by Judith Tarr
“I grant you,” she said to Senenmut, some three handfuls of days after she had begun her deception, “they do mean well. But oh, Senenmut! The potion of ox tongue and crocodile egg and the dung of a maiden heifer born on the night of the new moon—it was all I could do not to shove it down that idiot doctor’s throat.”
“It’s well you didn’t,” Senenmut said. They were granted a rare few moments’ privacy: it was late, the horde of healers and priests had been dismissed, the maids were preparing their lady’s bath. He kept his voice low, even so; one never knew who might be listening. “That idiot doctor was kind enough to offer a highly satisfactory diagnosis. You are, he says, haunted by nightwalkers. They’re draining your blood and souls. You need greater help than mortal man can give.”
“Yes,” she said, “and Mother Isis is a great healer and protector of women. They’ll prescribe a pilgrimage, of course. Gods know they’ve been long enough about it. I thought no one would ever get to it.”
“That is your punishment for falsehood,” he said severely. She was laughing at him. He frowned as blackly as he could. “This is no matter for levity, child.”
“If I don’t laugh,” she said as soberly as he could have wished, “I’ll break and run screaming. I can’t hide . . . this . . . much longer.” Nor could she: the swell of the baby under her hand was distinct, the shape impossible to mistake. Her maids were all bound to silence. Those whom she did not trust had been sent days since to attend the lesser wives of the Governor of Nubia, far in the south of Upper Egypt. If they chattered overmuch there, it would be a sufficient while before word of it came back to Thebes.
“You will of course depart with all dispatch, once your physicians prescribe the pilgrimage,” Senenmut said. “And pray Mother Isis you come safely to Abydos.”
“I shall,” she said. “Mother is sending Nehsi to lead my escort. No one ever argues with Nehsi, or does anything he objects to.”
Since that was eminently true, Senenmut could not protest that the task should have been his. He was the queen’s tutor. But he was not an ebon giant of a Nubian with a voice like a drumbeat and a face that struck terror in the hearts of his enemies.
Neferure raised herself from her couch, stretched luxuriously, strode across the room and back again. She dropped back on the couch and struck her hands together. “Oh, I shall be so glad when this is over! I’m dying to get out and run.”
“You must be hungry, too,” Senenmut said, not too sympathetically.
“No,” she said. “The maids have all been eating a great deal of late, while the world knows that I refuse to touch more than a bite of bread and a small cup of watered wine. But they can’t do my walking for me, or drive my chariot.”
“Bear in mind,” he said, “that all this began because you were bored.”
“This isn’t boredom. This is a fierce imp of restlessness. Can you even imagine what it’s like to lie here day after day, feigning a half-swoon, while the sun shines outside and my horses languish for lack of exercise?”
“You will not,” Senenmut said firmly, “ride your chariot to Abydos. It’s the covered barge for you, and the litter when you come to land. Maybe the priests will encourage you to strengthen yourself with exertion, preferably under the sun.”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. Nightwalkers wither under the sun, everybody knows that. If I’m out all day, from dawn to sunset, and doing something strenuous to drive the demons away . . .”
“Not outside the temple walls,” Senenmut warned her. “Still, there are great courts within, and sunlit gardens, and maybe enough to do until you grow unwieldy. Then you’ll be glad of a soft bed to lie on, and no need to do anything more strenuous than watch the clouds pass overhead.”
“Not I,” said Neferure. She embraced him, so sudden that he started. “I did want you to come with me. But Mother said it should be Nehsi.”
“Your mother had the right of it,” Senenmut said, however unwilling he might be. “You need a better guardian than I.”
“You’ve protected me as well as any man can,” she said. “I did as my heart bade. If that was folly, it is my folly. You were never at fault. No, not even for making that one known to me. If it had not been he, it would have been someone else, some guardsman maybe, with less wisdom and more inclination to boast.”
“You are much too wise,” Senenmut said.
She shook her head. “That’s not wisdom. That’s days of lying here with nothing better to do than reflect on my transgressions.”
“What else do you think wisdom is?” The maids were returning: the sound of quick feet, rustle of gowns, muffled laughter. Senenmut bent and kissed Neferure’s brow. “May the gods protect you. I’ll come again in the morning. Maybe we can work a little magic of our own on one of your sorcerers, so that he finally gets around to insisting that no goddess but Isis will heal you, and no temple of hers but the one in Abydos.”
She nodded. She was drooping again for her maids’ benefit, languishing on her couch while they flocked shrilly about her. Senenmut slipped away unnoticed.
~~~
He had not gone to the queen regent’s bed since this uproar began. Tonight however as he sought his own bed, one of the shadows by the wall opened dark cold eyes.
Senenmut jumped like a cat. He came down hunting wildly for a weapon; but he kept none in this room, not even a knife for cutting bread.
Nehsi the Nubian waited with unruffled patience until Senenmut recovered some fraction of his wits. In a dark kilt, with his dark skin, he was all but invisible in the dim light of the lamp. Yet his presence was a fire-bright thing, now that Senenmut knew of it.
“What in the gods’ name—” Senenmut began.
“She summons you,” Nehsi said. Ever the man of few words, was Nehsi.
“Now?” Senenmut’s heart was still beating hard, struggling to leap out of his breast. “It’s ungodly late.”
Nehsi said nothing.
“Someday,” Senenmut said, “she will stop using you for her errand-boy. Then what will you do?”
“Go on being her chancellor,” Nehsi replied coolly. “Enjoy the leisure of my evenings. She was mildly urgent tonight; and that was hours past.”
“I was reviewing accounts with a scribe from the House of Life,” Senenmut said. His mouth snapped shut. Why he should justify himself to this man, he did not know. It was that perfect lack of expression, that massive quiet. It made a man babble to fill the void.
He snatched his mantle against the night chill and the sting of insects, and turned toward the door. Nehsi followed, seeming at leisure, but he walked at the bodyguard’s distance.
Habit, Senenmut supposed. It was ingrained in him from youth; he would never lose it, however high he rose or how lordly he became. So guarded, like a prince or a prisoner, Senenmut answered his lady’s summons.
~~~
Hatshepsut was in her bedchamber, her face stripped of paint, her hair combed and braided for sleep. The light linen robe that she wore was meant to come off when she slept. She did not mean to be alluring, save that she could not help it. She was always beautiful; she could no more make herself ugly than Senenmut could transform himself into a handsome man.
He called his thoughts to order. It was never wise to let them wander while he suffered the queen’s judgment. She loved him; he never doubted it. But she was queen first and always. She knew no other way to be.
She did not greet him with a smile, nor offer him wine, nor even invite him to sit. He had to stand alone and growing cold, while she pondered whatever it was that had moved her to summon him so late.
While he stood there, Nehsi retreated beyond the door. The sound of its closing was soft and distinct.
Senenmut had never been greatly fond of the Nubian; the man did not invite friendship. And yet now, in his absence, Senenmut felt oddly bereft.
Nehsi forbore to judge. That was his strength and his defense. Hatshepsut could not do otherwise than judge, and judge harshly.
> At length she started as if out of a waking dream, and seemed for the first time to notice that he was there. “What are you standing about for?” she demanded. “Sit down, for the gods’ sake.”
As irritable as she was, Senenmut was comforted. Better irritation than royal anger.
He did as she bade, but he did not quite, yet, venture to speak. She seemed to have slid back into her reverie. Her chin lowered to her hand; she frowned slightly, gazing into the dark: beyond the lamp’s light.
When she spoke, her voice was almost too soft to hear.
She might have been talking to herself, except that she addressed him by name. “Ah, Senenmut. Do you wonder sometimes if these children of ours are truly so feckless, or if we’re simply growing old?”
“You will never be old,” he said, “my lady and my queen. Your beauty will endure forever.”
Her frown darkened. “I didn’t ask for flattery. Were we ever as young as that?”
“I don’t think so,” Senenmut said.
“Ah.” She sighed, frowning still. “I should have foreseen it. For me it was difficult, but easier than this. He was older, and had to wait for me. And a man may beguile his waiting as he pleases. Whereas a woman . . .”
“You know why that must be,” said Senenmut. “It’s happened here. Until the gods permit women to choose when they will conceive and when they will not, no woman can be as free of herself as a man.”
“Truly,” Hatshepsut said with an edge that he had not looked for. “Unless of course she is barren and a queen. Then she may do as she pleases. But never as a man may, in the light of the sun. She must creep about in the dark, and hide, and pretend to be as every woman is.”
“Do you wish you were a man?” he asked her.
“I wish . . .” She looked as if she would rise, but she chose to remain where she was, fists clenched in her lap. “I wish that I could be as I was meant to be. I wish— I would rule. I would command, and ask no man’s leave.”
“And be a man?”
“No,” she said. “Oh, no. Have you noticed? Men have to struggle to think clearly, particularly when they are young. The sight of a woman robs them of all intelligence.”
Senenmut felt himself flushing. She had not meant it, perhaps, but she had drawn him to the life.
“I can think,” she said, “even when my body is on fire. My heart can see clear. Or not. It chooses. And yet I must bow my head to a halfwit child, simply because he is male. I, Senenmut. I who was born to rule.”
He was silent. He had heard much of this before, but never so clear, never so bitter. Never so strong a resentment.
“I have dreamed,” she said. “In the nights when I have worn my body to a rag with ruling in that child’s name; in the days when the tedium of royal ritual has lulled my mind to sleep. I have dreamed . . . such dreams, Senenmut. Such dreams as woman never knew.”
“Nor man either?”
“No one,” she said. “No one but me. Listen, beloved. Hear what I dreamed.”
His heart leaped at the endearment. He was not forgiven—no, nothing as easy as that—but she had gone beyond the simplicity of anger. Perhaps for a while she had even forgotten her daughter’s scandal.
“I dreamed,” she said, “that Amon came to me—yes, Amon-Re the mighty, whose face is the sun. He came as a man, though the radiance of his face came near to blinding me. ‘Daughter,’ he said. ‘O my daughter, whom I love. Be strong; be patient. Only a little while, and your suffering is ended.’”
As swiftly as it had leaped, Senenmut’s heart went still. “He was not—you are not—if you die, I’ll die, too.”
She stared at him. “What? You foresee my death?”
“No,” he said. “The god. The god said—”
“The god said,” said Hatshepsut, “that I am his daughter, his beloved. He said nothing of freeing me from this world.”
Senenmut could breathe again, though his breath came hard. “Is that how it seems to you? Freedom?”
“To a god it is,” Hatshepsut said. “Flesh is heavy; it drags at the souls. It’s their greatest joy to fly free.”
“But if the god said—”
“The god showed me a thing,” she said. “A wonderful thing. A marvel. All queens in Thebes are children of Amon. Queen Nefertari is their foremother: she who lay with the god and conceived her daughter, and her sons, too, so that Egypt’s king might be the god’s own son. And the god was content, and favored his children.
“But the world grows old, and the line of Nefertari stretches long from its source. The god bethought himself of the line’s continuance, and in so thinking, looked on her who then was queen, and loved her in his heart. She was beautiful, but all queens are beautiful. She was proud, as all queens are. But he loved most her swift wit, her intelligence that yielded to no man’s. He came to her in the night, wearing the guise of the king her husband. He loved her as a man loves a woman, but his seed in her was living fire.”
She paused. Her breath came quickly, caught as she went on, living the dream as if it had just now waked in her. “She knew him then—she knew, and clung to him as if she would never let him go. She loved him with all her heart. She called him by name, there in the heat of it, and with his name she bound him.
“And she conceived,” Hatshepsut said, “and bore a child. And that child—that child was I. She was my mother, Senenmut. The god came to her, and he made me. Me, not my brother, not my brother’s son. I am Amon’s child. I know it. I feel it in my blood.”
Senenmut could think of nothing to say. He should be awed; he should bow down. But she had always been queen and goddess. Whether the god’s blood was near or far, in her mother or in her foremother—it did not matter. To him she was the same.
Yet it mattered greatly to her. She was exalted with it. Her eyes were shining—glittering, he would almost have said.
“Do you know what this means?” she asked him. “Do you understand?”
He shook his head. “Should I understand? Should I see anything but that you are the same—you are still my lady, my queen and my beloved?”
“But I’m not the same!” she cried. “Think, Senenmut. The god has told me himself. I am his child, the fruit of his begetting. He intended more for me than that I rule in a king’s name.”
Oh, she was mad, or obsessed. He should have known; he should have foreseen. All her resentment, her envy of her brother-husband and now of her brother’s son, had curdled and soured until she escaped into dreams of the god.
She read the doubt in his face. Her own grew the fiercer for it. “You! I thought you loved me. Are you no better than the rest of them? Will you never be more than a smug and lackwitted man?”
“Lady,” he said, “I can’t help what I am. But this—”
“It is a true dream,” she said. “The god is my witness. I am not a creature of whims and fancies. I never dream but to the purpose.”
“What purpose is that?” he dared to ask her.
But she was too angry, or had grown belatedly wise. She would not answer.
30
On the day that queen Neferure was to begin her pilgrimage to Abydos, Senenmut went to say goodbye to her. He found her still abed though the barge was nearly ready to sail. Her face was white and etched with pain.
This was no feigned indisposition, no too-clever avoidance of a journey that she had no desire to make. Her maids were nearly as white as she, and nearly as scared.
Senenmut shook the truth out of the one who seemed most coherent. “The baby is coming,” she said. “Oh, sweet Taweret, it’s too early!”
Senenmut slapped her just as she began to wail, and thrust her at another of her fellows. “Where are your wits?” he demanded. “Fetch the queen’s physician. Now.”
The one nearest the door nodded, a jerk of the head, and bolted. Why she had not done it the moment she knew her lady could not rise, the gods alone knew. It was as if they were all possessed; as if they had forgotten everything that could have
been useful. Maybe there truly was a nightwalker haunting these chambers.
Certainly the flock of them would know the kiss of the lash when this was over.
Senenmut composed his face before he bent over Neferure. She had doubled up with pain, but as he approached she unfolded slowly. Her expression was half tearful, half terrified. When she spoke her voice was determinedly light. “Well, old friend. I don’t suppose you’ll be weeping over this. It’s convenient, isn’t it?”
“Child,” Senenmut said with such vehemence that he startled himself, “never say that I would fail to mourn any child of yours. But you haven’t lost it yet. Some women know such false pangs; they have to rest well and take great care, but their children are born alive.”
She shook her head. Her hair had slipped from its plait, tangling on her shoulders. He reached to smooth it. She was fiery hot under his hand, yet she shivered as with cold.
“No. No, it’s dead. I felt it die. Deep in the night, when the heart’s river runs lowest, and the shadows whisper, and one sees eyes where no eyes should be . . . I felt its life slip out of me.”
“Oh, my child,” Senenmut said. “And you never called anyone? You never summoned a priest or a sorcerer, or at the very least a physician?”
“How could I?” she demanded with a flare of sudden heat. “This is my scandal, my secret.”
“You could have called for me,” he said.
Her eyes on him were steady, burning. “What, and betray you, too?”
“I was not—” But that would have been a lie. He bent his head. “My poor child. However well this may resolve your dilemma, it grieves me still.”
Her eyes closed. A spasm racked her. He reached as he had with her mother on the day that Neferure was born, and took her hands in his, and held them as he had her mother’s. It was anguish to remember that other face, so like this one.
He had never been one to run away from heart’s pain. He held her until the physician came, a dour man with a thin slot of a mouth and gentle hands. He took in what there was to see; frowned—perhaps at the gravity of the case, perhaps at his own failure before this to comprehend the nature of his queen’s indisposition—and set to work.