The silent Thutmose looked away.
“For your good work in this expedition, I present you with this, before all the court.” And she lifted her hand, motioned to her servants. They came at once with the gifts she had decreed, fine collars, necklaces, cuffs and armlets of gold and electrum. Bowls of silver, platters of ebony wood, ivory to make knife handles and drinking cups. Her men accepted the gifts humbly, and when she dismissed them to their places, Hatshepsut felt Thutmose shift on his throne with an irritated twitch.
Hatshepsut was well pleased to return to the comfort of her fine apartments after so long sleeping in gritty tents in the suffocating heat of the desert. But she had no time for the leisurely bath and massage she wished for. She sent at once for Thutmose, and he arrived so quickly that she knew he had been waiting for her summons.
The double crown was gone from his head, but he wore the cloth wings of the Nemes crown affixed to its golden circlet, and Hatshepsut was uncomfortably aware that she wore only a wig. She squinted at him, at his air of defensive swagger. He came through her double doors and halted, folding his arms tightly across his chest, jaw set, saying nothing.
“And where,” Hatshepsut said, “is your Great Royal Wife?”
Thutmose scowled. “In confinement, where she belongs. I would have left her there for your return processional, if I’d thought I could have done so without arousing the court’s suspicion.”
“What right do you suppose you had, to take my heir and make her your wife?”
Thutmose took one menacing step toward her, and she was suddenly aware of his strength and size, of the advantage his very sex gave him. But she did not shrink back from him, did not call her guards.
“This right,” he said, tugging at one wing of his Nemes crown. “I am as much Pharaoh as you, Mother, and I am not insensate to the troubles our house faces. I am not unaware of your reasons for going to Punt. After all, you and Senenmut took great pains to teach me.”
Hatshepsut’s mouth tightened at the venom in his voice when he spoke Senenmut’s name.
“Imagine our security if I could have had an heir growing in my wife’s belly when you returned with all your riches. Anyone who plotted against you – against us – would have been thoroughly undone.”
“Why Neferure, my heir? Why not some other woman – any other woman?”
“Because she is four times royal. Or so I thought.”
Four times royal. It was an idea that would have come from only one source. “Ahmose.”
“She is not to be punished for this. It was a good plan – better than yours – and it would have worked, if not for you angering the gods.”
“Be careful what you say, boy.”
“I am no boy. I am the Lord of the Two Lands.”
“As am I.”
“Then behave as if you are, and not like some rekhet slut rutting in an alley.”
She crossed to him in two quick steps, and her slap across his face cracked loudly against the walls of the Pharaoh’s chamber. The circlet slipped on his brow, and the Nemes crown hung askew.
“How dare you?” Hatshepsut grated.
Thutmose pressed one hand to his reddened cheek, then dropped it to his side. “How dare you?”
Hatshepsut forced herself to walk calmly away from him, sat lightly upon a couch. After a moment, Thutmose, eying her warily, joined her across the empty table.
“Explain this mess to me,” she said.
“Neferure has been wild to learn why she can’t speak to the gods for years. You would have known that, if you ever paid any attention to the girl, instead of trotting her out for ceremony and then putting her away again like a trinket in a box.”
“Speak to me civilly, or you will not speak to me at all.”
Thutmose gave one quick, jerking nod of his head, and made an obvious effort to rein in his rage. “With you away, she felt free to search for a reason for her affliction. She found your fan-bearer, lured her into her own palace, and tortured the poor woman with a knife until she told everything she knew.”
Hatshepsut pressed her palms together. Her hands shook, and were cold as a dead fish. “Batiret.”
“She is well enough. I found her in Neferure’s palace and stopped it before any real damage could be done. But she’ll have scars; that is certain.”
Thutmose fell silent. He blinked rapidly, unwilling to allow tears into his dark eyes. Hatshepsut watched him, fearful of his words, of what he might choose to do now that he knew her secret. She savored the silence, aware it was her last refuge of safety, and might be broken when Thutmose spoke again. But he maintained his silence, and Hatshepsut marshalled enough courage to speak on.
“So, then, what shall we do?”
Thutmose met her eyes, and in his own she saw his ambition, his pride, his love for the throne. She saw his love for her, too, reluctant though it was, and clouded by anger. She knew in a sudden rush that the balance between them had shifted, and now hung poised on a fragile fulcrum – knew that there was no senior king now, but rather two who stood shoulder to shoulder on shifting footing, equally matched in pride, equally matched in desperation to retain their respective power. The change struck her like a blow. She rocked back under its impact, and felt both regret and relief wash across her, throb with her rapid pulse beneath her skin.
He has power now – real power. If I meet him in compromise, he may yet preserve me.
“You know what you must do,” Thutmose said slowly.
Hatshepsut’s heart cried out, wailing against the blackness inside her chest. But when she spoke her voice was calm, the controlled, regal voice of a king.
“Yes.”
PART FOUR
THE GOD’S
JUDGMENT
1466 B.C.E.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE BLACK BULL SNORTED IN the dust of its own churning hooves, a repetitive roar that sounded in time with Hatshepsut’s own ragged breaths. It tossed its head to avoid her, rolling its peevish eye toward the gold-plated goad in her hand. Spittle flew from its muzzle, spattered in the dust, and was trampled beneath the bull’s blue-painted hooves. The sun-disc tied between its horns shimmered in the sun; the twin plumes rising from the disc thrashed against the sky as the bull bellowed and lunged toward her.
Hatshepsut danced aside. The tail affixed to her belt swung heavy against her legs and stung when it slapped her skin. It was the tail of a bull who had been as black as this one that now reeled around her, calling its anger to the distant crowd.
The people stood well back, watching breathlessly beneath a forest of sun-shades. The ceremonial circuit outside Waset’s walls was wide and dusty, hot as an oven in the mid-day sun. Hatshepsut was thirsty, her mouth sticky and dry, her nostrils crusted with dirt. She watched the bull carefully, waited for it to turn, lunged with her goad and dealt it a stinging blow along its flank. It bleated an undignified moo and lumbered in the correct direction – toward the two granite pillars at the far end of the circuit, where the priests of Hapi-Ankh stood waiting. The bull picked up its pace, and Hatshepsut ran after it, the black tail streaming behind her.
The snorting creature saw the two lines of priests fanning out from the pillars, and slowed its progress just enough for Hatshepsut to overtake it. For the final spans they ran together, woman and bull, king and god, she near enough that the heat of the sun reflected from the glossy black hide and beat against her skin. When they passed between the granite pillars raised in celebration of her own glory, she laid a hand on the bull’s withers, and felt its answering bellow shiver through her bones. The great ring of watchers – all the population of Waset, noble and rekhet, priest and royal – shouted in acclaim.
The Hapi-Ankh priests slowed the bull with familiar gestures, calmed it with the soothing words it had learned as a calf. Hatshepsut approached with the garland in her arms, and draped it round the bull’s neck.
“Renewal!” she shouted, raising one fist to the sky, and the crowd echoed her word.
Nehesi ca
me to her, bearing a skin of cool water, which she received gratefully. It took several long swallows to slake her thirst. She tossed it back to her guard half-empty, and he grinned at her before leading her back to the large dais that had been erected to overlook the circuit.
It was the Feast of the Tail, Hatshepsut’s Sed-festival, the jubilee to renew her strength on the throne, to ensure her ongoing glory. Pipers took up an old soldiers’ victory tune as Hatshepsut climbed the steps to her shaded throne, and the people, drunk on celebration and on strong beer, clapped and danced.
Hatshepsut fell gratefully onto her seat. The golden plating of her throne was cool beneath the canopy, a pleasure against her sweaty back. The bull’s tail stuck out between her knees as she slumped, catching her breath.
Beside her on his throne, Thutmose smiled. “You did well,” he said, and she was pleased to note that there was nothing grudging in his voice. Much of the anger he had felt over Neferure’s origins had dissipated over the past months as their house continued strong on their thrones, though there was still a vague uneasiness between them. Perhaps there always would be. How could Hatshepsut yield her former power, once so complete and unchallenged, without some conflicted emotion? But Thutmose was gracious in his strength, careful of her pride, quick to share both duty and power equally.
He had no interest, though, in sharing her Sed-festival. It was a celebration typically reserved for a king’s thirtieth year of rule, and Thutmose was made uneasy by any breach of tradition. Hatshepsut, recalling that her father Thutmose the First had died before he could celebrate a Sed-festival of his own, suggested the rite on behalf of their entire house. “Not just for me,” she had told her co-king, “but for you, and your grandfather, may he live. He sat the throne fifteen years, and I fifteen more. Taken together, the time is right.”
But the time was not right according to Thutmose, who had glanced sidelong at Neferure and refused to take part in the ceremonies himself, refused to share in this rite as they had so often shared rites before. Indeed, it was not until Neferure herself had warned that the gods would be displeased by such a breach of tradition that Thutmose agreed to allow the Sed-festival. Despite the girl’s warning and Thutmose’s superstitious fears, his loathing for his sister-wife was stronger than his dread. He approved the Feast of the Tail in Hatshepsut’s fifteenth year chiefly because Neferure opposed it.
Perhaps, too, Thutmose felt a little sorry for Hatshepsut, and wished to appease her or comfort her in some way. She had done what was required of her and sent Senenmut out of Waset, confining him to his estates. Her bed and her heart had both been empty for months, but she still filled her throne, and that, she considered, toying with the long hairs at the end of the bull’s tail, was enough for now.
Batiret offered cool, sweet melon and honey cakes on a tray, and Hatshepsut ate hungrily, laughing with her mouth full at the drunken dancing in the circuit below. Batiret laughed along with her mistress, and plied her ostrich-feather fan happily, waving the dust of hundreds of dancing feet away from Hatshepsut’s face. Her most loyal and trusted servant had taken some time to recover from the shock of Neferure’s mistreatment, but she had steadfastly refused to retire from service in the Good God’s personal chamber. After so many years of service she had become more friend than servant, and now, without Senenmut for company, Hatshepsut found herself turning more and more to Batiret for the things she lacked: laughter, comfort, reassurance, joy. For her part, Batiret had not only her loyalty to her mistress as motivation to stay on. With Senenmut gone from Waset, Hatshepsut had been in need of a new Great Steward, and was quick to appoint Kynebu to the position. She suspected her fan-bearer and her steward might soon be wed, and the thought brought her the pain of envy along with genuine happiness. In moments when pensiveness overtook her, Hatshepsut wondered whether Senenmut kept any women at his estate, whether he had filled his bed and his heart with someone else.
In due time, the priests raised their rattles, shaking them hard and long, but it took many long moments before silence spread throughout the drunken crowd and attention returned to the dais. As rested and refreshed as she was ever likely to be, Hatshepsut rose to bless the crowd, which brought about their cheers once more, then she descended with Nehesi to run the circuit – the final rite of renewal she must perform before the Feast of the Tail could truly begin.
Four pillars had been raised, roughly delineating a great rectangle in the flat, dusty earth. The crowd retreated, exposing the grounds of the circuit once more, and as Hatshepsut stepped from beneath her canopy the force of the sun fell upon her, unrelenting in its glare. A faint pain twinged in her hip; she rubbed it away, shook out her legs one at a time, limbering for her last feat of strength. A troupe of musicians struck up a marching tune, and, pausing first before the High Priest Hapuseneb to receive his blessing, Hatshepsut began her run.
At once the sweat sprang up on her body, and it cooled her somewhat in the breeze of her own motion. Soon enough, though, the heat in the air, in her own muscles, became oppressive. She gasped as she rounded the second pillar. Before she was halfway to the third, her throat began to burn. She completed the first of four circuits and loped into her second lap. The faces of the crowd blurred as she passed, stretching into one long swath of brown skin and black wigs, white fans, the flash of canopy poles flitting past her vision. Hands raised as she went, pale palms seeming to slap at her sight. She fell into a steady rhythm of breaths, each one dry as it entered her throat, burning hot as it left. She passed the starting pillar for a second time, swung into her third lap with a wheeze, her breasts painful from the bouncing, her knees protesting, her ankles swollen and stiff. Hatshepsut pushed on. Sweat ran past her temples, onto her chin, her neck. The furrow of her spine was like a river. As she was nearing the final pillar of her third lap, her eyes suddenly caught and held on something in the crowd – a half-familiar face, leaping out amidst the blur of all the other faces, there and gone. She could not stop, but ran on, and several flagging paces more her heart processed the sudden vision, and she recognized the face.
As her final lap came to a blessed close, Hatshepsut turned to look into the crowd in the place where he had been. Senenmut stared back at her, his eyes locking with hers, his mouth forming some word she could not read before she passed him by. Mut’s wings snatched up her feet like a hawk snatches up a mouse, sudden and unexpected, and Hatshepsut fairly flew the last stretch of her race.
When Nehesi helped her back to her shade canopy, pressing another skin of water into her hands, Hatshepsut fell into her chair gasping with grateful laughter, tears running down her cheeks to mingle with her sweat.
“It seems you enjoyed that run,” Thutmose said, chuckling.
“Oh, ah,” she replied, “never have I felt so renewed.”
When Thutmose turned his attention to the roasted duck his servants brought him, Hatshepsut slipped her arm around Batiret’s shoulders, pulled her close, stopped the girl’s hands in their busy-work of toweling the sweat from the Pharaoh’s body. “Send me Kynebu,” Hatshepsut whispered. “I have a message for him to carry to someone in the crowd.”
Batiret saw the pleasure sparkling in her mistress’s eye.
“Ah, Great Lady. As you wish.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE MORNING AFTER THE FEAST of the Tail dawned too bright and sharp for Thutmose’s aching head. He had managed to conduct himself with seemly restraint throughout Hatshepsut’s rites in the circuit, and had kept himself in check for most of the feast. But when the throne of the Great Royal Wife remained empty beside him and he realized at last that Neferure would not present herself at the festival she opposed, Thutmose had sunk sullenly into his cups.
The girl disturbed him when he recalled with a pang of impotent fear the way she had calmly set upon Hatshepsut’s servant with that copper knife. He did not know quite what to do with her. He couldn’t keep her indefinitely in her confinement cell, only drawing her out to set on display when festival or court
made it necessary. Had he not accused Hatshepsut of the very same misdeed? And yet he could not keep her as wife, either. He knew now that he despised Neferure, her unfeeling coldness, her abnormal preoccupation with the divine. He could never again bring himself to lie with her, and so she was useless as a Great Royal Wife. But to set her aside, and leave her free to marry? She would be snapped up by a noble house faster than any former harem girl, and his and Hatshepsut’s fears for their security would be redoubled. He might expose the secret of her parentage to the court, but only at great cost to Hatshepsut, the only mother he had ever known.
Thutmose shifted the problem of Neferure this way and that inside his heart while the Feast of the Tail went on raucously around him, a seething crowd of revelers, acrobats, dancers, servants, laughing and shrieking in the expanse of the Great Hall. And Hatshepsut had sat triumphant and glowing upon her throne, accepting the happy acclaim of her court with a confidence she had not shown in years. She was renewed in truth. Thutmose could not deny it.
Before he had realized just how many cups of wine he’d consumed, Thutmose was well and truly drunk. He barely remembered Hesyre leading him back to his chambers, giving quiet orders to the soldier who guided Thutmose on his strong arm. Now, in the stark light of morning, Neferure returned to his thoughts to plague him like the ache in his head.
He gave himself a long time to collect and order this thoughts, soaking in a warm bath, breathing deep of the bracing, invigorating oils Hesyre selected for his massage, allowing the pleasure of one of a servant woman’s kneading hands to soak into his bones. At last, as prepared as he could be, Thutmose slid the Nemes crown onto his brow and stood eying his own reflection in his dressing-room mirror.
“We must go to her – Hatshepsut and I,” he said to his own image. “We must decide her fate, and do it today.”
And so he met with his co-Pharaoh late in the morning, accompanied as she always was by Nehesi and her new steward Kynebu. Thutmose nodded a silent greeting to her in the courtyard that lay between their two separate apartments. He did not fail to note the somber expression on her face, braced and accepting. She knew, too: the time to sort the tangle of Neferure had come at last.
The She-King: The Complete Saga Page 79