to have a son. He’s waiting for the people to accept me as his wife before declaring a queen.
But even though I was happy, I grew afraid for Ramesses’s health. In the middle of the night he would crawl from my bed, searching through sketches his architects had submitted, hoping to find something that looked promising. He’d hunch over the low flames of the brazier and wouldn’t move until the sun rose in the sky and his eyes looked as red as the High Priest of Amun’s.
When Penre had been gone for a month, I wrapped my arms around Ramesses’s shoulders and whispered, “Let yourself rest. Without sleep, how can your thoughts be clear?”
“There’s only a month before it will be too late to plant. Why didn’t my father search for a solution? Or his father? Or Pharaoh Horemheb?”
I ran a soothing hand through Ramesses’s hair. “Because the Nile never ran so low.”
“But my father knew!”
“How could he have predicted that the Nile wouldn’t overflow for four years? He was busy planning war in Nubia and Kadesh.”
Ramesses shook his head in frustration. “If there was more time we could have sent emissaries to Assyria. We could have asked the farmers—”
I took his hand. “Come to bed. Stop for tonight.”
Ramesses let himself be led away, but in bed, I knew he wasn’t sleeping. He tossed beneath the linens, and I closed my eyes, willing him to be still. Then I heard three soft knocks outside our chamber. Ramesses looked across at me, and in the warm glow of the brazier, I saw his eyes widen. He rushed to the door, and Penre, the architect who had traveled to Amarna to find and unseal the tomb of Meryra, was standing with sheaves of papyrus in his hand. Behind him, Asha was dressed in a traveling cloak, his long braid arranged in a neat loop at the back of his neck. I scrambled from the bed and put on a robe to cover the thin linen sheath I was wearing.
“Asha! Penre!” Ramesses cried.
Asha stepped inside to embrace Ramesses like a brother. Penre bowed deeply at the waist. I took Asha’s arm and led him to the brazier. “It’s good to have you home,” I said truthfully. “Ramesses hasn’t slept for weeks.”
Asha laughed. “Neither have we,” and I noticed the dark circles under his eyes.
“Your Highness, our ship arrived in Gebtu this evening. We took a chariot the rest of the way, knowing that what we found couldn’t wait.”
“Everything. Tell me everything!” Ramesses exclaimed. Without his nemes crown, his hair fell over his shoulders like brilliant sheets of copper. He guided Penre and Asha to carved wooden chairs, then leaned forward to hear what his father’s architect would say.
“It was just as I remembered,” Penre revealed. “The very spot.”
Ramesses glanced at Asha. “And only you went with him?”
“Of course,” Asha replied. “No one else knows.”
I looked into Penre’s hard gray eyes and knew he would be as trustworthy as Asha. Whether the design he brought back failed or succeeded, no one would ever learn that it came from the Heretic’s city and had once been used by a High Priest of Aten. I wondered what my aunt’s capital looked like now. Though her name had been chiseled from the walls of Amarna when Horemheb became Pharaoh, perhaps images of her had remained beneath the earth.
“The tomb was in the northern hills,” Penre began. “We placed an offering of incense at the door, and inside, this is what we found.” He held out an image drawn on a papyrus. The drawing looked like the wooden toy that children play on, with a post in the middle and seats at each end. But instead of seats, the long end had a clay bucket, and the other a heavy stone.
“It’s so simple . . . with a fulcrum in the middle.” Ramesses passed the drawing to me, then looked at Penre in shock. “Do you think it can work?”
“Yes. With a large reed basket sealed with bitumen, it could do the work of hundreds of men. In fact . . . with a heavy enough stone, it might be able to lift five thousand des a day.”
Ramesses inhaled sharply. “Are you certain?”
“I’ve been making the calculations.” He shuffled the other sheaves of papyrus and gave one to Ramesses. I didn’t understand what was written, but both Ramesses and Asha were nodding in agreement.
“It’s unlike anything else in Egypt,” Asha promised. “In the tomb . . . dozens