Sphinx's Queen (32 page)

“Lady Nefertiti?” The other young man stared at me in disbelief. “Why are you here this la—? I mean, may we serve you?”

I looked past his ashen face to the towering door that dominated the hallway. The wall above it was painted with a glorious image of Horus in his hawk form, blue, gold, and red feathers spread wide in a protective pose. Its frame was adorned with pictures of Isis and Hathor as well as the cobra-goddess Wadjet and the vulture-goddess Nekhbet, protectors of every pharaoh. The door stood between two seven-armed lamp stands, their carved stone cups all aglow. The pleasant scent of burning olive oil arose from the wicks. Someone had decided that the pungent reek of common castor-berry oil was not suitable for the nostrils of a crown prince.

Except he’s not the crown prince anymore
, I thought. I gestured toward the door. “I am here to see Prince Thutmose. Take me to him.”

“Uhhhh …” The man squirmed. “Yes, my lady, at once. Er, that is, I’d better see if he is willing to, um—” He scratched the back of his hairless head. “Are you sure you want to see him now? If it would please you, I can carry any message you like to him and bring you his reply right away. Right away
tomorrow
. Or if you’d rather—”

“Enough.”
The word of command echoed like a blow. I was not Nefertiti; I was once more the awesome goddess whose voice was enough to put would-be tomb robbers to flight. “Since you can’t decide how best to serve me, I will do it myself.” I started for the door, pausing only long enough to snatch Ta-Miu away from her impromptu feast. She was
not
happy.

Neither were Thutmose’s servants. They scrambled to get ahead of me and bar my path to the door. “Please,
please
, Lady Nefertiti, don’t go in there. If Prince Thutmose doesn’t want to see you, he’ll kill us for letting you in.”

“Then don’t let me in,” I said reasonably. “Weren’t you on your way to the kitchens?” I indicated the smashed dishes and the scattered food. “If you were busy cleaning that up, you never noticed me.” I laid my free hand on the first man’s shoulder and gently guided him out of my way, then treated the second servant in the same way. “Did you?” They were too stunned or too confused by my self-assurance to put up any further resistance. I smiled into their anxious faces as I opened the door and slipped inside.

I stepped into Thutmose’s apartments expecting gloom and shadows. Instead, I entered a grove of seven-branched lamp stands all filling the place with light. A flock of maidservants were tending the many lamps. They gasped and squealed in alarm when they saw me.

“Lady Nefertiti?” A tall, angular man hastened up to meet me. He had the well-fed, well-dressed look of a high-ranking servant. He bowed as if he was doing me a favor, then said, “Ah, it
is
you. And Ta-Miu, too?” He raised his eyebrows so high that they were swallowed up by the wrinkles on his forehead. “She’s looking well. My lady, I am Uni, the prince’s Master of the Household, at your service. I will be overjoyed to help you go where you
want
to be. Please don’t feel embarrassed by this mistake. Even those of us who have lived all our lives in the palace sometimes get lost. If you will be good enough to wait on
that
side of the door, I will conduct you to your own rooms personally as soon as I let my assistant know that I am leaving.” He made an elegant wave at the entryway to the prince’s apartments. I was being thrown out in the most gracious way.

“You’re mistaken,” I said crisply. “I’m not lost;
this
is where I want to be. However, if you feel you
must
escort me somewhere, take me to your master. Now.”

“Ah, um, er—” Uni’s bewildered reaction to my announcement was comically similar to the one I’d gotten from the servant in the hallway. “My lady, the time is late. The prince is not receiving visitors; the circumstances are—”

I raised my chin almost too high, trying to look dignified, and had to look a long way down my nose at him when I responded, “You have a simple choice, Uni: Bring me to Prince Thutmose, force me to find him on my own, or pick me up and carry me out of these apartments with your own two hands. I promise you, any consequences you might suffer for the first choice will be much less painful than for the second or the third—
especially
the third.” I held his gaze steadily until he understood I meant everything I’d said.

Uni sighed. “This way, my lady.”

He brought me to one of the inner rooms of Thutmose’s apartments. As we walked, I noticed lights burning everywhere, a fortune in olive oil going up in flames, but when we came to the prince’s bedchamber, all was darkness. Uni positioned himself in the center of the doorway so that I had to stretch on tiptoe or duck my head to see around him, but it was all the same: I could peer into that room for as long as I wished and I’d still see nothing. It was so pitchy beyond the threshold that I couldn’t even make out the shape of a bed, a chest, a chair.

“My lord Prince Thutmose, I beg of you to forgive me for this intrusion,” Uni said in a wheedling, submissive tone. “There is one here—a young woman—who has insisted on seeing you. You have only to say the word and I will have her escorted from your apartments, but if there is some small chance that you might find her company agreeable—”

A dull, cold reply came from the blackness: “A young lady? Huh! Mother is getting creative. Give her a pair of gold earrings and send her away.”

“If I wanted a pair of gold earrings from you, Thutmose, I’d get them directly from Aunt Tiye and save time!” I called out over Uni’s shoulder.

“Nefertiti?”
The dull voice sparked to life. “Oh, gods, I
have
lost my mind.”

I nudged Uni. “Bring a lamp into that room.”

“My lady, I can only heed my master. If you can persuade him to call for a light—”

I made an impatient sound and stalked over to the nearest lamp stand. Snatching one of the stone vessels, I cut past Uni into Thutmose’s lair. The lone flame was enough to illuminate that small space. While Ta-Miu wriggled in the crook of my arm, I looked around briefly, perplexed. The only piece of furniture I could see was a bed, and not even a bed fit for royalty, but a simple, undecorated wooden frame holding a thin mat of woven reeds. Thutmose lay on it, his gaze on the ceiling, his arms at his sides.

“So it
is
you,” he said without looking at me. The lamplight fell on his face, still extraordinarily handsome but now a little gaunt and haggard. His eyes were unpainted and red, his cheeks and scalp covered with stubble. “Why are you here? Don’t tell me you’ve come to gloat, not you, not the darling of Ma’at, the perfect girl, the pure,
pure
heart.”

“First tell me why
you’re
here, Thutmose,” I said.

“Me?” His laugh was ghastly. “Stupid question. In my bed, in my bedchamber, in my apartments—where else should I be after my own father ordered me sealed away as if I were already dead?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped. “This isn’t your bedchamber. It looks like it belongs to one of your servants.”

“Ha. Still so smart. Smarter than Uni.” Thutmose rolled onto his side and propped his head on one hand. “You hear that, Uni?” he shouted. “Maybe if you weren’t such a mealy-mouthed foot-kisser, you’d have had the intelligence to tell me my visitor’s
name
instead of letting me make a fool of myself.”

“Ah! Pardon me, my lord, pardon me.” A flutter of apologies came from the doorway. “I am your
most
unworthy servant. I will do better in the future, I swear by Ma’at that, uh, I mean, I swear by Amun—”

Thutmose laughed until he was wheezing. “Swear by Ma’at, if you like. Swear by a dog’s backside, for all I care. What does any of it matter? Vows, promises, oaths, they’re all dust and dung.” He let his head drop to the mat. “Go away, Uni. Go, and see to it that none of the other servants come anywhere near this room. If I catch the faintest whisper of their presence, I’ll whip them with my own hands and then I’ll guarantee that your career in the palace is over.”

“Ye-ye-yes, my lord prince! Just as you desire! At once!” I heard feet running away and the distant sound of a very harried Master of the Household yapping out commands to his underlings.

“Thutmose, why are you doing this to yourself?” I asked. “You aren’t a prisoner in these rooms any longer. Your father changed his mind; you have the freedom of the palace and you know it.”

“Scraps,” Thutmose rasped. “They give me scraps and they want me to pretend that it’s a banquet. Everything else has been taken away from me. Nothing to live on but scraps, until the day I die.” He closed his eyes. “Leave me alone, Nefertiti. I don’t want your company. Go throw your scraps somewhere else.”

I perched on the edge of his bed and braced myself for him to object, but he had sunk himself too deeply in his own misery to notice or care. A single tear trickled from the corner of his eye, a droplet that the lamplight turned to gold. I took a breath and was surprised to hear it turn into a tiny sob.

Am I crying for him? For Thutmose? Lord Thoth, give me wisdom:
Why?
I must be as mind-sick as he is
. I let go of Ta-Miu so that I could wipe the tears from my own eyes and still hold on to the oil lamp. She leaped lightly onto the bed and planted all four paws on Thutmose’s chest, purring madly. With his eyes still closed, he reached up and began to pet the little cat with so much tenderness that it made me smile.

You
do
love her more than anything, Thutmose
, I thought.
When you forged charges of sacrilege against me, you created false evidence to show that I’d spilled her blood, but you refused to allow any real harm to come to her. A heartless man would have ordered one of his underlings to kill her outright. You kept her alive because you loved her, even though she was the living proof of my innocence
.

I made a choice.

I can’t say exactly why I did it. I had lived long enough to know that most people—highborn or low, male or female, poor or rich—would think I was a fool. I could hear their scornful voices calling out, “Aren’t you the same girl who was dumbstruck when Princess Tabiri told you she was praying to Hathor for Thutmose? Aren’t you the one who shrilled, ‘Do you know what he did?’ Where has your outrage gone, Nefertiti? He wanted to crush you. He tried to kill you. He’s made his brother’s life an unending procession of mocking words, contempt, and humiliation. Has he shown one flicker of remorse for any of that? Let him live and die with his scraps! They’re more than he deserves. Let him suffer; it serves him right.”

No, it doesn’t
, I thought.
It serves no one
. I recalled the sorrowful look on Amenophis’s gentle face as he said,
“Forgive me, Nefertiti—I still love my brother.”

I watched as Thutmose continued to stroke Ta-Miu’s fur. She uttered happy sounds that were a curious mix of snarls and purrs when she drew back her lips, and he rubbed her gums with the edge of his thumb. Her forepaws massaged his chest with a motion like a baker kneading dough. Anger and despair melted from his face. He looked as if he had finally found peace.

“You asked me why I’m here, Thutmose,” I said quietly. “I want you to have Ta-Miu.”

“What?”
His eyes shot open. He sat up so fast that the cat went flying in fright from her safe haven on his chest and shot under the bed. He seized my arm before I knew it and brought his face close to mine. His breath smelled sour and stale as he demanded, “Whose idea was this?”

“Mine.”

“Why? What are you up to? Do you give such wonderful gifts to everyone you hate?”

“I don’t hate you, Thutmose.”

How he laughed when I said that! “If only you’d spouted such a lie on that accursed day in Ma’at’s house! Then a
thousand
goddesses could have howled your innocence to the skies for nothing.”

“It’s true,” I maintained. “I don’t think I
can
hate you anymore. These past days, I’ve been forced to live cut off from anyone who’s ever been important to me, anyone who’s ever cared about me for who I am—not for my rank or my future or my face. The loneliness—it’s awful. No one should have to suffer that. No one.”

He hadn’t been eating. He had spent most of his time lying inert in a darkened room. It wasn’t so hard for me to twist my arm out of his grasp, but once I’d done that, I slipped my fingers through his and held his hand because it was what I wanted. “I met a woman tonight who knew you when you were a child and who still loves you very much: Princess Tabiri. Her son, Khenti, was your playmate, remember? She does. She wants you to be well and happy and
not
alone. So do I.”

He pulled his head back and stared at me. “You met Tabiri?” I saw the start of a fond smile on his face before the old, hard glare of suspicion clamped down over his features again. “You watch yourself around that woman, Nefertiti. She’s a worse liar than you. I haven’t seen her face since her son died, and I don’t want to. She resents me for being alive.”

“Oh, who told you
that
nonsense?” I burst out. “Your mother?”

He refused to answer. Jerking his hand from mine, he sprang from the bed and turned his face to the darkest corner of the room. “You want me to believe that you pity me for being alone? Don’t. I don’t want your pity, not even if it is real. I know better than to trust you. All your sweet talk is honey poured over a dish of scorpions. You’re not offering me my Ta-Miu because you feel sorry for me; you’re trying to deceive me the way you’ve always done! A simple, heartfelt good deed, a gift from the heart.” Sarcasm made his words ugly. “What a clever way to lead me on, to let me feel
safe
with you. Safe as a sheep feels the moment before the butcher cuts its throat.”

“Thutmose, listen: All I’m trying to do is let you have Ta-Miu again.” I spoke slowly, as if explaining things to a man who’d cracked his skull in a fall. “I have no hidden reasons for it.”

“Not you,” Thutmose said, turning sharply. “Amenophis. He’s heard that Father’s made my unfair punishment milder, and now he’s afraid it’s just the first step to bringing things back to the way they
should
be. He’s trembling because he thinks I might win back my rightful place as crown prince. And I will! Then I’ll show him what Pharaoh does to traitors.”