the most precious garments, the richest topaz, turquoise and gold.
Tey my mother adjusted the counterweight which held the great pectoral in balance across the slender shoulders and flicked an errant strand of hair into place.
'You are beautiful,' decided Great Royal Nurse Tey, and led Nefertiti to the door. She moved as she always did, with elegance and economy, like a dancer in the temple of Hathor, the Goddess of Love and Beauty, and the attendants, waiting outside until we should please to emerge, leapt to their feet. There were a hundred women in fine gauze and all of their jewellery. The scents of jasmine and myrrh were so strong as to be almost a stench. In homage to her beauty, the naked musicians carried Hathor's sistra before my sister on the way to her marriage with the Pharaoh Akhnamen may he live. We entered the corridor to the music of harps and drums and little bells.
That was the first time I saw him whose wisdom is famous throughout the whole world. Barbarian Kings sing his praises, and his own scribes and priests bow down to his sagacity: Pharaoh Amenhotep, Lord of the Upper and Lower Crowns.
He was old and fat and I was very disappointed.
We came in to the great hall of the Kings, our music about us, to stand before the two thrones. They were on a high dais with eleven steps. The thrones were of black wood, inlaid with lions and lotuses, and the king's enemies were on his footstool; defeated Nubians and Asiatics and Hittites. The carved figure of Amenhotep may he live was holding three of them at once by the hair.
Our sandals made a rustling on the inlaid marble floor, as though the papyrus remembered its reedy home. I was right behind my sister Nefertiti, a little stunned by the drumming and the music and half suffocated by perfumes.
Nefertiti was led toward the thrones by Father Ay, soon to be Divine Father. I had not seen him often during my life. He was wearing so many jewels that he glittered in the dawn light; a stocky man with dark skin, like mine and my mother's. He was scowling, as he usually was. He had shown no interest in me.
The women said that he had been very much in love with his concubine, who bore him one dazzling daughter before she died, and he visited my mother only occasionally. First wife has the position, concubine has the attention; that is what the women said. Perhaps that also was a maxim of Amenhotep may he live! for he had almost a hundred wives; though they said that he doted most on the red-headed woman, Tiye the Queen, who had been his first wife and still lay with him almost every night.
Nefertiti was approaching the throne. She sank down, graceful as a bird, while the music died away and there was silence. It extended for so long that I grew bored. We could not move until one of the Kings was pleased to speak to us.
I tried lining up my new sandals on the golden lotuses on the floor. They fitted perfectly, which pleased me. I peered around my mother, trying not to breathe heavily and risk stirring her delicate gauze draperies. If she felt me moving, she would glare me back into decorous behaviour.
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
