Sphinx's Queen (8 page)

For an instant they stared at me, as if my voice had turned them both into stone. Then a wonderful smile bloomed over Nava’s face. “Nefertiti! Oh, Nefertiti, you’re alive! You’re alive!” She leaped away from Amenophis and became a small, swift, happily shouting whirlwind, striking me so hard that I staggered and fell in a heap among the rushes. She swarmed over me, her eyes bright, hugging me so tightly that every breath I managed to take was a victory. “You’re
alive!”

“And so are you,” I said when she loosened her embrace enough to allow it. “Oh, my little one, so are you.” All at once, stupidly, I was crying again.

“Why are you crying? What’s the matter? Are you hurt?
Stop
it, Nefertiti. Please.” Nava’s voice rose anxiously. “What’s wrong?”

Amenophis answered for me, standing between Nava and me so that he could give a hand to each of us and help us stand again. “Nothing’s wrong anymore, Nava. Sometimes people cry because they’re so happy, it’s too powerful to control. Look, I’m doing it, too.” He touched his long, thin fingers to where tears were cutting channels through the grime on his cheeks. “Welcome back, Nefertiti.” He spoke solemnly, but his lips parted in a radiant smile. When he opened his arms to me, I stepped into his embrace and rested my head on his chest as naturally as if I were coming home.

“Me too! Me too!” Nava tugged at our arms until we included her in our hug. It was just as well: If she hadn’t broken the strange spell between Amenophis and me, I don’t know if I’d have found the strength to let him go.

How strange
, I thought. Even with Nava clamoring for attention between us, the beating of Amenophis’s heart still lingered in my ears. I looked into his tired, homely face, only to have him quickly drop his eyes and turn from me, looking toward the river.

“When we get to Dendera, I’m going to send a messenger back to Thebes to bring every piece of gold I own.” He spoke softly, as if talking for himself alone. “I’ll give it all to the gods who brought you back to me—to us. Hapy will have a share, because his sacred waters didn’t take you from us, and Ra, because his light guided you to us, and Isis, because I know she’s dear to you.” He spared me a smile so shy and fleeting that I wasn’t sure I’d seen it. “And Hathor, because Dendera is her holy place, and—”

Nava tugged at my hand and beckoned me to bend over so she could whisper to me. “I don’t have any gold, so I’m going to make a new song and sing it as part of my prayers. Not for your gods, though—for mine. Will you mind?”

I kissed her brow. “Not if your god won’t. If you like, I’ll give you a pair of gold earrings to offer him, along with your song.”

She looked at me narrowly, as if trying to judge if I was making fun of her or not. Nava had spoken to me many times about the oddly solitary god that she and her Habiru tribefolk worshipped, a god without a shape, without a face, and without any name except the One. “Do you think my prayers won’t be acceptable without gold?” she asked, so very stern for someone so very young.

“No, of course not,” I reassured her. “We’re together again, and we’re not going to lose one another anymore. I think that giving thanks for that is the important thing, whether to Isis or Hapy or Hathor or the One, with or without gold.”

“Maybe you should tell that to Amenophis,” Nava said. “Otherwise … well, you heard him. He’s going to give away
all
his gold, and then what will he do?”

I laughed. “Good idea. We wouldn’t want him to return to Thebes as a beggar”—I looked down at my bedraggled dress and my mud-smeared arms and legs—“even if all three of us look like beggars right now.”

We came up behind Amenophis and each took one of his hands. “You know, the gods will hear you even if you come before them empty-handed,” I murmured. “Otherwise it would be a waste of time for poor people to pray at all. Or do you believe the gods are like their priests?”

“Don’t mock the gods, Nefertiti.” Amenophis’s prominent jaw was set in a forbidding expression. “Not now, not after how wonderfully they’ve blessed us. If you knew what I felt when I thought we’d lost you! The moment that hippo threw us all from the boat, my mind went cold. I wasn’t human anymore. All I could hear was your voice calling out to me: ‘Save Nava! Save the child!’ The hippo was still raging through the water, bellowing, trampling, smashing everything, but all I heard was your voice, and all I saw was Nava, flailing in the water. I fought my way to her, got her to hold on to my shoulders, and swam to shore.”

“He told me to hide behind a big tree, in case the hippo came on land,” Nava put in. She was trembling with remembered terror. “Then he went back into the water.”

“Back?” I couldn’t believe it. “What were you thinking?” He didn’t bother responding to my question. We both knew the answer:
I had to find you
.

“There’s no sense in your worrying about that now,” he said. “You can see that no harm came to me.
Or
to Nava,” he added. “I didn’t leave her alone on the bank for too long. When I couldn’t spot you in the river, I returned to her and we took the long way around the stretch of shore where that beast was still wallowing. When we came back to the water, we began our search.”

“We looked and looked for you, Nefertiti,” Nava said. “We never stopped. I didn’t sleep, or eat, or—”

“Nava …” Amenophis spoke in a warning tone, but he was smiling at the little girl’s powers of exaggeration.

“Wellll … we did sleep. But not a lot! And we ate fish. I caught one all by myself!” She looked very proud.

“That’s true,” Amenophis said. “I wish you could have seen her, Nefertiti. She’s a little osprey, this one. She waded in the shallows, watched patiently, then … splash! She dropped onto her prey with both hands and came up clutching a fish that was more than half as big as she is.” His severe, chiding manner was gone, and I was pleased to see it go.

“Careful, Amenophis,” I joked. “Ma’at doesn’t make special exceptions for fishing stories. Nava, dear, I hope I will get to see you catch many more fish before this journey’s over. You’ll be able to feed us much better than I. All I’ve got to share with you are these.” I reached into the cloth sling at my waist and handed my friends Idu’s gift of bread. They greeted the small loaves as if they were the finest roast meats at Pharaoh’s table. I was hungry myself, but watching them tear into the bread comforted me nearly as much as having a full stomach. While they ate, I told them of my own adventures since the hippo’s rampage.

I ended my tale by saying, “You don’t need to be concerned about me showing proper respect to the gods, Amenophis. I know what a great debt I owe them for saving me from the hippo, the river, and the old man’s schemes. Even so, meeting one person with a heart as kind and honest as Idu’s is worth ten rescues, and I owe the gods thanks for that as well.”

“I didn’t mean to scold you, Nefertiti.” My friend looked and sounded deeply sorry. “The gods have my thanks, but if I could, I’d give my gold to that young man instead of to them as a reward for all he did for you.”

“For us,” I reminded him. “He steered me onto the right path, the path that brought us back together.”

“And not one instant too soon. We’d given up hope. Nava and I were about to go back to Thebes. I was going to place her in my sister Sitamun’s household for protection and then surrender myself to Thutmose. I didn’t care how harshly he’d punish me.” He sighed. “I didn’t care about anything anymore.”

“Then I’m doubly glad I found you when I did,” I told him. “You must never lose heart, Amenophis. Even if I’d never come back to you, you shouldn’t give up. What your brother tried to do to me wasn’t right—it was an offense against Ma’at—and it was made worse by the fact that he had the priests of Amun in on the plot with him.”

“Priests!” Amenophis exclaimed bitterly. “They’re so fastidious about keeping their bodies clean and pure for the gods, but what does that matter when they value wealth and power more than truth?”

“Then you should learn from their bad example and live better,” I said. “Your brother’s wrongdoing wouldn’t vanish just because I did. It would still be your duty to turn him back to Ma’at’s way so that one day he’ll be worthy to wear Pharaoh’s crown. Even if I died, you would have to—”

“Don’t say that again, Nefertiti.” Amenophis’s eyes pleaded for my silence. “I promise that I’ll do as you say—be brave, go on, help my brother be a better man if I can—but don’t make me think of losing you ever again.”

“Anyway, you’re not fair to Amenophis,” Nava piped up. “He wasn’t going to give up on
anything
until he saw those men. That’s why we were hiding here.”

“What men?” I asked.

“Soldiers,” Amenophis said, stone-faced. “Armed men from the royal palace. I recognized at least three of them, but there were more, maybe six. We were only a little way upstream when a kind breeze brought me the sound of their feet pounding the ground behind us. Who would need to go running along this side of the river? No one sends messengers to the dead.” He looked southwest, to the golden cliffs that guarded the valley where so many pharaohs lay entombed.

“They weren’t messengers to anyone,” Nava said. “They all had swords, Nefertiti—I saw them!—and some of them had bows and quivers full of arrows. They were hunting us.” She leaned her head against me. “Amenophis dragged me into the rushes before they could see us, but we got to see them when they ran by.” She put her arms around my waist and clung tight.

“I didn’t know they were soldiers at first,” Amenophis said. “I just knew that there was no good reason for a group of men to be racing along this side of the river. The peasants who farm here are too busy working their land. That leaves the men who work on constructing and adorning the royal tombs, and their settlement must be farther downstream or we’d’ve encountered it.”

There are also the men who
rob
those tombs
, I thought.
But they wouldn’t be running along the bank, in a group, in broad daylight. Those jackals stick to the dark places and the dark hours. Great
Lord Osiris, let your might protect the dead from their greedy and impious hands!

“The gods were gracious to us,” Amenophis said, continuing his story. “I got a good look at the men when they jogged past our hiding place, but they didn’t see us. I thought it might be safe to go on after they were well away. Then I looked again, to the river, and saw—”

“Boats!” Nava broke in. “I saw them, too. Not just the boats we saw when we were on the river together. Those boats got out of the way when
these
went by, all full of men carrying more weapons, and one boat even bigger than that, with a sail and—”

“Thutmose,” Amenophis said. “He’d send his men ahead in small boats, but he’d never set foot on any ship that wasn’t worthy of Pharaoh. Having others cast nets and set snares for us won’t satisfy him. He has to be part of the hunt or he won’t be able to triumph in the moment of our capture.”

“Then he won’t enjoy anything,” I declared, speaking with a calm certainty I didn’t wholly feel. “There won’t be any capture, and the only triumph will come when he sees us standing safe and secure beside your parents in the holy presence of Hathor herself.”

4
T
HE
F
ACE OF
S
ET

Amenophis and I conferred for some time after that, planning our next move. It was clear that we would have to shift our path to Dendera away from the river. The chance of encountering another one of Thutmose’s patrols was too great. We didn’t know how many men he’d taken from Thebes, but knowing him, he hadn’t skimped. He’d use them as his beaters—servants who moved together noisily through the vegetation, driving the frightened creatures straight to the waiting hunter.

“Thutmose has thrown a wide net, but we’ll find a way to slip through it,” I said. “He doesn’t know that we lost our boat and our supplies, so he’s probably keeping his eyes on the river. If we turn toward the mountains—”

“Do you mean the sacred valley of the tombs?” Amenophis shook his head. “Not unless we can eat and drink thin air.”