“There, sister. There. Amun doesn't hate you. You are his wife – my wife. You are the most blessed of ladies in the Two Lands.”
“I am not,” she insisted, her tears hot and wet on his shoulder. “Amun wants nothing of me. And I can never be with the goddess who loves me.”
“I'll send you to serve Hathor permanently, if it will make you happy.”
She pushed him away. “You cannot. Don't you see? Mother is right, though it's bitter on my tongue to say it. I am needed here, in Waset, at Amun's temple, to perform all the rites of my offices. It is maat, and without maat, Egypt will die. Oh, unhappy me! I am cursed to misery forever!”
Thutmose took her hands, coaxed her to her feet. “I don't like to see you so distraught.”
She took the square of linen from his hands, wiped her face clean. “It is my duty as Great Royal Wife to lie with you,” she said calmly, “and I will do it. I am nothing if not dutiful.”
“I can see that you are,” Thutmose said dryly. “We do need to get an heir, Neferure. It's of the utmost importance, now that I have removed you from your heirship and made you my wife. Without an heir, the throne is in danger.”
She nodded, took a step toward the couch. He stayed her with a hand on her arm.
“The way you looked at me…earlier, when we stopped. I may not be a god, Neferure. I may have only the body of a man. But I am still a Pharaoh.”
He had meant it lightly, but she did not smile. “Ahmose is god-chosen, and she lay with a god. I am destined for the same. You may be a Pharaoh, but a Pharaoh is not a god until he is dead and resurrected. Now you are only a man, made of mortal flesh. I deserve no lesser a consort than a god.”
Thutmose's heart chilled. What kind of a woman disdains even the love of a Pharaoh?
And at last he knew where his dread of Neferure came from. Now he understood the fear he’d felt when she tamed the bull. There was something dangerous in the way she understood herself – in her very will. Something inhabited her heart that did not dwell within normal women, nor within men. Not even Pharaohs thought so highly of themselves. At least, Thutmose did not. There was danger in such self-assurance. He could not quite grasp the danger – could not discern its exact shape, or know its boundaries. He only knew it was danger.
Thutmose let his hand fall from her arm. He made his way to his door, summoned his guard, and asked the man to send for Hesyre and Takhat. When the wet-nurse arrived, she looked expectantly at her charge, but at the sight of Neferure's tear-stained face and still-clothed body, Takhat's face fell into a deep, worried frown.
“The Great Royal Wife is too tired for company tonight,” Thutmose said. “Take her back to her Hathor shrine and let her pray before she sleeps.”
When they had gone, Hesyre turned to Thutmose, dry-washing his hands. “Lord...”
“I'll have that wine, Hesyre. Bring it to me in my garden. I need fresh air.”
He walked the paths alone until Hesyre found him and pressed a large cup of deep, blood-red wine into his hands. Thutmose drank of it, nearly gagging on its bitter potency. It was a strong vintage. But he drank it all, and as it settled into his blood, he moved from the protective shelter of hedges and broad-leafed trees into the open glare of starlight. His head swimming with the wine, he tilted his face up, staring undaunted into the night sky, until his wig slid from his scalp and landed with a thump in the grass.
“I am the Pharaoh,” he said to the stars, emboldened by the wine. “One day I will be as much a god as you.”
Hathor did not answer. Her stars shone down indifferently, white and cold.
“She has duties to Amun, duties to the throne. Release her; I command it.”
Still the goddess made no reply. Abashed, Thutmose retrieved his wig from the grass. He crept back into his chambers and fell into his bed, pulled the linens up to cover his face. He did not want to see the patches of starlight that played across the bars of his wind-catcher. He did not want the starlight to see him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Woman-king.”
Hatshepsut blinked in the smoky dimness of the queen’s great house. The door-cloth swung closed, falling into place with a sound like linen dropping on a stone floor. The arching walls reached above her, around her, a net drawing tight.
Ati lay in all her vast, arrogant glory on a pile of cushions, leaning her impressive bulk on one deeply dimpled elbow. Her thighs and hips spread around her, shining with the remnants of some fine, spicy-scented oil in the light of a great brazier which burned on a pad of red wool in the center of the floor. A girl with a regal bearing nearly as great as Ati’s own bent over the brazier, tossed a handful of resin on the glowing coals, and a cloud of incense smoke billowed about her face, dissipated in the shadows hanging in the peak of the roof. The girl was clad in the same brilliant yellow skirt that Ati wore, her forehead similarly adorned with the simple yellow band. And though she was young, her body was beginning to show the same fatness of which Ati was so proud, the thighs heavy and thick, the hips wide and pocked here and there with dimples. Hatshepsut guessed the girl to be the Queen’s daughter.
“Sit with us, King of Egypt.”
Ati’s voice was as deep and lustrous as long-worked wood, resonant with a low, rich tone that was almost masculine. The barest hint of amusement was in it, too, and Hatshepsut raised her chin imperiously. She was a visitor in Punt, but she was still a king, still the son of the very god who called this strange land his home. She made her way across the split and bound logs of the floor, uncomfortably aware that empty space yawned below, a drop the length of three tall men from the platform to the hard ground outside. Perhaps because it supported the great weight of Queen Ati, the floor seemed to quiver lightly with her step, seemed to bounce faintly – a feeling not unlike walking across the deck of a ship in its moorings.
Bita-Bita and Kani trailed her, and, when they saw that Hatshepsut was seated comfortably on her own cushions, the two girls prostrated themselves before Queen Ati and her royal daughter in the Puntite fashion, full length along the floor with hands reaching. Ati acknowledged them; the girls retreated behind Hatshepsut; she could feel them there in the shadows, tense in their attentiveness.
At a signal, Ati’s daughter approached with a grace that was incongruous to her large form, offering a bowl of palm wine. Hatshepsut took it with a nod of thanks, surprised that a royal daughter was expected to play the role of servant. The wine was pungent and faintly bitter, with a curiously green aftertaste that made Hatshepsut long for the coolness and kind perfumes of her palace gardens.
“You have been avoiding me,” Ati said.
Her directness took Hatshepsut aback. “Certainly not,” she replied after a moment. “There is much to be done, and I have been regrettably delayed by my work.”
Ati’s red-painted lips pursed in wry amusement. “As you wish. Abaty, bring the meat.”
The daughter produced, from its unseen resting place in the shadows, a platter laden with raw meat on skewers. Hatshepsut was not fond of uncooked meats, and she worried that she would be made to choke the meal down for the sake of Puntite propriety. But Ati took a skewer delicately between her fingers and laid it directly on the coals and resins burning in the brazier. Hatshepsut did the same; the hut filled with the enticing odor of charred meat.
“You traveled long to reach us,” Ati said, turning her skewer, not deigning to look at Hatshepsut’s face. As fat fell from the meat, flames licked up, and the queen’s face leaped out of the dimness with startling brilliance, the deep blue lines tattooed around her mouth as dark as plow lines in silt.
“The riches of Punt are famed all over the world,” Hatshepsut said. “My god greatly desires them, and I serve my god faithfully and well.”
They pulled their meal from the coals. The meat carried the rich, somewhat floral taste of the incense – a flavor that was not unpleasant on Hatshepsut’s tongue. Ati considered Hatshepsut as she nibbled at her meat. At last she said, “The god des
ires my riches, or you desire them?”
Hatshepsut smiled a small, acquiescent smile, bowed her head slightly, and made no reply. Her skill with the Puntite tongue was not nearly strong enough to rejoin, and in any case, she would not make excuses for her motives. Hadn’t the throne been given to her? Hadn’t she every right to maintain her hold on it, using any means at her disposal? She would not stammer and apologize before this arrogant river-horse of a woman.
“I, too, am a loyal servant of the gods, she-king.”
Ati added something else in the same amused tone – something Hatshepsut could not quite catch. She called quietly over her shoulder, “Bita-Bita.”
“The Queen says,” Bita-Bita supplied, her voice scarcely louder than a whisper, “that the gods of Punt are not so different from the gods of Egypt.”
“Gods all want the same,” Ati went on. “Power, and acknowledgment of that power. Worship. Obedience from their servants. And all people are servants to the gods, would you not agree, King?”
“I do agree.”
The Queen’s daughter offered more courses, bearing her trays of fruits and breads and sweet cakes with silent dignity while Ati and Hatshepsut (often with Bita-Bita’s aid) talked of small, incidental things. The differences in the seasons, and how Punt and Egypt marked the change of months. The music each enjoyed; a comparison of musical instruments and the skills of singers. The habits of their men, who seemed to have more similarities, in their need to swagger and boast, than differences. Hatshepsut relaxed into the conversation, and Ati, too, seemed to drop her cold formality, warming to Hatshepsut’s company. The Queen even laughed now and then, a loud peal like temple bells, trailing to a crackling wheeze deep in the woman’s chest.
The coals in the brazier burned low, dimming the glimmer on Ati’s well-oiled skin. Her face sank into half-shadow. The silent daughter knelt at Hatshepsut’s side, bearing one final tray. A single bowl sat in the center of it, filled to the rim with some dark liquid. Hatshepsut lifted it carefully.
“What is it?”
“A message from the gods.”
Hatshepsut said nothing, watching Ati carefully across the rim of the bowl, raised halfway to her lips. The queen stared back with that familiar, hungry intensity on her dark features.
“What message?” Hatshepsut said at last.
“Would you hear it, truly? Or would you disregard it, yet again?”
“I don’t understand.”
Ati sat up, reached across the brazier with both hands. The light played across her flesh, moving in golden ripples like a school of shy fish. Hatshepsut placed the bowl in Ati’s palms. A bit of the liquid escaped the rim, spilled over Ati’s knuckles. It fell viscous and red into the coals, and Hatshepsut choked on the familiar smell of blood.
Amun’s eyes – I nearly drank it!
Ati turned her face down to gaze at the bowl, blew on its surface, watched the ripples with pinched and furrowed brows. She tilted the dish this way and that, until the blood rolled around the rim, coming close to spilling over, and Abaty, the silent daughter, suddenly raised her voice in a loud chant. The sound made Hatshepsut gasp. Although she understood none of the words, their forceful cadence beat under her skin like a hot pulse. As the chant rose to a climax, Ati gave the bowl one final tilt, and blood splashed over her hands, falling into the brazier, splashing onto the floor. Kani and Bita-Bita moaned softly in terror.
Ati raised one blood-covered hand stiffly. Her daughter fell silent. For many long, trembling heartbeats, the only sound was Hatshepsut’s own ragged breath in her ears, and the crackling of the coals in the brazier.
Then Ati spoke. “Even here, we know of the Mistress of Stars, the goddess who wears many faces.”
“Hathor?”
“She has many names – all names known to women. Lover and virgin, mother and crone, queen and warrior. Dancer, singer, hunter, maker.”
Hatshepsut clutched her own hands, determined to show no fear. But she remembered how Hathor had pulled at her years ago during that dark night, the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, the cliffs echoing with the cries of her people, the night shimmering with torchlight.
“You have spurned her,” Ati said. “And she is not pleased.”
“I never spurned her. I have restored her temples, raised her up. I have increased her priesthood with the best girls in Egypt.”
“And yet you have withheld what was promised, the tribute she demanded.”
“The goddess cannot have Neferure. She is my heir, my hold on the throne.”
“So flat a refusal. The she-king is indeed an arrogant one, so puffed with her own power she would naysay even a goddess.”
Hatshepsut bit her tongue, fought back a bitter laugh. To be called arrogant by this great hummock of a woman…! Puffed, indeed.
Ati rumbled out a few more words, and Hatshepsut, distracted by the offense, shook her head, turning to Bita-Bita, who sat quivering with tears standing in her eyes.
“She says…” Bita-Bita faltered. “She says that even kings are not as great as the stars.”
“What does she mean by that?”
“I don’t know, Great Lady.”
Hatshepsut forced away her anger, made herself concentrate on Ati’s words.
“You came here to my land seeking a gift to please your god,” Ati said, her voice drawling now, slow with amused contempt, the twist of her mouth speaking plainly of the mistrust she had of Hatshepsut’s motives. “And yet you withhold from your gods. What am I to make of it? What is the Mistress of Starlight to make of it?”
“You forget,” Hatshepsut said, making as if to rise, “that I am a king, and not subject to your insults, Ati of Punt. I will gladly take my gold and turquoise and leave your land empty-handed, rather than suffer your disdain.”
“It is not I who disdains you. Look to the goddess to see true wrath.” The odor of burning blood seemed to steal the air from the dark hut. Hatshepsut clenched her fists.
“But there is yet time to amend your wrongs.”
“Oh?” Disbelief at the woman’s audacity pitched her voice high, and she bit her lip at the childlike sound of it.
“If the tribute comes to the goddess from your own hand, woman-king, then you will be spared. If not…”
“Spared! Indeed!”
“If not, death in this life will be the end for you. A true death. A final death.”
Bita-Bita gasped. Hatshepsut held her body very still, while inside her chest her heart fluttered wildly.
“No afterlife,” Ati said. “The goddess will see to it.”
In the call of crickets in the forest canopy, Hatshepsut could hear the cold ring of a chisel on stone.
**
Senenmut heard the murmur of Hatshepsut’s voice, talking to her servant girls in low, urgent tones, long before he saw her come through the forest gloom. From where he crouched on his heels, sipping palm wine on the platform outside Hatshepsut’s borrowed hut, he saw the golden necklaces around her neck first, pinpoint gleams of starlight reflected in their finely worked chains. The shape of her body followed, the tension of her shoulders evident in the darkness, the stiff carriage of her neck. She fairly stamped her feet as she walked the forest path, making the rough fabric of her Puntite skirt swing from side to side. He rose smoothly when she reached her ladder, so his presence would not startle her, distracted as she was.
“Great Lady. How was supper with the Queen?”
Hatshepsut stalled on the ladder’s lowest rung. “Senenmut.” She said his name with a note of deep relief, and, sensing her need, he climbed down to her side.
“Leave us,” she said to her girls, and they scampered up the ladder, disappearing into the quiet hut as though they feared she might recall them.
“Something is wrong,” he said.
“The Queen of Punt,” Hatshepsut growled, “is a foul-tempered, unpleasant, vile sorceress of a woman, with a black, hopeless ka.”
“So it did not go well,” he guessed.
To his surprise, she covered her face with trembling hands and sniffled, holding back tears.
“Now, now,” Senenmut murmured. “Don’t fret. Tell me.”
“Not here. My girls – anybody may hear.”
And so they took the path deeper into the forest, following its dark breadth with hesitant feet, their hands clasped together so they could not lose one another in the gloom. The leaves moved constantly above them, a sound almost like falling water, but not nearly so soothing. There was an undeniable menace to the forest, a pale, unseen threat hanging all about the god’s land. Senenmut had felt it, an itch on his skin, all that day while he and Ineni and Nehesi led the men into this very wood to procure the saplings of myrrh. They would sail soon for Tjau, and Senenmut would be glad to see the tiny, stinking port town. When they reached Tjau, they would be that much closer to Egypt, and a more benevolent environment with kinder, more sensible gods.
Their path gave way to a wide clearing, a swath of grass and weeds close-cropped by animals. Senenmut suspected it was a favored pasture for the little donkeys the Puntites rode. The ever-present, ever-whispering canopy drew back, and the silver of moonlight fell bright and clear into the grass, turning all it touched to colorless uniformity, dreamy but clearly seen, nothing hidden. Hatshepsut let his hand fall and stepped out into the pale light, turned her face up toward the moon. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes.
Senenmut sank onto his heels again, for he was tired from the day’s long work. The grass was soft and welcoming. He sank back further, lay along it with his head propped on one arm.
“Tell me,” he said again, and watched her as she simply stood, calm at last, bathing in the light.
“Khonsu,” Hatshepsut muttered. “The moon god. Here he is, even in Punt, shining as he always does.”
“Of course.”
“Do you think it’s true, Senenmut, that the gods of this place are no different from the gods of our land?”
Senenmut considered the question. “Well, after all, this is Amun’s homeland.”
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