Was that it? Had his self-imposed hunger weakened him too much for any last-moment meal to repair the damage? If that was so—O merciful Isis!—I was sure to win this race. I pushed myself to run faster, and as we turned the corner of the pool where the doum palm grew, I left him behind.
Five of Thutmose’s servants were gathered near Uni at the spot where the race would finish once Thutmose and I had circled the pool one more time. They were the ones he’d chosen to play witness—four broad-shouldered men and an older woman who looked strong enough in her own right to pick up her fellow witnesses and shake them like wads of wet laundry. As I rushed past her, she shouted, “Well done, little gazelle!”
The men with her laughed; then one of them called out, “Don’t let the hound catch your scent!”
A second joined in the spirit of things: “Leap, little one, leap! Over the thorn bush and you’re safe!” The third and fourth men had their own jests to add, and I smiled and waved my appreciation as I turned the next corner of the pool, flew past the entryway to Thutmose’s rooms, and trampled over the lotus that had signaled our contest’s start. I’d begun the second and last round of the race and Thutmose hadn’t even finished his first circuit of the course. I wanted to spread my arms like wings and laugh.
Another voice laughed first. I heard running feet coming up rapidly behind me, the drumming of their bare soles drawing closer and closer, faster and faster, until Thutmose shot by me like an arrow. “Did you like my little dance, Nefertiti?” he called over one shoulder. “But now I run!”
So do I, I thought grimly, and put fresh power into my pumping legs. As I tried to catch up to Thutmose, to my horror I felt the rolled-up dress material at my waist begin to come undone. First on one side, then the other, the thin linen slid down in spite of the sash securing it. I tried yanking it back in place as I ran, but without the time to gather it patiently and evenly, I wound up hampering myself even more. The narrow bottom of my dress became a noose that tightened around my legs. I stopped fighting it when it threatened to become a tangle that was sure to send me sprawling.
Thutmose must have heard something of my struggles because he paused for a moment at the far end of the lotus pool and peered back to see what I was doing. When he finished laughing, he started running again, but toward me.
If that braying jackass gets within arm’s reach, I swear by Bes that I’ll slap the gloating grin off his face, I thought. With my hem now back around my ankles, I couldn’t break into a wide stride and had to work twice as hard to keep up a good pace. Sweat trickled down my spine. I ran with my hands bunched into fists and felt them become damp. I wasn’t fighting for breath, but it was harder to draw the air in easily. Oh, how much I would have given for the one pin Thutmose refused to let me have!
He overtook me near the place where the willows grew. “Is this the direction we’re supposed to run, Nefertiti?” he asked in an irritatingly childish voice. “Or should we be going this way?” He ran around me twice, tittering, before sprinting onward.
I was still only halfway along the far end of the lotus pool when he reached the myrtles growing beside the last stretch of the course. Though there wasn’t that much distance between us, he stopped to make fun of me once more. He knew he had the advantage, and he couldn’t keep from flaunting it in my face.
“You’re doing better than I expected, little gazelle!” he called out. “Too bad your hooves are tied, or else you might have had a hope of beating me. What luck that hounds are smarter than their prey! Ah well, cheer up. You can teach our sons how to run.” He fell into an easy stride. I could only see the back of his head, but I’d have wagered my life he was grinning like a fully fed hyena.
Then I heard his voice raised in anger. “No cheers for my victory? Not even you, Uni? You shout for your precious little gazelle, but not for your master? Curse you all, if you don’t fill the air with your voices, I’ll—!”
They cheered for him before he could finish the threat of what they’d suffer otherwise. Slaves and servants, everyone who feared Thutmose’s wrath, sent up a roar of celebration as loud as it was false. It burst out suddenly, a shock of sound so startling that even I gasped and recoiled in mid-stride.
Somewhere in that eruption of noise, Ta-Miu woke in fright and bolted from the little maidservant’s arms. The panic-stricken cat dashed blindly across the garden path, her flight directly under Thutmose’s feet. She yowled when he tripped over her and desperately tried to keep his footing. Arms flailing in the air, he went stumbling and lurching in a zigzag pattern until he lost the battle and went sprawling over the rough, rocky border stones, face-first into the lotus pool.
I waited until I’d run well past Uni and the witnesses before I drank in a deep, deep breath and drenched myself with laughter.
“What is going on here?”
The voice of Pharaoh turned all of us to stone. Uni looked ready to collapse. The maidservant who’d lost her hold on Ta-Miu broke the silence when she began to weep in dread. From the lotus pool, Thutmose groaned, then cried out in pain.
Without thinking, I rushed to help him, kneeling on the stone border and letting him sling one arm over my shoulders so that I could help him stand. He was a soggy mess, his body streaked with water and slime. A deep, nasty, bleeding scrape ran down one leg from thigh to ankle. When he tried to step away from me, he yelped again: He’d done some damage to his right foot and couldn’t stand unaided. His eyelids fluttered as he blinked furiously through the water still dribbling down his face. He had the empty, bewildered expression of someone who has seen the bottom fall out of the world.
When no one else seemed able to do so, the sturdy female servant who’d first called me “little gazelle” approached Pharaoh and touched her forehead to the dust at his feet. “O my lord Pharaoh, eternal and mighty, I beg for permission to speak.”