“Batiret tried her best.”
“You'll have more water now. And some herbs for your head.”
“Good.”
Sitre-In rolled Hatshepsut over, onto her own mat. A few cushions and a sheet of soft linen lay upon the mat, crumpled by Hatshepsut's dream. The bedding had not been there when she had fallen asleep; she was sure of it. Batiret had thought of everything. She pressed her face gratefully into a silk cushion, moaning. A green light flared and dimmed behind her closed eyelids, pulsing with the beat of her heart.
“Here, Great Lady. Drink.”
Batiret sank onto the mat beside her. Hatshepsut lifted onto one elbow to accept the cup of cool water. It tasted of some woody, sharp herb. She drank it all.
“You slapped me,” she said, rubbing her hot cheek.
“Not I; it was your nurse. You were screaming, and we could not wake you.”
Hatshepsut remembered the mallet in Thutmose's hand, the grief in her grown son's eyes, and shivered. She took several more cups of the infusion, and when the pounding in her head receded, she ventured to stand. Her senses were still somewhat furry from the wine, but she was sobering, and her stomach and head had settled.
She made her way out onto the highest terrace with her women following close behind. The night had turned the corner, as the rekhet said; the warmth of a summer night had passed into the refreshing chill of the few hours preceding dawn. Many of the stars had faded. The torches in the valley were mostly extinguished, the revelers having retreated to tents or tombs to sleep off their wine. Along the dim length of the canal, the fires had died to heaps of embers. No more songs rang from the cliffs. The night murmured with the metallic, nasal call of insects. Hatshepsut felt the need to shake off the strangeness of the night. The green fire of her dream still haunted her. She laid a hand on Sitre-In's shoulder.
“I am going to walk alone. Just below, on the next terrace. I think the movement and the air will do me good.”
“Let Batiret go with you.”
Hatshepsut shook her head. “Nehesi is down there. He stayed awake all night, didn't he?”
Reluctantly, Sitre-In nodded.
“I will be well. Nehesi will watch me. I need to be alone with the god's presence.”
She made her way down the ramp to the terrace. The line of seshep stood like blue sentinels before her. My soldiers called me seshep once. She did not feel like a lioness tonight. She turned her back on them and retreated to the portico, drifting from one pillar to the next, tracing with her fingers the images of her works and her glories. They all seemed as nothing to her, naught but paint on stone, as though they had never happened – as though she herself had never been.
The scuff of running footsteps roused her from her dark thoughts. She ducked behind a pillar, and as she did so caught sight of Nehesi across the terrace, his body taking form out of the shadows of night. He came to alertness, stared with hawk-like intensity toward the sound of running – and then subsided, relaxing, his hand leaving the hilt of his blade.
Hatshepsut moved around the pillar until she too could see the runner. It was Neferure, the hem of her gown dark with water or mud, its pleats crumpled and ruined. She staggered into the shadow of the nearest seshep and fell against its plinth, her body shaking with sobs. She looked the picture of perfect grief, limp and helpless, her head bowed and arms draped across the lioness's paws.
Is she that drunk? She should not have had so much wine. I shall speak to Senenmut about it; he must watch her more closely.
Hatshepsut pushed herself from the pillar, ready to approach Neferure, to guide her to Sitre-In for care. But she saw a figure rise from the far ramp – head, shoulders, the swaying hips of a woman – to step up onto the terrace. The woman was dressed in a white gown that glowed faintly in the remnants of starlight. Silver at her wrists and ankles gleamed now and then as she moved. As she drew nearer, pacing between the seshep, Hatshepsut could see the locks of her black wig swaying around her face – a face incised with the lines of age and cares innumerable.
“Ahmose,” Hatshepsut murmured. She sank back against her pillar and willed herself to stone-stillness.
When Ahmose reached Neferure, the girl crumpled to the foot of the plinth, balling herself up like a bit of discarded cloth. Ahmose sank more gracefully to sit beside her.
“It's not fair, Grandmother!” Neferure wailed into the darkness. “I hear the Lady calling me, and yet I cannot answer!”
“You are so full of fire, Neferure. Still it – control it.”
“I try.”
“Try again. Take a deep breath; stop your crying. Take this cloth and dry your eyes. There. Now breathe. Allow your breath to come how it will. If it would be slow, let it be slow. If it would be harsh, let it be harsh.”
Neferure sat up straight, closed her eyes, and breathed. Hatshepsut watched her daughter's chest rise and fall several times, slowly, her small, new-formed breasts stirring against her gown.
“Let your ka fall open,” Ahmose said, “like the petals of a flower.”
Neferure remained still and silent for a few more breaths, then struck her knees with her palms. “It's no use!”
“You give up too soon. It is never easy to touch the gods, child.”
“Why do they not touch me? Why am I barred from them? I am the Divine Adoratrix! It is given to me to worship them, to love them! And yet they hold me away. Why? I, who tamed the white bull!”
“Be sensible. Did you tame the bull in truth, or are you confusing rumor with reality?”
Neferure lifted her chin, looked sharply away from Ahmose in that petulant way she had. “Of course I tamed it. You were not there; you did not see.”
Ahmose shook her head, but subsided.
“Grandmother, there must be some sin in me, some stain that taints me in the gods' eyes. What else could it be? I have devoted my service to Amun; I have restored their temples since I was a small child. I make offerings every day. I live my life in goodness and maat. I do everything my mother asks of me.” Neferure buried her face in her hands, and her cry of despair echoed amongst the pillars. “Oh, what is it in me that turns their faces away? I only want to adore them. They will not dwell inside my heart. What about me displeases them so?”
Ahmose did not answer. She lifted her face to stare into the shadows between the pillars. Her eyes found the place where Hatshepsut stood, pressed breathless against the stone.
She cannot see me. I stand in blackness.
But Ahmose did see her; Hatshepsut was sure of it. And the directness of her mother's gaze frightened her more than had any vision in that terrible dream. More than her brother's hatred, more than the chisel in Thutmose's hand.
“I do not know,” she heard Ahmose say to the weeping child.
But she did know. Hatshepsut was sure of it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The mood in the House of Women seemed light enough, though the night air was dry and smelled of dust when it should have hung rich with the clean, loamy odors of the flood. In the third year after Hatshepsut dedicated her great temple to Amun, the river failed to rise more than a handful of spans. The fields nearest the banks were covered by no more than a few fingers' breadth of water, and it was poor in silt. The fields beyond the roads and causeways, nearer the hills, remained cracked and dry. There would be no planting and no harvest this year.
Hatshepsut maintained calm throughout the Two Lands by distributing from her ample stores of grain. In prior years the gods had been more than generous; often the stores were filled to capacity and the throne was obliged to ship great surpluses of emmer and barley to other lands, lest the excess spoil. There was no threat of famine. Every belly in the Two Lands would remain full, even should the flood fail for two or three years more. Senenmut and Hapuseneb did their best to assure the king that such an occurrence was unlikely.
She strolled the great communal garden of the House of Women arm in arm with Opet, patting her half-sister's hand as she listened to the harem gossip, abl
e to lend barely half her heart to the conversation. Her thoughts strayed again and again to the river. The Iteru was sluggish and dim, and stank of decay. Crocodiles and water-horses grew bolder, encroaching on fields and quays where they never dared go when the currents ran high. Though she smiled and laughed at Opet's tales, and tossed her head as though she had not a care in her heart, the implications of the failed flood consumed her.
There is plenty of wheat and barley, she told herself firmly, accepting a bowl of beer from the serving woman who met them at the lake's shore. The lake was low, too, of course. The raised retaining wall showed a dark ring even in the moonlight, and the leaves of lotuses drooped, wan and rotting, across its surface.
“...and oh, wasn't Djefatsen sore when she saw Iy wearing that turquoise necklace! I warned her she was too fond of wagering, and she'd regret it one day! Iy won't part with the necklace now. Not for ten of Djefatsen's best silver bracelets, or her malachite earrings. Well, that is what comes of wagering.
“I was not the only one who warned her, either. Hetepti dragged Djefatsen off to see the God's Wife in her little palace, and Lady Neferure burned some incense and prayed and gave Djefatsen a terrible future, but said she could avoid it if she would give up dicing with the guardsmen. The Holy Lady told her she would wager away her firstborn child one day, but if she made offerings to Hathor daily for ten days, the goddess would break her habit.”
“And has it worked?”
“I do not know, Great Lady. Djefatsen is too afraid of Hathor to go into the Holy Lady's shrine.”
“Afraid?”
“Ah. Hetepti told me that when the Holy Lady was praying her eyes rolled back into her head, and she made a terrible croaking sound like a great frog in the reeds, and Djefatsen decided the goddess had entered your daughter's body. Hetepti said Djefatsen was near to weeping, she was so frightened by the sound. She won't even look at a carving of Hathor now.”
So Neferure was using her status in the harem to terrify the Pharaoh's women. Hatshepsut clenched her hands into fists. “Croaking like a frog. It seems Neferure has kept herself well occupied. How else does she spend her time?”
Opet peered at Hatshepsut from the corner of her well-painted eye. “Do you not know?”
“I have been preoccupied of late,” Hatshepsut said drily. “I've had little time for keeping up with the Holy Lady.”
“Well...” Opet's voice went limp with reluctance, as weak as the lotus leaves in the shrinking pool. “She has put it about that the...the river, Great Lady...is...”
“Yes?”
“...that the river is the work of Hathor.”
“Hathor. Of course.”
“She says that Hathor is angry with you, Great Lady.”
Hatshepsut held her tongue and her composure with difficulty. She eyed the outline of Neferure's small palace, dim across the span of the garden. A single lamp burned in one of its windows, flickering and low. There was no sign of movement within.
More men than ever before had engaged her harem women in polite conversation at festivals and feasts. How much longer would it be before the women returned their affections, and petitioned her for release? And once she granted them the freedom to marry and become mothers, they would spill Neferure's tales directly into the ears of Egypt's noble men. The Sovereign of Stars is angry with the Pharaoh. The king has lost all favor with the Mistress of the West. The goddess caused the flood to fail, because Hatshepsut displeases her.
“What exactly does my daughter say?”
Opet ducked her head in apology. “In truth I know very little about it. I am repeating only the murmurs of the other women, you see. The Holy Lady is careful never to speak against you where I might hear it directly. She knows how close you and I are.”
Hatshepsut rode back to the palace wearing pensive silence like a winter shawl, drawn tight all about her. Nehesi accompanied her back to her own chambers, and there she fell upon her bed, wracked with superstitious dread. She kicked her feet against her sheets and fine cushions, unable to find any comfort. Was Hathor angry with her, after all? Were Neferure's whispers true? The girl was god-chosen; Ahmose was still certain of it, though for all her mystical airs, Neferure had shown precious little talent that Hatshepsut could see. She had been certain, ever since the Feast of the Valley, that Hathor wanted Neferure. Yet as much as she feared Hathor, she feared Amun more. He was the patron of Waset, the king of the gods, and her own sire. Amun required a God's Wife, and Hatshepsut would not offend him by taking Neferure, gifting her to Hathor like a basket of pomegranates. To say nothing of the vital part the girl now played as Hatshepsut’s heir, a charm to protect the line of succession against scheming men until Thutmose came of age and sired an heir of his own.
Unless the High Priest or Ahmose told her otherwise, Hatshepsut would retain the girl for Amun's service. She had committed Neferure, and her word before the god would remain unbroken.
No, she told herself, trying to sound sensible within her own troubled heart, it is not Hathor who's stayed the flood. It cannot be.
Which god, then?
A spasm of fear seized her belly and ran cold up her spine. Amun? Was the king of the gods himself displeased with his begotten daughter?
If he is angry with me, it can only be over Senenmut.
She would marry him. Yes – take him to her bed as a husband, not as a lover, and the holy trinity would be complete in the mortal world as it was in the world of the divine: mother, father, and child.
But in another heartbeat she rejected that idea, too. A man who would be Pharaoh might marry into the blood royal, as her own father did. There was no shame in raising up the low. But for a Pharaoh to marry a commoner – and not only as a concubine, but as Great Royal Consort...? As much as she loved Senenmut, she saw at once that such an action would not raise him up, but would degrade her own position. Were the Pharaoh to give in to her emotions so completely, so publicly, she would only seem too mortal, not the slightest bit divine. It would only speed them taking my throne from me. No – I can never marry the brother of my heart.
She fought to clear herself of all thoughts, to sweep herself clean so she might at last sleep. From the direction of her servants' quarters, she heard a rustling, the sound of a woman shifting heavily in her sleep. Weariness dragged at her, a desire for peace. She cast her heart back to the days when Iset still lived, recalled with a tender pang the night she had convinced the girl to lie with her brother and conceive their Little Tut. What a good mother Iset would have made, had she lived. She would have known how to handle Neferure, how to appease the gods. She would have danced, and sung in her sweet, lilting voice, and told Amun tales of the deby in the northern marshes, and he would forget his wrath, and let Hatshepsut sleep.
**
Senenmut was a clumsy hunter at best. At worst, he was a humiliation to men everywhere.
As a youth his friends had goaded him into fowling one day when the afternoon had grown too hot to continue their lessons at the Temple of Amun. They had begged a little reed-cutting skiff from the priest whose duty it was to keep the temple's canal clear of weeds, and paddled it out into a thick stand of papyrus. Meryre, one of his friends, had a fine horn bow, a gift from his father. They had taken turns firing rather cheap, disposable arrows into the green density of the riverbank until at last a flock of geese rose, honking indignantly at being roused from their afternoon nap. By then it was Senenmut's turn with the bow and he could not even pull it; his chest was too weak. All the geese got away. The boys watched the flock glide across the expanse of the river and settle, a line of black dots, onto the far bank.
His skill with a spear was nearly as lamentable. The skiff nosed through a wall of reeds to reveal the haul-out of six or seven crocodiles. They lay half concealed in mud, their malevolent pale mouths open as if they might speak. One rolled a strangely keen, golden eye toward the boat and slid into the water. The boys screamed, paddling frantically to make their escape. The crocodile kept coming, th
ough, and Senenmut was obliged to pick up the hunting party's lone spear in defense. He jabbed it at the crocodile, striking its face twice, and the beast fled with a great thrashing of its tail. The other boys hailed Senenmut as a hero all the way back to the Temple of Amun, but even now, standing on the deck of the Pharaoh's hunting boat with her servants in a bustle around her, he recalled the weakness of his blows, the ineffectual way the spear's point had bounced off the crocodile's snout. He certainly had not killed it; he had not even drawn blood. For all he knew, it was the stink of his terrified sweat that had driven the crocodile away, and not his spear.
In spite of his unimpressive record as a huntsman, Senenmut felt a certain gladness to be underway. Hatshepsut, driven to distraction by her worries over the harem, had thrown up her hands two days ago when court duties were done, and declared that she would hunt lions, though Senenmut was certain she had not hunted since her youth. Now here they were, rocking together on the deck of her swift hunting boat, watching as a singing band of sailors scurried from rail to rail, preparing to land the boat deep in the valley opposite Waset.
Hatshepsut, clutching the rail at the ship’s sharp-pointed nose, breathed deep as the canal narrowed. Before their prow, the broad face of the temple stretched along the base of the cliffs, dominating the valley. Djeser-Djeseru, Hatshepsut had named it: The Holiest of the Holy. It was a good name. The avenue of seshep paralleled the canal. Each face that rose above each lion's body was a match for Hatshepsut's own, rounded and firm, the eyes insistent, the mouths barely curved in knowing smiles of complete self-assurance. Even without celebrants to tread from the quayside to the temple for a festival, the whole valley felt stately, holy. Perhaps the only feature that marred the effect was the bleached skeletons of the long-dead myrrh trees, strange white slashes like scratching nails against the golden landscape.
They landed at the clean new stone of the festival quay. Senenmut escorted Hatshepsut ashore, where they stood in the welcome coolness of a hastily erected cloth sunshade, watching while a veritable army of servants and soldiers unloaded their boats. The cloth and poles of tents came ashore on the shoulders of strong young men. The more adventuresome women from the palace's cadre of servants bore baskets of fruit and sacks of flour, which they would make into fresh cakes around nightly campfires. Soldiers led teams of skittish horses down the ramps, and staked them out with piles of hay on the bare ground between seshep. The horses' tails made sounds like whip-lashes as they swatted at flies. Men lowered sections of chariots from the boats' rails. Here a platform, there a pair of wheels, here an axle and tongue came together with pegs and mallets until the Pharaoh's small fleet of hunting carts gleamed in the mid-day sun. Men sang as they worked; women danced the rustic steps of servants, shouting and clapping their hands. A hunt, it seemed, was nearly as good as a festival.
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