“I never disappoint, Your Highness. I am a man of my word. As I know you shall be.”
When the heavy metal doors swung shut, Amunhotep stormed from his throne, startling the viziers. “This meeting is over!” The officials in the Audience Chamber hesitated. “Out!” he shouted, and the men scrambled to their feet. “Ay and Panahesi will stay behind.”
I stood up to go, too, but Nefertiti held her hand in the air for me to stay. The Audience Chamber cleared and I resumed my seat. Kiya, too, remained where she was. Below us, Amunhotep paced.
“This general cannot be trusted,” he determined. “He isn’t loyal to me.”
“You haven’t tested him yet,” my father said swiftly.
“He is loyal only to his men in the army!”
Panahesi nodded. “I agree, Your Highness,” and with this concurrence Amunhotep made up his mind.
“I will not send him to war. I will not send him north to fight the Hittites so he can come back with chariots full of weapons and gold that he can use to start a rebellion!”
“A wise decision,” Panahesi said at once.
“Panahesi, I am sending you to supervise the temples,” Amunhotep said. “You will go with Horemheb to see that nothing is stolen. Everything the army collects comes back to me. For the glory of Aten.” He turned to my father. “Ay, you shall deal with the foreign ambassadors. Whatever matters come before the throne of Horus will be handled by you. I trust you above all other men.” His black eyes held my father in their grip, and my father bowed respectfully.
“Of course, Your Highness.”
On our third night in Memphis, the dinner in the Great Hall was muted. Pharaoh was ill-tempered and suspicious of everyone. No one dared mention General Horemheb’s name, and the viziers whispered quietly among themselves.
“Have you seen the gardens yet?” my mother asked, reaching down and feeding a morsel of duck to one of the palace cats, making the servants envious. She was the only one who was merry at our table. She had been exploring the markets while Amunhotep was vowing to turn his back on the general as soon as Horemheb had raided the temples of Amun.
I shook my head. “No. I’ve been unpacking.” I sighed.
“Then we shall go after dinner,” she said cheerfully.
When the Great Hall cleared, we passed through the crowded courtyards and wandered into the quiet of the evening. From the topmost steps of the palace leading down into the gardens, I could see the windblown dunes of Memphis. The sand shifted in the waning light and dust billowed up in a shimmering haze. The sun was setting, but it was still warm, and that night the sky above was clear. I reached up and plucked a leaf from a tree. “Myrrh.” I tore the leaf apart and rubbed its juices on my fingers, then held them up for my mother to smell. She craned her neck back.
“Awful.”
“Not when you’re in pain.”
She looked at me in the fading light. “Perhaps you and I should have stayed in Akhmim,” she said suddenly. “You miss your gardens. You were always so talented with herbs.”
I glanced at her, wondering what would make her say such a thing now. “Ranofer was a good teacher,” I replied.
“Ranofer has married,” my mother said.
I looked up sharply. “Who?”
“A local girl. I’m sure she’s not as beautiful as Nefertiti, but she will be loyal and love him.”
“Do you think Nefertiti loved him?” I asked.
We watched as the sky deepened to violet. My mother sighed. “There are many different kinds of love, Mutnodjmet. The kind you have for your parents, the kind you have for children, the kind that’s really lust.”
“You think Nefertiti was in lust?”
My mother laughed. “No, she has too much self-control for lust. It’s men who are in lust with her. But I think she loved Ranofer in her own way. He was there, he was attractive, and he followed her.”
“Like Amunhotep.”
She gave a little smile. “Yes. But Ranofer always knew Nefertiti was meant for Pharaoh. She is the daughter of a princess.”
“And now he’s married.”
“Yes. I guess his heart has mended.”
We both smiled. I was happy for Ranofer. He had married a local girl. A good wife, probably, who would water his herbs and bring him dinner when he came home from visiting his patients in the village. I wondered if my future husband would know about herbs or care about tending a garden. We walked back to the palace under the stars. My mother came into