The Crook and Flail

by L. M. Ironside

  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 ihadn 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, maordking 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. .&n0 ike agn="j 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.

  Nehesi barked an order. His men dashed to surround the God's Wife and the new king. Hatshepsut pulled Tut against her chest, cupping his head with one.&nf protective hand. She glowered in confusion. He saw her mouth moving, shouting a demand. But over the cries of Thutmose! Thutmose the Third! Senenmut could hear nothing of her voice.

  He stared past the mummy into the cold black mouth of the tomb, where Nebseny the leopard stood waiting. Below the leopard's downpointed muzzle the mouth of the priest curved in a mocking smile.

  The threat was never here – not from Nebseny himself, not from anyone in this crowd. The palace, then – it must be the palace.

  There was nothing Senenmut could do that Nehesi could not – not when it came to strength or to blades. Reluctantly, Senenmut reconciled himself to leaving her in the Medjay's hands. He would better serve his lady as he always had done: with quick and careful thought.

  The boats returned to the eastern bank, Hatshepsut still ringed tightly by her guards. At Ipet-Isut, Senenmut lost himself among the crowd, deliberately this time, letting the flow of priests carry him back toward the Temple of Amun. He peered around for Nebseny, and saw to his right the yellow of a leopard's pelt moving between two priests, darting like an ibis among the reeds. He dodged to follow. Always Nebseny evaded him, peeling further from the crowd, making his way into a secluded corner of the city of temples. Senenmut wondered where the High Priest's path led, who he was hurrying to meet. His assassins, no doubt; the ones who would do his work for him so that his hands stayed clean.

  Senenmut halted in the shaded forecourt of a small royal shrine. Afternoon was advancing. Long shadows lay across the courtyard, converging in disorienting angles. He had lost sight of Nebseny. He held his breath and listened for some voice, some betraying scuffle, but here at the outer edge of the complex Ipet-Isut was eerily still. He moved uncertainly toward the shrine. It was a modest building as shrines went, walled in white granite. Two small pillars framed the entryway, above which the name of some nigh-forgotten prince was carved. Senenmut took one step toward the shrine, hesitated, took another. A wind moved through Ipet-Isut; it rattled the distant leaves of the myrrh trees before Amun's gate; a few dry leaves scuttled past Senenmut's feet. He moved toward the shrine more boldly. As he passed the pillars, a blow fell on him from behind. He grunted, stumbled, fell to his knees in the dark entryway. Senenmut clapped a hand to the back of his head, feeling for blood, and turned to see Nebseny standing over him with his fist still raised.

  Senenmut lurched, half-crouched, launching himself into Nebseny's gut. The priest sprawled backward into the courtyard; Senenmut followed, rolling. Nebseny was on him again in a moment. He raised a fist high but Senenmut threw himself aside; Nebseny's knuckles cracked against paving stones. He choked back a gurgling scream and rolled away from Senenmut. His breath hissed between his teeth as he fought against the pain.

  Senenmut staggered to his feet. A streak of blood glowed darkly on the paving stones between his feet.

  “So,” Senenmut panted.

  Nebseny clambered upright, clutching the bleeding hand against his leopard skin. The glaring mask hung from a cord around his neck. It watched the blood drip from the priest's hand with an expression of implacable hunger.

  “If not at the tomb, then at the palace. You have sent killers to my lady. But they will not reach her. Nehesi and his men....”

  “You fool. Can a guardsman stop a god? Can a dozen, a hundred? The will of the gods shall be done this very night.”

  “No one will come near her. No blade will have a chance.”

  “Confine her to her chambers until she is a withered old woman if you like.” Nebseny smiled. “She must eat and drink eventually.”

  Senenmut's heart thrashed, reared like a panicked horse. Gods damn me, why didn't I see it?

  “If I had a knife I would kill you right now, Master Senenmut, favorite of the Great Royal Wife.” His words were thick with mockery. “But even knowing what you know, you cannot stop it. No man can stop the will of Amun. Once she is buried beside her husband, I will find you and kill you myself. I promise you that.”

  Senenmut lunged, intending to strike Nebseny in the face, but the High Priest danced backward. His fingers closed on the leopard mask. He tore at it savagely; Nebseny shouted in pain as the cord snapped, welting the skin of his neck.

  Then the High Priest laughed. His grinning mouth seemed poised to rend. “Run, Chief Steward! Your lady needs you.”

  He did run. He pelted from Ipet-Isut's towering gate, sprinted toward Waset. In the sky above the city he seemed to see a faded echo of the hanging fire. His thighs and his lungs burned, but he never stopped, never slowed. Long before he gained the road to the palace he feared his heart might burst and drop him in the dust. He implored Amun to carry him, to lend him enough strength, at least, to reach his lady before it was too late, and then he could die, choking for breath, his legs consumed by flames. The sound of celebration rose from Waset, improbable in the face of his desperation. His ears roared with the clamor of drums. The gateway. The guards shouting his name, waving him on. The courtyard, the porticoes...he flashed past them, thanks be to Amun, only let it not be too late! The hall that led to her door. The mask hard and cold in his hand. The door thrown open, a sickly light spilling into the pillared hall, the moving shadow of guards.

  And above the roaring in his ears, the sound of a woman's agonized screams.

  He fell against her doorway, legs collapsing, useless from the effort, breath a torment of red fire and sand in his throat, his chest.

  Hatshepsut crouched on the floor of her antechamber, bent over a still, pale form. She rocked under the blow of her grief, threw back her head and keened again. She cradled Iset's head in"juro her lap. The girl's lips were blue. Her eyes were open, shallow and cold and dead.

  The leopard mask fell from Senenmut's hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “It was meant for me.”

  Guards had come to remove Iset's body. They had been obliged to pry her from Hatshepsut's arms, while a pair of insistent hands pulled at her shoulders, took her away from the woman she loved. They were Senenmut's hands. She allowed him to wrap his arms about her, shield her eyes against his chest. His skin was hot from some great exertion, slick with sweat and with her own tears.

  Senenmut led her to her bedchamber. She fell onto her great bed and curled there, sobbing and beating her hands against the mattress. When she had exhausted herself she lay calm, wondering with a blank, fuzzy curiosity whether the suffocating pressure in her chest would stop her breathing.

  “It was meant for me – the poisoned wine.”

  Senenmut said nothing. He sat at her feet, his sh
adowed, sad eyes tracing patterns in the tile floor.

  “It was the wine. I saw a trace of it on her lips.” It did no good to announce these things, the few small pieces of the broken puzzle which she had fitted into place. None of it would not make Iset live again. But she kept talking, as though by reasoning it out she might build some wall of protection around herself. “He could not have known that Iset was so familiar with me that she would be in my rooms when I was not there, that she would think nothing of helping herself to my wine.”

  “He?”

  “The one who wishes me dead.” The words were cold and hard in her mouth.

  Senenmut took something from the knot of his kilt. At first she thought it was a plate or an offering bowl. He turned it in his hand, and the leopard's face scowled at her.

  “Nebseny,” she said. “I thought I had secured him. I thought Ankhhor...”

  “Ankhhor – his brother. So his was the other voice I heard.” And Senenmut told her of his visit to the Temple, the conversation he had heard through the windcatcher, his struggle to warn her or her men during the procession. He told her how he'd fought with Nebseny in the shadows of Ipet-Isut. It was only then that she noticed the bruises beginning to ripen on his face, his arms.

  “You are right enough,” she said dully. “It must have been Ankhhor. I was a fool – a child – to think I had brought him under my control. Nehesi saw it true: I should have killed him in his own home. It was for Iset's sake I spared him, and nowcatro0 self fy">

  They lay in silence until Hatshepsut's weeping once more passed. A fierce resolve came over her. Fear, too, but greater than her fear, the conviction that no one should be in a position to take anything from her again. Not her station, not her lover, not her power. She sat up slowly. Her head throbbed. “Go and fetch Nehesi,” she said. “The three of us are going to the Temple.”