Egypt, who is wealthy in land and great in strength. It is like all of his other letters.” I shrugged. “It begins with flattery and ends with a threat.”
“And what about this?” someone else asked. The students gathered around me and I translated the words quickly for them. When I glanced at Iset, I saw that her first line wasn’t finished. “Do you need help?”
“Why would I need help?” She pushed aside her scroll. “You haven’t heard?”
“You’re about to become wife to Pharaoh Ramesses,” I said flatly.
Iset stood. “You think that because I wasn’t born a princess like you that I’ll spend my life weaving linen in the harem?”
She wasn’t speaking about the harem of Mi-Wer in the Fayyum, where Pharaoh’s least important wives are kept. She was speaking about the harem behind the edduba, where Seti housed the women of previous kings and those whom he himself had chosen. Iset’s grandmother had been one of Pharaoh Horemheb’s wives. I had heard that one day he saw her walking along the riverbank, collecting shells for her own husband’s funeral. She was already pregnant with her only child, but just as that had not stopped him from taking my mother, Horemheb wanted her as his bride. So Iset was not related to a Pharaoh at all, but to a long line of women who had lived, and fished, and made their work on the River Nile. “I may be an orphan of the harem,” she went on, “but I think everyone here would agree that being the niece of a heretic is much worse, whatever your fat nurse likes to pretend. And no one in this edduba likes you,” she revealed. “They smile at you because of Ramesses, and now that he’s gone they only go on smiling and laughing because you help them.”
“That’s a lie!” Asha stood up angrily. “No one here feels that way.”
I looked around, but none of the other students came to my defense, and a shamed heat crept into my cheeks.
Iset smirked. “You may think you’re great friends with Ramesses, hunting and swimming in the lake together, but he’s marrying me. And I’ve already consulted with the priests,” she said. “They’ve given me a charm for every possible event.”
Asha exclaimed, “Do you think Nefertari is going to try and give you the evil eye?”
The other students in the edduba laughed, and Iset drew herself up to her fullest height. “She can try! All of you can try,” she said viciously. “It won’t make any difference. I’m wasting my time in this edduba now.”
“You certainly are.” A shadow darkened the doorway, then Henuttawy appeared in her red robes of Isis. She glanced across the room at us, and a lion could not have looked at a mouse with any less interest. “Where is your tutor?” she demanded.
Iset moved quickly to the side of the High Priestess, and I noticed that she had begun to paint her eyes the same way that Henuttawy did, with long sweeps of kohl extending to her temples. “Gone to see the scribes,” she answered eagerly.
Henuttawy hesitated. She walked over to my reed mat and looked down. “Princess Nefertari. Still studying your hieroglyphs?”
“No. I’m studying my cuneiform.”
Asha laughed, and Henuttawy’s gaze flicked to him. But he was taller than the other boys, and there was an intelligence in his glare that unnerved her. She turned back to me. “I don’t know why you waste your time, especially when you’ll only become a priestess in a run-down temple like Hathor’s.”
“As always, it is charming to see you, my lady.” Our tutor had returned with a handful of scrolls. He laid them on a low table, as Henuttawy turned to face him.
“Ah, Paser. I was just telling Princess Nefertari to be diligent in her studies. Unfortunately, Iset does not have time for that anymore.”
“What a shame,” Paser replied, looking at Iset’s discarded papyrus. “Today, I believe she was going to progress to three lines of cuneiform.”
The students snickered, and Henuttawy hurried from the edduba with Iset in tow.
“There is no cause for laughing,” Paser said sharply, and the room fell silent. “We may all go back to our translations now. When you are finished, come to the front of the room and bring your papyrus. Then you may begin work on Emperor Muwatallis’s second letter.”
I tried to concentrate, but tears blurred my vision. I didn’t want anyone to see how much Iset’s words had hurt, so I kept my head low, even when Baki made