CHAPTER TWENTY

ON THE NORTHERN SEA

  IN THE GOLDEN mist of early morning, ten ships lay at anchor, clustered around the stone steps of the quay that abutted the palace. The largest was Amun’s Blessing, and fifty soldiers who were dressed as merchants heaved and rolled barrels filled with sand up its gangplank. The ship looked like its sisters, except that from the masts, the blue and gold pennants of royalty moved quietly in the breeze. A young boy had been found to dress as a princess and walk the deck. He stood with Asha, examining a jeweled knife that he had been given. When the fighting began, he would be secured in the ship’s cabin.

Senior members of the court stood on the quay, waiting for the ships to finally set sail so that they could return to the warmth of the palace and eat their morning meal. As the last barrel was loaded, Iset flung herself at Ramesses once more.

“She’s wasting time,” I said reproachfully.

But Woserit smiled. “Let the viziers see her making a fool of herself while you stand here, ready for battle.”

Iset wept on Ramesses’s shoulder, and kohl streaked down her cheeks in thick black lines. For the first time in all of the years I had known her, she looked neither alluring nor beautiful, and the stiffness of her walk told me she was suffering from yesterday’s birth. “What if something happens to Ramessu?” she cried. “How will you know?”

“I will see you in Avaris,” Ramesses promised gently. He pried Iset from his shoulder and glanced uneasily at Asha.

“But what if something happens to you?” Her voice rose, and Ramesses was about to smile kindly until she made the error of asking, “What would Ramessu’s place be in the palace?” At once, she saw she had made a mistake. “I . . . I mean how would Ramessu know his place without a father to guide him?”

But it was too late. Iset had given herself away, and Ramesses’s voice was cold when he replied, “Then it’s a good thing the gods watch over kings, and our son will never have to be raised fatherless.”

I strode ahead, meeting Ramesses at the edge of the quay, and in front of the viziers he asked, “Is the Warrior Queen of Egypt ready?”

I lifted my head with its heavy diadem. “Ready to show the Sherden pirates that Egypt will never suffer thieves to steal her riches.”

Long clouds trailed across the sky, and ibis birds called to one another in the growing light. It was a good day for sailing. We boarded Amun’s Blessing, and from the deck of the ship I saw Henuttawy whisper something into Iset’s ear. But whatever plan Henuttawy was hatching, Woserit and Paser would be there to stop it. I waved to Woserit until the fleet slipped from the lagoon on its journey to the sea, and all I could see were her turquoise robes and dark head leaning against Paser.

Ramesses stood at my side while Amun’s Blessing moved swiftly down the River Nile, its blue and gold pennants unfurling behind her like a woman’s hair. “Woserit has been in love with Paser for as long as I can remember,” he remarked. “Do you ever wonder why they haven’t married?”

I wrapped a cloak tighter against the mist, choosing my words carefully. “Probably because she’s afraid of angering Henuttawy.”

“Henuttawy can have any man,” Ramesses said dismissively. “Surely she wouldn’t object if Woserit marries first.”

“She would if Woserit is marrying the man that Henuttawy wants.”

Ramesses stared at me. “Paser?”

I nodded.

“How long have you known this?” he exclaimed.

“Woserit told me.” I walked with him into the ship’s royal cabin. A bed had been placed beneath painted images of Sekhmet slashing her enemies.

“What else did she tell you?”

I searched Ramesses’s face and determined to roll the knucklebones. “Woserit believes that Henuttawy wants Paser because he’s the one man who won’t have her.”

We took chairs that had been arranged around a Senet board. “I am wary of Henuttawy,” Ramesses confided. “She’s beautiful, but under that beauty is something dark. Don’t you think?”

I had to stop myself from telling him everything I knew about Henuttawy’s darkness, from reaching across the table and shaking him awake, imploring him to see what his aunt truly was. Instead I replied, “I would be very careful before trusting her advice.”

WE SAILED along the river for three days, stopping at night to cook on the shore and drink barrels of shedeh from Malkata’s winery. I was the only woman in the fleet, and if not for the boy who would play the role of princess when we reached the Northern Sea, I would have been the youngest as well. We sang and ate roasted duck in bowls from the palace, and the fat from the meat dripped off the soldiers’ fingers as they sat around the fires.

On the fourth night, Ramesses announced, “We have asked the locals and there is word that the Sherden were here a few nights ago. They have raided a ship bound for my father’s palace in Avaris.”

The men around the fires began to grumble their indignation.

“Tomorrow, we will send a scout,” Asha said. In the silvery light of the moon, he looked older than his nineteen years. When we were students in the edduba, he had broken the hearts of all the girls; I wondered now if he had met anyone yet, and whether he would marry. “The scout will go by land,” he went on, “and when the Sherden have been spotted, we will send out Amun’s Blessing and follow close behind. The fleet will wait at the bend in the river, and the scout will go out a second time. When he signals that the Sherden have approached our merchant ship, we will sail and attack!” Asha sprang to his feet for emphasis, and the cheers of the men rang out along the deserted stretch of riverbank.

Late that night, Ramesses stood behind me in our cabin and caressed my shoulders. We breathed together in the darkness, naked except for my long kilt. He removed the linen slowly, letting it fall in a pool at my feet. I shivered from his touch and he took me in his arms, carrying me to the ebony bed. He pressed his body against mine, inhaling the oil of jasmine from my skin. Over the sound of the ship groaning against its moorings, there was no one who could hear us, and when we finally fell asleep, it was in each other’s arms.

A SHRIEK pierced the morning’s stillness. Ramesses and I sat up in our bed, shaken from deepest sleep. I couldn’t tell what it was. A child, an animal?

When it sounded again, we rushed to find our sheaths, and on the shore we saw the boy, who was dressed in a woman’s wig and heavy bangles, weeping into his hands. A large soldier was shaking him by the shoulders.

“Leave him!” I cried, and the boy gaped up at me as if I had saved him from a tutor’s merciless beating. When I reached the shore, he ran and clung to my leg, refusing to let go.

“He won’t do it, Your Majesty!” the soldier shouted. “He is too afraid. We promised his father, the Stable Master, seven gold deben for his son to walk the decks, and he swore to us that his child was no coward!”

The boy began to cry loudly again, pathetic wails, and I pressed my hand softly to his cheek. “Shh, nothing terrible will happen to you.”

“But what of us, Your Majesty!” the soldier protested. “What will we do with the Sherden so close? A young girl may not have any breasts, but if we use a man, how will we explain . . .”

“Maybe a soldier can wear the disguise,” I suggested, “and he can stand with his back to the ship’s railing?”

The man snorted. “And if the spies glimpse the muscles in his shoulders? We need someone who can pass for a woman. We need a princess’s dowry ship that will lure them out!” He turned in supplication to Ramesses. “Please, tell me. What shall we do, Your Highness?”

I wondered if fatherhood had changed Ramesses, for instead of growing impatient with the child, he was watching him with pity. When the boy began to whimper again, I pried him from my kilt and said firmly, “I should go.”

Ramesses looked at me, and concern was etched upon his face. “You understand this is dangerous, Nefer. You would need to carry a weapon.”

“I can strap a knife to my thigh.”

The soldier fumbled for his words. “But . . . but you’re a woman!” he exclaimed. “You’re a princess. Your life would be at risk—”

“And what is our alternative?” I demanded. “To waste days and let these Sherden slip away?”

His cheeks flared like a cobra’s. “For this child to put on a wig and do as he’s told! You realize, boy, that your father will be expecting his gold deben?” The little boy looked up with wide, frightened eyes and began to tremble. “He will be angry when you return without it!”

“Then I will give him the deben,” I said. “And walk the decks instead. Then, when the Sherden arrive, I will lock myself in the cabin just as he was going to.”

The soldier looked at Ramesses. “Your Highness, this is your wife!”

“And that’s why I trust her to act responsibly. We shall keep her close.”

The soldier stared at us, shocked beyond words, as we returned to the ship. Then the scout who had left in the night appeared with news. The Sherden had been spotted only a short distance away, in the channels and passages leading to the Northern Sea. Immediately, Amun’s Blessing weighed anchor, and I sat in the cabin watching the soldiers in their merchants’ clothes, laughing at one another and relishing their new roles.

“I want you to use the crossbar when we arrive.” Ramesses indicated the lock on the cabin’s door and added, “I’ll post soldiers outside and two within. No matter what happens, Nefer, whatever you think you hear outside, you’re not to come out.”

“We don’t even know that we will find them today—”

“We don’t have to worry about finding them,” he said darkly.

“Their spies along the shore will find us once we dock in Tamiat and unload the barrels.”

“How do you think they will send word to their ships?”

“Polished bronze mirrors . . . light signals,” he guessed, and stood. “As I said before—do not come out of this cabin. Not even if you think I’ve been wounded. This isn’t a game. These are men who haven’t seen a woman in a very long time. They live on the water and eat what they catch. A glimpse of you and they will be beating down this door.”

Listening to the seriousness in his voice, I felt real fear. “But if you’re wounded, you will take shelter in this cabin. You won’t fight if you’re wounded.”

“I will fight until the Sherden have been defeated!” he swore, and I was afraid of where his rashness might lead. He cupped my chin in his hand. “You are the bravest woman I have ever known. But if something were to happen to you—”

“It won’t. I won’t open the door. I’ll lock myself in, and the guards will protect me.”

For the rest of the morning, we prepared. Ramesses watched me dress first, telling me which wig he preferred, and which bangles—though I had brought them for the boy—would catch the light best. I took extra care in applying my paint, making the lines both dark and bold so that even from far away it was clear that my lips had been reddened. When I was finished, only my throat remained bare, and as Ramesses fastened my golden pectoral, I could feel his breath warm and fast on my neck. I turned, and though I wanted to run my hands over his chest, I slowly fastened his leather armor. He had strapped a hidden dagger to his thigh, and when he knelt to do the same for me, I realized, “Your hair. Merchants wear their hair in single braids, not loops.”

Though we hadn’t washed properly in several days, his hair still smelled of lavender from the baths of Malkata, and when I stepped back to look at him, I sighed. “I wonder if there has ever been a Pharaoh who has looked this beautiful before battle?”

Ramesses laughed. “I’ll need a steady arm far more than beauty before these days are over.”

AT MIDDAY, we emerged from the soil-laden channels of the Nile, and an endless expanse of blue stretched before us. The Northern Sea.

Our ship arrived at the port of Tamiat that afternoon, and Ramesses took my hand. “We’re here. The soldiers will start unloading the barrels on the quay.” He smiled at me, but I could see apprehension in his eyes. “Are you ready?”

I checked my image in the polished brass. My breasts were still heavy from childbirth, and my Nubian wig fell across my shoulders in small, perfect braids. My earrings were turquoise, and even my sandals were encrusted with precious stones. There was no one who would mistake me for a commoner, and certainly not for a man.

I followed Ramesses onto the deck, and Asha teased him. “That kilt becomes you, Ramesses!” It was threadbare and worn, taken from a merchant outside Malkata, and he looked like he belonged washing the decks. Only his sandals, which were thick heeled and well made, gave him away.

“Laugh,” Ramesses rejoined, “but I’m not the one who smells of fish.”

Asha smelled himself; the cloak he was wearing was repugnant, and I wondered who he had taken it from. Then both men turned to me, and Ramesses asked, “You know what to do?”

I nodded. Seven soldiers disguised as merchants had tethered us to the quay and began unloading the sand-filled barrels. I stood on the prow, letting the pale sunlight reflect from my jewels, and inhaled the scent of sea air and brine. The ocean was nothing like the waters of the Nile. Frothy waves spilled onto the beach, surging shoreward, then back again as though they’d been caught in a fisherman’s net and hauled out to sea.

Then a pair of tall ships appeared to windward, and the men working around me grew tense. I looked at Ramesses, who was waiting on the prow with a polished mirror, and from the stern a soldier cried eagerly, “It’s the Sherden! I can see it from their pennants, Your Highness!”

Ramesses held the polished mirror above his head, and the three scouts who waited in the distance to give word to the other ships disappeared.

Asha turned to me. “Get yourself into the cabin. Lock the door!”

When Ramesses rushed to my side, I made him promise, “Don’t worry about me. Just remind the Sherden that Egypt will never tolerate thieves!”

I locked the door of my cabin and sat on my bed. Though guards stood on either side of the Senet board, armed with swords and javelins, the taste of fear was bitter in my mouth. I couldn’t stop my hands from giving me away. I tucked them beneath my legs to keep them from shaking. After all, servants weren’t the only ones who gossiped.

There was the thump of another vessel pulling up to the quay, then shouting as strangers began to board our ship. A scuffle resounded outside my door, then it seemed as if Anubis himself had been unleashed on the deck of Amun’s Blessing. Men shouted in foreign voices, and I imagined the moment that Ramesses’s soldiers must have torn off their cloaks and revealed their weapons. I heard the clash of metal on metal, and when a heavy object crashed against the door I cried out. But neither of my two guards moved. The gray-haired one said calmly to me, “They won’t come in.”

My voice came out in a gasp. “How do you know?”

“Because this was once a treasury ship,” the soldier replied. “There isn’t a door in the navy that’s stronger than this one.”

The shouting grew louder and more intense. Then a voice cried exultantly, “The ships have arrived!” I heard the panic of the Sherden as they realized that their own two ships had been surrounded, but even then the fighting continued.

The sun was still high when Ramesses called to me, his voice filled with triumph. I flung open the cabin door, and he spun me in his arms.

“More than a hundred Sherden are our prisoners,” he declared. “There will be no more pirates haunting the quays of Tamiat. No more Sherden pillaging from Egypt or Crete or Mycenae. Come!”

He led me from the cabin onto the prow, and I became aware of the blood on his kilt as the soldiers cheered, holding up their swords in honor of our victory. “To Ramesses the Great and his Warrior Queen,” one man shouted and hundreds joined in the chant. The words echoed over the waters and from the encircling warships, where the Sherden were being bound in chains. Ramesses led me to the quay, where chests filled with precious metals and ivory gleamed in the sun. In a happy reversal, our soldiers were unloading the Sherden ships, it appeared that the stolen treasures were endless: turquoise amulets and silver bowls from ships that had once been bound for Crete. There was red leather armor and alabaster jars engraved with strange scenes of a horse from a battle at Troy. Next emerged a golden litter adorned with carnelian and blue glass beads.

Ramesses put his arm around my waist. “The soldiers are all talking about you. It was incredibly brave . . .”

I waved away his compliment. “What? To walk the deck of a ship?”

“So many captives!” Asha interrupted. “We’ve had to place them on two separate ships. What do you want to do with them?” he asked. “They’re shouting for something, but I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

I separated myself from Ramesses. “What language do they speak?”

“Something I’ve never heard,” Asha admitted. “But one man was speaking Hittite.”

“They probably all speak some Hittite,” I guessed. “They may have learned it in Troy, along with Greek. What do you want me to tell them?”

“That they are prisoners of Egypt,” Ramesses said, then repeated what I had told him. “And that Egypt will never tolerate thieves.”

I smiled.

“And will you show yourself to them?” Asha asked.

It was a risk. Ramesses wouldn’t want the Sherden to think they were so important that the Pharaoh of Egypt himself had come to dispose of them. But if Ramesses appeared in his nemes crown with his crook and flail, they would be reminded of whom they had dared to anger, and that none could cross Pharaoh and remain unpunished.

Ramesses looked around the quay with its piles of looted treasure, and I saw his cheeks redden. “Yes, I will come.”

A soldier ran to fetch Ramesses’s crown, and Asha, forever cautious, said to me, “These men are pirates. Be careful. They are vicious, and if one of them should break loose—”

“Then I will have you and Ramesses there to protect me.”

We boarded the first ship where the captives were being held, and almost at once I was overwhelmed by the stench. Blood and urine soaked the decks, and I put the sleeve of my cloak to my nose. I prepared myself for the sight of men in chains, bleeding and angry. But the wounded had been taken to a separate ship, and the fifty men who sat blinking into the sun were unbowed. They didn’t wear beards on their chins like the Hittites, and their long yellow hair was a sight to behold. I paused to stare at them, and when they recognized Ramesses’s crown, they shook their chains and shouted. I commanded in Hittite, “Calm yourselves!”

Many of the men passed looks between one another. Some leered so that I would know what they were thinking, but I refused to be unsettled. “I am Princess Nefertari,” I addressed them, “daughter of Queen Mutnodjmet and wife of Pharaoh Ramesses. You have looted Pharaoh’s ships, taken Pharaoh’s goods, and murdered Pharaoh’s soldiers. You will now repay your debt to Pharaoh by serving in his army.” The men raised their voices, and next to me, Ramesses and Asha tensed. I saw Ramesses reach for the hilt of his sword, and I shouted over the outburst, “You may serve in Pharaoh’s army where you will be given training, outfitted with clothes, perhaps earn a command as an officer. Or you may rebel, and be sent to a certain grave toiling in Pharaoh’s quarries.”

There was a sudden silence, as the men realized that they were not to be put to death but trained and fed.

Ramesses looked at me. “You know that their leaders will have to be executed.”

I nodded solemnly. “But the rest of them—”

“May serve a better purpose.”