He raised his head and let me see a wobbly smile. “How do you do it, Nefertiti? We’ve been here for hours, and you’re not hungry or thirsty. Do you live on air?”
“I think I must live on stupidity,” I said, and hailed the first likely person I saw, a junior priest, judging by the look of his clothes and his hairless body. Once I told him that the lanky young man curled up under that sycamore was Pharaoh’s younger son, he summoned up a whirlwind of servants to carry Amenophis to more comfortable quarters and saw to it that my friend was given everything he needed to restore him, body and spirit.
“Thank you very much,” Amenophis said to the junior priest once he’d recovered. “Your kindness won’t be forgotten. I wish we could enjoy your hospitality longer, but I think it’s time that the lady Nefertiti and I returned to the palace.”
“Certainly, certainly.” The junior priest nearly snapped himself in two bowing to the prince. “I will send for your chariot and escort you to it personally.”
Amenophis tried to decline, but the man wouldn’t be dissuaded. He accompanied us every step of the way and insisted on pointing out special parts of the temple complex as we passed them.
“Now this should be of interest to the lady Nefertiti,” he said, gesturing at an odd piece of construction. “It is the obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut, stepmother of our revered Pharaoh’s great-grandfather.”
“What obelisk?” I asked. All I saw was a mud brick tower.
“Look up,” our guide said. When I did, I saw that where the walls ended, the pointed top of a carved stone shaft rose above them.
“Why would anyone build walls around an obelisk?”
The junior priest was only too happy to explain. “Queen Hatshepsut did not conduct herself the way a woman should. When Pharaoh’s great-great-grandfather ascended to stars, his son was too young to rule, so she became regent. It is said that she ruled well, but that she became arrogant and wicked, sinning terribly against the gods.”
“What—what did she do?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer. I expected to hear horrors.
The junior priest lowered his eyelids as if looking away from a hideous crime. “She declared herself Pharaoh, as if a woman could be the equal of a man.” He sounded very satisfied when he added: “When she died, her stepson saw to it that her monuments were all removed from sight so that her name and achievements might be forgotten.”
I looked at the obelisk, soaring regally above the inadequate mud brick walls. Well, he didn’t do a very good job of it, I thought.
That was only the first of many times that Amenophis took me riding in his chariot to explore the city. I continued my lessons in the scribal arts with Henenu in the mornings and sometimes spent afternoons helping Berett with her lessons or enjoying her harp music while I lost myself in dancing, but whenever I could, I’d slip away and let Amenophis show me yet another face of the royal city I was condemned to call my new home.
On one such day, when the season of Emergence was beginning to turn into the season of Harvest, I was sitting beside the long pool with Berett when Sitamun joined us unexpectedly. My older friend looked as mischievous as a child.
“You’re grinning like a crocodile, Sitamun,” I said fondly. “What sort of tasty gossip are you keeping to yourself?”
“Why would I tell you, you stuffy old thing? You don’t like gossip. You’ve told me so repeatedly.” She opened her hand, revealing a piece of broken pottery. “This is for you. It isn’t gossip … yet.”
I took the shard and read a message from Amenophis, inviting me to join him for another of our rides. My heart fluttered as I read the words: I’ve been thinking about what you’ve asked of me so many times and I surrender. I’ll let you do it. My eyes flashed to Sitamun. “Did you read this?”
“I tried not to,” she said, hedging. “My younger brother writes very large. He’d never make a good scribe, wasting space that way.” In a more serious tone, she added: “I love Amenophis, Nefertiti, and you’re my dear friend, but Thutmose is my brother, too, and the next Pharaoh and your chosen husband.”
“ I never chose him.”
“Do you think that tiny point changes anything important? Then you haven’t been paying attention to Mother, and that’s not smart.”
“Amenophis is my friend,” I said defiantly. “Only my friend. While your mother refuses to let me have any company except our family and Thutmose leaves me to gather dust and cobwebs, Amenophis has been here for me! He worries that I’m lonely, he cares if I smile. Aunt Tiye sends me flasks of rare perfume and makes Thutmose give me earrings and bracelets—though I doubt he even looked at them before he had his servants deliver them to me. Amenophis gives me the gift of his time. We aren’t doing anything wrong, and if you go running to your mother or Thutmose with any false tales, I’ll—”
“Hush, lioness, smooth down your fur,” Sitamun said kindly. “Do you think Amenophis would have entrusted that message to me if he believed I’d tattle about it? He’s just as vehement as you when he insists you’re just friends, but I wanted to hear the same thing directly from your lips.”
“Oh.”
“Why do you sound so disappointed?”
“I’m not,” I protested quickly. “Why do you make a pebble into a pyramid, Sitamun?”
“What else have I got to do with my days?” she replied a little sadly. “Thebes holds nothing new for me to see, and I will never leave my father’s house to marry. Foreign kings send us their daughters because we are the more powerful nation and they want to buy Father’s good will. Father knows this, and so he’ll never let any of his daughters be sent as brides for other kings. The most my sisters and I can hope for is that some noble performs such a heroic deed on the battlefield that Father rewards him with a royal bride, but how can that happen? We’re at peace.”