by Judith Tarr
“Mother’s up and dressed and acting civil. Father’s beside himself. Senenmut, he’s asking for you! ”
“Who in the world—” Senenmut’s mind woke more slowly than his tongue. Mother not only awake but dressed and being civil. Father flustered, who never noticed enough to be perturbed by it.
Gods. The queen had done it. She had sent her soldiers to seize him and carry him away, no doubt to a terrible and too richly deserved fate.
It was not courage that brought Senenmut out of the dubious safety of his sleeping-room. He was too practical to imagine that he could escape. If he went over the wall and disappeared into the city, the queen’s men would simply assuage her wrath with the blood of his family.
He would happily have seen his brother muzzled and chained in a kennel like the yapping pup he was, but never in the world would Senenmut have wished him dead. Nor Mother, sharp-tongued ungentle creature that she was, nor Father who was all that his wife was not. The baby, the servants . . .
He took time to bathe first and to make himself properly tidy: head new shaved, kilt his best and cleanest. He brought his satchel, because if he was to die, he wanted to do it as a scribe should: with pen and brush close to hand.
~~~
Bes must have had his bread and beer early this morning. There was no one near the shrine. They were all in the room the family gathered in to eat. It was no more splendid than Senenmut remembered, but his kinsfolk were on their best behavior. They were almost quiet. No one clamored for attention. Even the baby sucked peacefully at the nurse’s breast.
A personage sat in the best chair, where Father usually sat. He had been offered date wine and new bread: both lay on the table beside him. He did not seem to have touched either.
He might be a soldier. Senenmut had not thought to inquire when he was in attendance on the queen. His height and breadth and his ebon darkness were impossibly exotic in that small and common room with its middling bad wall-painting of palm trees and crocodiles. He did not seem discommoded by it, but neither was he at his ease. He simply sat, still as a stone panther, waiting as he must have been ordered to wait.
Senenmut’s coming brought him alert. It was a subtle thing: a light in his eyes, expression in his face where had been none before. Senenmut did not see death there. Maybe it was only that he could not read a Nubian face as he might an Egyptian.
Nehsi the queen’s servant rose to greet Senenmut. He did not have to rise quite so high, Senenmut thought nastily, or loom quite so huge. His head brushed the ceiling. He spoke in good Egyptian, in a voice as deep as a drum beating. “You are summoned to the queen,” he said.
Senenmut bit his tongue. No way in the world could he ask what he wanted to ask, not here in front of his mother. She was simpering—she of all people. It shamed him. If she knew what he expected, which was to be fed to the crocodiles, she would be appalled.
“Imagine,” she said with a lilt in her voice such as Senenmut had never heard. “Our boy is going to be the queen’s own teacher and scribe. Who’d ever have thought it? I would have been content to see him settled in the House of Life.”
The Nubian bowed gravely.
“And will he be needing his belongings?” she asked. “Will we be bidding farewell to the eldest and best of our sons?”
Senenmut opened his mouth, but the Nubian spoke before him. “Not yet,” he said, “lady. The queen requires a master of writing and reading, but not for every hour of every day. When she has no need of him, he may do and go as he pleases.”
“And,” said Hat-Nufer, still much too sweetly but with a return of her wonted canniness, “will there be any . . . consideration in return? A man must eat, after all, and buy clothing and ornaments suitable to his station.”
“It will be seen to,” said the Nubian.
“Ah, but one does wonder,” she said, “how much a queen values the man who teaches her the arts of the scribe. If we might have some inkling . . .”
Dear gods, she was haggling, and in that cloying tone, too. For the first time Senenmut saw an expression in the Nubian’s eyes. It must be amusement. It could not be admiration. “The wages of a royal scribe are not insignificant,” he said. “You may expect that your son will receive the same. Bread and beer for every day, a brace of fat geese on festivals, clothing as needed and as required by his duties, and a wig of his choosing; and in addition, if he does well, such ornaments and emoluments as the queen deems appropriate.”
“And, I expect, all necessities of his art,” said Hat-Nufer with notable lack of shame. “Inks, brushes, pens, a new palette as befits a royal scribe. And papyrus, of course, and such books as he requires for his instruction.”
“Of course,” said the Nubian blandly. “You may expect that your son will be well rewarded for his service.”
Neither clearly had any thought of consulting Senenmut as to whether he wished to be nursemaid to the queen. His mother could only see the rank and the title. She did not know the child, spoiled as she was and imperious, as likely to cast Senenmut off as to demand his service.
If he had not refused her, she surely would not have wanted him. But since he had, she had to take vengeance by sending her servitor, guardsman, bedmate, whatever he was, and disarming his mother, and trapping him much too neatly for his comfort.
He had no choice but to follow the Nubian. It never occurred to anyone to feed him. He was too sulky to demand at least a bite of bread. Hungry, seething, he went back to the palace that he had approached with such joy the day before.
4
Nehsi the Nubian did not see what his lady saw in the boy from the Temple of Amon. His resistance was naught but puppy-snarling. At heart he was no more high-minded than his mother, and not much less venal, either.
He pondered that as he stood guard over his lady in her lesser garden. She had gone there ostensibly to take the air as a queen might do, actually to be by herself except for the inevitable and inescapable guard,
He, who had been standing about in livery since he grew tall enough to overtop any but the tallest Egyptian, had ample leisure to consider the queen’s latest acquisition.
“You are jealous,” Hatshepsut said, reading him as easily as she had since she was a small princess and he a callow young guardsman. “You think I might grow too fond of him.”
“I think,” said Nehsi, “that he is a low and vulgar creature with lofty ambitions.”
“And that he’s not pretty enough for me?”
Nehsi showed her his teeth. “Pretty is as pretty does. And isn’t he a fine one, with that crooked beak of his?”
“And you with yours spread half across your face, you can quibble?” She tossed her head in its wig of many beaded braids. “You’re too vain of yourself, that’s the trouble with you. Is it going well with the twins? Are they asking you yet to choose which of them you favor more?”
Nehsi had always been glad of skin too dark to show a blush. The queen’s two maids, twins and as like as two eggs in the same nest, were each a delicious handful, but together they were another kind of handful entirely. For a fact they were wearing him out; but he would never tell the queen that.
She grinned at him, no heed of dignity here where there was only Nehsi to see. “As bad as that, then? Oh, poor Nehsi! And now you’re fretting about the scribe with the crooked nose. I know what he is. He’s also quite intelligent when he troubles to be. Seti-Nakht speaks well of him—and Seti-Nakht has never suffered a fool in his life.”
“All boys are fools,” said Nehsi.
“When did you stop being a boy yourself?” she demanded. “Years aren’t inches, my dear, no matter what people may let you think.”
“I’m older than you,” he said, “and older than that puppy, too, I’ll wager.”
“He’s not an ill teacher,” Hatshepsut mused. She wandered over to the fishpond and sat on its rim, watching the dart of bright bodies from sunlight into shadow.
There was a water-lotus blooming just within reach. She craned f
ar out to pluck it, so far that he reached to catch her, but she came back with the blossom before she fell. She buried her nose in it, drinking the sweet scent. “He doesn’t like teaching,” she said. “That’s obvious. But when he forgets how insulted he is, he does it middling well.”
“He has no patience,” Nehsi said, “and no understanding of those who are slower of wit than he is.”
“Oh,” she said, “but I’m quick. Very quick. He even admitted it.”
“He could hardly deny the truth,” Nehsi said.
“Of course not,” she said. She darted a glance at him, with one of her sudden shifts of mood. “My husband wants me in his bed tonight. Should I go, do you think? Or should I put him off again?”
Not a shift of mood, then. A shift to the thing that was more truly troubling her.
Nehsi was careful in his reply. “You know you have to do it in the end. Whether now or later.”
“That’s what he told his messenger to say,” she said. “I was to be reminded that I may have been married to him when I was too young a child to do what wives do with husbands, but now I’m a woman. It’s time I did my duty as queen.”
“He wants a son,” Nehsi said.
“Surely,” said Hatshepsut with a curl of the lip, “and doesn’t every man? Isn’t there time enough and more? I’ve just begun my courses.”
Nehsi could find it in himself to pity her, a little. She was very young, yes, and no man had ever touched her or come to her bed.
She saw the pity. It made her angry, as he had expected that it would. “I’m not afraid, Nehsi. Don’t you dare think I’m afraid. I just don’t—his hands are clammy. And he sweats.”
“He is the living god,” Nehsi said.
“He is a sweaty, panting lout without the least grain of delicacy.” She was shaking, and she seemed unable to stop, but her voice was less difficult to control. “Whenever he tries to kiss me, he slobbers all over my face. All the women he’s had, and all the women he’s said to have had, and hasn’t a one of them ever taught him to do it properly?”
“Some things a man has to learn for himself,” said Nehsi.
“Not this one,” she said. “He needs a schoolmaster. If a cocky boy can teach me to write, why can’t some obliging soul teach my husband how to bed a woman?”
“One doesn’t do that with Horus on earth,” Nehsi said dryly. “It’s not even wise to offer.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” Her eyes glittered. “I’ll send him a teacher. Someone pretty. Someone skilled and willing, but not too clever.”
He nearly groaned aloud. She was a clever child—but by no means clever enough. “Lady,” he said. “How wise is that? If you send a woman to him, and he falls to her charms as he can’t help but do, he might forget you altogether. What then if he gets a son on her while you remain barren? You’d never lose your rank, but you’d lose power and standing. And a concubine’s son would be the next king of Egypt.”
She heard him. He saw it in her eyes. But she did not hear him clearly enough. “I’ll have to trust in the gods. And by the greatest of them, old friend, I do not want to go to my husband’s bed for the first time only to be pawed over like a trull in the market.”
Nehsi swallowed a sigh. She had a look he knew all too well. She would do what she would do, and no one had any hope of stopping her.
“You,” she said, “will hunt down a suitable woman for the king. Let her be young, but not so young as to lack experience in the arts of the bedchamber. Let her be beautiful—that goes without saying. And above all let her be sweet and biddable, and see to it that she is loyal to me.”
It was never the habit of queens to set simple tasks for their servants. Nehsi bowed to the ground. He did not pause to see how she responded to that pointed abasement.
~~~
On his way out of the garden he roused one of the other guards, a good enough man for an Egyptian, and set him on watch over the queen’s solitude. He was not entirely sure how to go about his task, but he knew at least where to begin.
The twins were busy with the queen’s wardrobe, washing her gowns of state and spreading them in the sun on the roof of her palace.
Most people could not tell them apart. They affected the same waist-long plaited hair and the same blue beads on a string about the hips, and they were identically pretty, with round ripe faces and laughing black eyes. But Nehsi knew that Mutnefer was a very little the taller, and Nutnefer was a very little the more ample of breast. He could aggravate them terribly by knowing which was which when they tried, wickedly, to deceive him.
They greeted him with matched and brilliant smiles. He paid obligatory tribute: a kiss for each, and a quick slap at the hand that strayed under his kilt. “Not now,” he said. “I’m on the queen’s errand.”
“Can’t it wait?” Mutnefer abandoned her washbasket with visible relief. Her sister was already pressed to Nehsi’s side, stroking him above the kilt since he barred the way below.
“You know the queen can never wait,” he said from between them.
“What does she want?” asked Nutnefer as her fingers walked themselves down to his kilt’s fastening. He caught them; she giggled. “Aside from that, of course.”
“The queen doesn’t know what it is, to want it,” Mutnefer said. “Poor thing, she’s scared to death. Some idiot told her it hurts the first time; now she doesn’t want it at all.”
“I don’t think she’s a coward,” said Nutnefer. “Wary, more like. She never rushes into anything.”
“Some things one should rush into,” Mutnefer said.
Nehsi, listening and fending off determined hands, enjoyed a moment’s pleasurable contemplation of a twofold gift to the king. He discarded it with regret. These two were pretty and charming and delightful in bed, and their likeness to one another was a rarity, but the king liked a less substantial armful of woman. A willowy girl would allure him best; and one of exceptional beauty. Which the twins were not. Pretty, that was all, and lively. No more.
“Listen to me,” he said over their chatter. “You can help me if you will. I need a woman—”
“And here we are!” they cried, attacking him with delight.
He got a grip on each and set her firmly aside. “Stop that and listen. The queen has taken it into her head to do a thing, and she’s harnessed me with the doing of it.”
It was slow going, with a great deal of foolery, but in the end he got it all out. The twins were less incredulous than he had been.
“That’s like her,” Nutnefer said. “Careful. Silly, and no mistake. But it can’t be either of us, no.”
“Not that we’d mind at all, teaching the king manners,” said Mutnefer, “but we’ve tried already. He’ll not take lessoning from us.”
They were both almost sober for a moment, with the hint of a frown.
“It’s not that he’s exactly clumsy,” Nutnefer said. “He never commits rape, nothing as bad as that. But she has the right of it. He’s awkward. And he sweats.”
“Nothing like you,” said Mutnefer, but she had stopped trying to drive him wild with wanting her. She was pondering. “Sister, do you think . . .”
“No,” said Nutnefer promptly. “But maybe . . .”
“No, not that one, either. And as for . . .”
Nehsi was used to these cryptic conversations. The twins had a magic of sorts: each always seemed to know what the other was thinking. They spoke aloud out of a native courtesy, but broke off in midsentence, since there was so clearly no need to go on. It could drive a listener to distraction.
Nehsi set himself to be patient. Nothing they ever did could match the queen in one of her moods.
As he had expected, after a while they looked at one another and nodded. Then they seemed to remember that he was there, and more to the point, that he had to hear words in order to understand them. Mutnefer said, “There are one or two who might do, and who would be willing. Three, even. Maybe. Four?”
“Enough to choose from,” Nutnefe
r said. “Come, we’ll look for them. But you have to promise something.”
Nehsi raised a brow.
“You can’t have any of them,” said Mutnefer. “Even the ones who don’t go to the king.”
“That’s hard,” Nehsi said.
“Promise,” said Nutnefer.
He heaved a sigh. “I could simply do my own searching.”
“Yes, and there are hundreds of women in the palace, and dozens are pretty enough at least to be considered. How long will it take you to examine them all?” Mutnefer demanded.
“He might enjoy it,” Nutnefer said, “till the queen ran out of patience and came looking for him.”
“Indeed,” said Mutnefer. She ran a light hand across his shoulders. “I should so hate to see this beautiful panther-hide ruined with whip-scars.”
He shook off her hand. “Enough, enough! I yield. I promise. As long as I enjoy the delights of your companionship, I won’t cast my eye on one of the king’s women.” They considered that, narrow-eyed. Nutnefer looked ready to argue, but Mutnefer said, “It will do. Come, let’s to the hunt.”
Nehsi paused. “And this?” He tilted his head toward the baskets and the swaths of drying linen.
“It will wait,” Nutnefer said. She tugged at his hand. “Quick! Time’s flying.”
5
The queen inspected the women whom Nehsi had brought to her. She had taken pains with her appearance: had put on one of her state robes and the tall crown like plumes of gold, and under that an elaborate wig. Her jewels were pure gold, her collar as broad as a breastplate, the wealth of a kingdom weighing down her neck and shoulders.
She received her servant and his hoard of living treasure in one of the audience chambers on a throne of faience and gold, with her maids about her and a company of guards standing at rest along the walls. It was no more state than she was entitled to, but for receiving half a dozen trembling maidservants it was slightly overdone.
Nehsi was wiser than to remark on it. For what she intended, which was to terrify his charges into silence, it succeeded admirably. One, ironically enough the most robust-seeming of the lot, looked ready to faint.