The Heretic Queen

by Michelle Moran

  “The scribes have been compiling it for you for more than a year.”

  “A year? But I was in the Temple of Hathor—”

  I stopped, realizing what he meant. Every misery of the afternoon disappeared. It didn’t matter that the people hated me. We fell onto the bed and thought only of each other that night.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER

  WHAT SHOULD HAVE been Pharaoh’s triumphant departure from Thebes became instead a quiet lakeside farewell. I wondered if the court members were as angry with Seti as they were with me. He had allowed my marriage to Ramesses to proceed, and he knew that if there was plague, or further drought in Thebes, the blame would likely fall on me. Tuya held back tears while she embraced her only son, and Ramesses’s face was solemn. No one knew what might happen once Seti’s ships left, and over the crying of the gulls I heard him remind Ramesses, “Half of my army stays with you. If there is any talk of rebellion—”

  “There won’t be rebellion.”

  But Seti wasn’t placated. “Have your men watch over the city. Four viziers are staying behind. Send one of them to walk the streets and listen to what the people are saying. This is your capital now.” Behind him, the white palace of Malkata gleamed like a pearl against the darkening sky. “Its glory will reflect your reign. You should begin rebuilding the Temple of Luxor, and let the people see that there is nothing more important to you than honoring the gods.”

  Seti beckoned to me with a jeweled finger. “Little Nefertari.” I embraced him as tightly as I could. “I want you to be careful on the eastern bank,” he cautioned. “Be patient with the people.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  Then Seti took my arm and led me aside. I felt certain that he was going to say something about what had happened in the streets the day before. But instead, he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “I also want you to take care of my son. Ramesses is rash, and he needs a head with reason—”

  I flushed. “I think you should be talking to Asha . . .”

  “Asha will keep my son from trouble on the battlefield. It’s trouble at court I’m worried about. Not everyone lives their life according to the rules of Ma’at, and I suspect that behind those pretty green eyes you have a good understanding of this.”

  Seti stepped back, and as I reached forward to embrace Tuya farewell, Adjo strained at his leash and snapped angrily at the air.

  “That’s enough!” Tuya reprimanded. She gave me a long look from beneath her wide Nubian wig. “He never barks at anyone else.”

  The trumpets blared, and the clanging of sistrums filled the air. Seti and Tuya went on board and soon waved from the prow of their ship. As Ramesses and I waved back, Iset appeared beside us and asked, “What does it feel like to be the Pharaoh of all of Thebes?”

  Ramesses looked at her as if to ask how she could wonder such a thing. “Lonely,” he replied.

  An hour remained until the Audience Chamber, so as the court returned to the palace, Ramesses took my hand and it became clear to everyone where he intended to be. After all, we had only been married for a day.

  By the time Merit knocked on our door and told us that the petitioners had arrived, Ramesses was not feeling so lonely. I took his arm, and we walked together into the Audience Chamber where the herald grandly announced our presence. Inside, the entire court had gathered. Courtiers rolled knucklebones next to the warmth of the braziers, and musicians huddled around the dais, performing on their double flutes and lyres. Women laughed at the back of the room, and a few old noblemen in warm furs were playing Senet. It looked more like a feast in the Great Hall than a place for the affairs of state. I was shocked. “Is it always so merry?”

  Ramesses laughed at my surprise. “Until the business begins.”

  “And then where do all of these people go?”

  “Oh, most of them will remain. But the musicians will leave, and the courtiers will keep quiet.”

  In the middle of the Audience Chamber, the viziers were already seated at their tables. They stood as we passed, and I nodded briefly to Paser. “Your Majesty,” they murmured. “Princess Nefertari.” I caught the bloodied eye of Rahotep and thought, He will send me all of the difficult petitioners. He will try to embarrass me.

  On the dais, Iset was already seated at her throne. She was dressed in a wide collar I had never seen on her before, and she had left the front of her heavy cloak open to remind the court of her swelling belly. Five months, with only four to go, I thought. If she births a son, and a Chief Wife has not been announced, her child will be the heir to Egypt’s throne until Ramesses declares otherwise. I knew that everyone was watching me, and I was careful as I ascended the steps. The thrones had been set close enough together so that if Ramesses wanted, he could stretch his arms from the center of the dais and touch both of his wives. In the history of Egypt, there had never been two thrones for dueling princesses.

  “Are you ready?” Ramesses asked both of us, and I nodded. He struck his crook on the dais and declared, “Bring forth the petitioners!”

  Courtiers sprang into action. The wide doors leading to the courtyard of Malkata were thrown open, and the first petitioners were led inside. Three men approached the viziers’ table, and all of them bore scrolls that they handed to the viziers. I watched while Paser, Rahotep, and Anemro read the petitions, then took out their reed pens and signed a name on the bottom of each scroll. Then all three men approached the dais, and the oldest one held his petition out to me with a bow.

  “For the princess Nefertari,” he said. My family’s seal had been drawn on the scroll, but it wasn’t in Paser’s hand. The old man watched me with plain distrust. “I asked to see the princess Iset, but the High Priest sent me to you. I specifically requested—”

  “Whatever you specifically requested,” I snapped, “I will be the one who reads your petition.” Woserit had warned that if I allowed a single petitioner to treat me as though I was less important than Iset, he would leave the palace and tell of my timidity to the others still waiting in line. I looked at the open scroll. The man had come to request entry into the Temple of Amun at Karnak. Commoners were not allowed inside, yet he was requesting a special dispensation to see the High Priest. “What is this for?” I asked him quietly.

  “My daughter is sick, and the offerings I’ve placed at our shrines have not been enough.” The old man narrowed his eyes. He watched me pick up the reed pen from the small table at my side, then write across the bottom of his scroll. “You may enter the temple,” I said.

  The old man stepped back as if to see me better. “I was alive during the time of Amarna,” he said. “I saw the Heretic break the statues of Amun and murder the god’s priests.”

  I tightened my fist around his petition. “And what does that have to do with me?”

  The man squinted up into my face. “You look like your aunt.”

  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 thr
one. “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.”