The She-King: The Complete Saga

by L. M. Ironside

  Meryet found his hand beneath the linens. The lotus petal crumpled between their fingers. “There is a way to stop her.”

  Thutmose looked at her dumbly. He knew the words she would speak, but his heart quailed even before he heard them.

  “I have thought about it often,” she went on, “the whole time you’ve been away. You must disinherit Amenemhat. Absolutely and irrefutably.”

  “But he is not even my heir.”

  “It is not his claim you must fear. Neferure was Hatshepsut’s heir. If she lives, then she is the heir still.”

  “She never wanted the throne for herself,” Thutmose said slowly, piecing the pot shards together at last. “But she does want it for her son.”

  “She can pass it to him. But only if she is still the heir.”

  Thutmose gathered his wife tightly against his chest. “Gods, but I thought I left the battles behind me in Megiddo.”

  Meryet sighed. “I’m afraid, my love, that a great war has only yet begun.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  STARLIGHT BRIGHTER THAN ELECTRUM through the pillared wall of Meryet’s bed chamber. The night was young and fresh, the air heavy and rich with the promising fragrance of water to come. She pulled a heavy robe close about her shoulders and made her way out into the garden. A tinge of blue still clung to the sky, the deep, dark blue of wet lapis stone. She saw a brilliant white fire amid the black branches of her tall old sycamore, that dear friend who had provided her shade and a refuge from the pressures of duty more times than she could count. A breeze stirred the tree, clearing her view of the sky for one heartbeat. There it was: the full, glimmering orb of the star Sopdet. A new year had come.

  Two sets of light footsteps sounded on the path behind her. Meryet did not need to look around to know that her twin shadows had followed her here, as they did everywhere. Batiret, slender and pretty and thoughtful in her duties, and Nehesi. The guardsman was advanced in age now. His untrimmed hair often peeked from beneath his wig, grizzled and thin. The lines of his face were deep now, but rather than giving him the softness of old age, they only made him sterner, more imposing. He was still as strong as a bull, and always would be, for all Meryet could tell.

  Both servants had passed to her from Hatshepsut’s keeping. In their comfortable presence Meryet still could feel the departed Pharaoh’s many kas watching and, she hoped, approving.

  “I’m all right,” she called to them softly, automatically.

  They were beside her now, following her gaze up into the sky. The stars were so numerous they seemed to shout a glad, clamoring chant among the branches of the sycamore. But Sopdet was brightest, and it burned like a temple fire.

  “A new year,” Batiret said. “Festival time. Nehesi will drink too much again and ask me to marry him.”

  Nehesi coughed to clear his throat.

  “You had better not accept,” Meryet teased. “He asks all the pretty girls to marry him when he’s drunk.”

  “Well do I know it.”

  “If a man never asks,” Nehesi said good-naturedly, “he can never expect to receive.”

  Batiret sniffed. “Women might prefer to be asked by a sober man. And anyway, you know I have a husband.”

  “That scribe you never see? Bah! He has arms like twigs. I’ve got much more to hold onto. Here…” Nehesi flexed his arm to show Batiret his muscles, “and here…” he made as if to grab for whatever he had beneath his kilt, but Meryet stopped him with a hand on his wrist.

  “Gods have mercy on me,” she laughed, “but you are in the presence of the Great Royal Wife, Nehesi. Show some decorum, please.”

  “Apologies, Great Lady.”

  “I swear by Mut, the two of you quarrel like you’re married; you may as well be.”

  “You ought to come back inside, Great Lady,” Batiret said. “The night is chill, and you need sleep for the festival tomorrow.”

  “She is right,” Nehesi murmured. “The first day of the new year is always a long one. Plenty of sleep would suit you well tonight.”

  Meryet hooked her arm through Nehesi’s elbow, pulled Batiret close with her other arm, clutching the woman in an affectionate hug. “Quarrel like an old married couple, and order me about like two overprotective parents. Oh, very well. Take me to my bed and tuck me in.”

  They did just that, Batiret marshaling the usual small army of body servants to take Meryet’s wig and jewels, wash the paint from her face and soothe her skin with a cool cream. They dressed her in a fine silk night-robe – a gift from Thutmose, from his store of costly foreign fabrics – and eased her into her bed with soft voices, quiet music, the low flicker of a single wick burning in her brass lamp.

  Meryet, though, could not sleep. Rest evaded her, slipping beyond her grasp no matter how she turned on the mattress, no matter how she tilted the ivory cradle of her head-rest. After a time, the gentle, monotonous tones of the harpist became annoying, yet the thought of dismissing the woman seemed somehow cruel. She closed her eyes and lay quite still, feigning sleep until the harpist dismissed herself and the last of her body servants snuffed the lamp’s wick. When she withdrew through the servants’ door, Meryet was left alone with the sound of her own breathing and the faint, desultory crackle of the wick settling back into the oil.

  A new year, she mused, shifting against her head-rest. And a new battle for Thutmose. I have no reason to think it’s so, and yet I do. Why?

  She opened her eyes, watched through the pillars of the wall as the sycamore swayed in the wind. It painted a shifting web of starlight and shadow over the gaps between the pillars. Sopdet, dominating the deep blue of the heavens, seemed to catch sight of her between the mobile black branches. Its stare was direct and forcefully bright.

  Meryet raised her arms before the great statue of Waser. The golden discs sewn along the edge of her fine white winter shawl chimed with the movement.

  “O Waser, holy one, originator, thou who make the dead live again! O Waser, Lord of Silence, thou who art forever kind and young! Thy wife Iset comes to thee in love. She has reassembled thee; she has raised thee up; she has opened thy mouth, that the breath of life might fill thy nostrils again. Exhale the breath of life across our land!”

  The god gazed over her head, smiling impassively at the crowd of nobles gathered at her back. The statue was more than twice the height of a man, his skin painted as green as a fertile field. The black jut of a conical beard pointed outward from his stern face, but his smile was benign, nearly loving, and his eyes were, Meryet thought, as warm as stone eyes could be.

  Beside her, Thutmose bore the offering tray, a great silver platter heaped with green offerings of every kind: bundles of herbs, the pliant branches of young trees, sheaves of still-unripe wheat, and a pyramid of several kinds of fruit, which Thutmose took the greatest care not to upset. It would never do to have the New Year’s offerings go tumbling down the steps and into the crowd.

  Sleep had evaded Meryet the night before the ceremonies. Eventually she had risen to walk again in her garden, but the chill had soon driven her back beneath the blankets. She had drifted in and out of consciousness, her body sometimes giving an involuntary jerk of exhaustion that pulled her cruelly back from the verge of true restful sleep. When the dawn broke and the birds chorused outside, she was relieved to rise from the bed and cast all hope of sleep aside. It was futile, and Meryet did not enjoy pursuing futility.

  She had at least been spared walking the long road to the temples at Ipet-Isut. A litter had carried her, and she had ridden it uncomfortably, fighting the urge to rub at her stinging, tired eyes. She pushed her way through the ceremonies of the Opening of the Year with dogged focus, promising herself that there would be time for a nap between ceremony and feast. Strange, that the surety of returning to her bed, the very site of her night-long torment, should be all that kept her from breaking into hysterical laughter or sobs of frustration now, before the eyes of the gods and the court.

  The invocation of Waser was the fin
al phase of the Opening of the Year. Only a few moments more, and I will be on my litter returning to Waset. Gods, but I’m tired!

  She reached for the bundle of herbs on Thutmose’s tray, held it aloft for Waser to inspect.

  There was an abrupt sound in the crowd behind her, a stifled exclamation of surprise. Meryet ignored it, and went on with her intonations to the god.

  As she lifted the sheaf of wheat over her head, a wider murmur came from the crowd, and something that sounded like a whimper of fear. Meryet glanced quickly over her shoulder. Her eyes went immediately, instinctively, to where Amunhotep’s nurse stood. The woman was there, and the prince too. In fact, the nurse held him clutched tightly to her breast, though at nearly four years of age, Amunhotep was old enough to stand on his own at the front of the crowd. In that brief moment, as Meryet glimpsed the nurse’s face, she saw in the woman’s dark eyes and compressed lips the trace of fear, as well as ferocious determination.

  What in the name of the gods…?

  As Meryet turned back to Waser, her eye passed swiftly over another woman’s face – Amenemhat’s nurse, pale, eyes wide, mouth open in an expression of panic. Her arms were empty.

  Meryet paused with the sheaf of wheat raised above her head. “Thutmose,” she whispered urgently. Her voice barely carried beyond the braids of the wig that framed her face, hiding it at this angle from the eyes of the nobles. “Something is wrong.”

  Thutmose’s eyes shifted, but he did not upset his pyramid of fruits. “What is it?”

  “The boys’ nurses.”

  Thutmose, too, glanced quickly over his shoulder. When he returned his eyes to the god, Meryet could see grim understanding paling his features. “Where is Amenemhat?”

  Meryet gave the dedication of the wheat as quickly as propriety would allow, and, in the act of turning to the tray to lift the sapling branches, she allowed her eyes to run over the crowd. Nehesi was ushering Amenemhat’s nurse from the temple, steering her with a firm hand.

  “Just get through the ceremony,” Meryet whispered. “Then we will know.”

  Meryet walked calmly back to her litter, her path strewn with bunches of herbs tossed by the watching crowd. She seized Batiret’s hand as she mounted onto her chair, pulled the woman onto the litter’s platform with her. The bearers lifted the platform into the air, and Batiret, unused to riding on the shoulders of men, squeaked where she crouched at Meryet’s feet. She gripped the legs of the chair in white-knuckled fists.

  Meryet leaned close. “What in Amun’s name happened back there?”

  “Gods preserve me, Great Lady. Satiah’s boy – Amenemhat – he’s gone.”

  “What?”

  Scores of nobles, to say nothing of the crowds of rekhet in their festival best, lined the long road from Ipet-Isut to Waset’s palace. Meryet struggled to keep her face calm.

  “His nurse lost sight of him, and he…he vanished. Nehesi took her out of the temple before she could scream, and he set all his guards to work searching for the boy.”

  Meryet glanced about her. For the first time in over three years, Nehesi was not slinking along beside her. She had lost her shadow. Her eyes went unbidden to the scars on Batiret’s arm, and Meryet shuddered. She willed panic out of her heart, pressing it away with the deliberate hand of her ka. She ordered it away.

  “I am sure Nehesi’s men will find the boy.”

  “Oh, gods,” Batiret moaned. “It’s Satiah – you know it is!”

  “Stop this at once,” Meryet hissed. “You are too sensible to behave this way.”

  Batiret breathed deeply, fighting against her own memories, her own terrors.

  Meryet dropped her hand to the woman’s shoulder and gave a quick, reassuring squeeze. “It will be well, Batiret. But you must keep your wits about you. I need you now.”

  “Ah, Great Lady.”

  The moment her litter arrived at Waset, Meryet exchanged it for another – a curtained one, so she might hide from public view. She and Batiret rode at once to the House of Women. The wailing, panicked shrieks of Amenemhat’s nurse greeted Meryet in the courtyard; they sped to the boy’s small room. The stricken nurse was at the center of a knot of frantic women. Her face was an ugly mess of red flush and wet black kohl.

  “Here now,” Meryet said, pushing into the crowd. Dimly, she was aware that Satiah might be in that crowd, Satiah and her knife, with Nehesi nowhere to be found. But she could not spare a worry for that now. She must find out what had happened to the boy. “Here now, Lady. Listen – listen to me! The Great Royal Wife stands before you. Take hold of yourself!”

  The nurse did take hold of herself with visible effort, gulping back her tears, twisting the edge of her shawl between shaking hands.

  “Tell me what happened,” Meryet demanded.

  The nurse could enlighten her no more than Batiret had. It seemed one moment the boy was there, and the next he was gone, and nowhere to be found.

  “It must have been one of the priests.” The sudden deep, masculine voice turned every woman’s head, and in a moment the harem women were falling away in deep bows, murmuring Lord Horus and King. Meryet stared up into Thutmose’s face, desperate, absurdly grateful to see him here, a rock in the midst of this chaotic, helpless current.

  Thutmose nodded a tense greeting. “I figured somebody would bring the poor nurse back here to Amenemhat’s room, though it probably does her no good to see it. Meritamun,” he called into the crowd, and a tall, slender woman bowed at his shoulder. “Take this poor mawat to the kitchen and give her some strong wine. It will be all right,” he added to the nurse as she went stumbling by, tucked under Meritamun’s arm. “We will find your boy.”

  He sent the rest of the women away – all but Batiret, who remained stoically at Meryet’s shoulder, grim and silent.

  “You think it was a priest?” Meryet asked when they were alone.

  “Or a priestess. Who else could move unnoticed at the edge of a festival crowd, and who else knows the temple well enough to whisk a child away unseen? Whoever took Amenemhat is hiding with him in some passage, some storeroom….”

  “Nehesi’s men are searching the temple now.”

  “Nehesi should not have left you,” Thutmose said.

  “I’ve survived. Let us worry about Amenemhat. Are you sure…” Meryet gave Batiret an apologetic glance, “…that Satiah herself didn’t take the boy?”

  “I am certain Satiah is still at her estate. I receive reports daily. The usual messenger arrived just as my litter returned to Waset, before I came here. She is…at her home.”

  “It’s where they’ll take the boy – whoever abducted him. They will bring him directly to Satiah.”

  “I know.”

  “You must go to her, too, Thutmose. You must get him back.” Meryet’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She is making her move. Now. She is reaching out for your throne.”

  “She will not take it,” Thutmose vowed.

  He turned on his heel and strode from the room. Meryet was left alone, clutching both of Batiret’s hands in her own, the two of them standing wordless and frightened among the discarded playthings of Satiah’s boy.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THUTMOSE’S FASTEST SHIP LANDED AT the estate’s moorings less than an hour later. He had traveled under sail and oar both, moving at all speed, the prow churning the water, the oars slapping the Iteru with a furious rhythm that sent white spray flying. A stiff wind had blown steadily, hurrying him south as if the gods themselves understood his urgency. And yet his progress still felt too slow. He glanced nervously at the sun’s position in the pale winter sky as he leapt from the ship’s deck to the crumbling stone quay.

  He had no guard with him now – none but the guards who waited at the estate itself. Thutmose ran up the long roadway, past fields long since harvested, their earth dry and bare, shot with the dun tufts of winter weeds. He sprinted through the olive orchard where last season’s leaves clung to tired branches. When he reached the hill that r
ose to the house, he slowed, mindful of his strength. It would not do to arrive in Satiah’s presence winded and trembling. As he climbed, his hand stayed firmly on the hilt of his sword.

  The guards had seen him coming, of course, and the gate stood open to him, flanked by bowing men. The small, tidy garden was empty, silent and breathless, crouched as if waiting for him to strike a great and terrible blow.

  Thutmose marched toward the dark arch of Satiah’s doorway. The scent of fresh myrrh smoke reached him before the darkness of her chambers closed across his vision.

  “Satiah,” Thutmose called harshly.

  She made no answer, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, a small, pale form asserted itself against the blackness. Satiah was perched like a tiny, delicate bird on an ebony chair. Its back was high, ornately carved. Her hands lay on arm rests very like those on Thutmose’s own throne. In the dimness of her chamber, half-lit by the offering bowl burning at her small Hathor shrine, she looked as grim and powerful as any Great Royal Wife who had ever ruled from the dais in the Hall of Audiences.

  Thutmose advanced on her. “Where is the boy?”

  She held up a hand imperiously, and without thinking, Thutmose stalled. He cursed himself for capitulating like a subject.

  “Tell me where he is, Satiah, and I’ll spare your life.”

  “Spare my life? You did not come to kill me, Thutmose.”

  “Where?”

  “Amenemhat is not here.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She shrugged.

  “How did you contrive to take him? And at a ceremony, Satiah! I never would have thought you would defile a holy day.”

  “It defiles nothing, for a child to be with his mother. It is you who offends the gods – you who cast me off unjustly and put a false Great Royal Wife in my place.”