A lute player plucked a more languid, dreamy melody as the feast continued. Servants waving huge fans of blue-and red-dyed ostrich plumes stirred sweet breezes through the air. Thutmose leaned toward me in front of Sitamun and offered me a plate of little cakes studded with dates drenched in honey and garnished with a sprinkling of rose petals. As I reached for them, Ta-Miu appeared out of nowhere, leaping onto the table as if she owned it.
“Oh, that cat!” Sitamun exclaimed. Her sisters shrieked with delight to see the elegant animal daintily weaving her way among the golden plates and goblets, sometimes stopping to tap one delicate paw against a precious glass vessel filled with wine until it edged its way toward the rim of the table.
“Stop that,” I said with mock severity, seizing the cat and cradling her to my chest. “You’re going to smash something if you’re not careful, Ta-Miu.” I got a loud, resentful meow for an answer.
“Watch out, Nefertiti!” Sitamun’s youngest sister exclaimed, giggling. “Ta-Miu is a sacred animal and she knows it. It’s almost the feast of Bast, so you mustn’t offend one of the cat-goddess’s children or you’ll be punished.”
“It’s true,” another of the princesses said eagerly. “Remember when we were all little and they caught that Phoenician merchant trying to smuggle a chest filled with cats out of Thebes? The priests said he’d committed blasphemy and he was executed.”
“Cats are always sacred, not just during Bast’s festival,” Thutmose said amiably, taking Ta-Miu from my arms and scratching her sleek brown spotted head in exactly the spot that sent her into ecstasies of purring. “But my Ta-Miu would be special even if the goddess Bast weren’t her mother. She’s destroyed at least five scorpions that I know of, and countless mice. Her mother killed cobras—just small ones, but still—! It’s impossible for a snake to get into the palace, though if one could, no doubt Ta-Miu would prove her own worth as a warrior.”
He gave her an additional scratch under the chin and put her down. She promptly jumped back up onto the table and rubbed her head against the glass wine vessel. It wobbled, tottered, and crashed to the floor, splashing my dress. The cat looked around the room with a “who did that?” expression in her huge green eyes. We all laughed.
The only false note amid the joy of Thutmose’s party was Amenophis. My friend smiled and laughed, feasted and drank, clapped his hands to the music, and called out compliments to the hired dancers as well as to his sisters and me, but it seemed that there was something hollow in his words and actions.
Perhaps I’m imagining it, I thought. I’ve been drinking a lot of wine; I could be seeing things that aren’t really there. But when I took a good, long look at Amenophis, I couldn’t deny the touch of sadness I saw in his eyes.
There was nothing I could do about it, no matter how much I wanted to ask him to share his sorrow. Even though Thutmose was behaving like an ordinary young man—one who didn’t spend his days seeing conspiracies under every leaf in the gardens and around every corner in the palace—I wasn’t going to put him to the test by speaking to his brother right in front of him.
“What are you staring at, my lovely Nefertiti?” Thutmose asked. His question took me off guard, so much so that I realized I hadn’t taken my eyes off Amenophis for several long breaths.
“I—nothing,” I said.
Thutmose chuckled. “You shouldn’t call my brother nothing, Lady Nefertiti. Until I marry and have a son of my own, he’s my crown prince.”
“I didn’t mean to stare at him,” I protested. Amenophis shifted uneasily in his seat throughout my conversation with his older brother. “My mind was wandering. I must be getting sleepy. I should go back to my rooms.”
“Nonsense, the evening has barely begun! Drink a little less, eat a little more, and you’ll drop all this silly talk of going to bed. It wouldn’t be a party if you left us so soon.”
He slipped his arm around my waist. I braced myself for the unpleasant experience of being forcibly propelled back to my seat, but to my surprise, Thutmose gave me only the gentlest touch, a suggestion and not a shove. The expression on his handsome face was gracious and agreeable. I let him help me back to my place, amazed at the change in him.
If he’d been like this when we first met, I might have married him by now, I thought, though it might have been the wine helping me forget that a few hours’ kindness was not enough to outweigh his past fits of jealous rage or the bruises he’d left on his brother’s face.
“Thank you for consenting to stay with us a while longer, Nefertiti,” he said, once more passing me the plate of honeyed date cakes. “I promise that you won’t regret it. I have no intention of letting this party last until dawn, though we’re all having such a good time that I hate to see it end. But I need my sleep, too. I’m going hunting tomorrow.”
“On the river again?” I remembered the last occasion when he’d mentioned a hunting trip to me. It was part of our time of compulsory togetherness, when Aunt Tiye held Thutmose’s beloved cat hostage, forcing him to court me. It hadn’t been a happy time for either of us.
“Better,” he said. “Into the Red Land, where there are lions. I’ll be hunting them from my chariot. Shall I bring you a trophy?”
“I’d rather have the chariot ride,” I blurted. Did I just say that out loud? I was stunned by my own audacity. Stupid wine. Stupid me for drinking so much. I stuffed a piece of cake into my mouth to cover my embarrassment.
Thutmose put another sweet morsel into my hands and smiled. “Is that true? Then, please, ride with me. I wasn’t going to invite you because I thought you might feel compelled to accept. But if it’s something you want to do …” He regarded me hopefully.
I wouldn’t lie. “Yes, very much.”
“Then we’ll go tomorrow morning.”
“But you’ll miss your lion hunt!” I said. “You shouldn’t give it up for me, not if you’ve been looking forward to it.”