Somewhere in the near darkness, Nehesi waited, tireless and alert, near enough to protect her but far enough to leave her to her thoughts. What few thoughts she had – what a relief it was, after these days of agonizing, to have come to a decision at last, and to cast her sacrifice at the gods' feet. What a relief to crouch on the cold stone and stare at the simple bats going about their business, to watch the soothing shimmer of moonlight on water. Cramping, distant and mild, clutched at her belly in intermittent waves. She must drink the herbs three more times, for three more nights, Bakmut had said. And then the pain would begin in earnest, but when it was done all her wrongs would be put to right, and no danger, no evil would befall the Two Lands. A pair of bats dove for the same fat moth and tumbled one over the other, righted themselves a hair's breadth above the water, parted ways. She smiled distractedly at the sight, as though it were a show at a feast, performed just for her amusement.
She looked around sharply at a rustle in the garden. Nehesi's bulk moved from one blue shadow to another, tense and alert. He paused, staring down a narrow pathway that wended around the edge of the lake to a distant stand of trees. Hatshepsut was filled with sudden terror, a cold tingling in her limbs. A cramp came upon her, stabbing into her middle, and she caught her breath, heart pounding.
A figure appeared from the path's bend, white and shining in the moonlight. It drifted toward her.
“Stop,” Nehesi said. “Who is it?”
The figure did not respond, nor did it slow. Nehesi moved to protect Hatshepsut; he stood at the confluence of two paths, and the bulk of his shoulders and back blocked the figure from her view. His hand went to his blade hilt. And then, with a murmured apology, he bowed. Beyond his bent form, Hatshepsut looked into the face of her mother, knowing and sad.
“Ahmose.” Hatshepsut came shaking to her feet.
“I know what you have done,” Ahmose said. The sound of her voice, unheard after so many years, fell like a blow upon Hatshepsut's heart. “You must not go further. Do not cast out this child.”
Hatshepsut's vision blurred. Her limbs seemed to float; she felt the catch and panic of falling, a sensation far away. When her senses cleared a heartbeat later, Nehesi's arms were around her, easing her back onto the lake's low wall.
“Great Lady? Are you well? Should I send for a physician?”
“She is well, guardsman.” Ahmose sat beside her, took her hand in her own. “It is the touch of the god's hand she felt. It can come upon a person that way sometimes. It can take one's senses. But it is only a momentary effect. Leave us.”
Nehesi hesitated, watching Hatshepsut's face warily. “Go,” she told him, though her very kas seemed to quake. He retreated to his shadows.
“Mother.” Hatshepsut could find no more words. Her voice broke with pain, with the emptiness of isolation, the weight of her duty.
“I know.” Ahmose gathered her into her arms and rocked her. She sobbed against her chest, flooded Ahmose's white gown with tears. When her breathing steadied, Ahmose lifted Hatshepsut's face in her hands. “I know how you suffer. But, my child, you are doing the gods' work. They are pleased, Hatshepsut. They smile on you.”
“No. Oh, Amun, blessed Mut, I have ruined it all. The hanging fire – it is a portent; Senenmut said! It foretells a great evil. It is my fault, my doing. I have destroyed maat with my selfishness, and now the very skies turn against Egypt.”
Ahmose's laugh was low, gently chiding. She placed her hand on Hatshepsut's middle. “You have destroyed nothing. The fire is the sign of your child. This is a servant of the gods you carry, one who will bring them worship. Whatever you think you have undone, Hatshepsut, will be restored by this child.”
She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Mother. You do not understand. Thutmose is not the father.”
“I know.”
She clutched at Ahmose's hands, stared into her face, desperate and harried. “How?”
Ahmose smiled wryly. “I may be growing older. I may be only a lady now, and no longer the Great Royal Wife. But I am still god-chosen.”
Hatshepsut remembered Mut's impassive smile, the smoke of myrrh surrounding her. She prodded at her bruised knees with tentative fingers. “I prayed to Mut tonight. Did the goddess send you to me?”
“You asked for understanding. I bring it.”
“Mother, I have missed you. I have tried to rule well, but there is so much I do not know, and my heart fills with fire when I should be calm, and I make a mess of everything.”
“I should not have removed myself from the court. I was wounded, but it is no excuse. I should have been stronger, should have put away my pride for you. I should have helped you.”
“I made you a liar before the court. I am sorry. Truly, you can't know how sorry I am.”
Ahmose lifted Hatshepsut's chin, made her look into her stern eyes as she had done so many times before, when Hatshepsut was a willful girl. “Do not apologize. It is your task to guide this land, your will that must be obeyed. You are the son of the god himself. He has shown me Egypt whole and thriving, unfettered by whatever unknown evil you fear. And he has shown me you upon the king's throne, with your baby in your arms. This star is your own scepter, Hatshepsut. It is the banner of your coming. Your triumph is written on the sky.”
She thought of Little Tut then, of how it felt to cradle him. She longed to touch his soft hair, to blow her lips upon his warm, rounded belly until he squealed with laughter.
“I have secured Thutmose's boy as heir. I could never put him aside, not even for a son of my own body. I love him as though he were my own.”
“There is no need to put him aside,” Ahmose said. “Your child is a girl. You will bear a daughter of maat, whose dedication to the gods will be as vital to them as the breath of life is to man. She will restore all things that have been lost. She will shine as bright as your banner among the stars.”
Hatshepsut's hands fell upon her belly. The child fluttered there, stirring minutely, as if in response to Ahmose's words. Tears washed afresh down Hatshepsut's cheeks – tears of gratitude, tears of relief.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“THE GRAPES ARE THE BEST I've yet seen, master.” Paweraa plucked a stem from the nearest vine to hand. He offered it to Senenmut.
Senenmut pulled a grape free, rubbed the glaucous bloom from its skin, and bit. “Still quite tart,” he said to his overseer.
“Indeed, but plump, and a greater yield than last year's. Last year's harvest was, you recall, master, the best to date. We shall do even better this season.”
Senenmut nodded, placed a hand on Paweraa's shoulder. The old man had come, part and parcel, with the estate Hatshepsut had gifted him those years ago. Paweraa's family had worked this land for generations; the fields of the estate were as familiar to him as his own limbs and heart. It was Paweraa's expertise that had kept Senenmut in his wealth – his knowledge, and the generosity of the God's Wife. Senenmut had much to be thankful for, and as he toured his fertile fields, sampling the produce of his land, he felt his gratitude as a surge of warm contentment below his heart. The gods were good. As near as Senenmut could tell, they had stayed completely whatever evil they had promised with their hanging fire. The unsettling star had burned for a week, a portent of nothing more than a few robberies within the city – then quietly faded away. Five months had passed, and the expected tribulations it seemed to foretell never materialized.
They came to the planting of barley, the season's second crop just beginning to ripen. The new-formed seed heads glowed a luminous, soft green in the sun. Paweraa pulled up a stem, held it up for Senenmut to see where some beetle or other had gnawed. He was detailing his plan for eradicating the pests – something about hiring local boys to run through the field, plucking the beetles and crushing them – when Senenmut became aware of a commotion at the far end of his fields. He shaded his eyes and peered down the line of a dry ditch to where the women of the estate worked, dipping water from the canal with tight-woven bask
ets dangling from the ends of great weighted levers. The women shouted, gestured toward the road. It ran along a causeway here, well above the level of the flood's high water. A chariot came from the south – from the direction of Waset. Nothing unusual in that; nothing to make the women stop their work and raise their voices. But in another moment he realized that the chariot was moving with great haste, and that it gleamed in the sun, banded in gold. A messenger from the palace.
Paweraa had forgotten his gnawing beetles; he, too, held his hand above his eyes. As they stood watching, the driver swung down the side road that led to Senenmut's estate. Senenmut's belly clenched in sudden apprehension. Hatshepsut.
He left Paweraa to make his own slow way back to the house and outbuildings. Senenmut sprinted to meet the chariot.
The driver was Hatshepsut's personal guard. He drew in his horses and stared down at Senenmut, his mouth tight with worry.
“What is it? What has happened to her?”
Nehesi put out his hand. Senenmut clasped it, allowed the man to boost him into the chariot. “She is in the birthing pavilion.”
“Early. At least half a month early, by what she told me.”
“She will not stop crying for you. One moment she demands somebody fetch you, the next she pleads, and the next she simply wails your name. I have never seen her in such a state.”
Nehesi turned his horses, hissed them back along the causeway. Ipet-Isut loomed in the distance, its towering walls a bright smudge on the horizon. Once past the city of temples, it was but one mile more to Waset and Hatshepsut's side.
“She cries for me, not for her husband?” Senenmut knew it was absurd, under such circumstances, to attempt a casual air. And yet he knew he must try all the same.
Nehesi pierced him with a dry, level look. He said nothing for a long while as the horses' hooves pounded, as the chariot rattled and jarred. At last the guardsman broke the silence. “No, not for her husband. He has gone south to make war on the Kushites.”
Of course. It was a ridiculous question, Senenmut knew, but he was obligated to ask it all the same. He had been at court the day Thutmose announced he would trek to the border once more, this time to attack the Kushite king in his own territory and throw him into the dust. “For the glory of Egypt,” Thutmose had pronounced. “To continue the great work my father started, to conquer every land until every place the sun touches belongs to Egypt, to our gods!” The courtiers had cheered and the Great Royal Wife had smiled upon her throne. But later, as Hatshepsut lay upon her couch, her ladies rubbing soothing oils into the skin of her swollen belly, she had sniggered over Thutmose's blustering. “He has no care for continuing my father's work, and no stomach for expanding Egypt's reach. Even had he, the boy would not know how to go about it. He only wants to put an end to the whispers at court, Senenmut.” He had asked, “What whispers?” And Hatshepsut had been too pleased to supply the answer. “That he is weaker than a woman – weaker than me.”
Senenmut fixed his eyes upon Ipet-Isut, willing it to come nearer, faster, faster.
“Even were the Pharaoh not gone away,” Nehesi said quietly, barely audible above the relentless clangor of the wheels, “she would call for you still, I think.”
Senenmut risked a glance at his companion. Nehesi caught his eye, said nothing. Then, with a force that nearly knocked Senenmut to his knees, he pounded him upon the shoulder. Senenmut stood stunned and fearful until Nehesi laughed, a grumbling cough of a sound, and Senenmut understood that the blow was not an attack, but a brotherly tap. He knows. But we are safe in him, Hatshepsut and I.
It took more than an hour to reach the palace. Nehesi tossed the reins of his blown horses to a guard and once more led the way through the maze of corridors, past pillars and porticoes, into the garden. Senenmut wanted to run, wanted to take up a sword and fight – something, someone, anything. He was afire with a terrible energy, a fear, a longing, a desperation that could not be contained. She calls for me. Is it because I am her chief steward? Or because I am the father of her child?
Was he? He had wondered, had agonized over not knowing. For so many nights, so many months, sleep had eluded him. He had lost uncountable hours watching the moon track across the sky, aching in his stomach and head, picturing the child growing within her, wondering. He dared not speak his fears – his hopes? – aloud. Since their return from the southern border, Thutmose hated Hatshepsut more than ever he had before. Hatshepsut had told Senenmut, of course, brimming with pride, how she had conquered the Kushite captives. And she had told him of the look on Thutmose's face when he saw her with her foot raised in victory – the naked loathing she had seen in her husband's eyes. Senenmut had seen it himself. The whole of the court had seen. There were times when, as the royal couple sat side by side upon their thrones, Hatshepsut would speak and Thutmose would turn upon her eyes black and clouded by hatred. He made no pretense at concealing his feelings for his sister. Thutmose hungered for a reason to tear Hatshepsut from her throne, put her aside, strip her of all rights and titles. To kill her. This child may be all the excuse the Pharaoh needed to be rid of his troublesome wife.
Nehesi guided him through the garden, turning down this pathway and that. They dashed through a cloud of swirling gnats toward a grove of slender shade trees. Over the sound of their own feet on gravel, Senenmut heard the ululating song of women, a clapping of hands. With a hot, tingling flood of relief he recognized joy in the sound, not sorrow, not mourning. They pushed through the grove; there before him stood the birthing pavilion, its thick linen walls painted with the images of the gods who protect women in travail: Tawaret the deby, her round snout open wide, tongue and breasts comically pendulous; Bes, the bearded dwarf, guardian of newborns; Iset and Hathor, Horus and Heket. A breeze stirred the pavilion's walls; the gods danced upon it as if in celebration.
A heavy-breasted woman stopped Senenmut at the pavilion's door. Her face was lined, though she wore a wig of youthful braids. “This is a place for women only, Chief Steward.”
Hatshepsut's voice rose above the singing. “My steward is here? Midwife, let him in.”
“Ah, lady, I am here.” He tried to dodge around the formidable bulk of the midwife, but she stepped quickly this way and that, barring him.
“I said let him in. The birth is finished, thank the gods. A man can do no harm now.”
The midwife narrowed her eyes at Senenmut, then, bowing toward Hatshepsut, she let him pass.
Hatshepsut lay naked upon a mattress. A shaft of light fell through the pavilion's door, shimmering the drops of sweat on her bare brow. She breathed easily, but her eyelids were heavy with exhaustion when she gazed up into Senenmut's face. A servant knelt over her, wringing a wet cloth over her thighs, wiping away the last traces of the birthing blood.
Her arms were wrapped tightly around a tiny bundle swaddled in a length of fine purple wool. She clutched it to her chest. Wordless with awe and anxiety, he knelt beside her. Gods, let the child not bear my face. It would mean the death of all three of us. And yet he ached to look upon the baby. The need to see its face, to know it, welled in him with a sharp and beautiful poignancy.
Hatshepsut turned her arm, shifted aside to expose the child to his eyes. “My daughter,” she said. “Neferure.”
“Beautiful as the sun,” he repeated. “A good name.” She was red and creased, as all newborns were, her brow furrowed and angry. But even as small as she was, he could see in the shape of her face, the set of her eyes, the angle of her nose, nothing but Hatshepsut. She was her mother's daughter. No one who looked upon her could discern anything more than that. Senenmut's chest trembled with relief.
Hatshepsut stretched the bundle toward him. His heart stilled with reverence. He took the babe in his arms, marveling at her lightness and warmth. She stirred in protest, uttered a brief, shrill cry, then settled again. He could feel Hatshepsut's eyes upon him as he stared into Neferure's small, clenched face.
“You will be her Chief Steward, as you are mi
ne,” she said quietly. “And you will be her tutor, as you were mine when I was but a girl. You will be with her always, teaching her, protecting her. I have spoken it; it will be so.”
He chuckled. “Another title, Great Lady? You honor me too much.”
“This is your greatest honor. This is your greatest title. Cherish it, Senenmut.”
He could not keep the tears from his eyes. With Neferure in his arms he was helpless to wipe them away. One dropped from his lashes and pattered onto the baby's cheek. She flinched and grimaced, and the tear rolled to the crease beside her tiny round nose, trickled onto her lips. When she tasted it, she made a curious growling sound. Senenmut laughed. He pressed his forehead to the babe's, inhaled her strange, warm, thick-sweet odor. “I will cherish the honor, Great Lady. Thank you.”
The women had continued their singing outside the pavilion, and now their song rose in pitch, broken here and there with the special delighted squeal that women will give when they see a small child and wish to pinch its cheeks or dandle it in the air. Senenmut looked up, expectant, and grinned in welcome as Iset entered the pavilion, beautiful and beaming. She carried Little Tut in her arms. The boy's eyes were wide and serious. When he saw Hatshepsut lying on her mattress he reached his hands toward her, whining.
“Look, Tut,” Iset said, lowering herself beside Senenmut. “Look at your sister.”
The boy surveyed the newborn, unimpressed, then squalled and squirmed from his mother's arms, clambering onto the mattress to cuddle into Hatshepsut's side.
Iset sighed. “He has been asking for you all day. I tried to explain to him that you were busy getting him a sister, but he did not understand. I think...”
The singing outside cut off abruptly. The buzz of many voices talking at once took its place, and the midwife at the door stuck her head outside, craning it this way and that. She drew back a step into the pavilion, turned and stared at Hatshepsut, her eyes wide and frightened.
The She-King: The Complete Saga Page 52