“Thutmose—” I hesitated for an instant. I want to trust you. I want to believe you can be my friend, that you’ll make sure this message reaches my family, that perhaps you’ve even got the power to let me receive word from them at last, after all this time! “Thutmose, could I have visitors? Please?”
“Visitors …” I thought I saw a flicker of the old, mistrustful look in his eyes, but it vanished in the flash of a grin before I could be sure. “Of course. Why not? I’ll arrange it; however”—he grew thoughtful—“I think that it should be only my sister, at first. You heard the chief priest: He believes you cast a spell over Amenophis. He’d probably suspect the same if you were allowed to have any male visitors.”
“Except you,” I joked. “My ‘evil’ magic can’t touch you, O prince!”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” he said, and kissed me.
My lips were still burning when he left. I sat there, staring at the door, trying to make sense of everything that I was feeling. It all turned into tangles in my head. At last I made myself put it aside and concentrated on preparing the papyrus for my message home.
I was still working on the letter when a servant came in with food and fresh water. He also brought me a short-handled ostrich plume fan. “From Prince Thutmose, for the heat of the day,” he said, bowing. I asked him to wait until I finished writing to my family, then told him to take the finished message to his master. “He’ll know what to do.” I spent the rest of that day wandering from daydreams of freedom to the maze of events from the previous night. Bits and pieces of memory nagged at me, insisting, Something in all this makes no sense, something is wrong! You must discover it or—
But then I would stir the heavy air with Thutmose’s beautiful gift, and inhale the fragrance of the dying roses, and remember his kiss, and fall back into daydreams.
Much later that day, when the shadow grew long and the light in my lone, narrow window turned from gold to amber, my door swung open and an armed guard announced, “Her royal highness, beloved of Amun, great in beauty, Princess Sitamun.” He scarcely finished speaking before my friend pushed past him and hugged me to her so fiercely that it squeezed me breathless.
Then she let me go and began to curse. It was amazing to hear her. Where did a royal princess learn such language? The guard was just as dumbstruck as I, and a second guard leaned against the doorpost to gawk as well. Sitamun’s stream of fiery words was overwhelming, vicious, and thorough. She named no names—only “he”—but the unknown object of her fury was doomed to all sorts of sickness, accident, disfigurement, misery, and affliction while he lived, and condemned to be the prey of every demon and agony that the Afterlife could provide after he was dead.
Her blind rage was terrifying and fascinating, so much so that it was only after she fell silent that I noticed the guards had shut the door to my prison and that Sitamun wasn’t my only visitor that evening. Wide-eyed and quivering like a cornered rabbit, Nava peeked up at me from behind the princess. Her little hands clutched a leather bag.
“Nefertiti?” Her voice had lost its rough, unused edge. It was just an ordinary child’s voice now but sweeter than any music to me.
“Oh, Nava!” I knelt and opened my arms. She dropped the bag and was on me in an instant, babbling my name over and over, begging me to tell her that everything was going to be all right.
“Shhh, don’t worry,” I said, patting her back. “Nothing is going to happen to me, unless”—I grinned at Sitamun—“unless you ever get angry at me. By Bes, Sitamun, you could peel the skin off a crocodile with that language! Who’s the unlucky soul that made you that mad?”
Her face was flint. “The gods will punish me for my words, but I don’t care: It’s my brother Thutmose.” She spoke his name so low it was almost a whisper.
“Oh, Sitamun, no!” I exclaimed. “You don’t understand.” And I repeated everything that he had told me, all the reasons that excused him for having ordered my death, all the things he was doing to save me. “You know that your father will never permit my execution, and he’s sure to get to the bottom of this when he comes back. If I’m locked up, it’s just to pacify the priests, but I’m in no real danger. Do you see?”
She looked unconvinced, so I added: “Thutmose is—I think he likes me now.” More than likes me, I thought, and my heart beat a little faster. “He’s doing whatever he can to make my imprisonment comfortable. You wouldn’t be allowed to visit if not for him. And look, he brought me this and sent me that”—I indicated my garland and the feathered fan. “Best of all, he let me have those”—I pointed at my scribe’s tools—“so that at last I could write a letter home that will reach my family!”
Sitamun bent to pick up the sack Nava had dropped. She pulled out a wrinkled tattered scrap and handed it to me. It was so mangled that I asked myself why my friend was giving me such a rag. Then I saw my own handwriting and recognized a shred of the letter I’d written with such care and love.
“He was reading this when he sent for me, to tell me I could visit you,” Sitamun said. “By Amun, how he laughed! When he was through, he tore it to pieces and threw them on the floor. My brother is strong, to be able to tear papyrus like that. Most men wouldn’t make the effort.” She sneered. “I thought I glimpsed your name on one of the scraps, so I asked him what it was. He told me to mind my own business.” Her sneer became a satisfied smile. “So I did. The servant who gathered up the pieces is a little richer for it.”
I closed my eyes. Tears slid down my cheeks. “Nefertiti?” Nava put her arms around my neck. “Don’t cry.”
Sitamun knelt and put her arms around me, too. “Listen to her, my friend. He’s not worth your tears.”