The Bull of Min (The She-King)

by L. M. Ironside

  “She is not dead,” said Meryet, quite unnecessarily. Her tongue was sluggish and thick in her mouth.

  “She had a child with her,” Khuit said. “A boy. She told us the boy is her son and the true heir to the throne.”

  Meryet’s heart worked feverishly to piece together this riddle. Thutmose had said it would take Satiah an hour by boat to travel from the estate. She must have left just after Thutmose had departed, and sailed directly for the House of Women. Somewhere along the way she met with the priest who had snatched Amenemhat from the temple that morning. This was a carefully orchestrated plot, well-crafted over many weeks. What other paths had Satiah paved for herself, what roads had she laid into the hearts of Egypt’s great houses, into the temples and priesthoods?

  The women’s words tumbled over one another now, so eager were they to spill out the story.

  “She said the boy is the son of the gods…”

  “…demanded that those women who are loyal to the gods bring their families into line…”

  “…she wanted us to swear our support to her cause. Imagine!”

  “…after what she did to Batiret. We are no fools; we remember.”

  Meryet raised a hand for silence. “Did any women swear to her cause?”

  The women looked uneasily at one another, but none spoke.

  Meryet choked back a curse. “Who? I need to know which noble houses are backing Sati…Neferure. Immediately.”

  “We don’t know, in truth,” Meritamun said quickly. “We left for the palace as soon as we understood what she was about.”

  “But many of the women do fear her,” Khuit supplied. “You see, Great Lady, when she lived among us she had a…a reputation.”

  “A reputation?”

  “For great power.”

  “For great strangeness,” Henuttawy said with a snort. “That woman is mad as a donkey with a wasp in its ear.”

  “Some of the women believe Neferure is not mad, but has the powers of a great priestess,” Khuit said. “They believe she has magic nearly as great as the magic of the gods themselves.”

  “She is the daughter of Hatshepsut, after all,” said Meritamun quietly. “And Hatshepsut…”

  “Was of the blood of Amun,” Meryet snapped. “I know.”

  Meritamun ducked her head in apology.

  “Listen, all of you,” Meryet insisted, hoping her words were true even as she said them. “This isn’t magic. She had friends – people in her service, foul insects to carry her messages for her, to assist her in weeks’ worth of plotting.” One of the guards at the estate, obviously. One or more. And who else? Might one of these very women be in Neferure’s control?

  “In any case, Great Lady,” Henuttawy said with a self-conscious glance in Batiret’s direction, “we all know Neferure can be dangerous and unpredictable. Confronted with her that way, suddenly and so unexpected, as if she had returned from the tomb, there is no telling which women might capitulate to her demands. We knew we had to tell you at once.”

  “You did well,” Meryet said. “Batiret, is Nehesi back yet?”

  Batiret, still pressed silently against the chamber door, shook her head. “Not yet, Great...”

  A woman’s harsh scream filled the hallway beyond. Batiret leapt away from the door as if it had scalded her skin. The scream came again, rising, keening, curdling the blood in Meryet’s veins.

  She stood stricken for a long moment as the cry filled her ears. Then it filled her heart, and she realized from where it came.

  Amunhotep’s room.

  Meryet wheeled, seized the handles of her massive double doors. She threw them open onto a scene of panic spilling into the hallway from her son’s chamber.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AMUNHOTEP’S NURSE REELED FROM THE open door of the child’s nursery, her hands flailing at the air. Her eyes were as wide as the eyes of a sacrificial bull in the moment when the knife drops to its neck. Nehesi charged down the hall toward the nurse, calling harshly for order. Beyond him, Thutmose ran from the direction of his chambers, his kilt and wig flying, his mouth set into a grim line.

  Meryet reached the nurse a moment before the others did. She caught the woman in her arms, shouting into her ear, striving desperately to restrain her. She did not want to look into Amunhotep’s chamber. She feared what she might find.

  Nehesi and Thutmose took hold of the nurse, pulled her waving, clawing hands to her sides. Meryet was dimly aware of more women crowding around, all of them dressed in the finery of the House of Women. So Thutmose, too, had received messengers from the harem, carrying news of Satiah’s startling appearance.

  “He’s gone,” the nurse wailed. “Gone!”

  Meryet loosed the nurse, staggered to Amunhotep’s door. The boy’s little bed stood vacant in the center of the room.

  A scream twice as loud and desperate as the nurse’s ripped from Meryet’s throat.

  “How did this happen?” Thutmose bellowed as Meryet sagged. A pair of familiar arms caught her before she could fall; she buried her face against Batiret’s neck, keening her shock.

  “Oh, gods,” the nurse cried. “I only turned my back for a moment. I had dressed the little prince for the feast, and he fussed for his favorite toy, so I stepped out into the garden to fetch it. And when I returned he was gone – just gone!”

  Nehesi shoved past Meryet into the nursery. She peered after the old guardsman, her thoughts clouded by terror. As she watched, Nehesi seemed to move through the room with the slow, dragging motions of a man underwater. The interior door that connected the nurse’s sleeping chamber to the prince’s was closed, but it was the only possible ingress. Any person who entered through the main door, where Meryet now huddled with her fan-bearer, would have been spotted at once by Meryet’s guards.

  Nehesi moved into the nurse’s chamber, scouring for evidence. He let himself out by the side entry, further down the hall. From where Meryet stood, the side entry was partially blocked by the edge of a pillar. It may just have been possible for one of Satiah’s creatures to enter the room there, unnoticed by the guards.

  Thutmose was questioning those same guards, one finger stabbing toward their cringing faces.

  “It was a palace servant,” Meryet said, steadying herself with a ferocious effort. “Or someone dressed as a palace servant.”

  Thutmose rounded on her. “What?”

  “A palace servant. Think, Thutmose: they are all but invisible. These men never would have taken note of a servant going about her duties with her head down.”

  “It is their responsibility to take note.”

  “Put them in custody if you like and question them later. Doing it now won’t get our son back!”

  “The nurse is lucky she was out in the garden when it happened, Lord,” Nehesi said quietly. “Whoever was sent in through her chamber door would have been armed. Had the nurse been present, she would not have survived.”

  “Had she been present, my son might be in his bed right now!” Thutmose pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “You’re right, of course, Meryet. We need to get Amunhotep back – now. The rest we will sort out after he’s returned to us safely.”

  “Alert the entire palace, Lord,” Nehesi suggested. “Guests are arriving from all over Waset for the feast. Turn all their eyes to your service. The abductor won’t go far if every noble and lady of Waset is looking for the prince.”

  “A good plan. Do it, Nehesi.”

  “No,” Meryet cried. Her limbs shook violently; whatever shreds of clam she had summoned abandoned her. She wanted to run screaming down the hall, tearing at the pillars with her nails and teeth until the stone of the palace yielded up Amunhotep and the foul beast who had taken him. She drew a deep breath. “Send someone else. I want Nehesi here with me.”

  It was the harem women who went to spread the word. Eager to be of some service in such a fearful time, they raced through the palace, shouting the alert. Soon pillars and courtyard walls echoed with the
sounds of running feet, the voices of men and women calling, “Amunhotep! Prince!”

  Thutmose gathered Meryet in his arms.

  “Gods, Thutmose,” she cried, pressing her face against his chest. “It’s madness. The whole palace is in an uproar. This is exactly what she wanted.”

  “It will help us find our son.”

  Meryet willed herself to think clearly. “She was at the House of Women only a short time ago.”

  “And she will be meeting up with whoever took Amunhotep somewhere between the harem and the palace. Unless…”

  “Don’t say it.” Meryet did not want to think it, but she could not banish the terrible possibility from her lurching heart. Satiah had come to clear the way for Amenemhat’s ascension to the throne. It meant death for Meryet’s own sweet son.

  “He’s alive,” Thutmose murmured. “Nehesi is right – whoever came through that nurse’s door had to be armed, to dispatch any opposition to their Set-cursed task. If Satiah wanted our son dead, it would have been done in the nursery.”

  Meryet shuddered. “Thutmose!”

  “He’s alive, and we will find him somewhere between this place and the House of Women. I swear it.”

  “But where?” Meryet sobbed.

  Waset was impossibly large, a great sprawl of humanity along the Iteru’s eastern bank, filled with secretive passages, dark cellars, unknown alleys leading to the gods knew where. Beyond, the fields and rekhet villages were larger still, an endless, unsolvable maze stretching from north to south – and Meryet’s only child could be anywhere, anywhere!

  “The quay,” Thutmose said. “The fastest route to the House of Women is by water.” He paused, his eyes distant with thought. Then he said too quietly, too calmly, “No. No, she is not planning to bring her son to the palace, to present herself at the feast. We miscalculated.”

  “We’ve miscalculated all along!”

  “The priest who took Amenemhat – don’t you see?”

  “No,” Meryet cried desperately.

  “Satiah’s influence runs deep at the temple. She will take her son there first, to present him formally to the gods. She will go to receive the blessing of the priesthood, unopposed, while all of Waset is distracted by the feast. And she will take Amunhotep with her.”

  “How do you know? You can’t know! We cannot afford another misstep, Thutmose – not now!”

  “I know her,” he said simply. “She is my sister.”

  The chariot raced along the abandoned road toward Ipet-Isut. The river already promised a bountiful flood, poised on the edge of the season of Akhet. To either side of the causeway the fields had begun to shimmer with the water that accumulated in every divot and furrow. Thutmose took it for encouragement, an assurance that the gods saw him, and would aid his cause against this enemy as they had done so many times before.

  To his left, Nehesi handled the reins of the swiftest horses in Waset. To his right, Meryet clung grimly to the rail, her face falcon-fierce. Back in the palace she had summoned her courage and composure with a visible effort, but now that it was upon her she was as solid and cold as a statue of a warrior-goddess. Thutmose pulled his wife tight against his side and felt her tremble, for all her bravery. Or perhaps the shiver he felt was in his own flesh.

  Ipet-Isut grew ever larger before them, its several temples and colossal statues seeming to drift apart as they came closer, to separate themselves like individual trees in the great forests of the far north. Somewhere in that maze of temples his sister moved like a malignant ghost, small and white and baleful. She would be there, waiting for him. Thutmose was sure of it.

  The square outer gates of the complex passed overhead. The bulky forms of statues five times the size of a man flashed rapidly by, dizzying Thutmose with the speed of their passage. Nehesi slowed the horses as they gained the inner courtyard. Their hooves sounded loud and hollow on the paving stones, the echo rattling off the surrounding walls of temples and shrines like a pebble shaken inside an empty jar.

  The horses halted, blowing, and Thutmose glanced around the courtyard. A few apprentice priests scuttled forward to take the horses’ reins, crouching into hasty bows as they ran. In the mouths of shrines, priestesses stretched their palms toward the king. He opened his mouth to demand of the people gathering in the courtyard where the Lady Satiah had gone, which temple hid her – and snapped his mouth closed with a click. He knew.

  She is of the blood of Amun. She will take her son to Amun’s shrine first. She must be there!

  They ran up the steps to the Temple of Amun without a care for the priests looking on. The black mouth of the temple yawned above them, wide as the sky, waiting to swallow Thutmose and his wife, his son, his throne.

  The umber dimness of the temple’s interior closed in. Meryet pressed close to Thutmose’s side. A single brazier stood alight far into its depths, near the door to the black inner sanctuary where the god lived. Thutmose squeezed Meryet’s hand for reassurance, and together they made their way toward the fearsome star of that distant brazier.

  A tight snake of apprehension coiled in Thutmose’s gut. This was Amun’s shrine they were about to enter, unpurified, without any offering save for their own fearful, desperate hearts. His lips move on a silent prayer, begging the god to forgive him. Thou art the father of the gods, Lord Amun, the father of us all. How can I, a father, do anything but what I now do?

  He found Nehesi’s grave eyes in the glow of the brazier, jerked his head toward the sanctuary. With a nod, Nehesi seized the handle and opened the door wide.

  The light of the brazier spilled all at once into the sanctuary. A series of rapid impressions assaulted Thutmose’s eyes, quick and flashing like lightning above the cliffs of Retjenu. He saw in a fluttering glance the golden feet, legs, knees of the god, rudely illuminated where he sat on his throne; a small figure in white linen rising from a crouch, turning; Satiah’s beautiful pale face looking up at him, twisted in shock and anger; the braids of Meryet’s wig lifting like a black bird’s wings as she sprinted into the sanctuary, arms outstretched. And Amunhotep, tearing his hand away from Satiah’s with a squeal, his little legs pumping as he fled into his mother’s arms.

  Amenemhat sat quietly on the stone floor beside his mother. A wide basin stood waiting at the feet of the god – the kind of basin used to collect blood offerings from ritual cattle. Nearby a knife shivered on the floor, and Thutmose realized with a sick horror that above the beating of his heart and the cries of his wife and son, the repeating metal echo of bronze on stone rang from the walls of the sanctuary.

  Amun save me – she dropped it. The knife was in her hand when I opened the door. It was poised above my son.

  Nehesi was already moving to apprehend Satiah, but Thutmose shouldered him aside. He seized her by the front of her dress himself, hauled her roughly away from basin and blade. She lost her feet and clung to his wrist, steadying herself. The touch of her hand chilled his skin.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” Thutmose spat into her face.

  She bore her teeth in an ugly, challenging grin.

  The boy Amenemhat clambered to his feet and stood watching the scene soberly. Thutmose felt a rush of guilt, that he should brutalize the boy’s mother before his very eyes. Though the gods know she deserves it.

  “Nehesi, take the boy.”

  Amenemhat did not protest when the hulking guard lifted him as easily as he might have lifted a two-day-old pup.

  “Unhand my son,” Satiah said, her voice raw with hatred. “A worthless beetle like you is not fit to touch the child of the gods.”

  Thutmose shook her. “Keep your mouth shut, Lady Satiah.”

  A commotion erupted in the temple. Thutmose heard a shout of dismay, then, “Gods preserve me, the door! The light! Somebody close the sanctuary door!”

  He heard the advance of running feet on stone, and a cry of “Amun is defiled by light! Who is responsible for…”

  An old man stumbled to the sanctuary door and
stopped abruptly, wheezing deep in a chest that clattered with dozens of amulets. Thutmose did not need to look around to know that it was Hapuseneb, the High Priest of Amun.

  “Good day, Hapuseneb,” Thutmose said, biting off his words in a parody of courtly casualness.

  The High Priest gave a quavering wail of dismay as he bowed. “Mighty Horus, I would never presume to interfere in your…your business, but I must beg you humbly, desperately, to close the door! The god is offended by light upon his skin; you know this, Great Lord!”

  “Hapuseneb, take this child from my guard. I need Nehesi’s hands free.”

  “You won’t kill me,” Satiah whispered. It was not a plea. There was not a hint of desperation or fear in her voice, only cold assurance.

  “Kill?” Hapuseneb sputtered. “Please, Lord, not in the sanctuary!”

  Nehesi shoved the little boy into Hapuseneb’s arms, then, with a muttered apology, the guardsman turned the priest around bodily and marched him out of the sanctuary. “The Pharaoh’s orders,” Nehesi said. “Take the child away from this place. He should not see what is to come.”

  “Bring him back,” Satiah called out. “He must receive Amun’s blessing!”

  “Amenemhat will be treated well,” Thutmose said levelly. “Let that, at least, be some small comfort to you when you set your heavy heart on Anupu’s scales. For your sins are too numerous; you have no hope of redemption in the afterlife, Neferure.”

  The name widened her eyes for a heartbeat. Then she narrowed them again in mockery. “Do you think you know the heart of Anupu, or of any other god, O great king?”

  “Nehesi,” Thutmose said, “your sword.”

  Nehesi hesitated. Thutmose looked to him expectantly, and saw a cloud of superstitious fear cross his face.

  “Not here, Mighty Horus. I beg you. I have already…er…Amun’s sanctuary has been defiled once in the past. As we are speaking of Anupu’s scales and heavy hearts, I would just as soon not do it here, for the sake of my own hopes for an afterlife.”

  Thutmose jerked his head in a quick nod. He pulled Neferure from the sanctuary. She clawed at his wrist where it held the front of her dress; she kicked at his ankles. But he hauled her from Amun’s presence, down the length of the temple, out into Re’s righteous light. It fell brightly, painfully on the white limestone of the temple steps. A crowd of priests and priestesses had gathered, watching wide-eyed as Thutmose stood his captive roughly on her feet. A murmur of Satiah passed through the crowd like a distant wind.