The final panel of the carving caught Neferure up short. It depicted a portion of the tale she had never heard before. Hatshepsut, wearing the kilt of a man and the Pharaoh's high, rounded war crown, strode across the face of a god, treading him into the earth. Neferure gaped at the scene, at the sorrowing, helpless face of Dedwen, god of the Kushites, and the fearsome straightness of her mother's body, the triumph of her dark eyes.
Senenmut's hand came down softly upon her shoulder, but she could not tear her eyes from the image.
“Did it truly happen?”
“Truly,” he said.
She conquered a god. She trampled a god into the dust.
Neferure tore her eyes from the face of conquered Dedwen, peered over her shoulder at her mother. Hatshepsut smiled broadly as she spoke to Thutmose, gesturing at the wall opposite, describing the scenes she would commission there. Her face was so plain, for all her divine origin, the bigness of her teeth and the roundness of her chin so unassuming, so mortal. There were lines around her eyes when she laughed at something Thutmose said. This king – this woman – destroyed a god. True, Dedwen was a god of Kush, and so by definition inferior to even the humblest household god of Egypt. But still, Hatshepsut had defeated him.
What other gods might she bring low? There could be no doubt that Hatshepsut was the offspring of Amun. Not that Neferure had ever doubted it.
She returned her gaze to the temple wall, though now she saw none of it. Her eyes seemed to look beyond the stone into a black distance pricked by the light of thousands and thousands of stars.
I, too, have the blood of Amun in my body. Do I have the power to trample gods? Or the power to raise them up?
With a bitter pang, she recalled the white bull of Min, the feel of its hide beneath her fingers. She remembered the whispers that ran through Hatshepsut's court, circulated amongst the palace servants. Oh, yes, she had heard them – heard all the rumors. Why should they not be true? Neferure tamed the white bull. Neferure is favored by the gods. Neferure's very name is holy. She tamed the bull. There is nothing the King's Daughter cannot do.
She reached out a trembling hand, laid her fingers on Dedwen's cheek. She willed him to live again, to rise up and roar like a bull in the emptiness of her mother's bare hall. She opened herself, reached her heart out to the divine, offered it like a piece of myrrh on the sacred fire.
Live, she commanded the god.
But the wall remained flat and cold, and Dedwen only stared back at her with empty, defeated eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By night, the valley lived.
By day it was a flat, dry expanse, as blank and unused as the untouched clay shard of a lazy schoolboy. After sunset, the floor of the sacred ravine turned from dry yellow to a mysterious blue-black as deep and dark as ink, and the vertical rock walls faded into blackness. Lights bloomed in the dark: scores upon scores of torches flaring, moving, swaying forward and back like a garden in wind. Revelers carried their torches and lamps from the valley floor up secret, hidden trails that climbed into the rocks, where they found the tombs of ancestors a hundred years gone. Lines of light flickered as they ascended, draped like golden chains across shoulders of night-blue stone. The living once more carried bread and beer, honey and wine to the homes of the dead, too long forgotten. The night rang with songs of celebration, cries of drunkenness, of fear, of passion. Fires blazed along the length of the newly built canal, and reflected in a double row that wavered and shimmered, that bent with the water's movement like a snake dancing in the grass. The movement of light was as the movement of the Iteru, constant, vital, an unceasing mystery. For the first time in generations, Egypt celebrated the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, resurrected from obscurity by the majesty of the king’s new temple.
Hatshepsut leaned alone on the low wall surrounding the highest terrace of her temple. The wine bowl beside her was empty. She closed her eyes, feeling the touch of the valley's brisk wind on her eyelids. Her wig's many braids shifted when the wind touched them; the feel of it set her to swaying. She rocked high above the deep blue valley, the wine a warm pulse in her blood, listening to the rising and falling of song, the calling of the kas of the dead amongst the rocks.
West, she thought. Here I am as far west as I may go, unless I were to dwell in the Red Land.
She had built her temple in the west, the place where the god died each night in the form of Atum-Re, the sun who set in all the colors of blood – the bright, the deep, the fiery. The place where the god entered the underworld, where he would strive each hour to return to the sky. The west was the place of the mysterious Lady, Hathor, She of Seven Faces, who welcomed all into the underworld.
I built my temple in the west. I dedicated a beautiful sanctuary to her, in this very spot. What more does Hathor want?
Hatshepsut had increased the numbers of girls she dedicated to the Lady's service at Iunet. Each year she sent more than the last, until she was hard-pressed to find suitable candidates near Waset, and was obliged to send her stewards and priests to search farther afield. She had given a larger portion of the treasury to restoring temples up and down the Iteru, joining her own plans to Neferure's, ensuring the disused shrines to Hathor – or any ancient aspect of the Lady's being – were renewed prior to any other god's.
And yet the dreams had not ceased. With cruel reliability, her sleep was haunted every handful of nights by the image of the goddess who strode into a circle of light and changed her face from gentle smile to lioness's leer. And each time, no matter how Hatshepsut pleaded, no matter how she ran, no matter how bravely she stood and challenged the goddess, the fangs sank deep into her neck, and ripped and ravened, and her blood flowed like hot, choking wine. Sometimes the goddess had eyes of two colors, and white braids in her hair. Sometimes she had Ahmose's eyes, or Senenmut's, Iset's, Hatshepsut's own.
This year will be different. I have revived the Lady's own celebration. I have rededicated the Beautiful Feast of the Valley to her, and she will be appeased. She will go quietly into the west, and let me be.
Hatshepsut opened her eyes. Her vision swam, seemed to lift a chain of lights making its way up the most distant cliff face high into the stars, so that some stars burned a steady silver-white, and some flickered golden. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, then cursed at the smear of kohl and malachite powder on her palms. At the sound of her voice Nehesi glanced up from where he stood below, guarding the base of the ramp, defending her loneliness. The ululating wail of drunken song lifted from somewhere deep in the valley. It pierced her heart and left her gasping. Then it faded away again, and Hatshepsut shivered.
She groped for the wine jar and found nothing.
“Batiret!”
Her woman appeared – the only attendant she would keep tonight, high and solitary at the apex of her great temple. Tonight Hatshepsut would remain alone with the god.
Batiret appraised her mistress with the usual no-nonsense flick of her eyes. “Water, I think,” she said.
“More wine.”
“The Great Lady will have a terrible headache in the morning.”
“The Great Lady does not care. The Pharaoh must be drunk! It is the way of the festival!” Her words ran together.
“The Great Lady will vomit.”
“Let her!”
“And I shall have to clean it up.”
Hatshepsut draped an arm across Batiret's shoulders. “You are beautiful.”
The woman bore it patiently. “Most definitely water for you.”
“Kiss me!”
Batiret leveled a dry look at Hatshepsut. “You do not desire me. I am not Iset.”
The name jarred her. She inhaled sharply, the scent of fine wine and myrrh from the braziers in Amun's sanctuary, the fainter overtones of acrid dung-smoke and sweet wheat cakes baking over open fires far in the valley below. She smelled water from the canal. That canal had taken a year to construct, so that Amun's barge might be floated the length of the valley to her
temple's forecourt. All to revive the festival. All to appease Hathor. All to protect the ones she loved. Like Iset.
“She wants Neferure,” Hatshepsut muttered.
“Great Lady?”
“But she cannot have her. I pledged her to Amun. Neferure is God's Wife. She is Divine Adoratrix. She is my heir! That is maat.”
Batiret's arm went around Hatshepsut's waist; the woman tugged at her until she took a few stumbling steps toward the private courtyard at the temple's crown.
“Maat is all,” Hatshepsut said in a booming voice that sounded comical even to her own ears.
Batiret giggled behind her free hand.
“My father used to say it. Hatet, maat is all!”
In the center of the courtyard, Batiret lifted her face to gaze up at the stars. Hatshepsut imitated her, but the stars lurched and rotated like an unmoored boat in a fast current. She clutched at Batiret's shoulders. “What is maat, anyway? Do you know? I surely do not. Every time I think I've served maat, I discover I've done it all wrong. What is it, then, Batiret? Tell me.”
“For you, maat is water,” she said, and disentangled herself from Hatshepsut's arms.
Hatshepsut swayed, swam in a pool of starlight. The shimmer of it on the stones of her temple's floor seemed to take the shape of faces. She stared at them, trying to identify them, trying to discern who stared back, who stared at the Pharaoh with such impunity. But the eyes kept blinking, the mouths kept twisting; she could make nothing of them.
Batiret set a pottery jar on the floor. The circle of water visible at its lip reflected the points of a hundred stars, stretching and breaking as the vibration of the jar's movement ran in rings across its surface, expanding and contracting.
Batiret lifted a dripping cup to Hatshepsut's lips. “Drink.”
When her belly was full, Hatshepsut staggered past the pillars to the wall of her temple. In the dimness she traced the shape of a body with her fingers, carved into the smooth stone. Artisans had worked a full year to adorn the temple with the images she had commanded, and now she could not remember whose image dwelt on this wall, rendered eternal by chisel and pick.
A sudden weariness gripped her. She pressed her palms, her cheek, against the unseen figure in the stone.
“Leave me, Batiret. Join Nehesi. Keep everyone away. I must be alone. Alone with the god.”
Hatshepsut was aware of the gentle scrape of stone against her knees, aware of a sinking sensation, aware of her knees buckling slowly, so slowly, as if all happened in reverse. She heard herself snore as she surrendered to sleep.
**
When she rose up, her legs were steady. The walls of the temple pulsed with a faint light: green, the color of resurrection.
She gazed up at the wall where she had crumpled – hours before? Days before? She could not tell how long she had slept. A bead of green fire ran along the edge of a carving, tracing the form of a striding king. Wherever the fire traveled, it left a line of its own substance glowing, until it traced the king's arm, his shoulder, his face, the great arcing reach of his proud crown. The fire met its own tail and the king stood outlined in eerie light.
Hatshepsut stared, wondering. Was it an image of her own self, or of her father? She could not discern the king's face. She stepped nearer, cautious of the fire, hugging her body with trembling arms.
Hatshepsut.
She had not heard her father's voice since she was a small child. But she recognized it at once, the deep, mellow softness, so incongruous a voice for a king or a soldier.
“Father.”
You must remember, Hatet. Maat is all.
“But what is it? You must tell me.”
I did not listen. I did not serve. And all my sons died – all but you.
“Only tell me how to serve, and I will do it.”
Thutmose the First laughed, a loud percussive sound, drums in a temple, a jackal in the night. The memory of his laugh beat painfully at Hatshepsut's heart. She remembered his smile close to her own, his voice whispering legends in her ear as he held her to stand on a ship's rail so she might watch the great pyramids, black against a setting sun, slip past their boat. She did not fear standing on the rail. She did not fear the river below, though it was full of crocodiles and weeds to tangle her. She could never fall. Her father held her tightly.
Who is the son who loves Aakheperkare, the king, Thutmose, he who has gone to live forever with the gods?
It was part of the litany of the Opening of the Mouth, the rite a new Pharaoh performed when his predecessor died. It was the rite that sent the old king to the Field of Reeds, granted him eternal life, and passed kingship of the Two Lands from the deceased body to the living body. Hatshepsut had never been granted the privilege of performing the rite for her own father. Ahmose had spoken the words on behalf of Thutmose the Second, whose regent she was, and Hatshepst herself had spoken the words on behalf of her own Little Tut over his father's gilded coffin. But she had never given the gift of the afterlife to her father, nor received the kingship from his arms into her own.
She stepped toward the fiery outline of Thutmose the First until she stood eye to eye with him, until she felt his gaze look into her own kas, filling her with a throbbing green light. She did not have the netjerwy, the sacred metal rod that opened the mouths of kings. She laid her bare fingers on the stone lips of her father, and felt him breathe in.
“I am the son who loves Aakheperkare, the king, Thutmose.”
When she stepped away from him, his face had changed. The mouth was twisted with disgust, the eyes burning with hateful light.
Hatshepsut cried out in shock. Her ka crumpled as if dealt a blow; she quailed on the floor of her temple.
And then she recognized the face. It was her brother's.
Hatshepsut. He spat her name as though the taste of it was foul on his tongue.
She made herself stand up, made herself face him. “Thutmose.”
Where is my kingdom? Where is my throne?
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he glared back at her, his pupils sparking, flaring.
You took it from me. You took it all; even my son.
“They were never yours, brother. Egypt was never meant for you.”
Do you not see? This is not maat. You are not maat. You will walk in darkness forever, because you are not maat.
Against her will, she took one small step backward, retreating from his words, from his hate-filled grimace.
My kingdom, wailed Thutmose the Second. His voice rose and wavered like the cries of the revelers in the valley. It is a terrible thing you do, Hatshepsut, Hatshepsut!
She threw her arms up to shield her face, crossed them before her eyes, trying without success to block out the rage and misery roiling in Thutmose's resurrection fire. The heat of him beat at her body, and she stumbled backward, afraid she would burn.
It is a terrible thing I do.
The voice whispered now, and was low and rich, laden with despair. Hatshepsut uncovered her face, peered cautiously at the king. She did not recognize him, and yet she did. The jaw was strong, the prominence of the Thutmoside teeth softened by the influence of some great beauty that refined the king's features, enriched the familial roughness, turned and smoothed the face like a clay pot in an artisan's hands. The eyes were closed in grief, but when they opened, Hatshepsut knew them well. They were Iset's eyes.
“Little Tut.”
He was a grown man now, wearing all the trappings of a king, with the mantle of pain and weariness a king must wear, too. She came toward him, holding her arms wide for the little boy, the child of her heart and Iset's beloved body. But he was not a little boy any longer. He did not see her.
It is a terrible thing I do. And yet, can I do any differently?
Thutmose the Third paused, as if listening to the counsel of another voice. Hatshepsut strained to hear it, but heard only silence. At last the king hung his head in defeat.
Hatshepsut, forgive me. She must forgive me. She mu
st understand.
And he raised a chisel in one hand, a mallet in the other. They lifted slowly, their weight great in his reluctant hands, and hung poised in the air before Hatshepsut's eyes. The sharpness of the chisel flooded her with terror. She cried out to him, begged him to stop. But he did not hear.
When the mallet fell against the chisel, the crack of stone split her ears. The pain of nothingness split her heart.
Hatshepsut fell to her knees, screaming.
**
A sharp crack across her face woke her. She lurched to her feet, and immediately fell again, her head pounding.
“Oh,” she groaned, clutching her stinging cheek. Her gut clenched; she levered herself carefully onto hands and knees and retched again and again. Nothing came up but a thin stream of saliva, which dangled from her lips until a gentle hand wiped it away with a soft square of linen.
“There, child. There.”
“Sitre-In.”
The presence of her old nurse was an unspeakable comfort. The woman knelt on a mat beside Hatshepsut, her lap as welcoming as it had ever been. Hatshepsut crept to her and sank onto the mat, her throbbing head on Sitre-In's bony old thighs. Sitre-In rubbed her fingertips in small circles across Hatshepsut's forehead, her temples, the back of her neck. Hatshepsut sighed in relief.
“Batiret sent for me,” the nurse murmured. “That servant of yours is as wise as a goddess.”
“Where were you? I have not seen you in so many years, not since you took to your estates.”
“I was down in the valley, of course, celebrating the Feast.”
Hatshepsut smiled at the thought of Sitre-In getting riotously drunk and carrying a torch with the other revelers, up into the tombs cut into the high cliffs. “You were not truly celebrating.”
“Not all of us celebrate by ducking our heads into a wine cask,” Sitre-In said drily. “You did not have enough water. Shame on you.”
Sovereign of Stars Page 12