The Sekhmet Bed (The She-King)

by Lavender Ironside

  Ahmose wanted to step back from the force of Mutnofret’s rage, it was so hot, so palpable. But to step back was to admit defeat. So instead she put her hands out and shoved Mutnofret’s shoulders, hard, hard enough to make the other woman lurch backward. Mutnofret’s face was all shock. She looked like a hare in the moment the eagle’s talons close. Then a ragged scream ripped from her throat, and she flew back at Ahmose.

  Ahmose never saw her sister’s hand coming. A white cymbal crashed in her ear and across her eyes with the speed of an asp’s strike. She staggered sideways into a flower bed, clutched at her face by some instinct, though her cheekbone hadn’t yet begun to hurt. Then a slow throbbing began, a lancing pain, a wincing heat.

  Mutnofret’s teeth were clenched as tightly as the fist she held.

  Ahmose straightened. She made herself drop her hand to her side. “You struck the Great Royal Wife.”

  “I struck no one!”

  “Get down on the ground.”

  “Before you? Never!”

  Something in the garden brushed Ahmose’s fingertips. It was a sapling, young and pliant, just a long reed of a tree with here and there a twig branching away from the finger-thin trunk.

  “Get down on the ground. The Pharaoh’s wife commands you.”

  “I am the Pharaoh’s wife. I have been true to him. What have you ever done for him? What have you given him? Shame and hurt! Dishonesty! Disloyalty! Why is it you’ve given him no sons, Ahmose? Did you discover with your foul steward that you’re barren?”

  Ahmose took hold of the sapling and tore at it, viciously, powerfully. The cuts and bruises on her right palm were nothing to her now. The hot pain in her left cheek was nothing. The sapling came out of the ground with a sound like a shocked gasp. Mutnofret stared at her, wide-eyed. Ahmose took hold of her sister’s shoulder and shoved her down, hard. The force of her own strength surprised and pleased her.

  Mutnofret cried out as her knees buckled and hit the pebbled walk. She caught herself by falling forward onto her hands, would have levered herself up again, but Ahmose kicked savagely at one wrist. Mutnofret collapsed into a heap with a shriek like a netted bird.

  There was a sound like arrows. A slicing of the air. A whip of wind, again, again. A smack of flesh. A scream, and another, and another. Ahmose felt her shoulder rise and fall, her arm ply like a sapling. It was she who made the wind whistle, she realized. It was she who brought these cries from the second queen, who sprawled, writhing, on the ground. The sapling was lashing against the backs of Mutnofret’s thighs, crack crack crack. And the sapling was in Ahmose’s hand. She paid Mutnofret a stroke for every pain she herself had felt by her sister’s doing. For the wedding feast! For the mockery! For the spying! For the quartz ring! For Ineni, for Ineni, for Ineni!

  And now there was another voice screaming, a wordless keen of suffering. Ahmose’s throat was being torn raw, red raw – it must be her voice, her sorrow and shame and rage in her ears, mixing with Mutnofret’s frantic sobs. More voices, spinning in her head. Words, but she could not understand them. All she understood was the lashing, and the scream in her ears and throat.

  A strong hand gripped her wrist. She tried to force her arm down, just one more strike! Just one more payment of this long-overdue debt! The muscles in her chest and armpit strained against the hand that held her until she cried out in pain, and she subsided, sobbing. And arm around her waist. A man’s arm pulling her gently back, step by step, away from the torn, shivering heap that was Mutnofret.

  She thought it was Thutmose who held her. She would have buried her face against his shoulder and cried, but the voice pierced her heart at last. Great Lady, you must stop. Leave off, I beg you! A man’s voice, surely, but not Tut’s. A palace guard, then. Just a guard.

  Mutnofret pushed herself up on unsteady arms. The wailing nurse came to her side, black tears streaking kohl down her face. She supported her mistress, one hand around her shoulders. Mutnofret had bitten her lip. Her mouth and teeth were bloody. The front of her dress was soaked with urine. Her wig was gone, her scalp scratched and red.

  Through the mess of her face, Mutnofret laughed. “What have you ever given him? I carry another son, Ahmose. Another son for the Pharaoh. What have you ever given him?”

  Ahmose tore herself from the guard’s grasp, threw down the sapling, and ran.

  THIRTY-TWO

  In the courtyard, a fine chariot stood waiting. Soldiers held the bridles of two black mares. Who waited to ride? Tut? I always do my best thinking in a chariot, he said to her from a great distance. She remembered him leaving her in a rattle of wheels, and Mutnofret calling to her from the harem rooftop.

  Ahmose was disheveled, she knew. When she wiped her cheek with the back of a hand, kohl smudged dark as a falcon’s eye. She took off her sash and used it to clean her face as best she could. Then she approached the chariot.

  “Is this for my husband?” Her voice was cooler than it should have been. Her ka trembled, sour and sharp.

  The nearest man stared at her, curiosity lighting his eyes. “Er – yes, Great Lady. He wants to ride before the feast.”

  “I am taking this chariot,” Ahmose heard herself say through a roaring in her ears.

  “Great Lady, forgive me, but you can’t. Please!” The man left his horse and lurched for her as she stepped up onto the platform. The reins were wound around the rail. She tugged them free. She’d never driven a chariot before, but how difficult could it be? She had watched Tut drive a hundred times.

  “Get away from me,” Ahmose shouted, as the soldier raised one foot to the platform. He hesitated. “I’ll have you killed if you touch me!”

  “Great Lady, I beg your forgiveness, but this is dangerous. You cannot drive a chariot on your own! Let me drive you, please, Great Lady! I will take you anywhere you wish to go, only please, do not do this yourself.”

  Nefertari had done it. She’d led the Egyptians to battle against the Hyksos. She had been armored in sunlight, with a spear in her hand.

  The other soldier was pleading with her now, too. “It’s too dangerous, Great Lady. Please, don’t risk yourself!”

  “Leave me,” she screamed. The black mares threw their heads, their mouths gaping. They screamed with her.

  She knew how it was done, driving horses. She shook the reins, snapped them against the horses’ backs, and hissed, as Tut had done on their rides together, back when he’d still loved her. The men shouted as Ahmose and the chariot sprang away from them. She wasn’t prepared for the sudden movement. She lost the reins, lurched against the side rail, righted herself in time to grab the leather straps before they slid over the bow of the chariot and beneath the horses’ pounding hooves. Her hands were cold and stiff with fear. But she was pulling away from the palace, out into the open ochre heat of the day.

  She chanced a look back at the courtyard. The men were in a frenzy, brown mice scampering and shrinking as she sped north. It wouldn’t be long until they were after her in chariots of their own. She didn’t know where she was headed, only that she wanted to run, as fast and as far as she could from the palace, from all the terrible things she had done, from Mutnforet’s bloody face. She urged the horses faster, faster. Their black bodies stretched and contracted, fluid, lithe as eels. The wheels on the road sounded like sistrums in the temple. And all at once, she knew where she was going. Where she must go.

  Horus, her ka cried as she sped north past the House of Women, where Tut had first touched her hand. Osiris, her spirit wailed as the failing crops fell into a long, colorless streak to either side of her. Mut, she sobbed, as she passed the cairn at the crossroads, and the path that lifted to the flat rock on the hill. Forgive me, I beg you. Forgive me.

  At Ipet-Isut, she slowed the horses – the gods alone knew how – and threw herself from the chariot when an apprentice priest caught the mares’ reins. She stumbled, fell flat in the dust, and staggered to her feet again, knees and hands scraped and stinging. “Great Lady,” the boy said, an
edge of panic in his voice. She ignored him, and ran toward the Temple of Amun.

  The temple crouched like a lion, golden in the sun. It watched her approach. I’m sorry, she whispered. Forgive me. I’m sorry. The temple made no reply, only watched her come.

  Priests clustered outside the entrance, shielding their eyes, watching the southern horizon. “Chariots,” someone said. “Coming from Waset. Great Lady, what’s happened? Is there trouble at the palace?”

  Ahmose shoved through the crowd. When she’d passed beneath the temple’s roof, she turned back to the men. “Do not let them in here. No one is to touch me. No one is to come into the temple while I am here.” Her eyes must be terrible to see, she knew. The grief, the anger in her eyes, as bright and hot and vast as the desert. They cowered at the force of her command. She saw the desolation of her face reflected in their eyes. Ahmose turned from the priests. She ran.

  ***

  Into the temple, into the cold, dark heart of the temple. She fled past statues and painted walls, the frozen images of Amun’s judgment. As she passed, the god’s eyes followed her. She shoved hard at the great sanctuary door, and it gave just enough for her to push past it. Inside, the sanctuary was cold, and blacker than the river bottom. Ahmose threw herself into the darkness, tripped over her own sandals, and hit the ground hard enough to steal the breath from her lungs. She pressed her face into the tomb-cold floor, fighting to draw air. Lord Amun! Give me the breath of life! Forgive me, and let me live! Her body cried out in pain, her heart faltered, and just when she thought she’d choke like a fish on the sand Amun heard her, and pitied her. Her lungs expanded in a warm, greedy rush. She lay on the ground, writhing, gulping air until her heart slowed. When her shaking subsided, she raised herself to hands and knees and crept toward the back of the room.

  Somewhere, she knew, clothed in darkness, the god waited. He was in this room, brooding, savoring the black. Waiting to judge her. But it was his judgment she needed. Only Amun could set her right again.

  It seemed she crawled for hours, for days on weak, water-boned hands and knees. The darkness touched her, felt her body as she moved through it with a thousand unseen hands. When at last her fingers brushed the feet of the god, she shivered with relief. She was not alone in this black room. Amun was here.

  Her eyes were closed, though there was nothing to see. She worshiped him with her hands, the feet, the strong legs, the seated lap. She pulled herself into the great statue’s embrace, weeping with shame and regret. Buried her face against his chest. Rocked herself in his arms. Kissed his cold, unmoving mouth.

  Forgive me, my god. Forgive me, and set me to rights.

  THIRTY-THREE

  This was a finer place than any Ahmose had ever known. She knew it even with her eyes closed. The bed was dream-deep and soft. The air smelled of comfort and ease: wheat cakes baking, warm honey, breath of myrrh, wind on the river. Ahmose sighed, safe, content. She was happy to lie here without looking around. She knew she was in a place of safety and pleasure, and knowing this was enough.

  There was a trouble in her heart. A small, tickling thing, a fly walking on exposed skin. Curious, indolent, she reached toward the trouble to toy with it, to tease out some meaning from its faint, quiet flutter. Losing her husband, that distant stirring seemed to say. Mistakes. Shame. Fear. A sapling in her hand. Most of all, though, Thutmose slipping away from her.

  It made no matter. This trouble was a small, far-away thing, and she was lying, eyes closed, in a very fine bed, with a very fine breeze soothing her. Breath of myrrh. Wind on the river.

  When did you arrive? There was a voice somewhere out there, far from her soft bed. It was a man’s voice, deep and rich, low. It brought to mind a fast chariot under a sky flying with stars, and a knife spinning end over end. How long has she been like this?

  What the voice said made no difference. It was not here, anyhow. Not really. It touched her mind with a feather’s touch. It was the pay-no-heed glance of an idle, passing thought.

  The bed was here. The bed was real. The odors of water and bread were real.

  She opened her eyes, though she did not feel wakeful. She did not feel tired, either; there was no point in keeping them shut.

  The room – if it was a room; she saw no walls – was a dark, penetrating red. This was not Mut’s red, the bright crimson of carnelian stone. It was a low, sweet, mysterious color. The red of wine, the red of the moon’s blood. There was no light here, yet she saw. Her arms and legs lay easy on the wine-dark bed linens, soft angles, bent flax stems waiting to be spun. The bed’s footboard, red like the rest, reared up to dominate her sight. It was carved as if by the hand of Ptah with the perfect image of nine striding boys, their arms interlinked. Ahmose stared at the boys, wondering. She raised herself up onto her elbows. The carved boys smiled as if they knew she looked upon them, and they were glad her eyes saw them at last.

  She has slept for hours, Mighty Horus. Forgive me. I brought her back from Ipet-Isut as soon as I could. That voice. She knew it, too. A woman’s voice, an earthy comfort like goat’s milk, like fresh figs. But the woman wasn’t here, either. No one was really here but Ahmose and the nine striding boys.

  There is nothing to forgive. I’m the one who should be asking forgiveness. Gods forgive me, they hand me a throne and an empire, and I can’t even keep two women from tearing each other apart.

  “Ahmose. God-chosen. Come to me, my daughter.”

  This voice, now. This was real. High, female, a mild night-music. Drumming among the reeds. Dancing in the fields. She swung her legs over the bed’s side and stood on moon-blood nothingness. It held her. She walked.

  “Come to me. I will give you a gift tonight. I will put a gift inside you.”

  Ahmose went toward the voice. The voice came toward her. They met in the dark never-there. The goddess stood before her. Heket, the lady of frogs, clad in green, holding her fine towering staff, smiling. Heket took her hand. The goddess’s skin was smooth and cool. It was damp like leaves in the morning.

  “A gift for you, a gift for Egypt, a gift inside you,” Heket sang, a-thrum-thrum-thrum, “a gift for the river.”

  They walked through veils of red. Breath of myrrh.

  Can they ever forgive me? Faint, far, buzzing man’s voice, of no consequence. It didn’t matter at all, at all.

  Lord Horus. Do you mean the gods? Or your wives?

  The man did not answer.

  Heket led her forward, and forward, and forward still. She did not look back, but she knew the very fine bed was no more. Another veil parted. A glowing back to her, the creak of a wheel, the musky scent of a drover’s herd. The broad back turned. He looked up at her with golden eyes shining beneath an arm’s-breadth span of twisted horn.

  She bowed to the ram-god, the shaper of spirits, hand to heart. “Khnum.”

  “Show the god-chosen what you spin on your wheel, on your wheel,” Heket sang.

  Khnum stood aside. The wheel at his feet spun once, twice, thrice, slowed.

  She was praying at the Temple of Amun, Lord Horus. She prayed for nearly twelve hours without taking food or water. The priests finally let me in to see her. They would admit no one else. I begged her to come home, but she wouldn’t speak to me. I don’t think she saw me or heard me at all, Lord. She was desperate, I think. She exhausted herself. The physicians said she’ll recover, that she just needs rest, but I fear for her. I’ve never seen her like this. I never saw her pray that way before.

  What did she pray for, Twosre? That distant voice sounded tired, hunted.

  An amendment to her wrongs, my king. She prayed for salvation.

  The wheel stilled. Ahmose blinked at what it held. A golden boy-child, shimmering, perfect in form, freshly shaped by Khnum’s hands. The ram-god nodded: his work was good. A bright, strong boy. A prince’s ka.

  “So you see him, Egypt’s gift,” Heket said, and took her hand again. In an instant Khnum and the boy’s ka were gone. In their place there appeared another
bed, greater than the one she’d left. Its legs were a lioness’s paws with claws unsheathed. The footboard bore the head of Sekhmet, she of the stern eye and the bloody hand. This bed was a place of power. Heket waved and its bare slats were covered with cushions and linens, all as silver-bright as beaten moonlight. The frog-goddess gestured to the bed, and Ahmose, obedient, fearless, eager, climbed onto it and lay waiting.

  She has forgiveness from me, by all the gods, the man’s voice said, far from this red and silver place. I’ve wronged her. She was barely more than a child when she came to me. I should have protected her better. Let me go to her. If she’s not awake, so be it. I just want to sit with her. I just want to see that she’s all right, the poor thing.

  Veils upon veils parted. A tall, blue shadow rippled within the red. Its misty parts came together. The shape of a man. No, not a man, for this being was too perfect, too fine and strong, to be a man. Two great golden plumes rose from his crown. His face was maat.