Amenophis’s mouth grew small with concern. “Let’s not speak too soon. Thutmose might have decided that it’s easier to keep us from reaching my parents by planting a fence of his men around them instead of around the entire city. If that’s the case, what will we do? Try to sneak past them?”
I took Nava’s hand before the overeager child could grab my bow and offer it to me. That was becoming her solution to everything. “No more of that, Nava. From here on, we’re letting Amenophis have the bow and arrows. A girl carrying such weapons would attract too much attention in the city. I’m not going to use the bow, and we’re not going to use stealth. Stealth wasn’t what saved Samut’s boy. We acted boldly then, and we have to act boldly now. A thief sneaks into the house he wants to rob, but the owner strides straight through the door. That’s his right; he belongs there. He’s supposed to go in! Who’d even think to stop him? And who’s going to dare stop a royal prince from seeing his parents?”
Amenophis surveyed his travel-worn clothes ruefully. “I don’t look all that princely.”
“If your clothes don’t tell people that you’re a prince, act like one! Stand like one! Speak like one!”
Amenophis took Samut’s perfume vial from his belt and dangled it before my eyes. “Smell like one?” he joked.
“If that’s what it takes.”
We thanked the shipmaster and his small crew for their kindness to us on the voyage to Dendera, then set out to find Amenophis’s parents in the city. He’d taken my advice to heart and was no longer acting like just another polite young man. When he said good-bye to the shipmaster, he did it with such a regal air of command that the fellow actually bowed to him without thinking! My hopes rose. If he can keep this up, we’re sure to succeed. Let the whole city of Dendera know that a prince is coming to rejoin his parents, and no one will stand in our way, not even Thutmose’s most loyal soldiers!
“Let’s go to the temple,” I said. “That’s where we’ll find your parents. If they’re not taking an active part in the rites, surely they’ll be watching the priests make the offerings and listening to the temple musicians singing and playing to honor the goddess.”
“Good idea,” Amenophis said, nodding. “Even if they’re not present at the ceremonies, they’ll be staying at the guesthouse inside the temple grounds. It’s a miniature palace, very luxurious. I remember that’s where we stayed the time I came here as a child.”
“Do you think you can lead us there, then?”
“Maybe.” Amenophis sounded only a little doubtful. “It was years ago.”
“You don’t have to know the way,” Nava said, cradling a purring, docile Ta-Miu in her arms. “If today is Hathor’s festival, lots of people will be going to the temple. We can just follow them.”
I laughed. “Leave it to you, Nava.”
Nava was right, of course. If we were going to find Pharaoh Amenhotep and my aunt, Queen Tiye, Hathor’s temple would be the place. Pharaoh was the god-on-earth by his own decree, a pronouncement he’d made to remind the priests that he was the ultimate authority in the Black Land. The so-called servants of the gods, especially the priests of Amun, had been growing more and more wealthy and influential over the years. Pharaoh’s decision to name himself god-on-earth was his clever way of putting a leash on them, and they didn’t like it.
What better place to find the god-on-earth than in the house of his sister-goddess Hathor at the time of her festival? He would show himself at his finest to the people of the city—clad in the richest garments, adorned with brilliant flashes of gold, wreathed with gracefully ascending trails of the sweetest incense from distant Punt—and the priests would be cast into the shadows.
It would also provide an effective distraction from the real reason that had brought Amenophis’s father to Dendera, namely to seek Hathor’s help in restoring his health. Pharaoh had not been well for some time, a fact that had to be hidden from everyone except his closest kin. The land was only as strong as the one who ruled it—everyone I knew grew up believing that. A weak pharaoh meant a weak land, a land where the sacred river failed to rise, the soil became barren, the crops refused to grow, and the people starved. It could also mean a land that would fall easy prey to the armies of our enemies. Pharaoh must stay strong!
But what would happen on the day when Pharaoh’s strength failed for the last time and his spirit rose to dwell among the stars? Thinking about that ill-omened day made Aunt Tiye half mad with worry. It wasn’t just that she loved her royal husband—she did, and would have loved him even if he hadn’t been pharaoh—but also that when he did go to meet Osiris, who would rule after him? Aunt Tiye would sooner die than lose the power she wielded as Pharaoh’s Great Royal Wife. If another woman’s son somehow managed to take Amenhotep’s throne when he died, that would be the end of Aunt Tiye’s status. She was determined that this would not happen and that the next ruler of the Black Land must be her older son, Prince Thutmose.
Must and must and must, with never any room for argument because that was the way Aunt Tiye had decided things were going to be. She was a very determined woman. She took nothing for granted. The chances of Thutmose succeeding his father looked almost inevitable. Even though I had good reason to dislike him, I couldn’t deny that the prince was handsome, intelligent, and fascinating. His father trusted him enough to have given him charge of governing Thebes in Pharaoh’s absence, but Aunt Tiye wouldn’t be able to sleep easily until the great red and white double crown of the realm was placed safely on her favorite son’s head.