The She-King: The Complete Saga

by L. M. Ironside

  “What is it?”

  “Great Lady, a messenger,” the midwife stammered.

  “Let him in.” Iset moved to cover Hatshepsut's nakedness with a sheet. She scooped Tut into her arms, her face pale.

  Senenmut clutched the child to his chest. His heart raced.

  A man ducked into the pavilion, bowing, his face haggard and shadowed. Senenmut recognized him from court: one of Thutmose's junior stewards, young but skilled and intelligent. He waited in a stoop for Hatshepsut's leave to speak.

  “What is your message?”

  “The Pharaoh, Great Lady.” The man stared at his palms, searching. When he raised his face, it was stark with exhaustion and grief. “He is dead.”

  “Dead?”

  The steward dropped to his knees as if expecting some blow from the God's Wife, some punishment. But she lay stunned beneath her sheet.

  “Tell me how it happened,” she said at last. “Midwife, bring a cushion for this man, and a jar of cool water. He is near as worn out as I am; anyone can see it.”

  The steward transferred himself heavily onto the cushion, drained the jar in a single, long draft. “You are kind, Great Lady. I have not slept for two nights. I took two men and a skiff from the Pharaoh's own ship, and we sailed ahead of his barge, back to Waset to tell you.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He paused, considering his words. “When the king reached the southern border, he was full of eagerness to begin his conquest. I was beside him all the while. I cautioned him to temper his eagerness – I and his other advisors, ah, and the general of the garrison. All his men. But he was hot as an untamed horse. With the dawn of the next day, he led an attack into the hills, and his men did find a small Kushite village. They killed some ten or fifteen men. It was a small victory, not worth the risk, we told him. And now the Kushites knew we were there.

  “That night he returned to his encampment, and at dawn the next day a party of Kushites fell upon us. They were swift and used the land to their advantage. We lost too many men, but managed to throw them back, and even took a captive: a young man hardly older than the Pharaoh himself. He was brave and wild. He spat at us and cursed us in his own tongue and ours.

  “I said to the king, 'How is it that this captive knows our language? He is a man of some import; he must be, to be so educated. Let us find out who he is.'

  “The general, he...” The steward glanced at Iset, at Tut in her arms, obviously reluctant to expose the lady and the child to the details of his tale. “Well, he coaxed information from the Kushite, and he learned that the man was a prince, the son of the very Kushite king the Pharaoh had meant to kill. We counseled the Pharaoh to be sensible, to use this man to guide him to wherever the king now hid. But the Pharaoh, he was...very brave, as you know, Great Lady. He was full of his own youthful pride. He said, 'Let me send a message to this Kushite king, to strike fear into his heart before I fall upon him and take his hand as my trophy.'

  “He approached the captive prince with his sword in hand. We urged him to stop, to hear our counsel, but the heat of war was in him, and he would not be persuaded. The Kushite's arms were bound behind his back, but he struggled to his feet when he saw the Pharaoh coming for him with death upon his blade. The Pharaoh struck and the Kushite danced aside. And then...then, Great Lady, before any of us could stop him, the Kushite kicked high, and caught the Pharaoh in the throat.”

  The steward dropped his head into his hands, trembling.

  “Go on,” Hatshepsut said, steady and cool.

  “The king collapsed. We carried him to a tent and did all we could, but his throat had swollen; the firmness, here...” he touched his fingertips to his own throat to show the place, traced the protruding stone, “...the place felt broken beneath the fingers, shattered into pieces. The fortress has a physician, of course, and he did all any man could do, but the Pharaoh's breathing was labored, and before two hours had passed, his ka was fled.”

  He fell silent. Hatshepsut stared at the wall of the pavilion, softly undulating in the breeze. Senenmut followed her gaze. It rested upon the painted figure of Horus. The god's stern eye seemed to stare back at her.

  “What happened to the Kushite?” Hatshepsut said at last.

  The steward shook his head in some confusion. “The Kushite, Great Lady? Why, he was killed, of course. The general took his hand.”

  “A brave man.”

  “The general? Ah, he is...”

  “The Kushite.” She turned her face from Horus, considered the steward for a long moment. The man dropped his head under the strength of her stare. “And so you sailed before my husband's barge. Before his body.”

  “Ah. We put in at the first good-sized town we came to and requisitioned from the local House of the Dead enough salt to keep the Pharaoh's body for proper enbalming. He lies under the salt even now, two days out at the most, I would guess.”

  Hatshepsut returned her eyes to Horus. The god nodded as he moved in the wind. In the silence, Little Tut fussed in his mother's arms. At last Hatshepsut said, “You have done well. Go and rest. My Chief Steward has heard you; he will spread your news to my court.”

  The man bowed his way from the pavilion. When he had gone, Hatshepsut turned her face to Senenmut. He was startled to see sorrow there – a genuine mourning, when all he could feel was relief covering him, body and ka, like a glorious, soft mantle of gold.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THE BOY KING THUTMOSE HAD lain beneath the enbalming salts for two months and ten days. His body had been emptied of its vital parts, the parts stored in jars. He was wrapped, finger by finger and toe by toe, in the most delicate of linen, spun from the straightest stems of flax. His coffins were carved and gilded, painted, inscribed with prayers and dedications from his sister-wife. A mask of gold was laid atop the still, hard form of the king's body, which looked small now, even for a boy not yet fifteen, bound in his wrappings like a goose trussed for roasting. The eyes of the mask were wide and smiling, boyish, kind, as Thutmose's had never been. Senenmut looked the mask, and turned away from that childish, almost pleading gaze. He turned and walked from the king's bedchamber as the final stars faded from a blue-black sky. He arrived at the gates of Ipet-Isut as dawn broke, spilling a pure light upon the crown of the high wall. The light ran along the wall's crest eagerly, as fire runs down a trail of spilled oil, snake-quick and flickering. It was the first hour of the day of the Pharaoh's funeral.

  By the time the pale morning sun reached its hands over the wall to touch the inner courtyards, patched with their chapels and shrines, the priests of Amun had all gathered at the water steps to await their barge. It would ferry them across the river to the valley where Thutmose's tomb waited. The boy had been so young; the tomb had belonged, in truth, to an older noble, some loyal man of the court. He had proffered it to Hatshepsut and she had accepted, set painters to work modifying, recarving, brushing over the grown man's life with the tale of the departed Pharaoh, his lineage, the sum of his few accomplishments.

  Senenmut stood for a moment and watched the priests as they clustered about the mooring, hugging themselves in the brisk dawn air. He remembered his own days as a priest, when he was not quite fifteen himself. He remembered the funeral of the last king. He remembered Hatshepsut, a small girl in a side-lock, resolute and staring and very small on the great litter that bore her above a river of wailing mourners.

  He tried to picture Neferure at that age – eight or nine, the age must have been. But all he could picture of the girl was a warm weight in his hands. Already she had grown too fast. The women all said it was an ill thing when a child was born too soon, that they seldom lived to weaning, and when they did they were stunted in body or in mind. Hatshepsut would grow quiet when the women said such things, withdraw into herself, her fond motherly smile freezing into a mask as strange and ill-fitting as Thutmose's. “You did nothing to cause it,” Senenmut told her one day, when the talk of Neferure's early arrival caused Hatshepsut to frown. S
he had shaken her head. “I wonder.”

  And yet in spite of the bad omen of her early birth, in spite of the hanging fire that had preceded her, the girl showed every sign of thriving. She suckled at her nurse's breast like a hungry little calf. Her cry was strong and musical. Already she lifted her head on a wobbling neck, a feat which never failed to make Senenmut sigh in admiration. The years would pass before he knew it – eight, nine, and more, and all too soon Neferure would be wed to Tut. Thutmose, they must call him now that his father was gone. Thutmose the Pharaoh, the third of his name. May he be a better husband to Neferure than his father was to her mother. That was the plea Senenmut would set before Amun's seat this morning, before he, too, made the crossing to the Pharaoh's tomb. The plea, and an expression of thanks. They were safe now, all three of them. A father could ask for nothing more.

  He paused outside the shuttered chamber of Amun's dark sanctuary. He dared not enter without the leave of a Temple official, but there was not a priest to be found. He turned for the long hall of dormitories where the young priests had their tiny sleeping cells. His intent was to find a straggling priest and beg leave to visit with the god, but a warm nostalgia for his younger days came over him as he passed door after simple door, pacing the worn stones of the familiar hallway. He found the cell that had been his and hesitated, his hand on the door. But no – it was his no longer. Whichever young man lived there now would not appreciate the intrusion.

  All at once he longed to see the rooftop where he and his friends had lounged on hot afternoons, doing their best to catch the breezes from the river, holding mats of woven reeds above their bare heads. His feet found the path to the stairway of their own accord. From the rooftop he could see the knot of priests milling like ducks in a shallows. A mile upriver, a bright linear slash detached from the pale quay: the massive funeral barge, and behind it, several more to carry the priests and mourners. Hatshepsut would be aboard, standing vigil over her brother's mummy. He moved down the length of the roof, drawn toward the distant barge where his lady waited. Birds in the myrrh trees below sang lustily. His ka felt freer than it had in months. He felt he might run down the whole long stretch of the building, but he was too dignified now for such boyish antics. The weight of the titles Hatshepsut had piled upon him kept his pace slow and even.

  “...this is the time.”

  He arrested at the sudden voice from somewhere below, caught himself lightly on the balls of his feet so that his sandals did not so much as scuff on the stone rooftop. Senenmut held his breath. A murmur sounded, a low vibration of masculine voices, barely audible, nearly beneath his feet. A few more words rose into the range of his hearing, then died away again. “...could hardly be a better moment to...” To his right, along the lip of the rooftop, a wedge of stone stood up from the neat flush of masonry by a finger's breadth. It indicated a windcatcher set into the wall below, narrow bars of granite in a gap three hands high, oriented to filter the river breezes downward, cooling the room within. Being above the dormitories once more roused in him a spirit of mischief. He crept to the lip of stone and lowered himself silently to stretch along the rooftop, listening.

  “I did not come all this way for nothing. I will see it done before my ship sails for home.”

  “And here I thought you came all this way for the king's funeral.” It was Nebseny, the High Priest. A note of amusement colored his smooth voice.

  “To pay my respects, ah.” The other chuckled, said something low and mocking that Senenmut could not discern.

  “It is too bad, though,” said Nebseny. “The boy had come to like and trust me. Another week or so, and I might have easily convinced him to displace his wife and raise Iset in her place. His hatred for that abomination of a woman had grown so, he would hardly have needed a reason to do it. Since their little adventure in Kush he could not even stand to look upon her. It's a wonder he could bring himself to sire a child on her. Gods know I would not be able to rise to such a task. The woman is as unattractive as she is unnatural.”

  “It makes no difference now. We will have it done and see Iset on the throne. The rest will be simple.” There was a pause, a faint sound of shuffling, the scrape of chair legs on stone. “You already sent word to your people? They are ready to do their work?”

  An agonizing silence, while Nebseny gave an unseen gesture of an answer.

  With intricate care, Senenmut pushed himself up from where he lay. He did not make a sound, though the pounding of his heart in his own ears was painfully loud, and a thousand desperate thoughts shrieked at once within his heart. On shaking legs he stood and checked that the barge was still moving, making its stately progress toward Ipet-Isut. Hatshepsut was safely aboard, he reasoned. The barge would not have sailed without her. For the moment, he could be certain that she was well. He rocked on his heels in an agony of desperation. He did not know whether to board the ship to protect her with his own unarmed hands, or run to the palace and warn her guards. Of what? He had heard only enough to know she was under threat, and not enough to save her.

  Ah, that sorted his thoughts quickly enough. He crept along the rooftop until he found the staircase, then rushed headlong for the water steps. In his nobleman's wig and long kilt, all could see that he was no priest. The young men of the temple eyed him, jostled him, muttered about intruders into the god's business. When at last the barges arrived, Senenmut joined the first file of priests to board. The line of men moved too slowly and complained too much of his inexplicable presence. But once on the deck of their boat, he could see Hatshepsut standing, solitary and unharmed, at the head of Thutmose's coffin, which lay as final a felled tree beneath its canopy of blue linen.

  She is unharmed. For now, that is all I need to know.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  WHEN THE BOATS REACHED THE western shore, Senenmut was the first onto land. He leaped from the ship's rail to the uneven stones of the quay before the sailors could even jump from the deck, their lines in hand. “Here,” one of them called after him, “if you're going to risk your neck, at least help us tie up, you fool!”

  He paced in the hot red dust of the landing as the ships let out their ramps, as priests and mourners picked their way slowly to the shore. They gathered about him, their voices raising, shouting to one another, a few women already beginning to wail. He kept his eyes on Hatshepsut's great barge, watched, avid and frantic, as she was carried from its deck on an ornate litter. She held Little Tut on her lap. The child clapped his hands.

  Senenmut surged against the crush of bodies, but he could not make his way to her side. The mourners moved like a great flight of birds, rippling this way and that, carrying him farther from the litter on stumbling, unwilling feet. He craned his neck, but the High Priest was not to be seen.

  The coffin was borne from the ship on a golden platform. It fell in behind Hatshepsut's litter, and with a raucous surge of sound the mourning began in earnest. Senenmut, no matter how he turned and pushed, could not free himself from the crowd. All around him women stooped as they walked, cupped dust in their hands, threw it upon their foreheads. His eyes filled with grit, ran with tears. The mourners tore their dresses, clawed at the sky with desperate hands, and on every side they cried out in a din that might have woken Thutmose's very ka, had it not already fled the living world.

  Senenmut saw the broad, dark back of Nehesi appear for a moment beside his lady's litter. Then the man was obscured by a cloud of thrown dust. “Nehesi!” he shouted. The name was lost in the keening.

  They pressed into the dry valley, between two upthrust faces of red stone. Senenmut slowed, let himself fall to the rear of the procession so he might make his way to the edge. From there he would run alongside the column until he was abreast of the litter. And all at once Nebseny was there, his face impassive above a drape of leopard skin.

  Senenmut gasped to see him. Nebseny turned to gaze at him with simple curiosity.

  “I know,” Senenmut said. “I know what you plan to do.”

/>   Nebseny tilted his head.

  Senenmut tried again, bellowing this time over the wailing. “I know what you plan.”

  Nebseny's smile was cold, joyless, pale-lipped. “Do you?” He lifted a bright object from his chest. It threw a great glint of sunlight into Senenmut's eyes; he shut them under the assault of the glare and the mourning dust. When he forced them open again, the golden face of a leopard stared back at him. Nebseny's eyes blazed through the mask's slits with a terrible triumph. Senenmut surged toward the High Priest, but a mourner's shoulder caught him; he staggered, spun, and Nebseny was gone.

  At the mouth of the tomb, Senenmut freed himself at last from the press of the crowd. Hatshepsut was lowered from her litter. She carried the boy toward his father's coffin as priests lifted away its outer and inner lids. When they stood the wrapped and gilded body of her husband upright, Hatshepsut gazed at the golden face without a flicker of emotion. As she raised her voice, clear and strong, to recite the rites in the name of Thutmose the Third, Senenmut edged through the listening crowd until he had managed to creep as near to Nehesi as propriety would allow. He had to hiss the man's name several times before Nehesi glanced around, recognized Senenmut through the red grit that coated him, and gestured him near.

  “I overheard a threat to the Great Lady,” Senenmut said at once into Nehesi's ear. “The High Priest.”

  Nehesi's hand flashed to his sword, but Senenmut stayed it. “Not here, man! Use sense. You cannot kill him in cold blood, before Hatshepsut even knows the reason why. The people will tear you apart.”

  “Right. The moment the ceremony is done I shall be at her side.” He caught the eyes of two of his guardsmen; his hands flashed in a series of signs. The guardsmen tensed, then turned to work their way through the crowd. By the time Hatshepsut raised the hook of black metal to Thutmose's gilded lips, opening his mouth to breathe in the sweet air of the afterlife, a contingent of guards had drawn up around Nehesi, poised for his signal. Hatshepsut lifted Tut high; the boy sucked on his fingers, his round face puzzled by the crowd that shouted his name.