The She-King: The Complete Saga

by L. M. Ironside

  Sometimes in the garden’s shade she would close her eyes and reach out for the gods. It was harder to do here than in the temple, where the incense and the offerings drew the gods near. She was out of practice now, and her curious, languid distress made it all the harder. Still, sometimes she could touch them. The gods were in a stupor, too, it seemed. They had no words for her, no images – just a misty sort of sorrow, an untenable pity. She seldom tried to reach for them at all anymore.

  The New Year came again. Seventeen, Ahmose thought with a dull kind of wonder as early morning light crept in through her beautiful pillared wall. I am seventeen now. She should have had sons by this age, like Mutnofret. Like Aiya. She should have surrendered to the physician’s knife long ago, and spared herself this wreckage of a life.

  But Twosre was coming in through the door, clapping briskly. “Up, up! Out of bed! It’s the Birthday of Waser! Festival!”

  There had been a time when the five days of the New Year made Ahmose squeal with anticipation. A long time ago, when she was happy, she had loved the feasts, the parades, and the holy ceremonies most of all.

  “Up!” Twosre seized her hand and pulled. Ahmose came after it, obedient, a tired old hound. “Oh, Lady, when will you come out of this daze?” Twosre stripped her and made her get into the bath. The water was cool, but Ahmose hardly shivered. “It does you no good. It does the people no good, to see you sitting on your throne unsmiling.”

  “I am nothing anymore.”

  “Nonsense! Goose gabble! Nothing. You are the Great Lady.”

  The lady of betrayal. The lady of sadness. Ahmose sank into her bath up to her chin, cherishing the thrill of self-pity in her stomach. She said nothing.

  Twosre made her sit up again. “You are to ride in the parade.”

  “Again?” She had done it last year. It had been more exciting then, to be carried on a beautiful painted platform through the city and down to Ipet-Isut. As God’s Wife she had led the services, told the festival story to a crowd of a thousand or more. A man was drawing water from a well long ago, in the place that would become Waset, our city, brothers and sisters! A voice came from all around him: go back to your people, to your herds and children, and tell them that the Great Lord has come! Waser! He who raises the river, he who will grant new life after death. Rejoice, children of the earth, for death is no more and life is eternal! She had always loved the story of the man at the well. The Sky-Mother’s Message, it was called. As a child she had dreamed of being the one to stand in the temple forecourt and lead the ceremony. This year, it seemed an impossible task.

  “I don’t have the energy to lead the ceremony. I am so tired.”

  Twosre’s hands paused on Ahmose’s shoulders. “Well, as to that, it seems Nefertari will be leading the ceremony this year.”

  Nefertari. But the God’s Wife tells the story and opens the festival. Ahmose stared at her bath’s tiled wall. The lilies set there in fragments of faience confused themselves into a meaningless jumble of color. There was one thought clear in Ahmose’s heart. Thutmose gave the title back to Nefertari. Only the Pharaoh had the power to do such a thing. Twosre resumed her work, and words came to Ahmose with the rhythm of her servant’s scrubbing. She opened her mouth, and they fell out all on their own. “Tut hates me.”

  “Never say that. Your husband does not hate you. He is the Pharaoh, Great Lady. You seem to forget that sometimes, if you will forgive my saying so.”

  “I have never forgotten it.” Her voice quavered, though no tears came to her eyes. Perhaps she had cried that river dry. “We used to be close, Twosre. He used to spend his time with me. We used to ride together. We used to talk.”

  “That was before.”

  Before the war. Before the Royal Sons. Before Ineni. How was she to face her subjects today? How could she face her grandmother at the temple? How could she ride in her gilded litter behind her husband’s and know that he would feel no urge to glance back at her and smile?

  “Out now, and I will shave you.”

  Obedient, mindless, Ahmose took the offered hand and came from the bath. It was best to do as she was told now. Better to be like a puppet, made to dance and sing by another’s hand, than to be like a chief wife.

  She was dressed, perfumed, beautiful and empty-headed, never minding Twosre’s scowls. Her servant wanted her to set this shadowy illness of the heart behind her, she knew, and dimly, distantly, the part of her that wanted to please tried to do just that. She fought to summon up a smile and painted it on her lips. Then the absurdity of smiling when her heart was in a tomb redoubled the formless pain. She had to blink hard to keep sudden tears from ruining her kohl.

  Twosre made her sit down to breakfast and told her to eat. Ahmose did as she was told. She tasted nothing of her thin porridge and hard bread.

  A clap sounded outside her anteroom door. Twosre and Ahmose both looked up from the meal. Who could be calling on the Great Royal Wife at this hour, when preparations for the festival were underway all over the palace?

  Twosre puttered over to the door and opened it a crack. A thin, high voice leapt into the room.

  “I must see the Great Royal Wife!”

  “She’s busy. She’s eating.”

  “Please, Mistress Twosre. It is so very important. You must let me in.”

  “Let her in.” The command in Ahmose’s own voice startled her. Twosre looked round, eyes wide, then stepped back, swinging the door open.

  It was Sitamun, Mutnofret’s skinny servant. Her big eyes watered. She ran across the room and fell to her knees beside Ahmose’s chair. “Do not go to the festival, Great Lady. You must stay away.”

  “What?” The words pierced Ahmose’s haze. “What’s going on? Speak up!”

  “Lady Mutnofret. She plans something – something to humiliate you.”

  “Do you think I am so foolish as to trust your words? You have spied on me and betrayed me to my vile sister.”

  Sitamun’s face crumpled. “Great Lady, please, I beg your forgiveness. I did only what I was made to do. I have never wished you ill. Mutnofret…Mutnofret requires me to…to tell her things. Mut frowns on me for betraying the God’s Wife; I am afraid of the goddess's wrath. But I am Mutnofret’s servant; what can I do?”

  “If you truly fear Mut’s wrath, you can atone for your spying by telling me things. What is Mutnofret planning?”

  “I wish I knew. All I can tell you for certain is that she told me you are to get your payment today at the festival.”

  Ahmose’s face flushed hot. She tasted her breakfast on her tongue suddenly, the sweetness of honeyed porridge so cloying she wanted to retch. “Isn’t it enough?” Her voice was high and loud, desperate, angry, violent.

  Twosre was at her side, one hand steady on her shoulder. “Calm, calm. It will do you no good to rage.” Not in front of Mutnofret’s creature, Twosre’s hand said.

  “Calm is not for Mutnofret,” Ahmose replied, though her words were more controlled.

  “Great Lady, she plans something to mortify you.” Sitamun held her palms out now, as if appealing to a goddess. “She is relishing it. I can see it in her face. She has been as smug as a crocodile all morning. Stay away, I beg you. Claim illness. I do not want to be a part of this anymore. I do not want to see you harmed. You are favored by the gods – everybody knows it – and Mut will curse me for the part I’ve played in harming you. Oh, Mut, forgive this miserable servant!”

  Moments before, Ahmose had been reveling in the surrender of control. It was pleasant enough to be under Twosre’s command; Twosre would never do her any harm. But to give command to Mutnofret? As well throw herself into a crocodile pool as allow herself to be the plaything of the second wife.

  Her sister’s challenge fanned the last ember back to light. The temple was not her home anymore, Ineni was gone, Tut wanted nothing of her. There was not a thing left for her at all, but this: to put Mutnofret in her place at last. In this one battle she would claim her victory.

 
“Whatever happens to me today, Sitamun, the gods have heard your heart. You will be forgiven. Do you want me to find a new assignment for you in the palace? Or perhaps in the temple?”

  Sitamun’s eyes widened. Her hands shook. “Can you, Great Lady? Oh, please.”

  Ahmose waved at the woman, a quick, ready dismissal. “It will be done. Go now, and clean your face up. Don’t let Mutnofret know where you have been.”

  Sitamun stood in paled, shaking silence for a long moment, then bowed, and crept away.

  “I am ready to go to the temple, Twosre. It is time.”

  “You don’t believe that creature, do you? No doubt that is exactly what Mutnofret told her to say, to lure you out! Sitamun feels guilty…bah!”

  “It does not matter whether she told the truth, or whether Mutnofret intends to draw me out today. I am going to the festival to face my sister, no matter what her payment may be.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THEY WERE HALFWAY TO IPET-ISUT when it happened.

  Ahmose’s palanquin, a lone golden chair on a slender, red and blue platform, was borne by eight strong men through the streets of Waset. There was no humiliation, no outcry, not an eye batted at her that seemed suspicious. Mutnofret rode behind her on her own litter, quiet, unconcerned. Thutmose, the embodiment of Waser on this day, rode alone at the front of the procession, splendid and serious with the tall double crown on his head and a bull’s tail tied about his waist. He had greeted Ahmose distantly, but not unkindly. She did not care. She was prepared for her husband’s distance.

  She was tense, braced, all through the city streets. She waited like a horse waits for the whip, but no blow came. Mutnofret was placid; Tut was his accustomed far-off self. The people cheered dutifully, looking somewhat more ragged and strained than they had a year ago. There were fewer flower petals scattered in their path, perhaps, but the people were in a mood for a festival and they had turned out to see the royal family’s procession to the Temple of Amun.

  Guards walked in two rows beside each rank of litter-bearers. Last year the people had cheered Ahmose’s name with real fervor. The guards had been necessary then, to keep the crowd back, to keep the path down Waset’s broadest street and out toward the Holy House cleared of the people who would crowd around to touch Ahmose for luck. Now, cattle and children were thin and Egypt had little to show for its depleted grain stores but a fortress in Ugarit that had as yet failed to show its worth. The trade would come in, Ahmose was certain, and make Egypt secure again, even in the midst of this cursed drought. But the certainty of the Great Royal Wife meant nothing to the rekhet. Who among them, after all, could know her thoughts? So their cheers lacked zeal and had the sound of obligation – better cheers than silence.

  Waset receded behind them. The crowds along the long road to Ipet-Isut were different here, out among the fields, in the open spaces beneath an impossibly blue sky: herders and planters of grain, trainers of dogs and horses – the people of the earth, mud between their toes, unshaven heads, like the man who had heard the voice of the goddess at the well so many thousands of years ago. They wore shabbier clothing than the city-rekhet, perhaps, but the people here cheered with a real excitement. They did not chance to see royalty often, living as they did beyond the city walls. This was true festivity for them, even if their cattle were thin. The real happiness in their voices lifted Ahmose up out of her tension, out of her clenched anticipation. She smiled a genuine smile, waved here and there.

  Then she heard it.

  “There rides the unfaithful lady!”

  Her head snapped sharply to the left. She scanned the faces on that side, but her litter glided past. She must have heard wrong; no rekhet would dare to call out such an accusation to the Great Royal Wife.

  “Whore!”

  The word was clear this time, shouted, meant to be heard. It had come from the right.

  “Stop,” she said to her bearers. They did not hear her. “Stop!”

  The litter lurched to a halt. She sat forward and turned to the crowd. No face looked guilty there, but plenty looked confused. The rekhet stared about them, muttering, heads turning this way and that as if they, too, sought the speaker. So she had not imagined it.

  “Flood-killer!”

  Ahmose snapped fingers at her guards. They needed no other command; six of them were in the crowd on the instant, jostling, shoving. Women screamed. Children cried. The rear rank of the crowd, butting up against a field of scraggly fig trees, surged, bulged, and scattered. The guards’ white kilts flashed here and there among the figs as they gave chase. The hissing of the orchard leaves was drowned out in an instant by the crowd’s roar. She caught a word here and there: Unfair! Let him go! …she did do it! …wickedness! The gods are punishing Egypt! And again and again she heard it. First as a question, first as disbelief. Then with conviction. Unfaithful lady!

  “Go on,” she said to her bearers. They did not move for a long moment. She turned around in her chair and looked back at her sister. Mutnofret was looking about her with a hand raised to her mouth, eyes popping, the very picture of shocked disbelief. She caught Ahmose’s eye and shook her head, as if to say, I knew nothing of this. Ahmose sat forward again and said fiercely, “Go on!”

  She thanked all the gods that Tut’s litter had not stalled when hers did. His bearers, oblivious, had carried him on toward the temple, and the crowds ahead cheered him. She had stopped for only a handful of heartbeats – a minute, barely – and it took almost no time for her own chair to catch up to her husband’s. He made no move to stop and never looked back. If the gods were good, he had not even marked the disturbance in the crowd. So far ahead, how could he distinguish treacherous words from the cheers of the rekhet?

  She gripped the arms of her chair hard and bit her cheeks to keep her face calm. Mutnofret’s look of innocence – as if Ahmose could be so easily fooled! Whore! Flood-killer! None of them understood, none of them cared to know! They listened only to Mutnofret, beautiful Mutnofret, perfect, unfailing, dutiful Mutnofret. Evil, hissing scorpion Mutnofret.

  She only needed confirmation of Mutnofret’s guilt, and after perhaps half a mile, it came to her. The six guards were back in formation, panting and sweating.

  Ahmose looked down at the nearest as they plodded toward Ipet-Isut. “Well?”

  “We caught him. He tripped over a downed tree and dropped this.” He pulled a ring from his belt pouch. The band was small – a woman’s ring, set with faceted milky quartz. She recognized it at once. A mere trinket to the second wife, but a treasure beyond riches to a farmer with mud between his toes. A cheap price to pay for revenge.

  “And the man?”

  The guard glanced at his comrades. “Dead.”

  A shame. She would have liked to have a confession from him. A confession was more, much more, than a ring. But the ring would be enough. She held it in her fist, squeezed it hard until its edges dug into her flesh. She did not let go all the way to Ipet-Isut. As her litter was lowered and Tut helped her to her trembling feet, she held tight to the ring. As she stood beside the smiling Mutnofret, as she watched her wrinkled, stooped grandmother deliver the ceremony and open the festival, she held it. She held it all the way back to Waset, while the crowds cheered around her and the people shared cakes in the streets. She held it hard, and it bit at her, left red indentations and a bruise in her palm. It striped her, shamed her, brought her back to life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THERE WAS TIME BEFORE THE feast began. Ahmose changed into the pure, unadorned white of a priestess. She set the cobra crown on her forehead. She left all jewelry behind, save the quartz ring. She carried in the other hand now, the left hand, for the right was too bruised and cut by the ring to hold it tightly.

  She walked to Mutnofret’s apartments amidst green, river-deep calm. There was no clapping for entrance. There was no storming inside and waiting like a snake in the grass, as she had done the day she put on her wings. She was far inside the center of her own self, a
ssured, knowing, prepared.

  Mutnofret was not in her anteroom. She was not in her bedchamber. Ahmose passed through these like an implacable wind and stepped out into the bright sunlight of her sister’s garden.

  A nurse, watching over the Royal Sons as they played in the flower beds, was the first to see her. The nurse’s body tensed; her face went dark with fear and sympathy.

  “Nurse,” Ahmose said, her voice like a drum, “take the boys out of here.”

  Mutnofret, sitting on a bench with Sitamun, her back to the palace, turned slowly around. Her eyes met Ahmose’s. She smiled.

  “I gave you an order, woman,” Ahmose said.

  The nurse stooped, propped Amunmose on her hip. Wadjmose’s fat arms reached up to her; she scooped him up, too, and hurried out of the garden, looking down.

  “You do not give orders to my women in my presence,” Mutnofret said languidly, pleased with herself.

  “Sitamun, leave us,” Ahmose said.

  Sitamun looked from Ahmose to her mistress, sitting like a skinny toad on the bench.

  “Stay where you are,” said Mutnofret. She did not look at the thin woman. Her eyes never left Ahmose’s.

  Deliberately, Ahmose turned her face away from Mutnofret’s and stared at the quaking servant. The woman gulped and rose to her feet. “Please,” Sitamun said.

  Ahmose pointed out of the garden.

  Mutnofret’s tone of sleepy amusement was unchanged. “You have no right to dismiss my servants, little sister.”

  “Sitamun,” Ahmose said. The thin woman ducked a bow to Mutnofret, but she ran from the garden.

  With her women gone, Mutnofret’s anger rose to the surface at last. “It’s funny, Ahmose, how far you’ll go, how much you like to prod at the limits of what a woman can do. If you can call a traitor funny.” She stood and came toward Ahmose, tense, ready to strike. It was no matter. Ahmose had her weapon. She flung it at Mutnofret’s feet.