The Lords were looking not at my sister but each other. One was Akhnamen may he live; a young man, heavily decorated and painted, wearing a long wig and the crown of the Upper and Lower Lands. The cobra which was wrapped around the crowns, the uraeus, was of bright cloisonné and so real that I thought I could hear it hiss. The younger King was thick of body, with a strange face; high cheekbones, slanting eyes, a long jaw and soft red lips.
The other King was fat and old. This was the Lord Amenhotep of legendary wisdom. His belly overflowed his beautiful embroidered cloth, and his solid chest bore many jewels; he had thick wrists and stubby fingers overloaded with rings. I was not pleased with him at all until I lifted my gaze to his face and he caught my eyes.
Brown eyes, most deep and considering brown eyes, terribly clever but terribly forgiving. He knew, I felt, as the Divine mouth lifted a little at one corner in a conspiratorial grin, exactly how boring it was to be an overdressed nine-year-old girl, forced to stand in a palace procession and not be able to see anything. He knew why I was peeping around my mother to see what happened to my sister. He even knew, I was sure, how very much I loved her. I smiled back at him with all my heart. Then he shifted his gaze so that my mother would not catch me looking at the Lord of the Two Lands, and returned his attention to his son.
I could not hear what they were saying. My mother was so tense that I felt her quiver like a leashed hunting dog. Was this all for nothing? Were we to take my sister home again? I hoped desperately that this would happen. But finally the strange young man stirred, stood up, and came down the eleven steps to take my sister's hands and raise her to her feet.
Then the music broke out again, loud and exultant, drums and women's voices. Nefertiti mounted the steps. Akhnamen may he live presented her to his father Amenhotep, who kissed her on each cheek. Taking one hand each, they presented her to the gathering and we all cheered.
The gates had been opened. Outside were the people of Thebes, all craning to catch a glimpse of the most beautiful woman in the world. When they saw her a gasp and a murmur ran through the mob. Then they began to yell 'Nefertiti Divine Spouse who lives! Health! Strength! Life to the great Royal Wife!'
As the Kings and my sister walked along the colonnade which led to the temple of Amen-Re where she was to be crowned Queen, flowers rained down from people who lined the walls, so that the golden stone was carpeted with perfumed petals, and the voices followed us, 'Blessings on the Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti daughter of Divine Father Ay, blessings on Divine Nurse Tey, life to Akhnamen, may he live!'
We left more and more people behind as we moved into the precincts of the temple.
The central mystery, of course, is only for the King and the High Priest of Amen. No one but priests see the God, when they tend him every day. The women stopped as though at an invisible barrier but the Kings walked on, Nefertiti between them, and I followed because no one stopped me, at the heels of Tey my mother and Ay my father.
Inside the temple, in the hypostyle hall like a huge forest of carved petrified trees, four thrones were set up beside a statue of Amen-Re as the Hawk Re Harakti. There were priests waiting. One held a crown. I saw that the Lord Amenhotep was talking to my sister, smiling at her, and she was smiling in return, shy in such state and such company. Then he bade her kneel, and the priest, a tall man with a priest's shaven skull, raised the crown and lowered it onto my sister's head.
It was heavy. I saw her shoulder and neck muscles tense to take the weight. With both hands in those of the Lord Amenhotep, she rose again, and was led to sit down on the throne between the King Amenhotep and her new husband, who had hardly looked at her. I was indignant. Didn't he understand that he had been given the most beautiful of all women as his own?
The air was heavy with the frankincense which came from far-away Punt. It smoked in little dishes on the floor. I felt sick.
Before I could disgrace myself by really being sick in the temple, for which I would probably have been condemned to have my heart eaten after death, I was distracted by the arrival of the Queen, who walked alone up the steps and sat down beside her lord, Amenhotep.
Queen Tiye was plump and smooth, draped in cloth of astounding quality. She wore the Crown of the Upper and Lower Lands, and her skin was as white as milk and her face rounded and smooth. I knew that her hair was red, thought to be unlucky, the colour of Set the Adversary and of Desaret, the Red Waste outside Khemet the Black Land. I knew that there had been trouble with the priests when the Lord Amenhotep had married the foreign woman, although he was Pharaoh and could presumably marry as he pleased, and there were no royal children left from his father's reign. But I also knew that she had borne sons and daughters to the King and he doted on her. I saw the great crown tilt as Queen Tiye smiled at Nefertiti, and my sister sighed with relief.
Then the priests censed everyone, declared a blessing in language so hieratic that I could not understand it, and we were released to go back to the palace at Thebes and feast.
It was a good feast, and I was sick, after all.
Ptah-hotep
When Pharaoh declares his wish, it is as good as done; and so it was with me. I slept one more night with the trainee scribes in the dormitory. My destiny had been declared. I would now not be a priest. I had no great leaning towards such a life, anyway. I had just wanted to be a skilful scribe, if I had to be a scribe, not a priest.
But I was distracted with grief at leaving my heart's brother. The Master of Scribes, for some reason, relaxed his usual rule and allowed us to sleep my last night together. In fact the Master seemed strangely sorry for me, considering the fact that everyone else was congratulating me on my amazingly good fortune. He sent me bread and roasted goose and fruit from his own table, and the servant who brought it had been ordered to stay and serve Kheperren and myself as though we were grown and masters in our own house.
We sat in my little room, one on either side of a borrowed table, dressed in our best clothes, and the servant poured wine for us whenever our cups were empty. And because I was a boy and my heart had already been broken when Pharaoh touched my shoulders with the flail, I began to enjoy myself. The food was good, and we ate heartily and drank deep, and drunkenly embraced. Then we slept in each other's arms all night, and I woke to the dawn twittering of the swallows who nest in the temple of Amen-Re and saw my brother, my spouse, asleep with his head pillowed on his arm. By the cool light he was to me entirely beautiful and unexpressively dear. The light embraced the curve of his olive cheek and the fringe of his sooty eyelashes. Kheperren's other hand had been curled on my chest as I slept beside him.
I stood silently in the doorway, my bundle of possessions in my hand - a few spare cloths, a childhood amulet given to me by my father, the usual belongings. My palette and the gear of my trade had already gone to the palace. I did not want to wake Kheperren. I feared I would not survive a farewell.
So I dipped my finger in lamp-black and wrote 'I will always love you' on the wall near his face, where he would see it when his eyes opened, and went away.
I washed in the sacred lake, put on my best cloth, painted my eyes with kohl to protect them from the glare, and went with the servant who had come from the Lord of the Upper and Lower Lands to take me to the palace.
And despite my best resolutions, I wept all the way.
I was met by a Chamberlain, who exclaimed, 'So young! Amen-Re have compassion on us, boy, you cannot appear before Pharaoh like that. Come in here.' He ushered me into an anteroom where a young woman was bandaging a slave's foot. She did it very neatly, I noticed in my dreary grief. She dismissed the slave with a pat on the toe and an injunction to rest for at least a week, and then turned her attention to me; as the Master of Slaves scolded her patient for being stupid enough to put his foot under a falling bench. 'And you the King's favourite cup bearer, what am I going to tell him?'
'This is the King Akhnamen's new scribe,' said