Sitamun studied the document I’d been crafting. “You’ve written her name more than once,” she said. “If she can show me every place that it appears, I’ll concede.”
I faced my little harper. “Do you understand what Princess Sitamun wants you to do, Berett?” I asked. “Do you want to try?”
The words were just out of my mouth when Berett began pointing at the papyrus here, there, there, and again until she had jabbed her small finger at five out of the six places I’d written her name. Then she looked from Sitamun’s stunned face to mine and gave us both an impish smile.
“Uhhhh, I think you owe me a pair of bracelets,” I said.
“Not so fast. She missed one.” Sitamun was joking, but the joke bounced back at her when Berett pointed at the last repetition of her name in the document and then, very deliberately, put her first two fingers in her mouth.
It was the symbol for a child. It belonged next to the other characters that spelled out Berett’s name, to indicate that I wasn’t writing about a grown woman. I’d included it five times, but not the sixth.
Berett saw it, recognized it, understood it. Berett could read.
A little while later, when Henenu joined us, Sitamun and I nearly bowled the scribe off his feet in our eagerness to tell him all about the miracle. He thought we were playing a prank on him. Even when we got Berett to repeat what she’d done, he claimed we’d trained her to do it. The three of us were arguing about how we could prove the truth when Berett stuck her finger into the water for making paints and traced Sitamun’s name on the rooftop.
“Did she just—?” I began. As if to remove all doubt, Berett made a sweeping gesture from the fast-fading symbols to my cousin.
“By Thoth, how did she learn that?” It was Henenu’s turn to be astonished.
“Sitamun and I often practice by writing funny messages to each other,” I said. “Then we read them aloud. Berett probably knows what my name looks like, too.” Berett nodded and tried to demonstrate, but she became confused partway through and slapped the floor in frustration.
“There, there, my girl,” Henenu said. “Nefertiti’s name is much longer than Sitamun’s, so it’s much harder to write. Would you like me to help you?” This time Berett nodded so vigorously that I thought her neck would snap.
As Sitamun and I looked on, Henenu sat cross-legged on the rooftop and began instructing the child. “Well,” I said with a gesture of surrender. “There goes our harp music.”
Later that day, while Berett napped, I sat beside the long pool just outside my door and marveled over the morning’s surprise. Isis be praised, she wants to learn! Oh please, kind goddess, grant that someday she’ll be willing to write the words she still can’t bear to say. It’s so hard, not being able to talk to her, to know if I’m really taking good care of her or not. But if she can write—!
I jumped to my feet. I was so happy, I had to dance. I hummed an old song Mery used to sing to me, about fisher men casting their nets in the river. I stamped my feet, clapped my hands, twirled, swayed, leaped, and burst into full song out of the gladness of my heart.
“So pretty! So good!” An unfamiliar voice put a stop to my dance. A majestic-looking young woman with light brown skin and startling green eyes stood at the far end of the pool, clapping her hands.
During the past months in this part of the palace, I’d come to recognize the most important women—those few junior wives Pharaoh preferred over all the rest, either for their looks, their youth, their importance as the daughters of his foreign allies, or for the sons they’d given him. This green-eyed beauty was one of the two Mitanni princesses, and though I’d often crossed her path, we’d never exchanged a single word.
Now she approached me, and though she hadn’t mastered our language, she managed to let me know that she admired my dance. “This is good to see. Again? Please?”
So I danced for her, and she praised me even more loudly, so loudly that she attracted a crowd of other women. I felt self-conscious, dancing and singing alone for all of them, but soon the Mitanni princess began to sing one of her own people’s songs and to share a dance from her homeland. Others took turns, bringing out their memories as music. Berett woke up and brought out her harp. Together we turned yet another ordinary day into a celebration.
That evening, a servant presented herself at the doorway to my rooms and asked if I would join the two Mitanni princesses for dinner. I was overjoyed. In the past six months, none of the other inhabitants of the women’s quarters had said more to me than a simple greeting when we crossed paths and it was unavoidable. My own attempts at making friends were always turned aside, politely but firmly. Even if I’d overheard one of the foreigners speaking our language fluently, the moment I tried to introduce myself, she acted as if she couldn’t understand a word I said. As for the women of the Black Land—the daughters of nobles whose fathers had given them to Pharaoh as a mark of respect or a bribe—they couldn’t avoid me by hiding behind our different languages, but they always managed to remember someplace they had to be immediately. After two months of such rejections, I gave up.
Who would have guessed that a simple dance could have built such a strong bridge? The Mitanni princesses greeted me warmly, and though they weren’t fluent in our tongue, they still managed to share stories, jokes, and an invitation for me to return to see them as much as I liked.
“Next time, bring little girl who plays harp,” one said. “Very good little girl.”
“She looks like people from near our home,” the other said.
“She’s a Habiru,” I responded. The princesses nodded.
“You, too, look like us, some,” the first one remarked. She indicated my nose and my high cheekbones.