As I’d suspected. Tiye had been the impetus for Pentawere’s marriage, not Pharaoh. Pentawere’s anger at his father for that at least was misplaced. “I know what I am, Majesty. Pentawere has a wife now. I promise you – I’ll never see him again. I won’t put Naqi’a into the position my husband put me in.”
“Would you like to know why I wouldn’t let Pentawere marry you, despite his desperate pleas?” Ramesses asked, his eyes probing mine.
“I’m a gardener, Majesty. The royal bloodline needs to remain pure. Ramesses said that’s why you married him to his sister.”
Pharaoh shook his head. “No, Neset. I understand why Pentawere loves you. Who wouldn’t? You’re an extraordinary woman, smart, engaging.”
I blushed more deeply.
“Every man’s eyes follow when you pass. There’s something compelling about you. And I can see why you’d desire my son.” Pharaoh leaned forward, earnest. “But Pentawere’s not good enough for you, Neset. Eventually he’d tire of you, find someone younger, more beautiful – not now, of course, but years from now – and he’d break your heart. I love my son, but he lives in a dream world – he refuses to face facts. He’s essentially weak – his mother manipulates him. If he can’t stand up to her… No, you’d have been a good match for Ramesses. He’s the strong one, if less flamboyant. But he’s far too old for you. And I wouldn’t have my daughter, his wife, compete with you for his affection.” Pharaoh leaned back in his chair. “Forget Pentawere, Neset. Move on with your life.”
You’re wrong about Pentawere, I thought loyally. He’d never tire of me. He loves me truly. And maybe he can’t stand up to his mother – but I’m strong enough to protect him from her and her ridiculous ambitions for him. He’d be a different man – a better man – with me at his side. But how could I say that to Pharaoh? “I have moved on, Majesty,” I said instead. “But I’ll never stop loving him.”
“I can arrange a good marriage for you, if you’d like, Neset. A mayor, a governor, an army commander, another overseer… Ramesses believes his chariot driver, Kairy, would make a good match.”
Not Pharaoh too! Why did men always think a woman needed to be married to be happy? And why was everyone so eager to pair me with Kairy? “Majesty, I’d prefer to keep serving you as overseer of your gardens, just as I am. I’d rather not be burdened with a husband.”
“Because your first marriage turned out badly?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“As you wish, Neset.” He stood. “And now, its time for me to retire.”
I stood as well and bowed low.
Pharaoh took hold of my hand and raised me up. “I’m very pleased with you, Neset. The garden you conceived and created to adorn Thutmose’s temple is spectacular. As a reward, I’m granting you an estate a mile south of Djeme on the west bank, adjoining that of Pere, overseer of my treasury, with a fine house and extensive fields and many servants and a vineyard. We galloped past it today. You’ll always have an independent income and be able to live as you please. I’ll give the order to Vizier Neferronpet in the morning. Ramesses will honor it when he’s pharaoh.”
I humbly bowed my head, overcome by his generosity. “Thank you, Majesty. I don’t have words enough to express how truly grateful I am to you.”
“Just keep making my gardens beautiful,” he said. “And if you ever change your mind about a husband… let me know.”
***
“Is this really your estate, Neset?” Beketaten asked, wide–eyed.
“Pharaoh really gave it to you?” Nauny queried.
“A week ago. I wanted all of you to see it with me the first time. You’re my family now, girls. And you, Hay.”
Wabkhet had hold of her great–grandfather’s hand. He looked tired. As he should. He’d come from the rest house on the heights to my hut in Djeme earlier today at my request. He’d just walked with the four of us half an hour south of Djeme along the river. No matter. He wouldn’t be making the return trip if everything went as I planned.
The field of what was now my emmer was half–harvested. The section closest to the river was stubble, the rest waist high with grain. Men and women and children were moving through the field, the men swinging scythes, the women collecting stalks into bundles and binding them into sheaves, the children picking stray grains from the ground and placing them in baskets attached to their backs. From the number of workers, I assumed all farmers in the area harvested in common, that as soon as they finished my field they’d move on to Pere’s and then his neighbor’s. Their shadows were lengthening as the sun neared the crest of the western hills. I saw a hut that likely belonged to my farmers, a thin column of smoke curling into the air next to it. I’d visit in a few days and introduce myself.
We followed a narrow dirt path west that led from my quay along the palm–lined riverbank to my house, set far enough back atop a small rise to be safe from the inundation. The house was surrounded by a very large low mud–brick wall. I noticed a vineyard to its right. A man and girl were waiting by the gate.
“My Lady Neset?” the man asked, bowing.
“I am.”
“I’m Djedi, overseer of your estate. I was told to expect you.”
“These are my companions. Hay, former foreman of His Majesty’s work gangs in the Great Place, and his great–granddaughters – Beketaten, Wabkhet, and Nauny.”
“Very good, My Lady. This is my daughter, Nebettawy. She oversees your household.”
She dipped her head, shy, nervous. She appeared to be nine or ten.
“Your wife, Djedi?”
“Dead, My Lady.”
“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “How many servants do you oversee, Djedi?”
“There’s a gardener, a vintner, a herdsman – you have a dozen cattle. Their families. A farmer and his wife and children. A cook. A weaver. Three household servants. And us.”
An unexpectedly large number. Pharaoh had been extremely generous. I realized that for the first time since Sitmut had come to work in my house in Ta Set Maat I wasn’t going to have to cook and clean and bake and fetch water and wood and grind grain into flour and perform the dozens of other domestic tasks it took to run a home on top of my gardening responsibilities.
“As you can tell, it’s busy right now on your estate, with the harvest. In a week or so will come the threshing. Then the picking of grapes in the vineyard and wine–making. Then preparations for the inundation.”
“Can we go inside?” I asked.
“Of course, My Lady.”
We passed through the gate into an extensive dilapidated garden. Whoever Pharaoh had taken this estate from had neglected it. There were bare patches, and sections overgrown with weeds, and scum on the surface of the pond. I knew where I was going to direct my immediate attention.
A shaded veranda ran along the back of the mud–brick house, facing river and garden. Half a dozen leather–bottomed chairs and a few small wooden tables were arranged beneath a roof of reeds thickly laid atop a wooden frame. We followed Djedi through a door into the main room, a shaded courtyard lined on three sides with a multitude of variously sized rooms. Rich furnishings – stools, small tables, chests – were scattered about the courtyard, but every wall was bare.
“I’ll round up men from Ta Set Maat and in a few days every wall will be decorated,” Hay assured me. “A garden theme, I suppose?”
I laughed. “You know me so well.”
“They’re going to be jealous in Ta Set Maat when they learn about your estate,” Hay added. “Everyone was mortified when you showed up at the Isis Festival with Pharaoh’s son in tow. Most of them feared His Majesty would call the gods’ judgment down on them for how they’d treated you.”
“Do you know – they never thanked me for going to him to settle their strike,” I said. “They should be glad I’m not a vindictive person.”
“My father thought you’d ordered the three of us to serve you so you could get back at the village by treating us mean,” Wabkhet
offered.
“Silly of them, wasn’t it?” I asked, hugging her close. I thanked the gods every day that Hay had sent them to help me manage flowers. They’d become my sisters, almost my daughters.
“What about your father, Neset?” Hay asked.
“We spoke during the strike. He never apologized for how he’d treated me. He did try to protect me from Pagerger at one point. I give him credit for that.”
“I’d blame his shrew of a wife more than him,” Hay said. “She’s the one who’s going to be most upset by your success.”
Djedi showed us through the house – many storage rooms, servants’ rooms, workrooms. In one were several looms, in another rows of pots lined up, ready to be fired, in still another a dozen half–woven reed baskets. The storage rooms were crammed with meat and grain and vegetables and fruit and jars of beer and wine and linen and various supplies. The oven and kitchen were outside, so smoke wouldn’t affect the interior, close by an area crammed with platters and jars and earthenware containers. My bedroom contained an actual bed, my first – I’d slept my entire life on a pallet that I rolled up each morning to make space in whatever house or hut I lived in. One very large room had a number of pallets, likely where the previous owner’s children had slept.
I’d never dreamed of having so much. This estate, plus everything Pentawere had gifted me, made me truly wealthy.
All that was missing from my life now was the man I loved and could never have.
We ate on the veranda that evening, sitting on mats around a cluster of platters and bowls, cooled by a gentle breeze, watching stars wink into the sky and moonlight dance on the surface of the distant river, our meal illuminated by a few small lamps.
“It’s a very fine estate, Neset,” Hay observed, sipping at a cup of wine.
I sipped my own – made on my estate. “It is. And I want all of you to live here with me from now on. You too, Hay.”
“Do you mean it?” Beketaten asked excitedly.
“It would be too lonely living by myself, girls. You can share the large room. We can walk to Djeme together every morning to attend to our duties.”
All three of them rushed to me and embraced me.
“It’s a generous offer…” Hay began.
I interrupted, caught his eyes over the girls’ heads. “You can’t seriously tell me you’d rather sit in the hot sun halfway between Ta Set Maat and the Great Place every day instead of in my shaded garden, watching the river, waited on by my servants. You can make shabati here just as easily as there.”
“When you put it that way…” Hay smiled.
I settled back, satisfied. For the first time in a very long time I was truly home.
***
“Someone’s come, My Lady,” Nebattawy announced. “In a chariot!”
I was sitting at a table on my veranda, a cat asleep at my feet, working on a plan for completely redoing my garden once planting season arrived. Half a dozen sheets of papyrus were scattered about. So far I hadn’t come up with a layout I liked. I looked up. Someone was indeed passing through the gate at the end of the garden. Tiye! I froze. What was she doing here? Should I wait on the veranda and let her come to me? How would she react if I did? Was that disrespectful to a pharaoh’s wife? Would she think I was treating her like a supplicant? Or should I run to greet her, in which case I’d be reinforcing my subservient position? On my own estate. As if that mattered when a royal was concerned. I forced myself to be calm, to rise, to slowly walk towards her, a smile plastered on my face. I met her halfway to the house, beside an embarrassingly large patch of weeds, bowed low, looked up at her command.
“Majesty. You honor me with your visit.”
“We have much to discuss,” Tiye said brusquely. “Where can we be alone?”
Discuss? What had I done now? “On the veranda, Majesty.” I turned, led the way.
Why in the world had Tiye traveled from Djeme to see me? She could have sent for me or simply waylaid me as I went about my daily duties in the garden there. Had she just discovered that Pharaoh had given me this estate? Had she come to accuse me of the two of us using it as a secret rendezvous? Or hoping to catch us together? I’d seen the look on her face and the other wives’ the night I’d ridden into Djeme in Pharaoh’s chariot. How many times had she accused me of being his lover before that night? My appearance in his vehicle had doubtless reinforced that opinion. Was she going to take my estate away? Was she going to do something worse? Half a dozen armed bodyguards were standing just outside the gate next to her chariot, watching us. Who’d protect me from them? Djedi? Hay? They’d obey her command and stand aside and let her guards drag me away. I clutched my talisman, prayed to the falcon god for protection. If Tiye killed me the line of the talisman bearers would end. After so many millennia was my line about to fail at the hands of a jealous woman?
Or had she come for a different reason entirely? Did she have news about Pentawere? Had she come to gloat because he’d put a child into Naqi’a?
I offered her a seat on the veranda and Nebattawy poured her a cup of my wine.
“Leave us,” I said harshly. I immediately regretted my tone. I was stressed, beginning to sweat. I sat.
Tiye picked up a sheet of papyrus from the table, glanced at it. “What’s this?”
“Whoever lived here before made a mess of the garden. I’m redoing it.”
Tiye set it on the table, uninterested. “I’ve come to make peace, Neset,” she said abruptly.
For a moment I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. The one reason for her visit that hadn’t occurred to me. “Make peace with me, Majesty? I’m your subject. I accept however you treat me.”
“Nonetheless, I’ve treated you abominably, Neset. My excuse was I was looking out for Pentawere. I thought I was doing right by trying to keep you two away from each other. You’ll understand some day, if you ever become a mother.”
“I had three daughters, Majesty,” I said. “The first died after a few hours. I was twelve. The other two were stillborn. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about them.” I gazed up at the sky. Maybe they were there, or among the nighttime stars. “The day the villagers came for my husband they dug up my firstborn’s bones. They desecrated her.”
Tiye reached over and placed her hand on my forearm. “You do understand, then. At any rate, I’m sorry for treating you the way I did, Neset.”
“Thank you, Majesty.” I wondered what had prompted her sudden change of heart.
She leaned back in her chair. “I know about your dream, Neset. I know you believe Pharaoh’s life is in danger.”
Pentawere had told her. Was she about to warn me to stop filling his head with nonsense?
“I’ve been marshalling people I trust within the per’aa to keep an eye on the fourth Ramesses so I can protect my husband from my stepson.”
She believed me. What a relief. “You’re doing it because Penta... – His Majesty – can’t protect Pharaoh from so far away in Pi–Ramesses,” I guessed.
“Exactly. And you can call him ‘Pentawere,’ not ‘Majesty.’ I’ve come to understand how close the two of you were.”
“Thank you, Majesty.”
Tiye leaned close and lowered her voice. “Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Iset is in on the plot with Ramesses.”
“Pharaoh’s Great Wife?” I was stunned.
“Great Wife now, Neset. But Iset was second to Minefer for many years, until Minefer’s oldest sons died – all of them young – clearing the way for Iset’s son to be named heir and co–ruler.”
“I’ve never considered the possibility Ramesses would have an accomplice. His mother?”
“Maybe Iset’s behind the deaths of Minefer’s sons, Neset. Maybe Ramesses doesn’t even know what she’s done. Or maybe he’s solely to blame. Amenherkoshef was with Ramesses in the army. Easy enough for Ramesses to slip poison into a cup of wine. By all accounts, Amenherkoshef was still quite vigorous the weeks before he died. And he was young.”
“By the gods!” I exclaimed. If what Tiye was suggesting was true I’d been wrong to ever doubt the validity of my dream. I’d started questioning my belief that Ramesses was a threat to Pharaoh during our day at Ta Set Neferu. Why was I so gullible and such a poor judge of character where men were concerned? First Mesedptah, now Ramesses?
“I think it’s suspicious that Ramesses was born so far down in the line of succession but is now co–ruler. Don’t you, Neset?”
“Now that you point it out, Majesty, I do.” And if Ramesses had been involved in the deaths of his older brothers, patricide wouldn’t be that great a step.
Tiye took a long drink of her wine. “Pentawere claims your ancestors were chosen by the falcon god, Neset.” She reached over and lifted my talisman with her fingers. “He said some talisman bearers receive dreams from the god.”
“Yes, Majesty. That’s what my family stories claim.”
“Tell me about your dream, Neset. Every detail. Don’t leave anything out. I want your version, not Pentawere’s.”
“Majesty, I saw Ramesses standing before a Great Kenbet, his arms bound. I saw Ramesses judged guilty of murdering Pharaoh, your husband. I saw Ramesses sentenced to die. I saw Ramesses tied to a stake next to Djeme’s garden. I saw him burned alive.”
Tiye was silent for a long time. “Why did you tell my son about this dream and not my husband?”
A legitimate question. “Because Pentawere was with me the night the god sent it to me.”
“Oh?” A knowing look, as if I’d finally admitted to something I’d lied about before.
“Majesty, the night after my grandfather died I was crippled with grief. Pentawere came upon me in the per’aa and comforted me. He walked me to my hut. I couldn’t bear to be alone. He stayed. I fell asleep in his arms. Then I had my nightmare and woke up screaming. I told Pentawere everything. We talked it over. We agreed we couldn’t tell Pharaoh. Ramesses would surely deny it – and he hadn’t done anything yet. Both of us might have been exiled or executed for perjury. Then there’d be no one to protect Pharaoh. Pentawere and I agreed we should do whatever we could to guard Pharaoh without his knowing and wait for Ramesses to make his move.”
The Gardener and the Assassin Page 49
