuttawy hissed, “Have respect for the dead.”

“By dancing and gossiping?”

We reached the mouth of the tomb, and Ramesses dropped back to walk at my side. “What is this whispering?”

“Henuttawy has said she wants to lead us into the tomb,” I invented. “She wants to be the first to see her brother’s sarcophagus placed inside its burial chamber.”

Ramesses looked at Henuttawy. Even in the low light of the flickering torches I could see that she had lost the color in her cheeks. “That’s very loyal,” he said. “You may go after Penre. He will show you the way.”

Henuttawy turned her dark eyes on me, but she didn’t argue. She raised her chin and stepped after Penre, leading the procession into total darkness. Woserit dug her nails into my arm, warning me to be careful. But what was there to lose? Important courtiers followed after us, and armed guards stood watch at the mouth of the chamber to see that no one else was let inside. We descended the stairs into the belly of the earth, taking care not to touch the walls where images of Seti’s life had been painted. Penre had told us that there was no other tomb in Egypt as long or deep as this, and when the air grew dank, I wrapped my cloak tighter around my waist. We moved through the first and second corridors by torchlight, and when we reached a four-pillared hall, the procession paused. I marveled at the shrine to Osiris and the scenes from the Book of Gates. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered, and Ramesses held my shoulder. “Your father would be proud.”

“Doesn’t this frighten you?” Iset whispered. Ramesses let go of my shoulder and took Iset’s arm. “As a child, I watched my father build this tomb,” he said. We moved into another passage, deeper still. When the High Priest removed the ebony adze that hung from his neck, to begin the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, Iset began to shake. The ceremony would give Seti his breath in the Afterlife. Rahotep placed the adze against Seti’s mouth, and I watched as Henuttawy stood as still as a figure carved in stone. After all, what words might Seti say if he again drew earthly breath?

“Awake!” The High Priest’s voice resounded in the chamber. Queen Tuya stifled a sob. Ramesses held her while I stood close to Merit. “May you be alive and breathing as a living one, healthy and rejuvenated every day. May the gods protect you where you are now, giving you food to eat and fresh water to drink. If there are any words you wish to say, speak them now, that all of Egypt may hear.”

The viziers shifted uncomfortably with their torches, and the courtiers held their breath to listen. When there was silence, I imagined that I saw Henuttawy smile thinly at Iset. Then the sarcophagus was lifted through the narrow corridor into its final chamber. The small party turned to Henuttawy, who would be the first to kiss the Canopic jars and see the sarcophagus lowered into the black void of the shaft below. We watched her step forward. Then she knelt in the dirt and quickly kissed the jars that would carry Seti’s poisoned organs into the Afterlife.

Rahotep, raising the adze in his hands, repeated a solemn passage from the Book of the Dead. “My breath is returned to me by the gods. The bonds that gag my mouth have been loosened and now I am free. Those who have done me harm in my life, I kindly forgive, for the gods will punish you, not me.”

Henuttawy stood, wiping the dirt from her sheath.

SITTING IN my chamber around the warmth of the brazier, I told Woserit and Paser what I suspected about Iset. Woserit gazed at the flames in silence, while Paser cradled a cup of warm Sermet beer in his hands. But neither was as surprised as I had thought they would be.

“She had to be someone’s daughter,” Paser said at length. “Everyone assumed it was some nobleman at court.”

“But she’s the child of the man who killed my family!” I cried. “He’s the murderer of Nefertiti. And if he set the fire . . .” My throat began to close with emotion. “Then he is the murderer of two generations. Do you think he would hesitate to commit another?”

But neither Woserit nor Paser seemed to see the danger I did in the prospect. They were more concerned about the coronation, and Woserit asked sternly, “Is there any chance he will crown you queen?”

I shook my head. “He will never break his promise to his father. But as for Iset, Merit reported seeing a man near her rooms last night.”

Both Woserit and Paser sat forward. This news, at least, appeared to shock them as much as it had me.

“Who was it?” Paser demanded.

I turned up my palms. “She couldn’t see.”

“It might have been the Habiru Ashai,” Woserit guessed immediately.

“No. I’m sure she’s not that foolish,” I replied.

But Woserit shook her head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she paid a servant to go in search of him.”

“She’s desperate,” Paser added. “Who does she have to turn to? Not Pharaoh. Not Henuttawy. She already owes the High Priestess of Isis more than she may ever be able to give.”

Woserit rested a hand on my knee. “Rahotep can do nothing more for her. He can’t speak too loudly against you because his past is still his prison. Iset may not know this yet, but we do.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FOR THE KING IS RA

RAMESSES’S WIDE PECTORAL caught the morning sun, and the blue faience tiles across the dais made it seem as though he was walking on water as he approached his new throne. It was seven days after Pharaoh Seti’s burial, and thousands of noblemen filled the Temple of Amun at Karnak from cities as far away as Memphis. I wondered what they thought of crowning a king without his queen. From my place beside Iset on the third step of the dais, I looked down at my sons in their milk nurses’ arms. They were such bright, happy babies. I felt the burning need to know that they would always be safe, that they would never be subjected to Iset’s whims if I were to die and she were made queen.

A trumpet pierced the crisp air of Pharmuthi, silencing the courtiers in their fur-lined sandals and heavy cloaks. And though I hadn’t been chosen for Chief Wife, Ramesses glanced at me as Rahotep placed the red and white pschent crown on his brow. Several of the viziers did the same, and of those who were gathered on the dais, only Queen Tuya with her ill-tempered iwiw avoided my gaze.

“For the King is Ra,” Rahotep declared. “He is the creator of all things, the begetter of the begotten. He is Bastet who protects the Two Lands, and the one who praises him will be protected by his arm. He is Sekhmet against those who disobey his orders, and Lord-south-of-his-wall. And now he is Pharaoh of all of Egypt, Ramesses the Second and Ramesses the Great.”

Cheers erupted throughout the temple. When Ramesses descended the dais, the chanting was so loud no one could hear him when he held my chin and swore, “If not for my promise . . .”

But no one in the chamber missed his kiss on Amunher’s head, and when he took our son in his arms, Ramesses’s meaning was clear. Amunher was the future of Egypt. Queen Tuya’s glare could not stop Ramesses from raising our son above the crowds. While young dancing girls beat their ivory clappers together, Rahotep passed Henuttawy a meaningful look.

I grasped Merit’s hand; she had seen it, too. My sons could not leave her sight for a moment; every dish brought to the milk nurses’ chamber must be sampled by palace tasters first. Though Ramesses held out his arm for me to take, I remained where I stood.

“Go with Pharaoh,” Merit prompted in my ear. “Nothing will happen.”

“But Rahotep—”

Merit pushed me forward. “I’ll be watching.”

In the courtyard outside of Karnak’s temple, Thebans waited to see who Ramesses would take into his chariot. He had kissed Amunher before the court, and now, before the cheering crowds of Egypt, he offered me his hand. I held my breath, dreading that the people should fall silent, but instead, their cries became thunderous. As we rode through the streets in a procession of soldiers and golden chariots, Ramesses turned to me and smiled.

“You are conquering their hearts. You really are a Warrior Queen, Nefertari.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

TO THE RIGHT OF THE KING

IN THE AUDIENCE Chamber, Ramesses still wore his nemes crown. He appeared no different to me than three months earlier, when only Thebes had been his to govern. But the palace of Malkata had certainly changed since his coronation. The walls had been stripped of their vermillion rugs, and from every niche the statues had been taken and placed in wooden chests bound for the palace of Pi-Ramesses. Wherever I went in the halls of the palace, servants were carrying heavy reed baskets, filling them with every conceivable luxury that the city of Avaris might lack. Few petitioners ventured into the Audience Chamber with the palace in such a state, so when Ahmoses appeared and demanded to see me, Paser waved him by, already knowing what my answer to the Habiru’s request would be.

“You’ve come at a bad time, Ahmoses. The court is leaving tomorrow,” I said.

“Then this would be a good time for the Habiru to leave as well,” he offered. “Why make them suffer the move to Avaris?”

“The army does not suffer.” I laughed. “They’ll be sailing the Nile in the same ships as Pharaoh.”

“Not every Habiru is in Pharaoh’s army. Some must sell their stores of grain to hire boats.”

“And they will have to hire boats to reach the shores of Canaan.”

“Not if we walk.”

“The Habiru cannot leave!” I exclaimed, more sharply than I intended. “Reports have come from the north of advancing Hittite troops. If the Hittites take Kadesh, there will be war. Every soldier is needed. Wait until Thoth.”

“I want to know when Pharaoh will set my people free!” His eyes were blazing. He brought his staff crashing down on the tiles, and armed guards moved forward, but I raised my hand to stop them.

Ramesses turned from his business with Paser. “My wife has told you the truth. Every soldier in Thebes will be coming to Avaris,” he said with a sharp dismissal. Then he turned to me. “Why do you entertain him?” he asked quietly.

As Merit and I made our way to the baths that night, she repeated Ramesses’s question.

“Because my mother suffered the way the Habiru do. But if Emperor Muwatallis moves for Kadesh, every soldier in Egypt may not be enough to stop him. And if Kadesh falls, Avaris will be next. Then Memphis. Then Thebes . . .”

The dark silhouette of Merit’s head shook as we walked the tiled path leading to the bathhouse. “If Pharaoh knew that you were considering this,” she began, but I held up my arm to stop her.

“Listen!”

There was the sound of weeping. I glanced at Merit.

“It’s coming from in there,” she whispered.

We slipped quietly through the columned entrance to the royal courtyard. Standing behind the girth of a sycamore tree was the shape of Iset and with her was a young man. From any other entrance, they would have been hidden from view. Her back was to us.

“You could come every morning,” she pleaded. “You’re a sculptor, Ashai. We could tell the court you’re sculpting my bust. No one would know—”

“I should never have come to you.” The Habiru moved away. “I loved you once, but I’ve learned to love my wife. She’s given me two children . . . But inviting me here—you’re putting my life in jeopardy!” He must have caught a glimpse of our movement, for in a moment he had fled.

Iset turned, and when she saw me standing with Merit, she covered her mouth in horror. She sank to her knees among the belt of flowers bordering the path to her chamber. “Are you going to tell Ramesses?” she whispered, her head bowed.

“No. Your secret is safe from him,” I said quietly.

Merit looked at me in shock. “My lady!”

Iset looked up at me, eyes narrowed in calculation. “And what will I have to pay for this silence?”

“It is only people like Henuttawy who expect payment,” I replied.

LATER, IN my chamber, I told Woserit and Paser what had happened. “They were hidden beneath the branches of a sycamore,” I finished. “If we hadn’t been on our way to the baths, we would never have seen them.”

“A wife of Pharaoh must be beyond suspicion,” Woserit said darkly. “When Ramesses discovers this—”

“He won’t discover it. I told Iset that her secret was safe.” Though Woserit and Paser both stared at me in astonishment, I shook my head firmly. “Henuttawy has already made her life miserable enough. And Ashai swore that he would never return. How would knowing this make Ramesses happy?”

“But Iset is betraying him!”

“For love. My mother betrayed her family for love. I wouldn’t be here if my mother hadn’t chosen the general Nakhtmin over duty to her sister.”

“But your mother wasn’t married to your sister!” Woserit cried. “They hadn’t sworn an oath before Amun.”

It was true. The situation wasn’t the same, but now that the time had finally come, and it was in my power to destroy Iset, I didn’t have the heart.

THE NEXT morning, every Theban who depended on Pharaoh for their employment was on the road. I shaded my eyes with my hand, and from my balcony, I could see the thousands of wagons, loaded with grain, chests, and weapons of war, beginning the long journey to Avaris. Those who could afford it hired barges, packing their belongings into simple chests. Beyond the city, farmers carried their last baskets of threshed grain to the whitewashed silos, where scribes paid them from the treasury. The fortunate used these copper deben to purchase a place for their families on ships.

I embraced Ramesses tightly as we stood together looking out over the sea of people.

“It’s not like Nefertiti and Akhenaten,” Ramesses promised. “We aren’t building a city in the desert to glorify ourselves. We’re moving to Avaris to protect our kingdom.” Ramesses looked down at me and smiled. “Do you know what I instructed the builders to see to first? Your chamber,” he said. “I’ve had them build you one next to mine, painted with all the scenes from Malkata.”

No one had ever done something so considerate for me. I put my hand to my heart, and when he saw that he had left me speechless, he kissed my lips, my cheeks, my neck. “Your akhu built Malkata, Nefer. Your mother lived here. I don’t want you to feel sad when you leave it today.”

I pressed my hands against the hardness of his chest, then down to his waist, and even farther. He swept me into his arms, carrying me from the balcony, but the servants had already packed my bed.

Next to the brazier was a sheepskin, deep and white and soft. “Like you,” he whispered when he laid me against it. He knelt to kiss my shoulders, then my breasts, then the soft inside of my thighs. He inhaled the scent of jasmine I always wore between my legs. We lay on the warm rug in my empty chamber and made love, until Merit’s knocking had become too loud to ignore.

Still, I wanted to look out over the fruit trees in the garden one last time. Their branches were supported on painted trellises, and some nights I imagined that it was my mother who’d planted them. She had been a great gardener, but there was no one to tell me which flowers she had left to me in Thebes. I’d told Ramesses that I wouldn’t be sad to leave Malkata, but now I realized that I had lied. In four months, during the Feast of Wag, there would be nowhere for me to go to in Avaris to light incense for my mother’s ka. She would sit untended in Horemheb’s temple, her face enshrouded by darkness, forgotten.

“We’ll return.” Ramesses came up behind me.

“My mother walked these halls,” I said. “Sometimes, I stand on this balcony and wonder if she saw what I am seeing.”

“We will build her a temple,” Ramesses promised. “We will not let her be forgotten. I am Pharaoh of all of Egypt now.”

“Akhenaten was once Pharaoh of all of Egypt—”

He took me by the shoulders. “You are related to me now. To Amunher and Prehir. The people have seen my victories in Nubia and Kadesh. They’ve seen our conquest of the Sherden. The gods are watching us now. They know us.”

That afternoon, we sailed with a flotilla of more than a hundred ships, and I stood on the stern watching Malkata disappear. Ramesses’s finest ship was filled to bursting, piled with chests and heavy furniture from the palace. Ebony statues of the gods peeked from the cabin, seemingly as anxious as I was to arrive. There was little room to stand, and the courtiers who’d come with us sat beneath a sunshade, unable to move. So much would change, and I sighed wistfully. “I wonder what it will be like to live in Avaris permanently?”

As always, Merit’s reply was sensible. “The same as it was when you were a child and the court spent every summer there. Now don’t let Iset decide which chamber she will have.”

“Ramesses has already chosen my chamber. He built me a new one next to his,” I told her, “and there are two rooms next to it. One for you, and one for Amunher and Prehir. You won’t have to share with the milk nurses anymore. It will be the largest room in Avaris.”

Merit put her hands to her heart gleefully. “And does Iset know this?”

WE ARRIVED in Pi-Ramesses in the middle of Pachons, and it was a different palace from the one we’d seen in the chilled month of Tybi. In the months that had passed, thick clusters of flowers had bloomed from newly painted urns and hanging vases. From the lofty heights of the sandstone columns, fragrant garlands of lotus blossoms had been twined with branches painted in gold. The sweet scent of lilies filled the halls, and in the tiled courtyards water splashed musically from alabaster fountains onto blooming jasmine. An army of servants must have worked every day since Seti’s death. I imagined them buzzing about the palace like bees, darting into the chambers to clean, and polish, and prepare for our arrival. The freshly painted walls gleamed in the sun, and a thousand bronze lanterns waited for nightfall to reflect in the newly tiled floors. Everything was rich, and new, and glittering.

I turned to Ramesses in shock. “How can the treasury of Avaris afford this?”

He lowered his voice so only I could hear. “It can’t. You can thank the Sherden pirates for this.”

Hundreds of courtiers assembled in the Audience Chamber with its colossal statues of King Seti and Queen Tuya, and Paser read out the locations of every chamber. When he came to my name, the court seemed to hold its breath.

“The princess Nefertari,” he announced, “to the right of Pharaoh Ramesses the Great.”

A murmur of surprise passed through the room, and I saw Henuttawy glance at Iset. To be placed at the right of the king meant that Ramesses had made me Chief Wife in all but name. It wasn’t a public declaration engraved on the temples of Egypt, but the entire court of Avaris knew his preference now.

“Shall I show you the chamber?” Ramesses asked. He led me to a wooden door, inlaid with tortoiseshell and polished ivory, and then placed his hand over my eyes.

I laughed. “What are you doing?”

“When you go inside, I want you to tell me what it reminds you of.”

I heard him open the door, and as soon as he withdrew his hand, I gasped. It was exactly like home. On the farthest wall were the leaping red calves from the palace of Malkata. On another was a large image of the goddess Mut, passing the ankh of life to my mother. I stared at the painting, remembering the mural that Henuttawy had destroyed, and tears coursed down my cheeks.

OVER THE next month, the Audience Chamber of Pi-Ramesses was never silent. Our days were spent in work, touring Avaris, overseeing repairs, meeting with emissaries and viziers from foreign courts. But at night, there were endless distractions. The deben in Seti’s treasury had gone to prepare for war and provide him with entertainment, so even while all around him the palace lay crumbling, he had never been without Egypt’s most beautiful dancers. They crowded the Great Hall in numbers, seeking support from the new Pharaoh of Egypt, and the entire court felt alive and merry. Amunher and Prehir could now sit upright on Woserit’s lap and clap in time with the rattle of the sistrums. But no one was allowed to hold Ramessu except his own mother or his nurse. Iset kept her watchful eye over him, and if Amunher and Prehir crawled too close, she gathered him in her arms and whisked him away. From his mother’s grasp, poor Ramessu listened to the delighted squeals of my sons, crawling together on the dais. He will grow to be a very lonely child, I thought.

But no one else in Avaris seemed lonely. In the grand villas beyond Pi-Ramesses, there were nightly feasts as new relatives arrived on the road from Thebes. The aroma of roasted duck wafted into the corridors of the palace, and in the mornings the scent of pomegranate paste was so strong I would awake to the sound of my growling stomach. From the balcony of my chamber, I watched the farmers harvest the amber-hued myrrh, and at night their wives would take their small children and stroll the city’s tree-lined avenues. The fear of devastating famine was gone, and though the people believed that it was Penre’s invention that had changed their lives, I knew better. I wondered what my akhu would think, knowing that not everything from Amarna had been destroyed.

Then came the message that we knew would arrive. We had been in Avaris for only a month, and our days of touring and feasting were soon ended. Paser came to us in our chamber and closed the door. Ramesses took the scroll and unfurled it.

“Ten thousand Hittite soldiers have taken Kadesh,” Paser reported. “The city has already changed its allegiance.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“Only the messenger, Your Highness.”

I read the report over Ramesses’s shoulder. Ten thousand men had marched on the city at dawn, and the people of Kadesh were so afraid of war they had surrendered by afternoon. Ramesses crushed the papyrus in his hand. “He thinks I am too young to challenge him! Muwatallis thinks he’s a hawk swooping in on the nest of a chick!” He flung the crumpled scroll across the room. “He greatly mistakes me.”

“Emperor Muwatallis is a veteran of war,” Paser warned. “He’s seen battle in every kingdom in the east.”

“And now he will taste war with Egypt.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

BEFORE THE WALLS OF KADESH

Avaris

“YOU’RE GOING ALL the way to Kadesh?” Merit shrieked. She stood over Amunher and Prehir, who looked up at me beneath their fringes of red-gold hair and flapped their arms, wanting to be held. “It’s enough that you went to the north, my lady, a princess of Egypt on a ship with pirates—”

“And you saw how the people reacted,” I argued. “It was worth the risk.”

“Because there were only a hundred men!” Merit cried. “Not ten thousand Hittites prepared for war. Does Pharaoh understand the danger—”

“Of course he does.” I only had one day to prepare, but Merit was standing in the way of my traveling chest. “He’s stayed up nights thinking about it. We both have, mawat. And last night he decided.”

“But think of all the ways there are to die in war,” she begged. “Please.” Her voice rose in desperation. “What will happen when Pharaoh is in battle? You’ll be completely alone.”

I drew a steady breath. “No. I will have Amunher and Prehir.” I saw the look on her face and added quickly, “Ramesses first went on campaign at eleven months old. Iset is going as well. With Ramessu.”

Merit’s hands fell from her hips, her defiance melting into astonishment. “To Kadesh?”

“It’s Henuttawy’s suggestion. She wants to be sure that Ramesses spends as much time with Iset as he does with me. We will be with the camp outside the city,” I explained, “in the hills. We’ll watch the battle from afar.”

Merit threw up her hands in horror. “Well, then, if you can join the camp, I can, too!” She stood with her fat little legs apart, and when she placed her hands back on her hips, I knew that there would be no arguing with her. “What do I prepare?”

“Linens and sandals,” I said swiftly.

“And for the princes?”

I kissed each of my sons on their soft cheeks. They were the brightest babies, always wanting to touch, and grab, and explore. “All they truly need is each other,” I told her. They had recently stopped nursing, and now they drank their milk from clay bottles and ate chicken from my bowl when it was cut small enough. They ate together, played together, and now they would see their first battle together, watching from the hills. I laid my sons back on their linen, and felt the thrill of knowing that by Epiphi the gods would recognize them. It might only be a small thing, and their names might not echo in Amun’s ears just yet, but to share in Egypt’s conquests was certainly a beginning.

In the Audience Chamber that morning, petitioners had been forbidden, and from a dozen polished tables, generals and viziers debated the strategy that Egypt would use to take back Kadesh. I sat listening to Asha and his father as they described the Hittite army.

“They have allies from eighteen kingdoms,” Anhuri warned. “Nearly two thousand chariots and thirty thousand soldiers. They have men from Aleppo, Ugarit, Dardany, Keshkesh, Arzawa, Shasu . . .”

“Aradus, Mese, Pedes, and many more,” Asha finished. “There is no doubt we will need all our twenty thousand soldiers.”

“Then we will break the army into five divisions,” Ramesses decided. We had stayed up for nights looking at maps, translating cuneiform messages that spies had intercepted. “There will be the division of Amun, which I will lead. The division of Ra, with Kofu at its head. General Anhuri will take the division of Ptah and name a general to the division of Set. Each division will march a day apart, so that if Hittite spies should see Amun’s division, they will think we are only five thousand strong. Then Asha will take a final, smaller army by river. If we can surround the Hittites and cut off their supplies, they will face starvation and will surrender within a month.”

The viziers frowned at one another. “You are going to divide the army, Your Highness?” Paser was wary. “No Pharaoh in my memory has done this.”

Around the tables, men shifted in their seats. It was either a brilliant plan or madness.

“I think it can work,” General Kofu spoke up.

“Can work, or will work?” Paser challenged.

“Will work,” Ramesses said fearlessly.

Rahotep remained silent, his bloody eye fixed on Ramesses’s throne. But Paser was braver. “If there is any chance of success in this, there will need to be excellent communication between the divisions.”

“And I have grave reservations,” General Anhuri admitted.

Ramesses hadn’t expected dissent from Asha’s father. “Tell me why.”

“You will lead four divisions up through Canaan, then on through the woods of Labwi. It will be a month’s march. If the Hittites should turn and surprise Amun’s division, how quickly can a runner be sent to Ra, Set, or Ptah? This has never been done—”

“Which is why we must try,” Ramesses said passionately. “Akhenaten lost Kadesh along with the Eleutheros Valley. Since then Pharaohs have tried to regain it and failed. It belongs to Egypt! How long was it in my father’s possession before the Hittites took it back? Without the Valley, we will never regain our land in Syria. If we allow the Hittites to hold Kadesh, they will keep Egypt’s territory along the Arnath River forever! Akhenaten let our empire crumble, but we will rebuild. We will reconquer. And to do that, we must crush the Hittites. We cannot simply use a huge blocking force, as before. It’s not enough to push them back—we must surround them, starve them, and force them to surrender completely!”

Ramesses’s speech roused his generals. They understood that if something different wasn’t tried, there might be battle after battle against Hatti without end. The Hittites had to be engulfed and destroyed once and for all.

THAT EVENING, I looked at Ramesses in the low light of the oil lamps. He sat on our bed, perched tensely like a bird of prey, a nineteen-year-old Pharaoh of the most powerful kingdom in the world. In a month, he would show the Hittite emperor that Egypt should never be mistaken for a gosling.

“Since the reign of Tuthmosis,” he said, “only my father and I have led armies into battle. And only a few pharaohs in history have ever taken their wives.”

“We will be fine,” I promised him.

“It’s not you who concerns me. It’s Iset. The march will be long, and she isn’t meant for such things.” I wanted to ask him what he thought Iset was meant for, but he went on. “I could send her on by ship in Asha’s galley,” he considered, “but they will be far ahead of the army, and that could prove more dangerous.”

“She has chosen to come,” I reminded. “She will do well.”

But I could see that Ramesses wasn’t convinced.

The next morning the court assembled on the small bluff outside Avaris. Viziers, wives, priestesses, and noblemen had come to see the awesome sight of twenty thousand soldiers readied for battle in the fields below. Helmets and axes gleamed in the sun, and from each division flew the standards of Amun, Ra, Set, and Ptah. Among the thousands of soldiers were Nubians, Assyrians, the new Sherden recruits, and the Habiru. They carried leather shields to be quick and agile, where the Hittite armor would be cumbersome and heavy.

“You see how fast our chariots are?” Paser pointed a driver out to me who charged across the floodplains, then reined in his horses with the slightest tug of his hand. “The Hittite chariots are much heavier than ours, because they carry three men.”

“A driver, a shield bearer, and an archer,” I guessed.

Paser nodded. A slight wind rustled his kilt, and in the morning sun his eyes looked tired. “Be careful, Nefertari. The Hittites will not hesitate to kill a woman. They aren’t Egyptians, and they may not take you alive . . .” He left his words unfinished, then stepped back so Woserit could embrace me.

“You are braver than I.”

“Or more foolish,” I answered. “But I’ve promised Ramesses that wherever he goes, I’ll be with him. And if he should meet with disaster, all Egypt would fall to the Hittites anyway. How could I stay here? I must have a hand in my own fate.”

We both looked to Henuttawy and Iset. Although they were standing close to each other, a wide river might as well have been flowing between them. Neither spoke, and the women Iset had grown up with since childhood shifted nervously. They had never known anything but life in the harem, and now Iset would be riding a chariot between desert cities while the army marched. They had no advice to give her, and Iset’s face was as white as her diaphanous sheath.

Woserit shook her head. “She will never survive. She’ll want to ride in the litter with the children all the way to Kadesh.”

Ramesses appeared in his golden pectoral, his courtiers chatting excitedly. The early morning sun reflected from his breastplate: His bronze armor was cinched with an azure sash, and from his khepresh crown of war the uraeus bared its fangs at the enemy.

“Like Montu,” I told him, the male god of war.

“And you are my Sekhmet,” he replied.

Iset came up beside him; her broad inlaid belt was so thick that it weighed her down as she walked. Up close I could see her nails had been hennaed. She was perfectly beautiful, like a freshly painted doll from the palace workshops. “We’re marching through the desert,” Ramesses exclaimed. “Not hosting a feast!” He looked at my linen kilt and simple sandals, then hesitated. “You are simply too beautiful for the battlefield, Iset. Perhaps you should—”

But she wouldn’t listen to him. “I am coming with you,” she said. “I want to be by your side. Battle doesn’t frighten me.”

Yet even the courtiers from the palace, who wanted to believe everything of her, could see through this. One of her women, the daughter of a scribe, suggested kindly, “You could remain with Vizier Paser in the Audience Chamber, Iset. Pharaoh needs loyal eyes to look after his kingdom.”

“Pharaoh needs someone to look after him in war!” she snapped, and then she turned her gaze in my direction. “And if it means I have to look like a boy, I’ll do it.”

“Then go and get dressed,” Ramesses said, and I detected a note of impatience in his voice. “When you return, you can take the litter. It will protect you from the dirt and the sun.”

THE MARCH was as long as General Anhuri had predicted in the Audience Chamber, and Iset rode for a month in her covered litter, borne on the shoulders of eight men. She never dared to complain about the oppressive heat or lack of places to bathe. When Ramessu cried, we could hear her shouting at him to be quiet, that if he didn’t behave she would leave him by the side of the road.

The poor thing will learn to hate her, I thought. She should allow him to ride with Amunher and Prehir. I looked across at the second litter, and from the squeals of delight behind the linen I imagined that my sons thought this was a great adventure. Merit rode with them, and I could see her shadow as she moved back and forth, keeping them from trouble. Although there was room for me in the litter too, I steered my own chariot next to Asha and Ramesses. And at night, when the army made camp where it could, Ramesses crept into my pavilion and we listened as Merit told stories of the gods in the pavilion next to ours. Some nights we could hear that Amunher and Prehir had gone to sleep at once. But most of the time, they had slept throughout the day and were no longer interested in settling down. Then Ramesses would call them over to us, and the three of them would crawl among the cushions, delighting in each other, while I stayed up translating messages our spies had captured.

“Emperor Muwatallis knows nothing of this march,” I said with certainty. We had passed through Canaan and traveled down toward the Bekaa Valley. We were steadily approaching Kadesh from the south, and I held up the latest scroll. “He is sending missives home that his wives must be there to greet him, and that a victory feast should be prepared for Epiphi. He has no idea we are coming. Though I don’t know about this.” I pointed to a line of ancient cuneiform. It was written in a Hittite that only priests used. I squinted, trying to recall what I had learned from Paser. “It’s something about the woods of Labwi.” I hesitated. “Something about . . . woodsmen perhaps?”

“Scouts!” Ramesses shouted, frightening Amunher and Prehir. They held their breaths to see if he was shouting at them, and when he failed to look in their direction, they carried on playing. “There will be scouts in the woods of Labwi!” he exclaimed.

I continued to study the scroll. “Yes.” I nodded quickly. “That must be it.” Though I had never seen some of the words before, Labwi and woodsmen were clear enough.

“Tomorrow, we will pass through Labwi,” Ramesses said. “And whatever Hittite scouts they’ve left behind, we will encircle them to cut off any warning.” He smiled at me. “We are going to take back Kadesh before Muwatallis has a chance to sit down at his next feast!”

The four divisions of the army on foot were assembled the next morning. Twenty thousand men listened to their orders as the sun rose beyond the hills, gilding their helmets and reflecting from their swords. Seti had amassed ten thousand leather shields, stretched taut on strong wooden frames that could deflect even the strongest arrow point, and now, after a month’s march, they would finally be used.

“The divisions of Amun and Ra will make camp across the River Arnath on the highest point,” Ramesses instructed his generals. “Set and Ptah will remain at the base of the hill. We’ve intercepted a message that indicates that there will be Hittite spies in Labwi. When we reach the woods this evening, I want them captured!”

There was a nervous excitement as the divisions marched. We were nearing Kadesh, and when the camp passed through the cedar forests of Labwi, this nervousness only heightened. But there were no sightings of Hittites anywhere in the tall, flat-topped groves, and when the divisions of Amun and Ra made camp on the hill above Kadesh, there were murmurs of shock as the men looked below them. The walled city appeared completely silent, and the Hittite army seemed to have disappeared. Ramesses stood on the crest as the cool of evening settled over Kadesh, and Egypt’s generals stared out in amazement.

“Perhaps they have retreated,” Kofu suggested.

“An army of ten thousand men does not capture the most important city in the north only to abandon it a month later. Perhaps they’re hiding within the city,” Anhuri offered.

“Either way, we must send a scout,” Kofu said. “Even if the Hittites have already left the city, word of us will reach them and they’ll return in force. You can be sure of it.”

The four divisions of Egypt’s army waited for news around thousands of campfires that dotted the hillside and filled the air with the scent of burning timber. Some of the men played Senet and rolled knucklebones. But once the sun set there was a tense expectation among the soldiers; the silence of the city below was more disturbing than seeing any Hittite army. Around our fire, Iset was the first to break the uneasy quiet.

“Where can they be?” she demanded shrilly. “We have marched for a month! And now we’ve come and there isn’t any war!”

Anhuri smiled warily. “You will get your war. In one day or ten, the Hittites will return.”

The hood of Iset’s cloak fell back around her shoulders, revealing her exasperated look. “With how many men?”

Anhuri glanced behind him. There was a commotion in the camp, but he answered her quickly. “As many as we’ve brought from Egypt. Likely more.” He stood as a young boy came running toward him, dressed in the printed kilt of a messenger. At once, we were all on our feet.

“What is the news?”

The boy paused to catch his breath. “Nothing!” he cried. “The Hittites left two nights ago. They have installed their own governor in charge of the city, but the army is gone!”

Ramesses glanced between his generals, and all of them wore guarded expressions. “It could be a trap.”

But the messenger boy was confident. “It’s not a trap, Your Highness. I’ve been through the city. There’s not a curly beard or striped kilt among them. Only in the governor’s house . . .”

“Two days ago?” Anhuri challenged. Asha’s father was incredulous. “It’s too convenient,” he dismissed, and I wanted to agree with him. But the other generals wondered if perhaps the emperor was so confident of his conquest he felt no need to remain in Kadesh.

“It’s possible they waited a month to see if an army would come from Egypt by river, and when none came, they decamped,” Kofu suggested.

“We’ll wait,” Ramesses decided. “If there is no sign of their army by tomorrow evening, we’ll take back the city.”

The generals returned to their fires, and the young scout was given two gold deben for his trouble. But in my pavilion, Ramesses couldn’t sleep. I kissed his shoulders, then his chest, but I could see that he was in no mood for me to undress him.

“If the Hittites have truly left,” he said, “we can take Kadesh tomorrow evening before the Hittite army has a chance to return. We can shut the gates and defend the city from within. You will remain on this hill with the provisions. I have given the Master of the Guards, Ibenre, instructions that only you may move this camp. If a division that doesn’t carry a banner of Amun, Ra, Ptah, or Set approaches this hill, I want you to leave for the south, for the city of Damascus.”

I placed my fingers on my lower lip, and gently, Ramesses brushed them away.

“There is nothing to fear. The gods are watching, and we shall be victorious.”

THERE WAS whispering outside my pavilion. A dark shape moved against the moonlight, and Ramesses sat up with his hand on his sword.

“Your Highness!”

“It’s General Anhuri,” I said. I felt a selfish pleasure that he had known to look for Ramesses with me. Ramesses rushed to the opening and pulled aside the linen. Next to his guards, the general stood with Kofu and two bound prisoners.

“Two Hittite soldiers, Your Highness,” said Anhuri. “Found lurking in the hills beneath the camp.”

I dressed myself quickly and joined Ramesses outside. The spies had been bound with rope, and a large gash cut the taller man’s cheek. Both wore the long kilts of the Hittites, with their hair braided away from their faces.

“What story have they given you?” Ramesses demanded.

“They speak little Egyptian,” Kofu replied. “But the taller one says they deserted the army.”

“What are your names?”

“They call themselves Anittas and Teshub.” Anhuri raised his brows. “Whether those are their real names is anyone’s guess.”

Ramesses peered down into the faces of his captives, and even the tallest one only came to his chest. “Why would you leave Emperor Muwatallis?”

Both men shook with fear, but it was Teshub, the fatter one, who replied, “We understand very little Egyptian.”

“Then you may use the little Egyptian you have,” Ramesses roared, “and explain yourselves to me, or you will be explaining yourselves to Osiris!”

Teshub glanced in my direction, and his gaze lingered on me. “We left the army of Emperor Muwatallis,” he said quickly. “We did not want to fight for such a coward.”

Anhuri prodded the fat man with the edge of his sword. “What do you mean coward?”

“Emperor Muwatallis has fled!” Teshub said. “He heard that the great Pharaoh Ramesses was coming with an army that could fill the horizon!”

Ramesses looked at me, then at his generals. A wide grin spread across his face, and he stepped closer to the deserters. “Muwatallis heard that I was coming and fled? In which direction?” he asked eagerly.

Teshub pointed to the north.

“Aleppo?” Kofu demanded.

“Yes.” Teshub nodded swiftly. “To find more soldiers.”

Ramesses’s eyes glowed. “We will take Kadesh tomorrow!” he vowed. “I will lead Amun’s army north to the city before Muwatallis brings reinforcements. Instruct my men to get up. They are done sleeping tonight.”

“And the other divisions?” Kofu asked.

“They shall follow at first light.”

Even before the gray of dawn brightened the sky, the division of Amun assembled on the hill. They would reach the gates of Kadesh before nightfall, and I wondered how long it would be before the Hittite army returned. In the privacy of my pavilion, Ramesses encircled my waist with his arms. They had been bronzed by the harsh summer’s sun and were corded with muscle from his years of training. I felt them tighten protectively around me and wished they would never let go. But he still had to make his farewell to Iset, and to Merit, who was dressing our sons.

“Capturing the governor will be quick,” he said eagerly. “When Muwatallis returns, he will see that Kadesh has been retaken. Then Asha and the fifth division will appear! It’s over for him.”

“And what will stop him from taking this hill?”

“Because Muwatallis has fled north, Nefer! He will have to get by us first. You are well protected here.”

WE WATCHED the Amun soldiers move out, and by afternoon, the men had disappeared and all we could see was a dusty marching column in the distance. Merit held tightly to Prehir, wiping away his tears as he gestured toward the horizon. But Amunher squirmed in my arms, feistier than his brother, and he didn’t shed any tears.

“He would crawl after Pharaoh if he could,” Merit remarked.

“He will be a little warrior. Won’t you, Amunher?”

“ He will be a crown prince,” Merit said firmly. “As soon as this year has passed.”

“Rahotep would sooner give up his leopard robes and go naked than crown Amunher.”

“Then I hope he enjoys the cold,” Merit snapped.

We both looked to the tent where armed soldiers guarded the Hittite deserters. Even from the edge of the hill, I could hear the two men arguing inside. One of the guards called to me, “They are speaking in tongues, Princess. Their captivity has made them lose their minds.”

I listened, then quickly handed Amunher to Merit and moved closer to the tent. One of the guards opened his mouth, but I shook

my head fiercely, putting my fingers to my lips. When I had heard enough, I stepped back. “They are speaking in Shasu. And they’re fretting about what Egypt will do to spies!”

There was silence inside the tent. The guards looked at me with terror as I shouted for someone to bring General Anhuri. The cry of spies echoed over the hill, and even Iset emerged from her pavilion where she had spent the day chastising Ramessu.

When General Anhuri came running, he had his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“They are spies!” I said. “These men are not Hittite deserters! They were speaking Shasu!” My voice rose with terror. “They were arguing over what will happen to them once Ramesses discovers the Hittite army hiding behind the hills of Kadesh!”

General Anhuri and his bodyguard entered the tent, armed with canes. I winced at the sounds of the men being beaten within. The nearby soldiers had heard what I was saying, and news was already spreading among the ranks that Pharaoh was marching into a trap. The division of Ra was already mobilized, and the men of the other divisions took up their spears, and axes, and shields. When Anhuri emerged from the prisoners’ tent, fresh blood stained his kilt. His grim nod confirmed what I had feared. “The three divisions are moving!” he shouted. “The princess Nefertari is placed in charge of the supplies and the three hundred guards who will be left behind.”