But she had cast aside her cloth when she came into her own rooms, and as she lay naked across her bed on the reed mat I saw one hand stray to her nipple and roll it gently, a self-caress full of sorrow. She had never been a ‘woman of a hundred lovers’ even when she had played with our cousin, her first lover, in the stooks of cut hay. She had told me that he had pleased her and that she loved him, but Divine Father Ay had plans for Nefertiti—‘the beautiful one who is come’—most saleable of daughters. Our cousin was sent away to the army and later we heard that he had been killed in a border skirmish somewhere south in Kush. I wondered suddenly about Horemheb, the captain, who had known his way to her bathing pool and bed-chamber when I had fallen into the Nile and nearly been eaten. Had he lain down in her arms as well? But Horemheb was also away on the borders, and in any case he was young and strong. He was not an old man.Nefertiti sighed. She rubbed her temples as though her head hurt.
