Sphinx's Princess (25 page)

“Can’t we ride some more?” I asked, and was ashamed to hear my own voice sounding so much like a spoiled child’s.

“Of course, Nefertiti, but—but I—I thought you might like to see this first,” he said bashfully. “It’s the great temple to Amun that Father is enriching.” His arm swept up and my eyes followed, filling with awe.

Such majesty! I had grown up with the temples of Akhmin, I had seen the ancient monuments of Abydos, but this was a holy place of such colossal size that any person seeing it would know how insignificant he was in the presence of the gods. I was only half-aware when Amenophis took my arm, helped me down, turned over his chariot to one of the waiting temple slaves entrusted with such tasks, and began to lead me through the sacred place.

Though I returned to the great temple complex many times, my first impression remained my most treasured and—embarrassing to say so—my most jumbled. The grounds were filled with priests and worshippers, workmen and artists, servants and slaves, yet they were little more than phantoms to me. I moved through a dream of looming walls, towering obelisks, sprawling flat-roofed halls whose ceilings were supported by a grove of titanic stone pillars, all carved with images of gods and kings and words that were a resounding shout of self-glorification by one Pharaoh after another. Amenophis’s father was only adding to this place; many other kings had left their mark here before him. Generations of unborn pharaohs would do the same when he returned to the gods. I looked down the long line of pillars and saw eternity. I should have been afraid.

I wasn’t; I was overjoyed. “This is beyond belief, Amenophis! I don’t know what to say. It’s all so … so …” I couldn’t speak. My heart was too full, yet I wanted him to
know how thrilled I was to stand in the midst of so many wonders. Without thinking, I threw open my arms and hugged him the way I’d hugged Father when I was small and he brought me some new “treasure.”

Father never broke out of my innocent embrace so suddenly or moved away from me so fast that he staggered and nearly fell over backward. “I—I—Nefertiti, you shouldn’t …” Amenophis gulped out the words, the bulging lump in his throat jerking up and down rapidly. His eyes darted left and right at the people surrounding us. Most of them went about their business, but a few smirked and snickered.

I clapped a hand to my mouth, mortified. “Oh! I’m so sorry! I don’t know why I did that.”

“It’s—it’s all right. I was only—surprised. Come, there’s a lot more to see.” He loped away on his long legs, leaving me to pick up the hem of my dress and try to keep pace.

I wanted to see everything, but that was impossible. The day wore on, and I became drunk with the glow of sun on golden stone and jewel-hued paints. Soon I was out distancing Amenophis, who began to weaken as I kept him on the run, not even pausing for food or drink. I didn’t notice anything was wrong until he finally staggered into the shade of a sycamore and dropped into a crouch, his head between his knees.
That
yanked me out of my trance. “What is it, my friend?” I asked, kneeling beside him.

He raised his head and let me see a wobbly smile. “How do you do it, Nefertiti? We’ve been here for hours, and you’re not hungry or thirsty. Do you live on air?”

“I think I must live on stupidity,” I said, and hailed the first likely person I saw, a junior priest, judging by the look of his clothes and his hairless body. Once I told him that the lanky young man curled up under that sycamore was Pharaoh’s younger son, he summoned up a whirlwind of servants to carry Amenophis to more comfortable quarters and saw to it that my friend was given everything he needed to restore him, body and spirit.

“Thank you very much,” Amenophis said to the junior priest once he’d recovered. “Your kindness won’t be forgotten. I wish we could enjoy your hospitality longer, but I think it’s time that the lady Nefertiti and I returned to the palace.”

“Certainly, certainly.” The junior priest nearly snapped himself in two bowing to the prince. “I will send for your chariot and escort you to it personally.”

Amenophis tried to decline, but the man wouldn’t be dissuaded. He accompanied us every step of the way and insisted on pointing out special parts of the temple complex as we passed them.

“Now
this
should be of interest to the lady Nefertiti,” he said, gesturing at an odd piece of construction. “It is the obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut, stepmother of our revered Pharaoh’s great-grandfather.”

“What obelisk?” I asked. All I saw was a mud brick tower.

“Look up,” our guide said. When I did, I saw that where the walls ended, the pointed top of a carved stone shaft rose above them.

“Why would anyone build walls around an obelisk?”

The junior priest was only too happy to explain. “Queen Hatshepsut did not conduct herself the way a woman should. When Pharaoh’s
great
-great-grandfather ascended to stars, his son was too young to rule, so she became regent. It is said that she ruled well, but that she became arrogant and wicked, sinning terribly against the gods.”

“What—what did she do?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer. I expected to hear horrors.

The junior priest lowered his eyelids as if looking away from a hideous crime. “She declared herself Pharaoh, as if a woman could be the equal of a man.” He sounded very satisfied when he added: “When she died, her stepson saw to it that her monuments were all removed from sight so that her name and achievements might be forgotten.”

I looked at the obelisk, soaring regally above the inadequate mud brick walls.
Well, he didn’t do a very good job of it
, I thought.

That was only the first of many times that Amenophis took me riding in his chariot to explore the city. I continued my lessons in the scribal arts with Henenu in the mornings and sometimes spent afternoons helping Berett with her lessons or enjoying her harp music while I lost myself in dancing, but whenever I could, I’d slip away and let Amenophis show me yet another face of the royal city I was condemned to call my new home.

On one such day, when the season of Emergence was beginning to turn into the season of Harvest, I was sitting
beside the long pool with Berett when Sitamun joined us unexpectedly. My older friend looked as mischievous as a child.

“You’re grinning like a crocodile, Sitamun,” I said fondly. “What sort of tasty gossip are you keeping to yourself?”

“Why would I tell you, you stuffy old thing?
You
don’t like gossip. You’ve told me so repeatedly.” She opened her hand, revealing a piece of broken pottery. “This is for you. It isn’t gossip … yet.”

I took the shard and read a message from Amenophis, inviting me to join him for another of our rides. My heart fluttered as I read the words:
I’ve been thinking about what you’ve asked of me so many times and I surrender. I’ll let you do it
. My eyes flashed to Sitamun. “Did you read this?”

“I tried not to,” she said, hedging. “My younger brother writes very large. He’d never make a good scribe, wasting space that way.” In a more serious tone, she added: “I love Amenophis, Nefertiti, and you’re my dear friend, but Thutmose is my brother, too,
and
the next Pharaoh
and
your chosen husband.”

“
I
never chose him.”

“Do you think
that
tiny point changes anything important? Then you haven’t been paying attention to Mother, and that’s not smart.”

“Amenophis is my friend,” I said defiantly. “
Only
my friend. While your mother refuses to let me have any company except our family and Thutmose leaves me to gather dust and cobwebs, Amenophis has been
here
for me! He worries that I’m lonely, he cares if I smile. Aunt Tiye sends
me flasks of rare perfume and makes Thutmose give me earrings and bracelets—though I doubt he even looked at them before he had his servants deliver them to me. Amenophis gives me the gift of his
time
. We aren’t doing anything wrong, and if you go running to your mother or Thutmose with any false tales, I’ll—”

“Hush, lioness, smooth down your fur,” Sitamun said kindly. “Do you think Amenophis would have entrusted that message to me if he believed I’d tattle about it? He’s just as vehement as you when he insists you’re just friends, but I wanted to hear the same thing directly from your lips.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you sound so disappointed?”

“I’m not,” I protested quickly. “Why do you make a pebble into a pyramid, Sitamun?”

“What else have I got to do with my days?” she replied a little sadly. “Thebes holds nothing new for me to see, and I will never leave my father’s house to marry. Foreign kings send us their daughters because we are the more powerful nation and they want to buy Father’s good will. Father knows this, and so he’ll never let any of his daughters be sent as brides for other kings. The most my sisters and I can hope for is that some noble performs such a heroic deed on the battlefield that Father rewards him with a royal bride, but how can that happen? We’re at peace.”

I hugged my friend. “Is it so bad, just being Princess Sitamun? Do you
have
to be someone’s wife?”

“No,” she said with a wan smile. “But I’d like to have that choice.” She paused a moment, then pushed aside her regrets. “So! If you and Amenophis are just friends, what is
this great, mysterious, totally innocent thing you’ve been nagging him to do? He surrenders, but I want to hear about the battlefield.”

“Is it any of your business?” I asked, mimicking her lighthearted tone.

“It is if you want me to continue serving as your trusted messenger.”

“He’s going to teach me how to drive a chariot.”

I might as well have said:
He’s going to teach me how to weave a garland of horned vipers
. Sitamun was appalled. “Are you
both
crazy? He can’t do that!”

“Why not? Because I’m a girl?”

“Because you’ll
die
. The horses will bolt. The chariot will break, or turn over, or bounce over a rock and send you flying. You’ll be trampled. You’ll break your neck. You’ll smash your skull. You’ll break every other bone in your body and never be able to walk again, or dance, or—You’ll
ruin
your face!”

“Well, we can’t have
that
,” I said. “Aunt Tiye would never approve.”

Sitamun tried talking me out of my plans until she saw that it was useless. She contented herself with making sure that I picked up a big rock and smashed Amenophis’s message to dust, then whisked the dust into the long pool. She left threatening to “talk sense” to Amenophis.

“Don’t you dare!” I called after her, then hurried to prepare for the adventure awaiting me.

Amenophis drove the chariot out of the city to a flat space out of sight of Thebes and the sacred river. “This is
where I learned how to drive,” he told me. “The ground is nice and smooth, with no surprises. You ought to be all right.” He jumped to the ground and took hold of the horses’ bridles.

He spent some time showing me how to hold the reins. “Whatever you do, don’t lose your grip or the horses will get away from you and run wild. And use both hands. You won’t be hunting lions.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When Father hunts, he doesn’t like to have a driver with him. He says it crowds the arm he uses to hold his bow. But he still needs both hands free to shoot his quarry, so he tucks the reins into his belt.”

“He can
steer
that way?”

“His horses are the best of the best, well trained. I think that if you set them loose, they’d bring back a lion on their own!” We both laughed over that.

“Can you do that, too?” What I really wanted to ask was,
Can you teach
me
how to do that
? but I thought it best to approach that question stealthily.

“Not yet. Father has been hunting for many more years than I. The best I can do is steer with one hand.”

“Like this?” I grabbed the reins loosely with my right hand and flung my left over my head.

He climbed back into the chariot and made me hold the reins in both hands. “Like
this
or like nothing.”

Under Amenophis’s nervous eyes, I was forced to keep the horses to a walk while he kept up with us. Back and forth across the plain we went, slow as a pair of oxen instead
of a team of wing-footed steeds.
How much longer is he going to hold me back
? I thought crossly.
I can do better than this
. And with that thought, I gave the reins a slight flick.

The horses were just as eager for more speed as I. That glancing sting on their rumps set them off like a green branch tossed on the fire, exploding into a shower of sparks. As Sitamun had predicted, they bolted. I tried to clutch the reins and pull the horses back, but my palms were sweaty and they slithered out of my grip. I lurched backward, but by some unmerited mercy of the gods, I didn’t fall off. In a desperate heartbeat I threw myself forward after the vanishing reins and grabbed the chariot rail. Bones shaking, teeth clashing, body jouncing, I got a bellyful of speed until the horses had enough of a gallop and came to a stop.

“Nefertiti! Nefertiti! Are you hurt?” Amenophis caught up to the chariot, seized the trailing reins, and looked fearfully at me as I huddled on the floor of the chariot, covered in dust from head to foot.

I shook my head no, and for the first time saw my friend’s homely face transformed with dark fury. “If you
ever
do something like that again—!”

“I’ll do it right,” I piped up.

His anger broke into shared laughter, and for the rest of the lesson I didn’t try any more silly tricks.

I was very glad that Amenophis didn’t hold my little escapade against me. The chariot lessons continued whenever the two of us could get away. One day, when the season of Harvest was two months old, we rode with a bundle of straw and Amenophis’s bow and quiver sharing the ride. He set up the target, showed me how to draw and aim the bow,
and was kind enough not to mock me when I lacked the strength to make the tall weapon bend more than a finger’s breadth.

“Keep trying,” he said. “It will get better.”