I hugged my friend. “Is it so bad, just being Princess Sitamun? Do you have to be someone’s wife?”
“No,” she said with a wan smile. “But I’d like to have that choice.” She paused a moment, then pushed aside her regrets. “So! If you and Amenophis are just friends, what is this great, mysterious, totally innocent thing you’ve been nagging him to do? He surrenders, but I want to hear about the battlefield.”
“Is it any of your business?” I asked, mimicking her lighthearted tone.
“It is if you want me to continue serving as your trusted messenger.”
“He’s going to teach me how to drive a chariot.”
I might as well have said: He’s going to teach me how to weave a garland of horned vipers. Sitamun was appalled. “Are you both crazy? He can’t do that!”
“Why not? Because I’m a girl?”
“Because you’ll die. The horses will bolt. The chariot will break, or turn over, or bounce over a rock and send you flying. You’ll be trampled. You’ll break your neck. You’ll smash your skull. You’ll break every other bone in your body and never be able to walk again, or dance, or—You’ll ruin your face!”
“Well, we can’t have that,” I said. “Aunt Tiye would never approve.”
Sitamun tried talking me out of my plans until she saw that it was useless. She contented herself with making sure that I picked up a big rock and smashed Amenophis’s message to dust, then whisked the dust into the long pool. She left threatening to “talk sense” to Amenophis.
“Don’t you dare!” I called after her, then hurried to prepare for the adventure awaiting me.
Amenophis drove the chariot out of the city to a flat space out of sight of Thebes and the sacred river. “This is where I learned how to drive,” he told me. “The ground is nice and smooth, with no surprises. You ought to be all right.” He jumped to the ground and took hold of the horses’ bridles.
He spent some time showing me how to hold the reins. “Whatever you do, don’t lose your grip or the horses will get away from you and run wild. And use both hands. You won’t be hunting lions.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“When Father hunts, he doesn’t like to have a driver with him. He says it crowds the arm he uses to hold his bow. But he still needs both hands free to shoot his quarry, so he tucks the reins into his belt.”
“He can steer that way?”
“His horses are the best of the best, well trained. I think that if you set them loose, they’d bring back a lion on their own!” We both laughed over that.
“Can you do that, too?” What I really wanted to ask was, Can you teach me how to do that? but I thought it best to approach that question stealthily.
“Not yet. Father has been hunting for many more years than I. The best I can do is steer with one hand.”
“Like this?” I grabbed the reins loosely with my right hand and flung my left over my head.
He climbed back into the chariot and made me hold the reins in both hands. “Like this or like nothing.”
Under Amenophis’s nervous eyes, I was forced to keep the horses to a walk while he kept up with us. Back and forth across the plain we went, slow as a pair of oxen instead of a team of wing-footed steeds. How much longer is he going to hold me back? I thought crossly. I can do better than this. And with that thought, I gave the reins a slight flick.
The horses were just as eager for more speed as I. That glancing sting on their rumps set them off like a green branch tossed on the fire, exploding into a shower of sparks. As Sitamun had predicted, they bolted. I tried to clutch the reins and pull the horses back, but my palms were sweaty and they slithered out of my grip. I lurched backward, but by some unmerited mercy of the gods, I didn’t fall off. In a desperate heartbeat I threw myself forward after the vanishing reins and grabbed the chariot rail. Bones shaking, teeth clashing, body jouncing, I got a bellyful of speed until the horses had enough of a gallop and came to a stop.
“Nefertiti! Nefertiti! Are you hurt?” Amenophis caught up to the chariot, seized the trailing reins, and looked fearfully at me as I huddled on the floor of the chariot, covered in dust from head to foot.
I shook my head no, and for the first time saw my friend’s homely face transformed with dark fury. “If you ever do something like that again—!”
“I’ll do it right,” I piped up.
His anger broke into shared laughter, and for the rest of the lesson I didn’t try any more silly tricks.
I was very glad that Amenophis didn’t hold my little escapade against me. The chariot lessons continued whenever the two of us could get away. One day, when the season of Harvest was two months old, we rode with a bundle of straw and Amenophis’s bow and quiver sharing the ride. He set up the target, showed me how to draw and aim the bow, and was kind enough not to mock me when I lacked the strength to make the tall weapon bend more than a finger’s breadth.
“Keep trying,” he said. “It will get better.”
“I’d rather be driving the chariot,” I said, in a bad mood because of my repeated failures with the bow.
“Wouldn’t you like to do both someday?” He gazed at me proudly. “I believe you could.”