by Judith Tarr
Nebsen was if anything lazier than ever. Years and good living had thickened his body and slowed his mind.
Senenmut often wondered how the king endured him, as little like a soldier as he was. He was easy to listen to, that was true, and amiable in company. How much he taught his pupil, it was difficult to guess. Rumor had it that other scribes had taken to instructing the king under Nebsen’s supervision—meaning that Nebsen snored in a corner with his jar of beer, and the scribes did as they pleased.
Still he was the king’s tutor, privy to his counsels; and he had been, if not a friend, then not an enemy, either. Senenmut approached him of a morning, a day like any other in the courts of Thebes. The palace servants were hard at work scouring floors, washing garments, preparing a feast.
Today they were celebrating the king’s excellence with the bow; he had defeated a flock of rivals in a contest, some of them older than he, almost men. It was like Thutmose not to strut the victory. He was holding audience in proper form and formality, but his companions had insisted on a celebration.
Nebsen never attended audiences if he could help it. That he left to the king’s advisors and the queen regent. When Senenmut avoided royal functions, it was to pursue some duty that could not wait. With Nebsen that duty was simply and always a jar of beer.
Senenmut found him in the king’s chambers, well into the jar but not yet prostrate. That would do well enough.
Nebsen greeted him with apparent gladness, groped about for a cup despite his objections, filled it sloppily and thrust it toward him across a table meant to bear fine jars of wine, not simple earthen jugs of barley beer.
It was a while before Senenmut could come to the point. Nebsen chattered as always, heedless of attempts to get a word in. “Wasn’t he just splendid with his bow? So strong an archer for one so young; so gifted in everything that a king must be.”
“Indeed,” said Senenmut, finding a gap at last in the thicket of words. “But isn’t it a pity that he can’t get along with the queen regent?”
“Oh,” said Nebsen with a wave of the hand. “That’s nothing to fret about. She’s intimidating, you know. Odd. Such a little woman—they’re all little, these children of Ahmose—and so pretty, but so terrifying when she looks at you.”
“Well then, and so is the king. He’s of the same blood. He’s remarkably like her, if either of them could see it.”
“Ah, so,” said Nebsen. “You know how that is. Like to like, bull to bull in the field of the herds. They’ll never see how they should love one another.”
“Listen to me,” Senenmut said, as impatient suddenly as Hatshepsut had ever been with the king. “I don’t need you to be wise. I need you to help. The king isn’t just afraid of my lady. He hates her. I worry about that, Nebsen. He’s only a child now, but he’s not so very far from becoming a man. What then? What becomes of my lady? He’ll drive her out if he can. He might even kill her.”
Nebsen shrugged and drank deep from his cup of beer. “Why do you fret so much? He’s barely nine years old. It will be years before he’s old enough to challenge her.”
“And what then?” Senenmut demanded. “What then, Nebsen?”
“Why, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe we’ll all be dead.”
Senenmut came near to spitting in disgust. No great delicacy prevented him, but rather a kind of greater repugnance. This cheerful sot was never worth the trouble.
Nebsen did not seem to care that Senenmut walked out without a farewell. The last Senenmut saw of him, he had gone for the cup that he had filled for Senenmut, and proceeded to gulp it down.
They said that men who drowned themselves in beer were troubled in the heart. Senenmut could not see what Nebsen’s trouble was, aside from bone-deep laziness. Great wallowing useless man; small wonder the king dealt so ill with the queen regent, if he had so poor a teacher.
Well; and there was something Senenmut could do to remedy that. He spoke a word here and a word there, and let this be known and that be mentioned. Within the month, Nebsen was gone, and in his place an eager young man from the Temple of Amon.
Perhaps Senenmut had outsmarted himself. This man was young, hardly more than a boy, and as wild for soldiers as the king was. He was no friend to Senenmut, nor was he likely to be: he came of a line of princes, and looked far down his elegantly arched nose at any mere commoner, however high the rank he might have risen to.
Communications between the queen regent’s household and the king’s had grown as mannered and distant as those between foreign kings. Messengers and ambassadors went back and forth. Even when they sat side by side in audience or in the courts of justice or in receiving embassies, they did not speak to one another. Their servants spoke for them.
~~~
“And he,” said Hatshepsut at last, “that infant who wears the crowns and clings so tightly to crook and flail—he has not one word to say for himself. These kingdoms are not well served, Nehsi. Their king is a fool, as slow of wit as of speech. Like his father before him, he cares nothing for the tedium of rule. He lives for war, dreams of it, yearns after it.”
Nehsi did not see that he should answer her. Often of late she had come in a temper from this function or that, in which she must speak in the king’s name, yield humbly to his rank and authority, and bow before his face. It galled her.
“Why in the world he does not simply ape his father,” she said, “and refuse to come at all, I will never know. That’s his mother, I suppose. She hides herself well, makes excellent pretense of retirement, but no one doubts whose counsel he listens to.”
“It seems to me,” Nehsi said after a pause, “that he does very little except sit in state while you do as it best pleases you. Has he ever resisted you? Has he ever advised you to do anything against your will?”
“Of course not,” said Hatshepsut. “He’s too much an idiot. I doubt there’s a thought in his head, except what’s been put there by one of his soldiers, or by his mother’s nagging.”
“Maybe he’s wise,” said Nehsi, “and maybe he’s more intelligent than you give him credit for.”
“Not likely,” she said with a toss of her head that nearly sent her wig flying. “Don’t you think I’ve hoped, hunted, prayed for any sign of wit in the child? He’s the king. When he’s a man he will rule. Do you remember how I used to ask him to judge in this matter or that? He stumbled and stammered. ‘I don’t know,’ was all he could ever say.
“He knows nothing, Nehsi. He’s a fool and a lackwit. And don’t tell me he only seems so to me! If he were born to be a king, he would at least be able to answer sensibly when I ask him a question.”
Nehsi did not suppose he could deny that. Pity, rather. The boy would make a good soldier. He might even make a general: he had a grasp of strategy that caused the old soldier Ahmose to speak well of him.
Ahmose spoke well of no one; his best estimate of a man was to growl that he could follow orders if he had a whip to his backside. Yet of the king he said, “He can keep two things in his head at a time. He might even amount to something.”
Hatshepsut knew none of that.
“Some men,” Nehsi ventured, “are hopelessly shy with women. I’ll wager the king is one. And you, great lady, are terrifying.”
She snorted. “Senenmut says the same thing. You’re both fools. Are you so in awe of the Two Crowns that you can’t honestly see the one who wears them?”
“Are you so convinced of the king’s incapacity that you can’t honestly see any evidence to the contrary?”
Nehsi held his breath. He walked very close to the edge; dared what might be too much. But it seemed necessary.
She did not burst out in rage. That in its way was more alarming than if she had, but he held his ground. Softly, calmly, she said, “Fetch my counsellors. Yes, even Ahmose the General, who is so enamored of the king. Fetch them all, and bid them attend me in my hall of audience.”
Nehsi had ceased some time since to run errands for any man, or wo
man either. But for Hatshepsut he did this. He set aside his rank and position, forgot everything that he had become, and was her guardsman again, her messenger and her defender. She would never know how great a gift he gave her, nor would he ever tell her.
He fetched them as she commanded: Ahmose from the training field, Senenmut from among the scribes, Hapuseneb from the temple; haughty Ineni the builder of tombs and temples, Thuty the Treasurer from his strongrooms and his bushels of gold; and the others with them, the handful of men whom the queen trusted. She had not summoned them so before, not all together and out of season, bidding them come at once. They were proud men and they had risen high, but for her they left what they were doing and came at her command.
She received them in deliberate lack of state, sitting in her audience-chamber, dressed in a simple gown with few jewels, and a plain wig, and no mark of rank. Her chair was no higher than theirs, her manner quiet, but beneath it she was drawn as taut as a bowstring.
If she paused for preliminaries, none of them after remembered. She favored each with a long look, both those whom she had raised to this eminence and those who had been great lords and princes while she was still a small princess in her father’s house. Nehsi noticed that none shrank from her stare, nor tried to defy it. No cowards here, nor fools either. She had chosen them well.
But then, he thought, she did most things well. It was the gods’ gift to her, one of many, and far from the least.
After what seemed a very long while she spoke. Her voice was quiet, as she herself was, and without pretension. She said it simply. “I have dreamed,” she said. “Hear the dream that I have had.”
Nehsi had heard it before, and so, from their expressions, had Senenmut and Hapuseneb. To the others it was a new thing; they heard her in silence, as they must.
“I dreamed,” she said, “that great Amon came to my mother, and put on the face of her lord the king, and lay with her. But she knew him; she felt the fire of him within her, and knew that this was no mortal man. She called him by name, and he answered her. He loved her, and for all that night she lay with a god, and when morning came, she knew that she had conceived a child.
“She expected that it would be a son. She was astonished when the child was born, and it was a daughter. But it was the child of Amon. She saw the light of him in those eyes, and knew from whom it came. She named the child First Chosen of the Palace—Hatshepsut. It was a princess’ name, fitting for a queen. But she knew what else it signified.
“So I dreamed, my friends. I dreamed, and the god came to me and called me his own. ‘Beloved,’ he said. ‘Daughter. Chosen of my heart.’”
There was a silence. None of them moved, none spoke. Hapuseneb, ever garrulous, stirred as if he would venture a word or six, but for once he chose to remain mute.
It was Ahmose Pen-Nekhbet who spoke at last, and not to the queen regent; to Hapuseneb. “Well, priest. You belong to Amon. What dreams has he sent you?”
“Why, none,” Hapuseneb answered him.
“Is she telling the truth?”
Hapuseneb glanced at the queen regent. She sat still, expressionless. “Well,” he said, “that’s difficult to say. She’s royal born, daughter of a king and a queen. They’re all descended from Amon. Who’s to say that he didn’t decide to visit his descendants, and take one look at Queen Ahmose and fall head over heels? He wouldn’t have been the first, man or god, to do that. She was a beautiful woman.”
“So you don’t know,” the old general said. He had no fear of royal wrath, having weathered storms of it since the foreign invaders were driven out. “Imagine that. A priest of Amon admitting to ignorance. Will the world end now?”
“I hope not,” Hapuseneb said. He grinned at Ahmose, who grinned toothlessly back. In the old days, Nehsi had heard, Ahmose had had handsome white teeth and a face that won many a lady’s heart—and the rest of her, too, if even half the stories were true.
His rakehell days were ended, but his wits were as keen as ever. He said, and this time he spoke to the queen regent, “You didn’t bring us here at the run and with our whole day’s duties half done, to tell us bawdy stories. That’s not like you. What are you getting at?”
Hatshepsut did not forgive impertinence, but from Ahmose she could endure much. “I am telling you,” she said, “that I dreamed, and I dreamed true. This dream has been with me since I was young. It’s come again and again since my royal husband died. Now it comes on me every night. Every night Amon comes to me, shows me the night of my conception, says to me, ‘Daughter. Beloved. I chose you; why do you close your eyes to me?’”
“I’d say he wanted you to do something,” Ahmose observed. “If it’s he who comes, and not a lie or a wish made flesh.”
“It is he,” Hatshepsut said with bone-deep certainty. “He burns like fire. Last night he laid his hand on me.” She lifted her arm that she had kept close to her side, wrapped in her mantle for the day was rather cool.
More than one man caught his breath. There were the marks of fingers above her elbow, red as if branded. One could think, Nehsi reflected rather sourly, that she had had an altercation with her lover, and he had bruised her; but Senenmut seemed as taken aback as the others.
She lowered her arm, covered it again with her mantle. “This he gave me as proof, and not only to you. I too have wondered if my dreams were false. But they are not. Amon comes to me; he calls me his daughter. He bids me do somewhat that I am to discover for myself.” She drew a long breath, lifting her head as if she gathered strength. “I’ve been slow to understand, my friends. Criminally slow perhaps, but what he intends for me . . . I tell you true, it makes me afraid.”
They were silent again, even Ahmose. The tension stretched so taut that it thrummed.
She snapped it with a word. “I’ve thought long. I’ve prayed. I’ve invoked other gods than Amon. Every day it’s come clearer, that I must do what Amon bids me do. When my daughter died”—her voice caught on that, but steadied—“I knew surely; but I could not bring myself to face it. Now I cannot escape. I must do as I am bid. I must be Amon’s chosen one. I must be king.”
33
Ahmose spoke for all of them. “You are mad.”
She met his eyes. “That, I may well be. But I have dreamed as I have dreamed, and I have prayed, and pondered every side of it. The god’s will is clear. I am to be king.”
“A woman cannot be king,” said Ineni the builder.
“That too I know,” she said, and without impatience, which was remarkable. “I said as much to the god. He said to me, ‘I have chosen you. You will be as you were meant to be.’”
“Did he admit that he’d made a mistake?” Hapuseneb grinned at all the shocked expressions. “Oh, yes, and I a priest of Amon, too. How irreverent of me. Still, lady, do think. If he had meant you to be king, surely he would not have omitted one small detail.”
“And what,” she demanded with sudden ferocity, “does a man’s rod do for him but pass water and get sons? Am I so much the less for lacking one?”
“It is traditional that the king have one,” Senenmut said dryly. “If you go ahead with this, the scribes will be in fits. There is no word for a king who is a woman; no place in the language for one. There is the Great House, the ruler of the Two Lands; there is the Great Royal Wife, the woman who stands beside him and assists him in his rule. There is no way to conceive of a woman who wears on her head the Two Crowns.”
“I am not the first,” she said. “Perhaps not the second, either, or the third.”
“And why is that?” Senenmut asked sharply; then answered himself. “Because, O my lady, neither gods nor men find it fitting that a woman’s head should uphold the Two Crowns.”
“Amon finds it fitting,” she said very softly, almost gently. “Now tell me, my servant whom I had thought loyal to me: in what way am I less than the child who wears the crowns? Do I lack his strength of will? Do I waver in diplomacy? Have I no such gift of speech as he has shown us all?”<
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Senenmut cut through her mockery with a slash of the hand. “Please, lady. You know well that no matter how little he pleases you, he pleased the gods and the people sufficiently that they allowed him to be crowned king of Egypt.”
“I will not strip him of his crowns,” she said. “I will simply do as I would have done had I been a man and not a woman: I will rule beside him, as his equal. So should I have done from the first. This regency is a travesty. Even the river-bargemen know whose hand in truth has steadied the steering-oar these past six years and more.”
“But,” said Senenmut, “they want to see that hand resting lightly atop the hand of a manchild. It’s long been the way, lady, that a man rules.”
“Not all ancient ways are good,” she said. “What of the very old ones? Shall we go back to sanctifying every tomb and temple with a man’s blood? Or shall we command that every king devote the wealth and power of his reign to raising a great vaunt of a tomb like those at Giza? Shall we do that, Senenmut?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.
“Then open your mind,” she shot back, “and think of what the god has willed for me. I fought it, too. I argued exactly as you have. He never wavered. ‘You are my chosen one,’ he said.”
“Did he happen to tell you,” Hapuseneb inquired, “why he took it into his head to choose you?”
“It was time,” she said, “and I was fit. Am fit. I rule now in all but name. He bids me take the name as well, so that my rule is blessed by truth, untainted by falsehood.”
“So you claim to do it in the name of truth.” Nehsi had let them forget he was there; now, to the shock of some, he reminded them. “Is that how you will present it? A regency in its way is a lie, a pretense of lesser power than the king himself possesses. You will strip yourself of deception and rule undisguised.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. That is the way of it.”
“In the kilt?” Senenmut asked. “With crook and flail across your naked breasts? With the false beard strapped to your chin?”