The Heretic Queen Read Online Free PDF

sword I had returned to Ramesses.
    "For war," Ramesses explained. "Would you like to watch? I'm going to show Asha and Nefer how it cuts."
    Iset frowned prettily. "But the cupbearer has already poured your father's wine."
    Ramesses hesitated. He breathed in her perfume, and I could see how he was affected by her closeness. Her sheath was tight over her curves and exposed her beautifully hennaed breasts. Then I noticed the gold and carnelian necklace at her throat. She was wearing Queen Tuya's jewels. The queen, who had watched me play with Ramesses since we were children, had given her favorite necklace to Iset.
    Ramesses glanced across at Asha, and then at me.
    "Some other time," Asha said helpfully, and Iset took Ramesses's arm. We watched as they left the balcony together, and I turned to Asha.
    "Did you see what she was wearing?"
    "Queen Tuya's own jewels," he said with resignation.
    "But why would Ramesses choose a wife like Iset? So she's pretty. What does that matter when she doesn't speak Hittite or even write cuneiform?"
    "It matters because Pharaoh needs a wife," Asha said grimly. "You know, he might have chosen you--if not for your family."
    It was as though someone had crushed the air from my chest. I followed him into the Great Hall, and that evening, when the marriage was formally announced, I felt I was losing something I would never get back. Yet neither of Iset's parents were there to see her triumph. Her father was unknown, and this would have been a great scandal for Iset's mother had she lived through childbirth. So the herald announced her grandmother's name instead; for she had raised Iset and had once been a part of Pharaoh Horemheb's harem. She had been dead for a year, but this was the proper thing to do.
    When the feast was finally over, I returned to my chamber off the royal courtyard and sat quietly at my mother's ebony table. Merit wiped the kohl from my eyes and the red ochre from my lips, then she handed me a cone of incense and watched as I knelt before my mother's naos. Some naoi are large and granite, with an opening in the center to place a statue of a god and a ledge on which to burn incense. My naos, however, was small and wooden. It was a shrine my mother had owned as a girl, and perhaps even her mother before her. When I kneeled, it only came up to my chest, and inside the wooden doors was a statue of Mut, after whom my mother had been named. While the feline goddess regarded me with her cat eyes, I blinked away tears.
    "What would have happened if my mother had lived?" I asked Merit.
    My nurse sat on the corner of the bed. "I don't know, my lady. But remember the many hardships that she endured. In the fire your mother lost everyone she loved."
    The chambers in Malkata to which the fire had spread had never been rebuilt. The blackened stones and charred remains of wooden tables still stood beyond the royal courtyard, reclaimed by vines and untended weeds. When I was seven, I had insisted that Merit take me there, and when we arrived I'd stood frozen to the spot, trying to imagine where my father had been when the flames broke out. Merit said it was an oil lamp that had fallen, but I had heard the viziers speak of something darker, of a plot to kill my grandfather, the Pharaoh Ay. Behind those walls, my entire family had vanished in the flames: my brother, my father, my grandfather and his queen. Only my mother survived because she had been in the gardens. And when General Horemheb heard that Ay was dead, he came to the palace with the army behind him and forced my mother into marriage. For she had been the last royal link to the throne. I wondered if Horemheb felt any guilt at all when she too embraced Osiris, still crying out my father's name. Sometimes, I thought of her last weeks on earth. Just as my ka was being formed by Khnum on his potter's wheel, hers had been flying away.
    I looked over my shoulder at Merit, watching me with unhappy eyes. She didn't like when I asked questions