“The scribes should be done with the translation of Emperor Muwatallis’s second letter. When I return, we will move on,” he warned sternly. The students waited until the sound of his sandals had faded before turning to me.
“Do you understand this, Nefer?” Asha pointed to the sixth line.
“And what about this?” Baki, Vizier Anemro’s son, couldn’t make out the third. He held out his scroll and the class waited.
“To the Pharaoh of Egypt, who is wealthy in land and great in strength. It is like all of his other letters.” I shrugged. “It begins with flattery and ends with a threat.”
“And what about this?” someone else asked. The students gathered around me and I translated the words quickly for them. When I glanced at Iset, I saw that her first line wasn’t finished. “Do you need help?”
“Why would I need help?” She pushed aside her scroll. “You haven’t heard?”
“You’re about to become wife to Pharaoh Ramesses,” I said flatly.
Iset stood. “You think that because I wasn’t born a princess like you that I’ll spend my life weaving linen in the harem?”
She wasn’t speaking about the harem of Mi-Wer in the Fayyum, where Pharaoh’s least important wives are kept. She was speaking about the harem behind the edduba, where Seti housed the women of previous kings and those whom he himself had chosen. Iset’s grandmother had been one of Pharaoh Horemheb’s wives. I had heard that one day he saw her walking along the riverbank, collecting shells for her own husband’s funeral. She was already pregnant with her only child, but just as that had not stopped him from taking my mother, Horemheb wanted her as his bride. So Iset was not related to a Pharaoh at all, but to a long line of women who had lived, and fished, and made their work on the River Nile. “I may be an orphan of the harem,” she went on, “but I think everyone here would agree that being the niece of a heretic is much worse, whatever your fat nurse likes to pretend. And no one in this edduba likes you,” she revealed. “They smile at you because of Ramesses, and now that he’s gone they only go on smiling and laughing because you help them.”
“That’s a lie!” Asha stood up angrily. “No one here feels that way.”
I looked around, but none of the other students came to my defense, and a shamed heat crept into my cheeks.
Iset smirked. “You may think you’re great friends with Ramesses, hunting and swimming in the lake together, but he’s marrying me. And I’ve already consulted with the priests,” she said. “They’ve given me a charm for every possible event.”
Asha exclaimed, “Do you think Nefertari is going to try and give you the evil eye?”
The other students in the edduba laughed, and Iset drew herself up to her fullest height. “She can try! All of you can try,” she said viciously. “It won’t make any difference. I’m wasting my time in this edduba now.”
“You certainly are.” A shadow darkened the doorway, then Henuttawy appeared in her red robes of Isis. She glanced across the room at us, and a lion could not have looked at a mouse with any less interest. “Where is your tutor?” she demanded.
Iset moved quickly to the side of the High Priestess, and I noticed that she had begun to paint her eyes the same way that Henuttawy did, with long sweeps of kohl extending to her temples. “Gone to see the scribes,” she answered eagerly.
Henuttawy hesitated. She walked over to my reed mat and looked down. “Princess Nefertari. Still studying your hieroglyphs?”
“No. I’m studying my cuneiform.”
Asha laughed, and Henuttawy’s gaze flicked to him. But he was taller than the other boys, and there was an intelligence in his glare that unnerved her. She turned back to me. “I don’t know why you waste your time, especially when you’ll only become a priestess in a run-down temple like Hathor’s.”
“As always, it is charming to see you, my lady.” Our tutor had returned with a handful of scrolls. He laid them on a low table, as Henuttawy turned to face him.
“Ah, Paser. I was just telling Princess Nefertari to be diligent in her studies. Unfortunately, Iset does not have time for that anymore.”
“What a shame,” Paser replied, looking at Iset’s discarded papyrus. “Today, I believe she was going to progress to three lines of cuneiform.”
The students snickered, and Henuttawy hurried from the edduba with Iset in tow.
“There is no cause for laughing,” Paser said sharply, and the room fell silent. “We may all go back to our translations now. When you are finished, come to the front of the room and bring your papyrus. Then you may begin work on Emperor Muwatallis’s second letter.”
I tried to concentrate, but tears blurred my vision. I didn’t want anyone to see how much Iset’s words had hurt, so I kept my head low, even when Baki made a hissing noise at me. He wants help now, I thought. But would he even glance at me outside the edduba?
I finished my translation and approached Paser, handing him my sheet.
He smiled approvingly. “Excellent, as always.” I glanced back at the other students and wondered if I detected resentment in their eyes. “I must warn you about this next letter, however. There is an unflattering reference to your aunt.”
“Why should I care? I’m nothing like her,” I said defensively.
“I wanted to be sure you understood. It seems the scribes forgot to take it out.”
“She was a heretic,” I said, “and whatever words the emperor has for her, I am sure they are justified.”
I returned to my reed mat, then skimmed the letter, searching for familiar names. Nefertiti was mentioned at the bottom of the papyrus, and so was my mother. I held my breath as I read Emperor Muwatallis’s words.
You threaten us with war, but our god Teshub has watched over Hatti for a thousand years, while your gods were banished by Pharaoh Akhenaten. What makes you think that they have forgiven his heresy? It may be that Sekhmet, your goddess of war, has abandoned you completely. And what of Mutnodjmet, Nefertiti’s sister? Your people allowed her to become a queen when all of Egypt knows she serviced your Heretic King in his temple as well as his private chamber. Do you really think your gods have forgiven this? Will you risk war with us when we have treated our own gods with respect?
I glanced up at Paser, and in his expression seemed to flicker a trace of regret. But I would never be pitied. Clenching the reed pen in my hand, I wrote as quickly and firmly as I could, and when a tear smeared the ink on my papyrus, I blotted it away with sand.
WHILE COURTIERS filled the Great Hall that evening, Asha and I waited on a corner of the balcony, whispering to each other about what had happened in the edduba. The setting sun crowned his head in a soft glow, and the braid he wore over his shoulder was nearly as long as mine. I sat forward on the limestone balustrade looking at him. “Have you ever heard Iset so angry?”
“No, but I’ve never heard her say much at all,” he admitted.
“She’s been with us for seven years!”
“All she does is giggle with those harem girls who wait for her outside.”
“She certainly wouldn’t like it if she heard you say that,” I warned.
Asha shrugged. “It doesn’t seem she likes much of anything. And certainly not you—”
“And what have I ever done to her?” I exclaimed.
But Asha was saved from answering when Ramesses burst through the double doors.
“There you are!” he called across to us, and Asha said quickly, “Don’t say anything about Iset. Ramesses will only think we’re jealous.”
Ramesses looked between the two of us. “Where have both of you been?”
“Where have you been?” Asha countered. “We haven’t seen you since your coronation.”
“We thought we might not ever see you again,” I added, a little more plaintively than intended.
Ramesses embraced me. “I would never leave my little sister behind.”
“How about your charioteer?”
At once, Ramesses let go of me. “It’s done
then?” he exclaimed, and Asha said smugly, “Just a few hours ago. Tomorrow I begin my training to be an officer of Pharaoh’s charioteers.”
I inhaled sharply. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“I was waiting to tell you both!”
Ramesses gave Asha a congratulatory slap on the back, but I cried, “Now I’ll be the only one left at the edduba with Paser!”
“Come,” Ramesses said, placating me. “Don’t be upset.”
“Why not?” I complained. “Asha is going to the army and you’re getting married to Iset!”
Asha and I both looked at Ramesses to see if it was true.
“My father is going to announce it tonight. He feels she’ll make a good wife.”
“But do you?” I asked.
“I worry about her skills,” he admitted. “You’ve seen her in Paser’s class. But Henuttawy thinks I should make her Chief Wife.”
“Pharaohs don’t choose a Chief Wife until they’re eighteen!” I blurted.
Ramesses studied me, and I colored at my outburst. “So what is that?” I changed the subject and pointed to the jeweled case he was carrying.
“A sword.” He opened the case to produce an arm-length blade.
Asha was impressed. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he admitted.
“It’s Hittite, made of something they call iron. It’s said to be even stronger than bronze.” The weapon had a sharper curve than anything I had seen before, and from the designs carefully etched onto its hilt, I imagined that its cost had been great.
Ramesses handed the weapon to Asha, who held it up to the light. “Who gave this to you?”
“My father, for my coronation.”
Asha handed the iron blade to me, and I gripped the hilt in my palm. “You could use this to decapitate Muwatallis!”
Ramesses laughed. “Or at least his son, Urhi.”
Asha looked between us.
“The emperor of the Hittites,” I explained. “When he dies, his son, Urhi, will succeed him.”
“Asha doesn’t care about politics,” Ramesses said. “But ask him anything about horses and chariots . . .”
The double doors to the balcony swung open, and Iset fixed us instantly in her gaze. Her beaded wig was adorned with charms, and a talented body servant had dusted the kohl beneath her eyes with small flecks of gold.
“The three inseparables,” she said, smiling.
I realized how much she sounded like Henuttawy. She crossed the balcony, and I wondered where she’d gotten the deben to afford sandals with lapis jewels. What gold had been left when Iset’s mother died had long since been spent educating her.
“What is this?” She looked down at the sword I had returned to Ramesses.
“For war,” Ramesses explained. “Would you like to watch? I’m going to show Asha and Nefer how it cuts.”
Iset frowned prettily. “But the cupbearer has already poured your father’s wine.”
Ramesses hesitated. He breathed in her perfume, and I could see how he was affected by her closeness. Her sheath was tight over her curves and exposed her beautifully hennaed breasts. Then I noticed the gold and carnelian necklace at her throat. She was wearing Queen Tuya’s jewels. The queen, who had watched me play with Ramesses since we were children, had given her favorite necklace to Iset.
Ramesses glanced across at Asha, and then at me.
“Some other time,” Asha said helpfully, and Iset took Ramesses’s arm. We watched as they left the balcony together, and I turned to Asha.
“Did you see what she was wearing?”
“Queen Tuya’s own jewels,” he said with resignation.
“But why would Ramesses choose a wife like Iset? So she’s pretty. What does that matter when she doesn’t speak Hittite or even write cuneiform?”
“It matters because Pharaoh needs a wife,” Asha said grimly. “You know, he might have chosen you—if not for your family.”
It was as though someone had crushed the air from my chest. I followed him into the Great Hall, and that evening, when the marriage was formally announced, I felt I was losing something I would never get back. Yet neither of Iset’s parents were there to see her triumph. Her father was unknown, and this would have been a great scandal for Iset’s mother had she lived through childbirth. So the herald announced her grandmother’s name instead; for she had raised Iset and had once been a part of Pharaoh Horemheb’s harem. She had been dead for a year, but this was the proper thing to do.
When the feast was finally over, I returned to my chamber off the royal courtyard and sat quietly at my mother’s ebony table. Merit wiped the kohl from my eyes and the red ochre from my lips, then she handed me a cone of incense and watched as I knelt before my mother’s naos. Some naoi are large and granite, with an opening in the center to place a statue of a god and a ledge on which to burn incense. My naos, however, was small and wooden. It was a shrine my mother had owned as a girl, and perhaps even her mother before her. When I kneeled, it only came up to my chest, and inside the wooden doors was a statue of Mut, after whom my mother had been named. While the feline goddess regarded me with her cat eyes, I blinked away tears.
“What would have happened if my mother had lived?” I asked Merit.
My nurse sat on the corner of the bed. “I don’t know, my lady. But remember the many hardships that she endured. In the fire your mother lost everyone she loved.”
The chambers in Malkata to which the fire had spread had never been rebuilt. The blackened stones and charred remains of wooden tables still stood beyond the royal courtyard, reclaimed by vines and untended weeds. When I was seven, I had insisted that Merit take me there, and when we arrived I’d stood frozen to the spot, trying to imagine where my father had been when the flames broke out. Merit said it was an oil lamp that had fallen, but I had heard the viziers speak of something darker, of a plot to kill my grandfather, the Pharaoh Ay. Behind those walls, my entire family had vanished in the flames: my brother, my father, my grandfather and his queen. Only my mother survived because she had been in the gardens. And when General Horemheb heard that Ay was dead, he came to the palace with the army behind him and forced my mother into marriage. For she had been the last royal link to the throne. I wondered if Horemheb felt any guilt at all when she too embraced Osiris, still crying out my father’s name. Sometimes, I thought of her last weeks on earth. Just as my ka was being formed by Khnum on his potter’s wheel, hers had been flying away.
I looked over my shoulder at Merit, watching me with unhappy eyes. She didn’t like when I asked questions about my mother, but she never refused to answer them. “And when she died,” I asked, even though I already knew the answer, “who did she cry out for?”
Merit’s face grew solemn. “Your father. And—”
I turned, forgetting about the cone of incense. “And?”
“And her sister,” she admitted.
My eyes widened. “You’ve never said that before!”
“Because it’s nothing you needed to know,” Merit said quickly.
“But was she truly a heretic, as they say?”
“My lady—”
I saw that Merit was going to put off my question, and I shook my head firmly. “I was named for Nefertiti. My mother couldn’t have believed that her sister was a heretic.”
No one spoke the name of Nefertiti in the palace, and Merit pressed her lips together to keep from reprimanding me. She unfolded her hands and her gaze grew distant. “It was not so much the Pharaoh-Queen herself, as her husband.”
“Akhenaten?”
Merit shifted uncomfortably. “Yes. He banished the gods. He destroyed the temples of Amun and replaced the statues of Ra with ones of himself.”
“And my aunt?”
“She filled the streets with her image.”
“In place of the gods?”
“Yes.”
“But then where have they gone? I have never even seen a likeness of them.”
“Of course not!” Merit stoo
d. “Everything that belonged to your aunt was destroyed.”
“Even my mother’s name,” I said and looked back at the shrine. Incense drifted across the face of the feline goddess. When she died, Horemheb had taken everything. “It’s as though I’ve been born with no akhu,” I said. “No ancestors at all. Did you know that in the edduba,” I confided, “students don’t learn about Nefertiti’s reign, or the reign of Pharaoh Ay, or Tutankhamun?”
Merit nodded. “Yes. Horemheb erased their names from the scrolls.”
“He took their lives. He ruled for four years, but they teach us that he ruled for dozens and dozens. I know better. Ramesses knows better. But what will my children be taught? For them, my family will never have existed.”
Each year, on the Feast of Wag, Egyptians visit the mortuary temples of their ancestors. But there was nowhere for me to honor my own mother’s ka or the ka of my father with incense or a bowl of oil. Even their tombs had been hidden in the hills of Thebes, safe from the Aten priests and Horemheb’s vengeance. “Who will remember them, Merit? Who?”
Merit placed her palm on my shoulder. “You.”
“And when I’m gone?”
“Make sure you are never gone from the people’s memory. And those who know of your fame will search out your past and find Pharaoh Ay and Queen Mutnodjmet.”