“I only asked a simple question,” I said, feeling my temper slipping out of my control. “I didn’t want to upset you like this.”
“There are no simple questions inside these walls, Nefertiti,” he told me. “If you ask me whom I’d rather marry than you, it means that there’s someone you’d rather marry than me.”
“No, it doesn’t, I swear by—”
“Stop. I hear too many oaths, too many promises. Let’s forget you ever asked me anything. I would rather have your answer.”
“To what?”
He made a small sound of exasperation. “To my invitation. I’m going hunting for birds in the marshes tomorrow and it would make me deeply happy if you’d come along.”
“Thank you, but I’d rather—”
“Please, Nefertiti.” Thutmose’s mask slipped and I was looking into the eyes of a young man who had lost the one thing he actually cared about.
“All right, Thutmose,” I said, relenting. “Until tomorrow.”
I tried to resume my aimless exploration of the palace, but Thutmose wouldn’t leave me alone. He spent the rest of the day stuck to my side like a burr. There was no question about why he was doing it: He saw his mother’s spies everywhere and wanted them to report that he was doing everything he could to win my heart and hasten our marriage.
The next three days were filled with more of the same uncomfortable togetherness for Thutmose and me. We ate every meal together except for breakfast. I think we both liked those mealtimes best because we didn’t have to make conversation while we were drinking or chewing. Thutmose was perfectly polite when he did speak to me. His words were thickly laden with praise for my eyes, my skin, my mouth, my voice, every part of my body he could list. He even recited poems that claimed how deeply he adored me, how painfully he missed me when we were apart, how ardently he wished for my love. He sounded like he was counting the number of steps from one end of his room to the other.
I was polite, too. I never laughed at him once. Aunt Tiye would have found out and she wouldn’t have liked it. Neither one of us wanted her to become cross enough to punish Thutmose through his innocent pet. It was the only thing we had in common.
So the days went by and I watched him kill whole flocks of wild ducks, watched him practice shooting the bow and arrow with the nobles’ sons, watched him throw hunting spears at straw targets, watched, watched, watched him until I closed my eyes and cried out from my soul, O Isis, let Aunt Tiye give him back his cat already! And thank you for showing me that there are worse fates than always being alone.
My prayer was heard. Thutmose and I were eating our midday meal together under the shade of a date palm when Amenophis came out of the palace with Ta-Miu in his arms. “Look who’s come to see you, brother!” he called out joyfully.
Thutmose was on his feet and across the garden in one bound. He plucked Ta-Miu out of his younger brother’s arms and lavished the cat with all kinds of affectionate babble. Then he carried her back to where the servants had set our table and began offering her tidbits. Amenophis and I might as well have been on the moon.
I reached over and tapped Thutmose on the arm. “Aren’t you going to thank your brother for bringing back your cat?”
Thutmose didn’t bother taking his eyes off his pet to answer me. “Why? He only did what Mother told him to do.” He tore off another shred of roasted goose and fed it to Ta-Miu.
I saw Amenophis turn to go, crestfallen. That’s not right, I thought, and ran from the table to stop him before he could leave. “Come and eat with us,” I said.
“I’m not hungry.” He sounded miserable. “I’m going to take a walk.”
“Then I’ll walk with you,” I said.
“Are you sure? Thutmose will—”
“Thutmose won’t notice, and if he notices, he won’t care.” I laid one hand on Amenophis’s scrawny arm. “Can you do me a favor? I’ve been blundering everywhere in this palace for months, but I’ve never been able to find that tiny garden where I met you. Can you take me there? Just so I don’t start believing it was a magician’s illusion.”
“I wouldn’t make a very good magician,” he said, with a faint smile. “I’ll show you how to find it.”
We walked through the palace together with Amenophis taking special care to point out landmarks along the way so that I’d be able to find my way to the hidden garden whenever I liked. “It’s a good place when you want to be alone, but you can’t do that if you need someone else to bring you here,” he said as we finally crossed the threshold into the garden.
“I don’t have to go somewhere special to be alone,” I replied, running my fingertips across the leaves of a fragrant shrub.
“Really? But the women’s quarters are so busy.” He pulled back the fronds of a very young date palm, revealing a stone bench, and motioned for me to sit down. Then he sat as well, though so far from me I thought he was going to fall off the edge and land in the dirt. “Haven’t any of the ladies spoken to you?” he went on. “Are none of them willing to make friends?”
“A friendship takes two,” I replied dully. “It doesn’t work out so well when one of them doesn’t dare to talk to the other.”
“Well, you are a royal princess, betrothed to the next Pharaoh, so the concubines might be shy about approaching you, but the junior wives wouldn’t hesitate. Some of them are princesses in their own right, like the two Mitanni women Mother is always complaining about.”