The Heretic Queen (26 page)

I suppressed the strong desire to ask him how. Was it my nose, my lips, my high cheekbones, my build? But I knew what he was trying to imply, and instead, I shoved the scroll at him and said darkly, "Go. Go before I change my mind!"

Ramesses glanced at me instead of paying attention to his own petitioner, and his look was one of pity, not admiration. I felt the fire in my stomach spread.

"Next!"
Whatever happens, keep smiling,
Woserit had warned. A farmer came forward and I smiled beautifully. "Your petition?" He held out his scroll. I read it, then looked down at the man. His kilt had been neatly pressed for the occasion, and he was wearing leather sandals instead of papyrus. "You come from Thebes and wish to claim access to your neighbor's well? And why should your neighbor grant you this access?"

"Because I have given his cows grazing in my fields! I have no water on my land and I want something in return."

"So if he will not give you water, stop giving his cows feed."

"My son would let the beasts starve! And he would do it to spite me!"

I sat back on my throne. "Your neighbor is your son?"

"I gave him a piece of my land when he married, and now he won't give me access to my well because of his wife!"

"What's wrong with his wife?"

"She is against me!" he cried. "When I told my son I didn't want a harlot like her for a daughter, he married her anyway. And now the girl wants to ruin me," he raged.

The viziers stopped to watch us, but I resisted the temptation to see which had sent the farmer to me. "And what has your daughter-in-law done to make you think that she is unfaithful?"

"She has slept with half of Thebes. She knows it as well as Ma'at! My son's heirs might be any man's children, and now she won't even give me access to my land!"

"Did you deed your son the land?" I asked him.

"I gave him my word."

"But not the deed?" The man clearly didn't understand. "It is not enough to give your word," I explained. "It must be set down in writing."

The farmer smiled widely. "I have not given anything in writing."

"Then it is your well to use," I said firmly, "and she will have to live with it until you've signed away your deed or your son finds his own land."

The old man's face was a picture of shock. I took up my reed pen and wrote the verdict on the bottom of his papyrus. When I handed him the scroll, he watched me with a guarded look. "You . . . you are not like they say."

Every day will be like this,
I thought
. Every morning for the rest of my life I will be treated as the Heretic's niece. If I don't change their opinion of me, I will never escape it.
My back stiffened as a third petitioner made his way to me. He held out a scroll and I read the contents quickly.

"Give me the whole story," I said, but the young man shook his head.

"I ask to see Pharaoh, who speak my language, but Vizier Paser send me you," he stumbled in a heavy accent.

"And is there something wrong with me?" I demanded in Hurrian.

The foreigner stepped back. "You speak Hurrian," he whispered.

"Well, what have you come for?" I demanded.

For every petitioner who watched me with mistrust, there was another from Babylon, Assyria, or Nubia whose language I could speak. Before the day was finished I could see the interested glances that courtiers made in my direction. I sat straighter on my throne. Even without the signature at the bottom of each scroll, I could guess where each petition had come from. Foreigners from kingdoms whose languages I could speak were sent by Paser. The angriest and most contentious men were from Rahotep.

When a trumpet sounded in the distance, there was a sudden shifting in the room. A table was brought and placed at the base of the dais, and servants began positioning chairs with large arms and padded cushions.

I turned to Ramesses. "What are they preparing for?"

"Obviously, we're done with petitions," Iset replied.

Ramesses ignored her and said quietly, "At noon we finish and move on to private business."

The remaining petitioners were led away, and from a small door on the side of the room a group of women entered the chamber. Although Henuttawy and Woserit were among them, they never looked at each other.
Like a pair of horses wearing blinders,
I thought. As they seated themselves around the table, Ramesses struck his crook against the dais.

"We are ready to begin the business of the court," he declared. "Bring in the architect Penre."

The doors of the Audience Chamber were thrown open and Penre appeared. He was a strapping man, with a lean jaw and a straight nose that would have been too large on any other man's face. His long kilt was banded with yellow, and his golden pectoral had been a gift from Pharaoh Seti. He looked more like a warrior than an architect to me. "Your Majesties." He bowed efficiently, then wasted no time unfurling his scroll. "You have requested an undertaking that no other architect has ever accomplished. A courtyard in the Temple of Luxor, with obelisks so tall that the gods themselves can touch them. So I have drawn for Your Highness one vision of what might be built." He offered up a scroll and produced another two from the bag that hung at his side. These, he gave to myself and Iset.

I unfurled the papyrus and saw that the changes to Luxor that Penre had drawn were magnificent. Dark limestone pillars rose from pink sands, decorated with reliefs and hieroglyphics.

"What is this?" Iset demanded haughtily. She looked at Ramesses. "I thought your first act would be to build on to the palace."

Ramesses shook his head, and the
nemes
head cloth brushed against his wide shoulders. "You heard my father request that we rebuild the Temple of Luxor."

"But we're living in the palace, not the temple," Iset whined. "And what about a birthing pavilion for our heir?"

Ramesses sighed. "There is a pavilion already built. The people must see that Pharaoh's first project is for Amun, not us."

"We all know what happened when another Pharaoh built only for himself," Rahotep reminded.

Iset glanced at the bottom of the dais to where Henuttawy was sitting. "Then perhaps we should rebuild the Temple of Isis?"

Ramesses didn't understand her persistence. "The Temple of Isis was rebuilt by my grandfather!"

"That was many years ago. And since then Hathor's temple has been made new. Don't we want the people to know that Pharaoh values Isis as much as Hathor?"

Rahotep nodded, and I sensed an unspoken message in the glance he flashed at Iset.

But her persistence seemed only to baffle Ramesses.

"There is only so much time and gold," he said shortly. "I would rebuild every temple from here to Memphis if I could, but Amun must come first."

Iset saw that she had lost. "The Temple of Luxor then," she said. "And think . . ." She touched Ramesses's arm with her hand, and the brush of her fingertips seemed sensual. "If the temple can be completed by Thoth, your father will be able to see it when he arrives for the next Feast of Wag."

This was what Ramesses wanted to hear. He straightened. "Are there changes you think should be made?"

He was asking us both. Iset said swiftly, "I wouldn't change anything."

"I would."

The court turned to me, expectantly. Penre's design was skillful. In his vision, two towering granite obelisks guarded the gates, piercing the sky in magnificent testaments to Ramesses's reign. But there was nowhere to remind the people of Ramesses's deeds. In a hundred years, how would the people know what he had done if there was nowhere to record it? Time might rot the gates of the palace, but Amun's stone temples would be forever.

"I think there should be a pylon," I said. "Outside the Temple at Karnak is the Wall of Proclamation." On this wall, images are carved and erased with every new triumph. "So why not outside of Luxor as well?"

Ramesses looked to Penre. "Could you erect a pylon?"

"Certainly, Your Majesty. And you may use it as a Wall of Proclamation as well."

Ramesses glanced approvingly at me, but Iset was not to be outdone. "Then what about a hall?" she suggested. "A columned hall in front of the temple?"

"What purpose would that serve?" I asked.

"It doesn't need a purpose! There should be a hall, shouldn't there, Ramesses?"

Ramesses looked between us, then down at Penre. "Can a hall be constructed?" he asked wearily.

"Of course. Whatever Your Highness would like."

THAT EVENING, only a day after our own wedding, Ramesses began his ten nights with Iset. And even though I understood that every king in the history of Egypt had divided his nights equally between his most important wives, I sat in front of my bronze mirror and wondered if he had left me because he loved her more.

"Nonsense," Merit said with absolute conviction. "You told me yourself what she did in the Audience Chamber. Nothing but whine."

"But not in bed," I said, and I imagined her naked in front of Ramesses, rubbing lotus oil over her breasts. "I'll bet Henuttawy taught her every trick she knows. She's beautiful, Merit. Everyone sees it."

The pouch beneath my nurse's neck grew rigid. "And how long is beauty entertaining for? An hour? Two hours? Stop complaining, or you'll be just as bad as she is."

"But if I can't whine to you, then who can I whine to?"

Merit looked across the chamber to my mother's wooden
naos,
with its tall statue of the feline goddess Mut. "Go tell her. Maybe she'll want to listen."

I folded my arms across my chest. Even though I felt like sitting in my robing room and complaining to Merit, I
had
promised Woserit that each evening Ramesses spent away from me, I would meet with Paser. So I made my way through the dimly lit halls around the royal courtyard, and when Paser's body servant opened his door, I saw my former tutor sitting with Woserit at his brazier. At once, they moved apart, but the scene had been so intimate that I stepped back. Paser's long hair was loosened from its braid, and in the firelight it gleamed like a raven's wings.
He is beautiful,
I realized. I immediately thought the same of Woserit, whose face seemed suddenly younger. She was only twenty-five, but the weight of life at court had etched thin lines between her brows.

"Princess Nefertari," Paser said, and stood to greet me. His chamber was large, painted with murals and decorated with expensive hangings from Mitanni. Above the bed were carvings from Assyria, sphinxes whose tightly curled beards gave away their origin. And at the entrance to his robing room, the carved wooden faces of Babylonian gods stared back.
Has he been to all of these lands?
I wondered.

It was cold, and Woserit was wearing her heaviest cloak. "You did well today," she said while I took an empty seat. "Especially with your entrance. There was no one in that chamber who couldn't tell that you were a princess, born and bred."

"And you judged wisely," Paser added.

"Then I must thank you for sending me all of your simplest petitions."

Paser raised his brows. "Those foreign petitioners wouldn't have been simple for Iset. Once the court begins to recognize your talent for languages, perhaps we'll start sending those cases to her instead." He smiled at Woserit. "If Rahotep thinks he's the only one who can play this game, then he'll discover very quickly that he's wrong."

"What were your impressions of the Audience Chamber?" Woserit asked.

I looked between them, wondering what she wanted me to say. "It was filled with interesting people," I said carefully.

"Did you find it tiresome?" Paser asked.

"With so many petitioners to talk to?" I exclaimed. "No."

Paser glanced at Woserit. "She's not another Iset," he said thankfully, then turned to me. "When the people see how valuable you are, the tide of love for Iset may change."

"Especially if you are pregnant," Woserit added.

We both looked down at my tunic, with its amber studded belt emphasizing the smallness of my waist. They both knew the story of my mother. It was a legend now at court, how she had been poisoned by the Heretic King and lost her first child. She had been tall, with wide hips for childbearing, but it was years before Tawaret blessed her womb again with my brother. Yet she'd wanted more children, and I could only imagine how she must have felt when her third had come into the world robbed of its breath. And then, while she had been pregnant with me, there was the fire in the royal courtyard. I shuddered to think of her gentle heart having to bear the news that everyone she had ever loved--her mother and father, her son and husband, both of Nefertiti's remaining daughters--was gone. Was it any wonder that after my birth, she had no more energy left for living?