out the cream Merit had gone to the farthest market in Thebes to purchase. I rubbed it over my arms, then down my legs.
There was a knock at the door. Merit’s chin wobbled furiously. “Hurry!”
I rushed to prop myself up against the pillows, allowing my hair to spill onto the white linen, and when Merit opened the door I held my breath just in case it was a dream.
But she bowed very low. “Your Highness.”
“Nurse Merit,” Ramesses said in greeting.
“The princess Nefertari is waiting for you.” She gestured toward me on the bed, and when she reached the door to her chamber, said loudly. “Good night, my lady.”
When the door swung shut, Ramesses looked at me, and both of us laughed. “She’ll be waiting on the other side of the door all night,” I whispered.
“As a good nurse should,” he teased. “In case you should scream and want to run away.” He approached the bed, and I slipped the nemes crown from his brow, running my fingers through his hair. “As you did once before,” Ramesses said quietly.
The pain in his eyes wrenched at my heart. “But now I am here,” I promised, and let the sheath I was wearing fall from one of my shoulders. “Here with you for eternity.”
“And this time I won’t let you run away.”
WHEN RAMESSES and I emerged from his chamber the next morning, we walked together to the lakeside, and the cheers from the courtiers who were waiting for our arrival must have reached the ears of the gods themselves. Ramesses took my hand in his, and the viziers of Seti’s court surrounded us, talking and smiling as though they had supported my marriage all along. Although Iset had claimed an indisposition and remained inside Malkata, the rest of the court was in attendance. Even Queen Tuya spared a smile for me. Her iwiw bared his fangs, and a low growl rumbled in his skinny throat.
“Hello, Adjo,” I said cheerfully.
I smiled at the thought that I might never have to see him again. Tonight, there would be a feast of both celebration and farewell, and tomorrow Pharaoh Seti would sail with his half of the royal court to the palace in Avaris. Ramesses had been fully trained in the Audience Chamber; now he would rule Upper Egypt on his own. His father, in his advancing age, would reign in the capital of Lower Egypt, where less would be required of him. This move had been planned for many years, yet even though Ramesses had always known it was coming, I saw his lips turn down in sorrow when he gazed across the lake. The eastern horizon was obscured by his father’s towering ships. They floated like pregnant herons on the water, their decks filled with some of the most valuable treasures in Thebes: ebony statues and granite tables, rare sedan chairs with wide lion’s-paw feet. While some kings were content to remain in the same city as their coregents, governing from the very same Audience Chamber, Pharaoh Seti now wanted a simpler life. Once he reached Avaris, there would not be so many petitioners, and in his summer palace closer to the sea, there would never be the kind of heat that sucked the life from the air as it did nearly every month in Thebes.
The court had assembled itself on the quay, while a small golden vessel was rowed to the shore. It would fit only three people: myself, Merit, and a ferryman. Once Pharaoh Seti gave his permission, we would be rowed the short distance to the Temple of Karnak. Behind us, Ramesses would sail in his own golden bark, accompanied by his parents and rowed by a single soldier from Pharaoh’s army: Asha. Behind them the court would follow in a flotilla of brightly painted boats. When I asked Merit once why a Pharaoh’s marriage begins on the water instead of the land, she told me that it was because Egypt had been born from the Watery Waste of Nun, and if such a fertile land could be birthed from the water, a fertile marriage would as well.
I stood on the quayside, separated from Ramesses by hundreds of courtiers in their whitest linens and finest gold, waiting for Pharaoh Seti to give his blessing. When the piercing sounds of several trumpets blared, Pharaoh Seti said something I couldn’t hear. But he must have given his blessing to set sail, for Merit took my arm and led me to the boat, helping