Briefly she glanced up to the roof where the windcatcher still opened its broken mouth towards the north. There her father, and after him Kamose, had sat looking out over the tops of the shuddering palms and the glint of the Nile in quiet deliberation and there Seqenenra had been brutally clubbed and partially paralyzed by Mersu, the Setiu steward whom he had trusted. Quickly Aahmes-nefertari averted her gaze. It would be good to see the palace come alive again, full of bustle and light, the roof merry with the chatter of women spreading colourful carpets under the stars to escape the heat of Shemu. Perhaps then the forlorn ghosts that hung in the dusty corners and sobbed out their pleas for justice would be satisfied.
Tetisheri was enthroned amid a pile of cushions on the grass at the edge of the path. She too was sumptuously arrayed in a white sheath belted and trimmed with gold ankhs. As Aahmes-nefertari approached, she thought how appropriate it was that the woman should wear the sign for Life, since she was nearing her sixty-seventh birthday and showed few signs of decrepitude. Tetisheri, hearing her come, turned a sour, heavily painted face towards her and waved one thin, gold-weighted arm. “Since the protecting wall around our arouras was heightened and extended, there is no view of the watersteps any more,” she grumbled. “If I want to see the Nile, I must order the guards on this side of the new gates to open them, go through, have them closed by the guards on the other side, and then spend less time by the steps than I would like because the soldiers becomevisibly nervous at my presence. It is a considerable nuisance, my dear.”
“I know,” Aahmes-nefertari offered, stooping to kiss her grandmother on one wrinkled cheek. “I am sorry, Tetisheri. But I was only following Ahmose’s orders. If you wanted to, you could go across the courtyard of the old palace and through the opening in the wall there where the new gates will be hung.”
“Humph,” Tetisheri grunted. Having made her protest, she was appeased. “New gates. He wants electrum, I suppose, for his fine new residence, if we can ever amass so much silver. The gold in the amalgam is no longer a problem since the Kushites have been cowed; indeed, lately it has been flowing into the treasury and the jewellers’ workshops with reassuring frequency. Teti the Handsome has been very quiet.”
“So my spies tell me.” Aahmes-nefertari lowered herself onto the cushions beside the older woman. “But Kush has never lain quiet for very long, unless my history teacher was wrong. I must confess a secret fascination with that mysterious Prince.” Her grandmother sniffed.
“Prince? I would not grace a man with a polluted mix of Egyptian and Kushite blood as such,” she said. “It would not surprise me if he also had a lick of the Setiu in his veins. Has he not been a staunch ally of Apepa and his father ever since he assumed the chieftainship of his barbaric tribe? Ahmose will do well to keep a steady watch on him.” Aahmes-nefertari did not reply. It would be pointless to remind Tetisheri that the King had been utterly involved in more important matters than the doings of a self-styled ruler many miles to the south, or even that she and Aahotep had woven a net of scouts who brought regular reports of conditions in both Wawat and Kush. To Tetisheri, Ahmose would always be the rather simple younger brother who needed constant advice and admonition.
For a while the two women sat in silence. Then Tetisheri said, “Next month we celebrate your father’s birth. We will go to his tomb and offer food, wine and oil. I hope Ahmose remembers without being told.”
“Of course he will,” Aahmes-nefertari retorted. “But I warn you, Grandmother, do not push him. In one week we bury Hent-ta-Hent and his attention will be fixed on the loss of his daughter. He will not think of Seqenenra until afterwards.” She turned to meet Tetisheri’s gaze. The kohled eyes, still sharp with intelligence though nested in a myriad of fine lines and hooded by skin as thin and papery as a dried leaf, met her own.
“I know what you are going to say,” Tetisheri forestalled her. “That I have never liked or respected your husband, that I live in the past, that I am full of arrogance and an unyielding pride. It is true, and I am sorry, Aahmesnefertari. Seqenenra was a King. Kamose I adored. There is nothing left for Ahmose, although you must believe me when I say that I try to overcome my prejudice.” She waved a skeletal hand at a fly that was attempting to settle on her neck. “One of the curses of encroaching old age is the return of many youthful memories long forgotten, while the events of the near past seem to melt away. I understand what Ahmose has done. But I cannot help looking behind him to the brilliance and desperation and self-sacrifice of his father and brother, without whom Ahmose would have achieved nothing.”
“You are speaking of things that might or might not have been,” Aahmes-nefertari said, struggling to contain her anger. “Such thoughts are vain and dangerous. You are the only one, the only one, Tetisheri, who has indulged in the fruitless game of what if. If Father and Kamose had fallen into the trap you step into so willingly and so often, we would have accepted Seqenenra’s defeat at Pezedkhu’s hands and been separated and gone into exile under Kamose. And if my husband did not possess a more complex mind than Kamose, he would not be coming home today leaving Het-Uart a tiny island in an ocean of Egyptian triumph. Seqenenra began our rebellion. Kamose continued it. Ahmose’s task is to complete it. Why can you not see the harmonious weaving of Ma’at in the different destinies of all three precious lives?” She got up and smoothed down her sheath with stiff fingers. “History will pity Seqenenra and vilify Kamose because what he had to do will not be understood. But future generations will worship my husband as Egypt’s saviour. What they will say of you I cannot guess. Perhaps that she was beautiful in her youth.” An expression of pain twisted the dignified old features and Aahmes-nefertari knew that she had gone too far. Squatting, she took Tetisheri’s face in both her hands. “Forgive me, Grandmother,” she begged. “That was unfair.”
“But probably true.” Tetisheri pulled herself out of Aahmes-nefertari’s grasp. “I sit here waiting for him so that I can be the first to greet him, so that I can capture his attention, so that he will see me, be conscious of me,” she said hoarsely. “I am not stupid, Aahmes-nefertari. I know that he deliberately excluded me from the strategy meetings he held with you and your mother, that in response to my dislike of him he has firmly but politely relegated me to the women’s quarters, that in his own gentle but entirely implacable way he has taken away any power I might have exercised. It is my own fault, yet I cannot conjure a warmth for him that is not there.”
“Then do not try.” Aahmes-nefertari sighed and straightened. “You are his grandmother and as such you have his respect. Do not weaken it by dishonesty. Remember that his blood is yours and he is the King.” She looked down at her grandmother’s distress. “Kamose recognized his ability to rule,” she said harshly. “Kamose knew that he himself would not have made a good King. He was a warrior. He was fated to die by violence and he knew that too. If he had lived, his reign would have been an increasingly ruthless one. He fulfilled his destiny, Tetisheri. It was not the one you would have chosen for him, but your love for him blinded you to his faults, although he saw them clearly. Ahmose was born to restore Egypt to peace and prosperity. Not as glorious a fate as that of a commander who gives his life in the struggle for his country. That is how you see it, is it not?” She paused. Tetisheri was staring expressionlessly at the ground. “You were not born a man and neither was I,” she finished in a burst of sudden insight. “We cannot wield the sword or don the Double Crown. Only despair waits for you if you allow the bitterness of your sex to consume you, Grandmother. Ahmose is King. If you will only leave your self-absorption behind you and give thanks for his divinity, you will find in him a kind and forgiving grandson as well.”
Turning on her heel, she strode towards the new gate, and seeing her approach the guards swung it wide. I should not blame her for my own private resentment, she thought as she walked through. In berating her I realize that I was castigating myself. Thus I myself am warned. I am not the Son of the Sun. I am not a warrior. Yet I am a Queen
, and with that I will be content. Amun forbid that I should end my life swimming in a hot sea of self-pity like Tetisheri!
“Majesty, you should not take the river path unescorted,” one of the soldiers called as she set off in the direction of the temple. “The citizens of Weset are already congregating along the bank to see the King arrive. You might be jostled.” I might be jostled. Aahmes-nefertari smiled to herself. Not so long ago I might have been the target of an assassin, but today my august person might be jostled. Yet she remembered what Ahmose had said on the last occasion she and he had strolled by the river together, that it was not good for royalty to be so nakedly visible, so approachable to commoners.
“Two of you come with me then,” she conceded reluctantly. “I do not intend to go all the way to the temple. I just want to watch the Nile.” And to get away from the frenetic preparations going on in the house, she said to herself as the men swung in behind her and she began to tread the beaten track that wound between the high wall of the estate and the spring verdure edging the river. She sensed their disapproval. They think I should be sequestered behind the curtains of my litter, her thoughts ran on. I daresay Senehat would agree with them. My feet will need washing and softening after the dust of the path.
Her sudden desire for seclusion was thwarted, however. As the soldier had predicted, the people of Weset were pouring out of a city that now surrounded the temple and spread in all its tumultuous sprawl to the boundary of the royal precincts. Chattering groups of men, women and children were crowding the path, anxious to be first to take the best positions along the bank, from which they would have a clear view of Ahmose’s flotilla when it hove into sight. It was not a gods’ feast day, Aahmes-nefertari reflected with resignation, but as if by universal agreement no one seemed to be working.
Seeing her come, the noise gradually faltered and died away only to resume excitedly behind her. Knees were bent, foreheads touched the earth as she passed, and in a wave of affection her name was shouted with none of her titles preceding it, as though she were being hailed by friends.
She was about to turn back in sheer frustration, when she heard a commotion some way ahead and, peering beyond the lattice of shade and sunlight cast by the arching arms of the sycamore and flowering acacia, she saw heads lowered and backs bent but not in her direction. She halted, her heart suddenly jumping into her throat. Figures were coming towards her, dappled by moving shadow, their strides confident, their voices deep and commanding as they talked to each other. Around them a roar of acclamation had broken out. “The King! It is His Majesty! Long life to you, Mighty Horus!” Aahmes-nefertari’s heart constricted. Then she was running, past Khabekhnet’s imposing height, dodging the dark column that was Hor-Aha, almost colliding with a startled Ipi, until her outstretched arms closed around her husband and his pectoral was pressing into her cheek.
There was a moment when he was taken aback. She could tell by his slight recoil. Then with a chuckle of delight his own arms encircled her, strong masculine arms, crushing her, enfolding her in safety, protection, making her feel tiny and cherished and entirely one with him. For several long seconds she rested against him, unwilling to move, but in the end he moved her away gently, holding her shoulders and smiling down at her. “Majesty, Second Prophet, my own Aahmes-nefertari,” he said. “What are you doing out here with no attendants save a couple of soldiers?” She smiled back at him widely, stupidly, drinking in the warmth of his dark eyes, the dearly familiar contours of his face, thinner now, more angular, but the same wide jaw and broad brow under the golden band of his winged headdress.
“Ahmose,” she breathed while the men beside him did her reverence. “I could ask the same of you. My household guards are even now lining the garden avenue to salute you as you disembark. Where have you come from? Where are your ships?”
“Oh, I decided to say a quick prayer of thanks to Amun for my victory in the north before I came to the house,” he explained. “There will be a full and formal sacrifice made later, of course, but I wanted my first words here to be to the god. It was good to see Amunmose again. As for the ships, my Shining in Mennofer is already right behind us and the Medjay not far away.” Aahmes-nefertari took one step back, already battling the fume of disappointment and offence rising in her. Am I not dearer to you than the Chief Priest? she wanted to shout. Do you not know how I have longed to greet you, spent the hours since your letter imagining how you would fly to me with singleminded purpose, your own mind full of nothing but the desire to see me? Have I not impressed you with my scarlet sheath, my new jewels, the message they are intended to convey? Yet you have not really looked at me! With an effort of the will she linked her arm through his.
“The whole household is in a fever of excitement,” she said with a forced cheerfulness. “Tetisheri took up her station just inside the gates above the watersteps hours ago. Mother went to the temple early with Yuf so that she would be back by the time you arrived. You should have seen her there. She must have decided to take her litter through the city and re-enter the estate by the servants’ entrance. Such a clamour there, too! The kitchen staff began to prepare your feast at dawn!” She found that once she had begun to babble she could not stop. Her mouth opened and closed on words she hardly heard, while inside herself she watched that deadly smoke of resentment gradually thicken. “Hor-Aha,” she called to the General’s bare spine just ahead. “Where is your hair? Did a Setiu sword lop off your braids?” He gave her a tight smile over his shoulder.
“No, Majesty,” he said tonelessly. “I cut them off myself.” It was no explanation and all at once Aahmes-nefertari felt like an idiot. The flow of what was almost hysteria in her abruptly dried up. She clenched her teeth.
The press of citizens fell behind them as they neared the watersteps. Aahmes-nefertari saw her husband’s gaze lifted wonderingly to the top of the new wall as the remaining gate guards came to attention and saluted. “I hope it has been constructed as you wished, Ahmose,” she said. “Its height raised all around our arouras and this gate set in it.” She pointed farther along, but Ahmose had halted and was staring through the nearer aperture where the palace gates would one day hang.
“Gods!” he breathed. “Look at this, Hor-Aha! Time has moved more swiftly here than in the north or I have been under some magic spell from which I have only just awoken! The interior wall that used to divide us from the ancient precincts has gone. I can see my garden. The scaffolding … The stacks of bricks …” He seemed bewildered, one hand coming up to tremble slightly on his wife’s imprisoned forearm.
“Ahmose, you sent me Sebek-nakht to begin these tasks,” Aahmes-nefertari said urgently. “Is it not to your liking? Have we done wrong?” He shook his head.
“No, no!” he exclaimed. “It is wonderful! It is just that my thoughts have been so fully engaged elsewhere, Aahmes-nefertari, and even now I am finding it difficult to drag them away from Het-Uart.” He smiled across at her as they moved on, his whole face alight. “I can hardly wait to discuss it all with the Prince. What other miracles is he achieving?”
“There is the new compound for the divisions you intend to quarter here permanently of course,” Aahmesnefertari reminded him, inwardly stung. And what of me? she thought, humiliated. Have I not stood day after day with Sebek-nakht while we thrashed out the plans for your palace, O King? Did I not accord the Prince every courtesy on your orders, seeing to his every comfort, making myself available to him for your sake? I have grown to like and respect him and he in turn has often incorporated my ideas into his vision. There is no room for you. Shocked at the vindictiveness of her unspoken thought, she was relieved to be distracted by the gate guards who ushered them through into the garden and closed the heavy doors behind them.
Emkhu had followed her command. The household troops were now ranked to either side of the path that led through the lawns, past the pond, and disappeared behind the house, their short kilts dazzling in the sunshine, the strong light glinting off the tips of thei
r spears and the bronze buckles of their sword belts. Their leather sandals and helmets gleamed with oil. They were a magnificent sight and Aahmes-nefertari felt a rush of pride as she scanned them. She heard Khabekhnet call the time-honoured warning, “The King approaches! Down on your faces!” and with one accord the men turned, saluting Ahmose with the cry of “Majesty!” while Emkhu himself came forward, knelt, and kissed Ahmose’s feet. Without thinking, Aahmes-nefertari bade him rise, saw him hesitate, and heard Ahmose’s permission mingle with her own. She bit her lip.
“Majesty, this is Emkhu, our Captain of the Household Guards,” she said carefully. “He comes from Birabi, the village on the western bank behind the cliffs. He and his father fought under Seqenenra. His father was killed.” Ahmose inclined his head.
“You have an impressive array of soldiery there,” he observed kindly. “How many men now guard my house?”
“Thank you, Majesty,” Emkhu replied. “At present Her Majesty commands two hundred troops. One hundred patrol the house and grounds, the gates to front and rear, and the outside perimeter of the wall. One hundred stand down. But all two hundred of them are here to do you homage today.” Ahmose cast a sidelong glance at his wife.
“She does, does she?” he murmured wryly. “But of course she does. I myself gave her that authority. Carry on, Emkhu.” The Captain bowed and shouted and the men turned into the path once more. “They are a fine show, Aahmes-nefertari,” he went on. “You have done well with them. You must teach me all their names and individual skills if they rotate their watches inside the house.” It was the voice and tone of a younger Ahmose, ingenuous and considerate, and in a rush of gratitude Aahmes-nefertari stood on tiptoe and kissed his warm cheek.
The Horus Road Page 22