Someone had taken the elaborate throne from the great assembly hall and placed it here, between two wall niches that held flaming alabaster lamps. There were more lights kindled along the other walls and held high in the hands of servants. No effort had been spared to turn night into day.
Thutmose sat on his father’s borrowed throne. Head bent, he rested his lips against his interlaced fingers, his eyes lost in thought. He was dressed in the same finely woven white robe he’d worn to public events of the highest importance. His head was covered with the nemes crown, a striped ceremonial headcloth adorned with the gold images of the vulture and the cobra, sacred guardians of royalty. Its long sidepieces trailed down his chest, flanking his immense jeweled collar. The scepters that were ancient symbols of Pharaoh’s authority, the crook and the flail, lay across his knees. His lowered eyes were elaborately, perfectly painted.
He raised his head and looked at me. “Why did you do it, Nefertiti?” he asked sadly. He reached beneath the throne and pulled out a wad of white cloth. “What did you hope to gain?” With a flick of his wrists, he unfurled it at my feet. It was badly stained and crumpled, but I still recognized it. It was the dress I’d worn on the night of Thutmose’s family party. I remembered how Ta-Miu’s antics had shattered a glass vessel filled with wine, splashing my gown, but I didn’t understand why it was also marked with so many small rips and slashes.
Then I realized that not all of the stains were wine.
“Why, Nefertiti?” Thutmose repeated. “She was Bast’s child, she was sacred, but she was also the only creature whose love I could ever trust. Why did you do it? Why did you kill Ta-Miu?”
I stared at the bright red spatters of fresh blood among the darker blotches of wine on my dress. At the heart of a spider web of scratch marks that had torn the linen, the scarlet imprint of a cat’s paw bloomed like a flower.
“N-n-never,” I said. My tongue was still like wood. It was a struggle to turn my horrified thoughts into words. “I n-never would hurt—hurt Ta—hurt her.”
“Listen to how she stammers!” The priest who’d led the guards into my apartment jabbed his finger at me. “Her voice breaks with guilt because she feels the wrathful breath of Ma’at searing the back of her neck, parching her throat, making her lying tongue shrivel in her head!”
“No!” Thutmose was on his feet, glaring at the priest. “Don’t talk to her like that. Let her defend herself.”
“She will lie.” The priest folded his arms, defying anyone to contradict him. “If she says one word denying her crime, she will double the charges of blasphemy against her.”
“Bla-blasphemy?” Why wasn’t this a dream? It was bizarre enough. “No. N-n-no!” I shook my head insistently and raised my hands in a gesture of prayer. If I couldn’t speak to clear my name, I’d fight to make them understand and accept my innocence.
One of the other priests laughed at me and ridiculed my attempts to act out my reverence for the gods. Thutmose was nose-to-nose with him in an instant, his face distorted with rage. “Is this the time for laughter, with a life in the balance? Do you find that funny? Or are you mocking my authority here? Go,” he snarled. “And offer Amun thanks that you serve him. If you weren’t a priest of the supreme god, I would break your bones for such insolence.” The priest went white and scuttled out of the room.
Thutmose resumed his place on his father’s throne. “Nefertiti, you know that to kill one of Bast’s children is sacrilege against that goddess. To lie about it is blasphemy against Ma’at’s sacred truth. I want to believe that you are innocent, but how can I, with this evidence in front of me?” He indicated the torn and bloody dress at his feet. “Justice must be done, in my father’s name. Please help me see proof that you’re guiltless of this dreadful crime.”
A dozen protests and a dozen frenzied questions seethed inside me, unable to be expressed. I thought I would choke to death on my frustration. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I speak, except so clumsily that I might as well have been as mute as Nava? Is this some act of the gods? I wondered. But in the next instant, I thrust that thought aside. Why must it be from the gods? Mortal hands and minds could teach Set himself the art of malice and destruction. If I’ve been left this vulnerable, may Aten’s all-seeing light witness that there’s something human behind it. But how was it done to me? And why? And—and—
—and what good will learning any of those answers do me, if I can’t defend myself right now? I remembered the fate of Nava’s sister, Mahala, also falsely accused of blasphemy. You gave up your life to save mine, and now your sacrifice is wasted.
I clenched my teeth. No. No, Mahala, you did not lose your life in vain. I won’t let it be so, I won’t ! Even if my voice fails me, there must be something I can do to save the life that you gave back to me.
I cast a desperate look at the evidence on the chamber floor. The smears of blood on my wine-stained dress mocked my powerlessness. They looked like some of Nava’s first failed attempts to try writing with a scribe’s brush on papyrus instead of her sharpened reed on wax.
Writing!