Thutmose would not be goaded. He stared flatly at Hatshepsut, his eyes long and slanted like his mother’s. “I don’t need to see the regent, Lady Bald-Head. My mother has given me the finest tutors and priests in the empire to teach me how to be a king. What could I learn about ruling Egypt from a woman?”
It took the greatest effort for Hatshepsut to bite her tongue. Ahmose did this petulant donkey's-rump of a boy a great favor by acting as his regent.
Thutmose went on: “I’m glad I don’t have to live here with the rest of the boys and girls. What do you learn from your tutors? Sums and reading and writing? I know all that. I know how to rule the kingdom. I’m going to be Pharaoh some day, and then you’ll have to do what I say.”
“Is that what you think?”
“You will. I’ll be Pharaoh, and I’ll marry you, and you’ll have to do everything I say, because I’ll be the king and your husband!”
Like a cobra, rage reared up in Hatshepsut’s heart. She abandoned all pretense of ladylike behavior. If Thutmose wished to drag her onto a battle field, she would oblige him with a fight. “Piss on your throne! I’ll never marry you, ever! And without marriage to me, you can never be king. I’ll go off and start my own country and invade Egypt and throw you in a crocodile pool.”
“That’s a marvelous idea. You can go off into the Red Land and rule the sand dunes. You can be the ruler of beetles and desert rats. I’ll be the king of Egypt.”
“Do you think you can be king without me? You, the son of a second wife? You may as well be the son of a harem girl! I am the blood of the Pharaoh and the Great Royal Wife; without me by your side, you are nothing.” All at once she was on her feet, swaying under the weight of her collar. “You won’t have any throne unless I consent to marry you, so you’d best start treating me with respect. And anyway, I’d be a better king than you. At least I can make decisions for myself without tugging on my mawat’s skirt and whimpering. I’m surprised Mutnofret let you out of your swaddling long enough to attend the feast!”
Thutmose, unflappable, rolled his eyes. “You can’t be the king, stupid. You’re a girl. You’re an ugly girl with a shaved head, who nobody would ever want to marry, even if it was the only way for a man to take the throne.”
Hatshepsut hurled her dish of fruit straight into Thutmose’s face. It bounced off his head and disappeared in the shadows beyond the sycamore trunk. Honeyed milk washed down his face and chest; at once he began to bawl like a weaning calf. A hand took Hatshepsut by the upper arm. She did not dare look around. She could tell by the ferocity of the grip that it was Ahmose who held her.
“What in Amun’s name is happening here?” When Hatshepsut said nothing, Ahmose shook her hard. “Speak up when the regent asks you a question!”
“He – he mocked me. He said I’m ugly.”
“She is ugly!” Servants with ewers of water appeared to flock around Thutmose. Two stood by with fresh towels as Thutmose rinsed his chest and arms clean. “She’s ugly and stupid and acts improperly!”
“Be quiet, Thutmose,” Ahmose snapped. “I gave you no leave to speak.”
The prince gaped at his regent as if he had been slapped. Then his face crumpled, his chin wobbled, and fresh tears rolled down his cheeks. Mutnofret laid a clean towel on the grass beside him and sank to her knees, stroking his head, dabbing at his chest with a damp cloth. “Hush, little one,” she murmured.
Hatshepsut snorted. Little one.
“She can’t talk to me that way,” Thutmose wailed, pointing at Ahmose. “Mawat, tell her she has to be nice to me!”
Mutnofret made a frustrated noise, half growl, half sigh. “Thutmose, my sweet prince, Ahmose is the regent, and we are to do as she commands.” Mutnofret’s voice was patient and gentle, but Hatshepsut saw the resentment shining in the second wife's eyes as she cut her glance toward Ahmose. She saw the way Mutnofret’s arm held strong and steady around her son’s shoulders. We must do as she commands for now, until you sit the throne. Those were Mutnofret's true words, the words she said with her eyes, her posture. Senenmut had taught Hatshepsut how to watch courtiers' faces, to discern the truth behind their artful speech. She watched Mutnofret comfort the prince through narrowed eyes.
A crowd of servants and harem women flocked about the children’s table. Ahmose marched Hatshepsut away from the bluster of bodies.
“I told your nurse to enjoy an evening off because I thought you were old enough to conduct yourself with some measure of dignity. Mut’s sake, Hatshepsut, you are the king's daughter! And you are fourteen years old. I was already Great Royal Wife when I was fully a year younger than you. I had hoped that living in the House of Women might teach you how to be a proper lady. What am I to do with you if you will not behave?”
“So you did send me away from the palace to make me be a lady – to teach me how to wear dresses and dance and sing.”
Ahmose’s face softened. “No. I misspoke. I moved you to the harem because all royal children must grow up in the harem. It is maat – the righteous way. A palace is too busy, far too dangerous a place for growing young people. In the House of Women you may learn all the arts that will make you…”
“Thutmose doesn’t have to live here. He gets to stay in the palace and learn how to rule the country. If I am to be his Great Royal Wife someday, I must know how to rule, too.” She pulled away from Ahmose's grip, dashed her fists against her thighs in a helpless fury. “This makes no sense!”
“Hatet, Hatet. How can I make you understand?” Ahmose rubbed at her forehead, smoothed the lines she wore beneath the cobra crown. “It is not for Thutmose’s sake that I’ve allowed him to stay in the palace. It is for Mutnofret’s sake.”
“Why should Mutnofret care whether her revolting son lives in the palace or the harem?”
Ahmose looked away, out across the blue shadows of the garden. An expression of great pain crossed her face, then fled again, replaced by the studied calm of the Great Royal Wife. Hatshepsut waited a long time, hands clasped and eyes down like a properly contrite daughter, and at last Ahmose spoke. “Hatet, you are no ordinary girl.”
I know, she wanted to say. But she kept her peace, and let her mother speak on in a voice that broke often, yet was still clear.
“I have kept things from you...important things...not because I do not care for you – never think that, my love. You have always been the light of my heart. There are some stories we are not strong enough to know as children...but you are almost a woman now. You are old enough to know the way of the world, my daughter. My son.”
Hatshepsut’s head came up sharply. Her eyes, wide, disbelieving, held the regent’s. She had not heard correctly. That was it – she had not heard correctly.
“We will go to your room now,” Ahmose said, “And I will tell you everything.”
CHAPTER THREE
THEY SAT TOGETHER ON HATSHEPSUT’S bed, mirroring one another’s posture: rigid, straight-backed, cold hands folded in laps, mouths in tight pale lines. Ita and Tem had tidied the room and set oil alight in the lamps. The braziers glowed orange and fragrant, reflecting their light off mirror-polished bronze discs. Streamers of dark smoke reached up to the high ceiling, escaped outside past the bars of the windcatcher to the deep blue evening sky. In the dim light, Ahmose’s face was lined and darkened, all harsh angles and deep shadows. Finally she spoke.
“What I tell you now must remain between us. It is not for any other soul to know. You must never tell anyone; not even your nurse or your tutor.”
Hatshepsut nodded.
“Swear it,” Ahmose said.
She was a stern woman, serious in her duties, but even so, Hatshepsut had never known her mother to be this grave. The quiet force of her voice raised the hairs on Hatshepsut’s arms.
“Swear it on the goddess.”
“I swear by Mut’s wings,” Hatshepsut whispered.
“Good. And I swear by Mut that what I tell you is true.”
The pressure of silence squeezed all
around. Hatshepsut’s eyelid twitched again and again, but she did not dare break the stillness to rub the twitch away.
“You are not what you seem to be, Hatet. You are not just a girl. And you are not only the daughter of the Pharaoh.
“When I was close to your age – when I had barely begun to bleed – my father, King Amunhotep, died. He had no royal sons and had appointed no heir. The sons of his concubines were no more than infants. Egypt was on the verge of invasion by the Heqa-Khasewet in the north and the Kushites in the south. The country was in great danger.”
Hatshepsut nodded, bridling her impatience. She knew all this; Senenmut had told her this story before.
“Rather than risk the land to the rule of an infant, my mother and grandmother, both wise queens, chose a man for the Horus Throne. A man of common blood – a rekhet – but also a great soldier, a tactician and battle leader who could not be beaten on the field.”
“Father,” Hatshepsut said.
“Yes, your father. And they were right to choose him. I believe still that no other man could have kept Egypt safe from the jackals waiting to tear the land apart. Thutmose the general – he was the gods’ own choice for the throne. But my mother and grandmother worried, you see, that because he was rekhet-born others may not recognize his right to be the king.
“The Amun priesthood, Hatshepsut: it is very powerful. It controls much of the wealth of the land, and more importantly, it has great influence over the hearts of all men, noble and rekhet. My mother feared the priests of Amun would reject a rekhet king. She feared they would turn the people’s hearts against your father. She needed a token to back her chosen king – a pawn, like a game piece on a senet board.”
“You were her pawn.” Hatshepsut had never thought to question why Ahmose was the Great Royal Wife rather than Mutnofret, who was the elder of the sisters. “But why you?”
“Do you know what it means to be god-chosen, Hatet?”
“I have heard such a thing mentioned before, at the Temple. But I don’t know precisely….”
“The god-chosen are rare people, touched by the divine. Sometimes they hear the gods’ voices, or fall into trances to speak with the voice of a god. Sometimes they know the meanings of dreams, or read omens, or see the future. I am god-chosen – a dream-reader, though in your lifetime I have mostly kept the skill to myself. It is demanding enough work ruling Egypt without the added toil of interpreting dreams. But when I was your age, everyone in Waset knew of my gift, even the priests. My mother reasoned – not incorrectly, I think – that if I was the Great Royal Wife, no priest would dare to speak against your father for fear of the gods’ wrath.
“But Mutnofret is my elder, of course, and she was first in line for the title of Great Royal Wife. She had always expected to be the new king's chief wife when our father went on to the Field of Reeds. When our family set me ahead of her, Mutnofret was savage with hate. She never forgave me for taking her birthright, though the gods know it was not my doing. And soon she and I were locked in a battle to give the Pharaoh sons.
“Mutnofret had…” Ahmose’s voice faltered. She breathed steadily for a moment, as if stilling a sickness in her stomach, and at last went on. “Mutnofret had three sons. Beautiful boys; I loved them, despite the war she and I fought. They were, after all, my own blood, and the children of the sister I had once loved beyond life.”
Hatshepsut said their names quietly. “Wadjmose, Amunmose, and Ramose.” She knew of them. Sitre-In had told many stories of her long-gone brothers. Sometimes Hatshepsut thought she could recall their faces.
“Yes. They were good boys. You played often with them, and they were kind to you. We all loved them – Mutnofret, of course, and I, and your father. But your father would not name any of them heir.”
“Why?”
Ahmose stared at her hands in her lap. Her thick lashes, matted with kohl, obscured her eyes. “He’d had a dream, Hatet, a dream that had visited him many times, even before he was called to the throne. In this dream, he saw the child who would succeed him as Pharaoh, and it was none of Mutnofret’s boys.”
A deep, shocking chill covered her, penetrated all her skin at once, as if she had been thrown into the cold, fierce river. There is nothing to fear; it’s just a story, she told herself. But a sharp, painful certainty dug at her ribs, pounded there with the beat of her heart. Was this what it felt like, to be touched by a god, to hear a god’s voice? Reluctantly, Hatshepsut asked the question, though she already knew the answer. “Who was the child in Father’s dream?”
“You.”
Hatshepsut could find no words. I am female. I cannot be Pharaoh.
Ahmose continued the tale. “You were not yet born, of course. Your father knew only that he would have his heir from my body. And I knew with the certainty of the god-chosen that I would never bear a son. It was a source of great strife between us. His insistence that his Great Royal Wife produce his heir only soured poor Mutnofret all the more; she and I were at odds all the time. I kept trying to make him name one of the boys as his successor, just to pacify my sister, but he refused, and the tragedy and strain of her fate began to tear at Mutnofret’s heart. Soon she was seeing threats everywhere. She accused me of trying to steal Wadjmose, the eldest, to raise him as my own child.”
Ahmose fell silent. She lifted her face, gazing up at Hatshepsut’s painted walls. Even in the dim light, the walls were bright with the images of the goddesses. Ahmose rose, graceful and straight. She walked to the nearest mural, reached out a finger to trace the form of Mut, the mother-goddess, with pure white wings outstretched. Hatshepsut wanted to hear how the story ended – needed to hear it now, now that she knew about her father’s dream, about her own part in it. But the darkness in Ahmose’s silence forbade questions. Hatshepsut sat quietly, working her fingers into knots, pressing her nails into the palms of her hands.
After a long time, Ahmose turned away from Mut’s image. She faced Hatshepsut once more. “I had a terrible fight with your aunt, Hatet, one day when her suspicion and rage had pushed me beyond the limits of my endurance. I threw her to the ground and beat her with a stick, as if she were a disobedient slave.”
Hatshepsut stared hard at her mother, eyes wide. Beat her? Mutnofret? Impossible. Ahmose was a small woman – smaller than Mutnofret, certainly – and the second wife wore a compelling, hypnotic allure all about her, as tangible as a priest’s leopard-skin mantle. No woman or man could beat the second wife. Hatshepsut was sure of it.
“I was in anguish over what I had done. Not only to Mutnofret, but to Egypt. I was young, you see, and inexperienced, and your father was too often away at war. By this time, I was afraid for my station in life, afraid Mutnofret would take all I had. So I…I did things that…I angered the gods, Hatshepsut. It is my greatest shame. In my fear and isolation, I took a lover – my own steward – and I usurped the title of God’s Wife of Amun from my grandmother, who was too old and weak to stop me.”
Ahmose’s voice quavered with shame, but Hatshepsut hardly noticed, flung as she was into a state far beyond excitement. This was better than any adventure story, better than she had imagined! She gaped at her mother, thrilled and impressed. “You took a lover? And you are the God’s Wife?”
“It is no longer my title,” Ahmose said quickly, her voice stern. “I was never truly God’s Wife, though if you look at court records dating back fifteen or sixteen years, I am referred to by the title. But it was never mine to take. It was a lie – a dreadful, despicable lie – one for which I will be sorry until my dying day, and after, too. I was young, but that is no good excuse. The gods turned their faces from Egypt because of my irresponsibility. The river failed; Egypt came very near to famine. All because of me, because I was too weak to deal with Mutnofret without scheming like a louse.”
Ahmose faltered. Her face pinched, and just for a moment her chin quivered as if she might cry. She drew a long, shaking breath. Then she said, so quietly, “And even that is not entirely true. I wan
t to deny what I did. I want to deny that I was ever the God’s Wife, because I came to the title in such a terrible, cruel, unfair way, and knowing I was ever capable of such wickedness burns my heart. And because your father made me renounce all claim to the title once he learned what I had one. But I was the God’s Wife, after all.”
“I don’t understand, Mawat.”
“We do as the gods will us, Hatet. You and I, the king, all the people of Egypt. Whatever our plans, in the end we do as they will.
“The god Amun wanted a son. And so he chose me – I will never understand why – but he chose me, and he took me; brought me to his side and to his bed, though the path that led me there nearly destroyed me. It nearly destroyed our family, and Egypt, too. He made me his wife, the same as any man makes any woman his wife. I could not escape my fate.
“This last great fight I had with Mutnofret…. I felt so guilty, so soiled, that I fled to the Temple of Amun and begged the god to forgive me. I sought forgiveness for everything – taking the title from my grandmother, taking a lover, hurting Mutnofret. I pleaded with all the gods for redemption. Straight into the night I prayed. And they heard my prayers.”
Ahmose returned to the bed. She sat close; in the brief space between them, Hatshepsut could feel the vulnerable, human warmth of her mother’s skin.
“The gods sent me a vision, Hatet. The strongest and greatest vision I have ever received. They would give me my redemption, an amendment for all my wrongs: a son, the heir to the Horus Throne. A Pharaoh unlike any other, who would heal the river, restore maat, and bring glory to Egypt. A child of Amun, half god, with nine souls, nine great and fearless kas.
“And on that same night, Amun came to me in your father’s body, and made me the God’s Wife in the flesh. On that night, the Pharaoh and I made you – our prince.”
Because she could not look at her mother, Hatshepsut watched the flame in the nearest brazier. It bent, flickered as if it might snuff itself out. Then it found some well of strength and leapt up higher, brighter than it had burned before. “But I’m a girl,” she said, her lips and hands tingling.
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