“Where is Mutnofret? Is she trapped in a privy?”
Tut jackal-laughed. “I’m sure she’ll show up. She probably wants to make a grand entrance.”
Ahmose’s shoulders raised like a wary animal hackling. A grand entrance? The grandest entrance Nofret could imagine wouldn’t be enough to shake Ahmsoe’s composure. She had to tell herself that several times.
“Pharaoh,” Ineni called from the door.
Tut rose from his chair and adjusted his long, many-pleated kilt. He looked so handsome and powerful in the formal dress. “It’s time to go play king.”
Ahmose followed him from the waiting room and down the corridor to the great hall’s entryway. The noise of many voices carried through the great double doors. She was suddenly all a-flutter over the feast, welling up inside with anticipation and pride. She didn’t think she could stand being alone, even for a few minutes while Tut was formally announced.
He stopped, turned back to look at her. She reached up to straighten his Eye-of-Horus pectoral; he caught her wrists. “A kiss for luck,” he said, and before she could blink, his lips touched her own. His kiss was there and gone in an instant, but her mouth tingled as he walked away. The complement of guards on the feast hall’s doors bowed to him, swung the huge carved and gilded doors wide.
“The heir to the Horus Throne, Thutmose,” the steward called. Hundreds of voices rose in a cheer.
Ahmose leaned against the wall beside the doors, where none of the guests could see her. She pressed a hand to her heart, squeezing her eyes shut, willing her breath to steady. Confidence. Confidence is all a queen needs. I will make them see me as a queen. When the shouts of the people died back, Ineni coughed politely, gestured. She sprang away from the wall. When she moved into the great hall, her steps were even and confident.
“The Great Royal Wife, King’s Daughter, God-Chosen, Queen Ahmose.”
The guests were on their feet, clapping, shouting their approval, raising their drinking-bowls in her direction. She walked down the wide aisle between rows of tables, her eyes on the three thrones at the head of the room. Thutmose sat upon the center one, grinning at her. His smile was all that mattered.
When she reached her throne, high-backed and adorned with a shining sun disc, Ahmose had one brief, soaring moment to look down on her approving subjects. I am their queen. They know it. Her proud bearing had been all she needed to win their love. She had won their hearts.
But she had hardly settled into her chair when the steward announced Mutnofret. Her sister swept into the hall like the Nile’s flood, undeniable, essential, rich. Far from being understated, Mutnofret was a glimmering vision. She wore unbleached linen of the loosest weave; every part of her body shone through the earthy fabric, more revealed than covered. Her breasts beamed like goddess’ faces, her nipples were dark jewels, her navel a pool to quench any man’s thirst. About her hips was a belt of golden links, hung with bright-beaded fringe. As she swayed toward Thutmose the fringe danced and parted, revealing the triangle at her groin, a brazen invitation. Her arms were bound in countless cuffs and bracelets, sparkling like the river; gems clustered all about her, glowing, enthralling. Ahmose gasped, torn between admiration for Mutnofret’s beauty and shock. She had expected deception. She hadn’t expected Mutnofret to look like perfection made flesh – like Iset, like the queen of the gods herself.
Ahmose only realized how loudly the crowd had cheered Mutnofret when at last they quieted. She was unable to meet any eye, suddenly and shamefully aware of how poor and child-like she truly looked.
Thutmose’s full attention was on his second wife; he helped Mutnofret fix her perfumed wax cone to her lovely gleaming wig, touched her soft hand, told her she was beautiful, so beautiful.
Ahmose’s belly soured.
The night dragged on forever. Mutnofret was a perfect woman, graceful and winsome, smiling her approval at all the performers, brushing her arm now and then against Thutmose’s, her cheek against his shoulder. Thutmose was not unmindful of Ahmose, to be sure; he offered every dish to her first, asked her opinion of each performance. But all his attentions had the flavor of duty, not the adoration she craved.
Is this to be my marriage, then? A dutiful husband who cannot take his eyes off my sister, even for a moment? Then she recalled Meritamun, sacrificing everything for Egypt, and stilled her heart. The gods had given the throne to Ahmose, for reasons only they knew. She had never failed the gods before, and she would not now. If her divine task was to be a dutiful queen, then so she would be. The harem women may read their love stories and dream of romance, but for Ahmose her heart and body could only be given to Egypt. This was the fate of a princess – the obligation of a princess.
She would do her work, and Thutmose would do his. If she was lucky, their mutual work would grow into – something. Friendship, she may hope. But love? She leaned her elbows on the table to look past her husband at Mutnofret. The second queen was laughing musically at something Thutmose had said.
Mutnofret would have his love, it seemed, while Ahmose must be content as his partner in duty.
EIGHT
The feast dragged on mercilessly. When it finally ended, thank all the gods, Ahmose escaped to her new quarters. The Great Royal Wife had an entire arm of the palace, a great pillared hall separated from the larger body of the complex by a courtyard, dappled now in moonlight. She nodded to the pair of guards on her chamber door, allowed them to open the ornate doors for her.
Happily, a brazier had been lit earlier in the evening. The oil was low, burned nearly away while the feast went on and on. The flame was weak. A fire box was on the floor, full of twigs, striking stones, and a jug of oil. She dismissed the guards back to their post and lifted the jug herself, trickled new oil carefully into the charred bowl, watched as the flame resurrected. The growing light revealed another brazier further along the wall. She filled it, then carried a burning twig to it, lit the oil; its pool of light reached yet another brazier. When the third was burning, the red-orange glow showed her an empty cavern of a room. All of Meritamun’s fine things were gone, moved to a large estate to the south, which she would now share with Nefertari. The gallery of the chamber echoed like a temple.
The floor was exquisitely tiled in bits of faience; an image of Mut with her perfect white wings outstretched spanned the length of the room, five times as long as Ahmose was tall. Several doors were set into the walls around her. One must be her bedroom. When these apartments had been Meritamun’s and full of beautiful objects, Ahmose had never noticed how large and grand the room itself was. It took an eternity just to walk across Mut’s figure to the line of doors.
Ahmose was lucky. The first door she tried revealed the bedroom, nearly as large as the anteroom. There was no need for a brazier here. The rear wall was a series of flat-faced pillars, soaring rectangular columns divided by spaces the width of two hands. The gaps reached from floor to ceiling; ample light from moon and stars poured into the room, turning the great bed – its only furnishing – to dull, beaten silver. In the center of one pillar, the largest, a doorway opened like a friend’s palm onto a private garden. Ahmose sighed in deep relief at the sight of it. So she would have a refuge, a place of peace.
The bed chamber was cleverly built. It would stay cool during the warmest months, and during the chill of the sowing season rugs could be hung over the wall’s gaps to keep out the wind. Patterns of black and silver reached toward her across the floor, shadow and pale light playing through the miraculous wall. She stumbled toward the bed, shedding sandals, jewelry, and gown. She removed her wig, the braids soaked in the fragrant oils of the festive wax cone she’d worn, melted down now to a sticky white stub. She tossed wig and wax alike carelessly on the floor. There was nowhere to set them anyhow – no stand, no table. And if the braids stuck in the wax, she could get another wig. She was the queen of Egypt.
Ahmose’s bed was double the size of the one she’d used in the House of Women. It was piled with clean linen
sheets, strewn with cushions of cool silk. An aged ivory headrest, padded with a blue bolster, waited at the top of the bed’s gentle slope, but she ignored it. Naked, she crawled atop the bed and huddled into the cushions, pulled a thin sheet over her exhausted body.
She imagined she was a gazelle fawn, fragile and fearful, cowering in a thicket. The hunter would come for her soon with his bloody spear. She shivered, recalling the physician Wahibra’s words. The mother was just too small, too young. Ahmose didn’t know how old or how large a woman must be to survive bearing, but her hands crossed defensively over her narrow hips, shielded her small, high breasts, and she knew she was too young. Like Aiya.
She lay paralyzed in the striped shadows of her bed chamber for hours before sleep took mercy. She fled into her dreams, bounding like a gazelle before a lion.
***
Late morning sun lanced into the courtyard, filtered through the climbing vines of a plant with huge, flat leaves. It was all over the columns on Ahmose’s side of the yard and provided pleasant, sweet shade. She had ordered her servants to set up her breakfast in the courtyard; men were busy moving the fine new ebony furniture she’d claimed into her rooms, and she could not eat there.
She had slept late, waking to the morning sun full in her face, shining insistently through her columned wall. A good night’s sleep had done her well – that, and the fact that Thutmose had not come to take her. She felt calm and determined now, ready to face her new life head on, a barque under full sail.
Ahmose had asked for two chairs at her breakfast table, intending to ask Renenet to join her, but her cousin was still asleep. Instead, she imagined Aiya’s ka for company, silvery as moonlight, with the perfect, soft belly of a virgin, holding her son on her knee. In her thoughts Ahmose chatted with Aiya about the wedding feast, gossiping over the singers, the dancers, the scandal of the High Priest kissing Iryet in the back corner. Ka-Aiya laughed and smiled, kissed her baby boy, told Ahmose how pleasant the life beyond was; though of course Aiya was not there yet in truth, could not be there until she was properly entombed – and that would not happen for two months yet. Still, it was a pleasant diversion.
“Good morning, sister. Did you sleep well?” Mutnofret padded across the courtyard. Evidently her own apartments were not far from Ahmose’s. She wore a more modest gown than last night’s spectacle, simple white linen with no adornments. Understated.
“I did, thank you,” Ahmose said tersely. She bit into a melon and looked away from Mutnofret.
Mutnofret seated herself in the other chair. Ka-Aiya vanished. “I didn’t sleep this much.” She snapped her fingers to show how little. “I hope you enjoyed the wedding night as much as I did.”
Ahmose flushed. So Tut had been with Mutnofret all night. Her relief at avoiding the pain was replaced in an instant by anger. As First Queen, he should have visited her bed before any other. But she couldn’t show her feelings to Mutnofret. She crossed her legs, leaned back in her chair, and flipped a sandal to show how she didn’t care. Flap-flap-flap, it said against her foot.
Mutnofret tried a different approach. “What did you think of my dress last night?”
“I thought some of the fatter nobles would get their eyes poked out from staring so hard at your nipples.”
Mutnofret burst into perfect laughter. “Oh, Ahmose. You are always so clever. I think our husband liked it, though. He wasted no time in coming to see me. I barely had time to bathe. I think I kept him happy. I might have worn him out.” She dipped her finger into the jar of honey and sucked it.
Ahmose made a disgusted noise. “What if the servants see you sticking your fingers into the honey?”
“Let them see. I’m the queen. Second Queen, anyway.”
Ahmose’s sandal flap-flap-flapped. “About that dress. I thought you planned to be understated.”
“Oh, I intended to at first, but I changed my mind.” She gazed across the table at Ahmose for a moment, all innocence, then her mouth opened in shock. “You can’t think – but Ahmose, I would never mislead you! Oh, by Hathor, I didn’t even remember I’d told you how to dress. I feel so silly now. I should have told you the plan had changed, shouldn’t I? Anyway, it’s all for the best. You didn’t want our husband and all the whole world besides to see that you still have a girl’s body, did you?”
Flap-flap-flap.
“Well anyway,” Mutnofret went on, helping herself to Ahmose’s pitcher of juice, “you looked perfectly lovely. Really. Like a queen.”
Ahmose rolled her eyes. She couldn’t have looked less like a queen if she’d rolled in mud before the feast. How to get rid of this buzzing fly?
Mutnofret propped her elbows on the table. “So, did he…?”
“Did he what?”
“Did he…visit you?”
Ahmose considered lying, but no doubt the Second Queen would just ask Thutmose about it the very next time she saw him. “No. He did not. I fell asleep early anyhow.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. He really is wonderful, you know.” Her eyes shifted about the courtyard. “I mean, up until the pain and the bleeding starts. Did you know he’s going off on a campaign soon? Oh, of course you didn’t know; you were asleep last night. He told me all about it while we bathed. He’s going south all the way to Buhen to check on the fortress and the outposts. He said there might be a battle with the Kushites. I expect he’ll be gone for weeks. I’m going to try to conceive a son before he leaves. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful surprise for our husband when he returns from battle? An heir already on the way.”
While they bathed? Together? Flap-flap-flap.
“How soon is he leaving? He can’t go anywhere until the Opening of the Mouth.” Thutmose would not truly be the Pharaoh until he had performed the ritual to raise his predecessor from death. And Amunhotep’s embalming was still not complete. Ahmose guessed her dead father’s body had been no more than twelve days under the salt. There was nearly another month to wait until Amunhotep could be raised to his afterlife.
“Just after that, I expect. I should have just enough time to conceive. If we lay together every night, it’s as good as certain.”
“You’d best pray to Hathor for fertility. And Hathor doesn’t like liars.”
Mutnofret sighed. “Ahmose, darling, I didn’t lie to you. It was a very simple mistake.”
“Whatever it was, you made me look like a fool.” She was proud that her voice didn’t shake. She was cool as night wind.
“Never! Thutmose adores you. I heard him call you Ahmoset that day on the barge.”
“And the nobles, and the priests? Have you heard them call me Ahmoset as well? There’s more to being a queen than being loved by your husband.”
Mutnofret’s smile was brittle. “Do you think I don’t know that? I, who was raised to be the Great Royal Wife?”
Ahmose stood and clapped for her servants. “Clear this away,” she said, waving toward breakfast and Mutnofret without looking at either.
“Where are you going?” Mutnofret asked, standing and stepping aside from the servants’ work as if she had ordered it herself, as if Ahmose hadn’t even spoken a word.
“To pray for your fertility. Perhaps Hathor will listen to me.”
***
She did not pray to Hathor, of course. She found the cool, shadowed corridor that led out to the palace lake and made her way there, needing peace and privacy. Mutnofret’s deception weighed on her heart, dragged at her ka as a quarryman’s sledge drags through deep mud. Between the Hyksos and the Kushites, Egypt’s freedom was at stake. Couldn’t Mutnofret see that? Did nothing matter to her but which throne she sat upon? More than anything else, couldn’t she see how this whole sorry arrangement pained Ahmose?
On the stone-lipped shore of the lake, Ahmose picked pebbles from the cracks in the wall and tossed them into the water, watching the ripples spread, break and reflect the day’s light, converging and merging and shattering like the shifting flash-and-dim dance of the river. The sweep of each ring
of tiny waves soothed her; she followed one ripple, then the next with her eyes; they sailed smooth as barques, pushing outward, growing, at last flattening into nothing but an echo of a wave. She threw two pebbles together; then one out of each hand, plunk-plunk, noting the different patterns they made, the way their ripples shivered together and rebounded away to chase each other across the face of the lake. Finally she gathered a whole handful of stone chips and sent them flying. They pattered into the water all haphazard, a splash like a fisherman’s cast net. The water’s surface scattered in disarray. As the ripples began to calm, settling into their familiar spread-and-rebound, the turquoise and lapis of sky’s light and water’s shade were replaced with an ever-shifting tumult of brown, black, linen-white. The lake grew calm. A man’s shape beside her own broke and reformed, broke and reformed.
Thutmose.
She turned to face him. Her face was hot with shame. To be caught at such a child-like game!
He didn’t say a word, just smiled at her, then searched through the stone chips at the base of the retaining wall. He found one he liked, tossed it a few times in his hand, then whipped it hard out over the lake. It sailed the length of six men’s bodies, then hep-hep-hep, jumped across the water’s surface. Ahmose, wide-eyed, stared at her husband.
“Not bad, eh?”
She shook her head, smiling.
“Do you know how it’s done?”
“No, I’ve never.”
“Let me show you.” He found the right kind of rock and guided it into her hand, set it just so. With words and gestures, he told her how to make the rock jump. She pulled her arm back, hesitated, then threw. The rock plunked into the water with a single disappointing splash.
The Sekhmet Bed (The She-King) Page 7