I moved to the side of the bed opposite Nefer, bent, kissed Aachel – her cheek was so hot – sat next to her, took her free hand in mine. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Aachel had been the friend of my youth, the one I had confided things I couldn’t share with Nefer or anyone else. She’d helped me through some dark times. I’d barely seen her since the beginning of my estrangement with Nefer, something she’d understood but hated. She’d worked as hard trying to reconcile Nefer and I as I had trying to get Nefer and Thut to see they were meant for each other. I’d failed, and so had Aachel. Nefer had never been able to forgive me my betrayal. And so I’d missed so much of Aachel’s life, and her children’s and grandchildren’s. Sometimes I’d resented Nefer for that, that she had claimed Aachel’s friendship for her own, leaving a gaping void in my life. And now Aachel and I were to be separated forever, by death.
I’d seen too much of death these past years. Just six months ago Thut and I had made the long sad journey north to bury General Djehuty in the necropolis at Saqqara overlooking Mennefer. He’d died at age 75, worn out by a lifetime of service to Thut and Thut’s father. I’d mourned him deeply, for since the day we’d captured Yapu he’d been my friend. All of the golden objects and fine weapons that Thut had presented him after his victories were in his tomb with him now. Thut had spared no expense to honor the general who had led his armies; he’d encased Djehuty’s mummy in solid gold, with hieroglyphs on each finger, and a scarab on a gold chain, and gold rings, and gold bracelets in his sarcophagus. He’d also placed four canopic jars and two scribal palettes in the old warrior’s tomb.
Djehuty had been buried not far from Neshi, leader of the long ago expedition that Nefer and I had accompanied to Punt. I took time after Djehuty’s funeral to make offerings at his tomb too. And Ahmose’s. A chariot accident had claimed him much too young. And theirs were not the only deaths that had touched me. Menwi, Merti and Menhet had passed away within days of each other three years ago, struck down by an epidemic that left the Kemetian wives in the king’s harem untouched but took the foreigners and many of their children. Menwi had been not quite forty, the other two still in their twenties. Their deaths had come as a shock that I hadn’t yet recovered from; of all the wives, we’d been the closest. Thut had buried them together in wooden coffins in a single tomb in a beautiful isolated valley west of the Great Place, its sheer cliffs cracked and fissured, their bases littered with scree, the valley’s floor flat and winding.
I myself had helped assemble their grave goods – a set of limestone canopic jars for each, gold and stone heart scarab necklaces, falcon collars and vulture pectorals of sheet gold, gold sandals and finger and toe stalls, ointment jars inscribed with Thut’s cartouche, bowls, jars, see–faces with Hathor’s head on the handles, diadems with gazelle heads, girdles with talapia fish, gold armlets decorated with cats and lions of carnelian, scarab rings in a variety of materials, silver libation vessels, strands of beads. I’d even secretly slipped in some of the possessions taken from them when we brought them to Kemet, to give them comfort in the Afterlife.
Aachel smiled at me weakly, tried to say something. The interval between her gasps was growing longer. Her chest barely rose beneath the sheet.
“Don’t speak,” Nefer said gently, tenderly brushing Aachel’s wet hair back from her fevered brow. “Save your strength.”
Aachel tilted her head the slightest bit. “Time… short.” She gulped a breath, tensed, recovered. Her eyes moved to me. “You… saved my life… on quay.” Her eyes shifted to Nefer. “You… gave life… wonderful… ever imagined.” She struggled, closed her eyes, collected herself. Her eyes flashed open. “Every good thing… Hori… family… life… because of you... both.”
Nefer and I were both crying now. Beset and Amunet were in each others’ arms. Baki was chanting a prayer, his eyes tightly closed.
“You’re our friend. You taught us so much,” I blubbered. “We’ll always love you, Aachel. We’ll never forget you.”
“Breaks my heart… you… apart,” Aachel said weakly. She was fading. She fought hard for life. With a last surge of strength she joined Nefer’s and my hands together, slipped the tips of her fingers on top. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Love… again. For me...” A half–smile. The light died in her eyes.
Aachel was still.
Her daughters and granddaughters began to keen, filling the room with eerie sound. I screamed with the agony of unbearable loss. Tears poured down my face. I glanced at Nefer through tear–wet lashes. She was crying too. And all at once we were in each others’ arms, laying across Aachel’s body, sobbing together.
After eighteen years apart, that night, in the presence of death, we took the first step on a very long road to reconciliation.
1423 BC
Regnal Year 2 – Amenhotep II
I sat in a richly–decorated chair under the canopy on the royal boat, Khamsutenuaa, Nefer to my right and three of Aachel’s granddaughters, our attendants, all lovely and young, on cushions at our feet. To my left, on his throne, squirmed Amenhotep, twenty–two now, sole king for the past two years, ever since Thut’s death. Amenemhab, the aging warrior who had served Thut so faithfully, sat to Amenhotep’s left. Nearby on the deck, given a wide berth by everyone, sprawled one of Amenhotep’s pet lions, a servant warily holding the end of its leash. Re was just above the western hills, his dying rays slanting across the river valley and filling it with rich golden light. Shadows were creeping across the strip of desert and cultivation, all the way to the orange and yellow river. The emerald fields lining the east bank of the river were darkening, the desert and hills beyond them being transformed from brown to gold. Farmers were trudging to their huts along narrow paths at the edges of emmer fields or irrigation ditches. Women knelt on riverbanks filling jars with water; others were in the river, bathing. A herd of sheep waded in the shallows between papyrus thickets, drinking and bleating. I began to recognize landmarks – we’d be home at Waset, back from campaigning in the North, in half an hour.
Amenhotep had led his army well, though not as well as his father. I felt sorry for Amenhotep; following a legend was not easy. I doubted there would ever be another man like my husband on the throne of Kemet. Thut had been tireless and inquisitive and versatile – a designer of exquisite vases during moments of leisure, a keen–eyed administrator who had made the river valley prosper, an unparalleled warrior who had launched armies upon the world and led them to victory every time. I remembered Rekhmire’s tribute at his funeral: “His Majesty was one who knew what happened; there was nothing of which he was ignorant; he was Thoth, the god of knowledge, in everything; there was no matter which he did not carry out.” Thut had been proud of his achievements, but always truthful about them. I remembered his words on his deathbed as he recalled his long life: “I haven’t exaggerated in order to boast of that which I did. I never said I did anything I didn’t do. No one can contradict what I’ve claimed to have accomplished. I’ve spoken only the truth for the sake of my father, Amun, because he knows heaven and he knows earth, he sees the whole earth hourly.” Never before had a single man wielded the resources of so great a nation and bent them to so great and single–minded a purpose, year after year, until he had achieved his goals. As a skilled craftsman manipulated a hammer, so had Thut manipulated his army to create an empire, using a hammer he himself had forged. No one before Thut had ever built an empire, much less dreamed of one; he had been the dominant figure in the world in his lifetime and had created a new order, one dominated by Kemet. He had been a commanding figure, towering over the trivial plots and schemes of the petty Setjetian and Retenuian and Mitanni leaders who sometimes pledged fealty to him and sometimes rebelled against him, blowing them away as a strong wind blows away fog. I suspected it would be generations before the men of far–off Naharina and the lands between forgot Thut. Even now his name was being placed on amulets by craftsmen as a word of power.
I missed Thut every single day. I knew I’d never
see his like again. He’d waged eighteen campaigns in his lifetime, captured over 350 cities in the North and countless more in the South. His empire extended from Setjet in the north to Naharina in the east to the Fourth Cataract in the south. He traded with every nation in the known world. His monuments littered Kemet – he had built or rebuilt nearly fifty temples. Architecture had evolved under his guidance, methods of decoration expanded. Thut left behind a Kemet far richer and more powerful than the country he’d inherited from his father and Hatshepsut. His reign had lasted a month short of fifty–four years. He was surely the greatest king Kemet would ever have.
But I wished that Thut had not been so blind or stubborn or influenced by his mother. As great as he was, he could have been even greater with Nefer as his Great Wife all the days of his reign. If not for the feud between Iset and Hatshepsut, I thought, Kemet could have been even mightier. And our three lives could have been far different.
Iset had finally died a year before Thut. She I had never mourned. The rest of his wives were long dead too. At the end it had just been the three of us, as it had been at the beginning – Thut, Nefer and me. And now we were two.
Nefer and I had gradually grown closer in the six years since Aachel’s death, even friendly, honoring her dying wish, though we’d never again become the sisters we’d been for so long. My betrayal had cut Nefer too deep. It had been good to have her to talk to again, good to be together with her and Thut at the same time, to sit beside them in the evening and reminisce about the old days when we were growing up in their parents’ per’aa. Unfortunately, there had always remained a distance between Thut and Nefer, because of how he had treated her mother and her at Iset’s urging.
I stared at the western cliffs and pictured the Great Place on its far side and thought about Thut’s funeral. Nefer and I had followed his mummified body in its open coffin across the river and along the winding path between the narrow walls of rock that guarded the valley, crying, throwing dust on our heads the entire way. The Opening of the Mouth ceremony at its entrance, the recitations of the priests, the funeral banquet before the tomb, all blurred in my mind. I clearly recalled placing a bouquet of flowers on Thut’s breast, the gold helmet being placed over his head, his body being nested within three coffins of gold decorated with jewels and faience, each drenched with incense and resins while priests chanted the spells to see Thut to the Afterlife. I remembered the sound as the heavy lid of the sarcophagus dropped into place. Such finality. Nefer and I had supported each other as we stood along one wall, watching as an endless stream of grave goods were carried into the tomb’s storerooms – statues and jars and containers and furniture and clothing and wooden boxes, the golden objects glittering in the torchlight, most of the larger items swaddled in linen. We’d watched as priests assembled three gold shrines around the sarcophagus, each enclosing the one before it, listened to the final spells chanted by the priests. Then everyone had departed the tomb but Nefer and Baki and me – we two wives to pay our final respects in the great burial chamber, its walls decorated with the Amduat, its blue ceiling littered with yellow stars, Baki to walk backwards behind us when we left to sweep away our footprints.
“Thut’s tomb is magnificent,” I told Nefer after the door to the tomb was shut for the final time and Amenhotep pressed his signet ring into the clay seal to secure it. “You built well.”
“At least he’ll have an eternal life,” Nefer replied bitterly. “And you.”
“As will you and your mother,” Baki reminded Nefer in a soft voice. “Don’t forget about the blocks of your mother’s red chapel, still inscribed with both your names, hidden within the king’s pylon.”
“For which I’m grateful, Baki, even more than you can know,” Nefer said. “Aachel told me of it, years ago. It has given me much comfort. Thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” Baki insisted. “It was Mery’s idea, and done at her explicit command.”
“Baki!” I hissed. He’d promised to keep my role secret.
Nefer stepped toward me, her eyes searching my face. “Does Baki speak the truth?”
“Yes,” I reluctantly admitted.
“Why?”
“Because what Iset and Thut did to you was wrong. Because I loved you, Nefer, even though we were no longer friends.”
“What if Thut had found out?”
“I didn’t care.”
“You were willing to risk that he and Iset might do the same thing to you – give you the eternal death?”
“Yes. I couldn’t bear the thought of my having an Afterlife without you in it.” I lifted Nefer’s hand to my lips and kissed her fingers.
Arms around each other, we’d walked back to the boat that would return us to the per’aa, feeling more connected than we had in years.
Only a week after Thut’s burial, Amenhotep had learned that the Mitanni and chieftains of the cities along the coast of the Great Green had rebelled, refusing to pay tribute and attacking scattered garrisons throughout the North. The Nine Bows were so predictable, always seeking to test a new king. But Amenhotep had been trained by his father in the art of war, and had his father’s army at his disposal, an army hardened by battle, and a month later he was on his way to war, Nefer and I with him. Iset’s constant warnings about the threat Nefer posed had been drilled into Amenhotep since birth and so, despite the fact she was in her mid–sixties and in declining health, he had forced her to accompany him. He and his advisors feared she might find a way to overthrow him while he was in the North. I’d done my best to make the journey easy for her, but it had taken a toll. I reached over and put my hand on hers as she stared at the western hills and she smiled weakly. Nefer had never looked so worn out to me before.
Since the seaports had been closed against Amenhotep, he’d led his army by land across Retenu, first clashing with and defeating the enemy at Shemesh–Edom. He’d proven to be a brutal warrior who led by example; he personally took eighteen prisoners and captured sixteen horses during that battle. Then he’d crossed the Orates River at Senzar and defeated a Mitanni force and then taken Takhis, a center of the rebellion, capturing seven of its leaders. After a two–week march he’d reached Niy, where Thut had once hunted elephants. Niy had simply opened its gates and offered tribute instead of fighting, having learned of Amenhotep’s victories. Ten days later he’d rescued a captured Kemetian garrison at nearby Kathy, then punished its inhabitants, either killing or enslaving them all. He crossed the Euphrates in force – this time there was no need for me to spy in the guise of a serving woman, for we were met by tribute–carrying Mitanni who sued for peace. Amenhotep took the tribute, erected a stela extolling his accomplishments, then headed home. I scanned the boats behind us. On board were 500 captive soldiers, 240 women destined for slavery, 210 horses, 300 chariots, 1,600 pounds of gold in vases and vessels, and 100,000 pounds of copper.
The seven chieftains who had led the rebellion were hanging upside down from the bow of this very boat, suspended by their feet from ropes, swaying back and forth, as they had been our entire journey up the river. Tomorrow, Amenhotep was going to execute them all before Amun’s temple at Ipet–Isut, much as his father had slain Durusha after the fall of Kadesh. Amenhotep planned to hang the bodies of six of them on the temple walls until they rotted. He was going to sail south into Nubia a week from now, all the way to Napata at the Fourth Cataract, and hang the seventh corpse there on the city wall as a warning to head off any rebellion from that direction.
“There’s Waset!” Nefer suddenly cried.
I smiled. After six decades, we still played our childhood game whenever we traveled. I studied her in the dying light. Nefer was still a beautiful woman, slim, face slightly lined, hair gray, eyes still dark and penetrating and missing nothing. Her shoulders were bowed just the slightest bit. I regarded Aachel’s granddaughters at our feet, their skin smooth, cheeks rosy, lips full and soft, long hair blown about in the breeze, legs long and bodies supple, constantly whispering to each other
and laughing about whatever caught their fancy. I remembered a time when Nefer and I had been just like them.
The first scattered mud–brick houses of the city appeared on the east bank, then the shrine of Ipet–resyt and the bulk of the city to its south and east. I picked out the sphinxes that lined the processional way to Ipet–Isut, their heads poking above the strips of garden. Sailors scrambled about our deck, some lowering our sail, others taking seats on the benches along each side of the boat and lowering oars into the water for the final short distance to our destination. The oarsmen began to ply them rhythmically and we moved steadily past town. We and the large fleet behind us had attracted attention, and suddenly townspeople were racing to the bank and cheering for the king. Waset’s quay was crowded with boats. I recognized some from Wawat, others from Setjet and Retenu, one from Keftiuh.
Amenhotep rose from his throne and moved to the side of the boat and acknowledged the crowd. They cheered even louder. He was unmistakable, towering over everyone on board; he stood over six feet tall, was powerfully built, and looked every inch the warrior–king that he was. When, a few minutes later, we reached the quay at the per’aa, it was lit with a phalanx of torches. Men lined its edges, waiting for the crew to toss ropes ashore with which to secure the boat. The rest of the quay was crowded with Amenhotep’s family and advisors. I saw his young wife Tiaa wearing her vulture crown, several of his concubines, his older sister Meryetamun. He’d named her God’s Wife. Beside them were Amenhotep’s childhood friends, holding the key positions in his court as I’d always expected they would – Vizier Amenemopet, High Steward Kenamun, Chancellor Sennefer, and Mutnofret, overseer of Ipet–Isut.
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