Sovereign of Stars

by Lavender Ironside

  “You foolish old thing,” Ahmose chided, and opened her eyes.

  The garden beckoned her, all shadow and moon-glint. She stepped barefoot into the grass, and when the cool, yielding blades touched her skin, she heard laughter among the flower beds. Ahmose turned her head. Out beyond her low wall, a single dark raft moved with the current of the river, a chip in a flood, tiny, drifting ever away. The laughter sounded again, and she checked herself from running. Ahmose walked with the dignity befitting a lady of the court, a regent, a Great Royal Wife. And yes, God’s Wife of Amun, too. She turned a bend in the grassy path. A shape moved from one clump of lilies to the next, glowing white in the moonlight, the gown trailing, a wisp of silk ruffled by movement. The pretty young face was turned just away from her, so she could not be sure of the features, but she heard a voice say, low and rich, “I believe you were right, little sister. He is suitable.”

  “Mutnofret?”

  “Sisters, first and always,” Mutnofret whispered, and laughed, her laugh receding into the garden.

  She hurried after the white glow, tears burning her eyes, nearly running. She ached with the need to hold Mutnofret in her arms, to press her cheek against her sister’s, to let their tears mingle in the immeasurably thin space that separated them, a space of so little consequence that only the salt of their weeping could find its way between. But when she rounded another bend in the path, Mutnofret was gone.

  Walk, the voice called.

  Ahmose stood still.

  She thought, suddenly and absurdly, of Meryet. The girl’s belly had grown big, and soon another life would enter the world, another squalling babe, another child running naked through the garden, her wet-nurse cursing her, catching her up, Ahmose’s husband laughing at the spectacle, laughing and drawing Ahmose in close beside him. Let’s ride in the chariot, she whispered, and the child squealed and laughed from somewhere in the garden’s depths, and evaded her nurse again.

  Meryet will bear an heir for the king. Neferure is gone – poor child, we will never see her again. If only you would have taken pity on her, Mut, Amun, and spoken to the girl. It was none of her doing, none of her fault. She could never help who her father was.

  And Hatshepsut – she could not help who she loved, for Ahmose knew as well as any woman that the heart seeks what it will seek, and finds what it will find.

  Walk, said the voice. And Ahmose, her mouth bitter with sorrow for Hatshepsut, for Neferure, for kind and good Senenmut, even for herself, found defiance at last. Fifty years she had been the faithful servant of the gods, always turning to their goad, tame as a steer. Now her legs were strong. She could stand on them unshaking.

  “No,” she shouted at the sky.

  Ahmose braced, shocked at her impiety, terrified for one wild heartbeat that in her anger she had undone everything. But the night insects went on singing their mindless chant. The moon moved slowly, shyly behind the branches of a sycamore. And Ahmose whispered, her heart hot with a secret and welcome fire, “I will not.”

  She smiled.

  She heard a rustle in the doorway, one of her women come to check on her, no doubt roused by her shout. Ahmose turned to call to the girl, a good one, no doubt, as they all were. She turned, and opened her mouth to tell her she was all right, was only a foolish old woman enchanted by the moon. But the wrong words came from her lips – words she did not intend to say, words she could not quite understand.

  “Lady?” the girl said, a note of panic in her voice.

  Ahmose raised a hand to comfort her, felt it raise but saw it hanging limp and useless at her side.

  “Oh,” she said faintly, “Amun.”

  Her legs gave way. She fell weak as water into the grass.

  **

  Her women brought a guest as dawn broke over the garden wall. Ahmose had indicated, with the last of her strength, her words halting and half of them wrong, that she wanted to lie out there, in the garden among the flowers, so she could watch Re rise full of hope and forgiveness in the morning sky. She did not want any guests, but she no longer had the power of speech, and so she turned her face slowly, with great effort, to see who came to her garden.

  He fell onto his knees beside her bed, and his sorrowing face hung close in her clouding vision. He was older, of course, as was she. The lines were so deep around his eyes, and Ahmose feared, gazing at him in wonder and gratitude, that there were more lines of sorrow than of laughter.

  I would have made it otherwise, if I’d been able, she said. She said it with her heart, not her throat, for her heart’s voice was the only voice left to her.

  But whatever the nature of the age that marked him, his look was still gentle, still a little shy, but fulsome and bright with love.

  Ineni pulled something from his belt. He held it up to the rising sun. The rays lit it, and it glowed from within: a piece of myrrh, pure as clear water, golden-green, Amun’s favorite.

  “I kept it for you,” he whispered, “from Punt. The best piece in all the god’s land.”

  Her lips twitched, and he smiled back at her.

  “Ahmose,” he said, and said nothing more. The name was enough, laden with long years of regret, with the pain of loss she herself had felt time and again, with joy and peace and love.

  Ineni held the myrrh to her nose. She breathed deep. The odor was sweet: the odor of all the good things in her life. Hatshepsut’s soft head as a babe at her breast, the feel of the regent’s throne against her back, Mutnofret giggling in the harem, a girl, an adoring sister. The smoke of incense in the temple. The sweetness of Amun’s kiss, and Tut’s, and Ineni’s.

  He placed the bit of myrrh into her cold, stiff hand, helped her close her fingers around it.

  “To give to your husband, when you see him,” Ineni said. “A gift for the lord of the gods.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Thutmose found his wife in the garden, lying on a blanket in the shade of the great sycamore’s spreading, fragrant branches. Her ladies were gathered about, spinning quietly or gossiping in whispers, one of them mending a linen gown spread across her lap, the needle she plied glinting in the sun. Meryet did not see him at first, and he hung well back on the path, content to simply watch her, savoring this rare moment of peace.

  Motherhood became Meryet as all things became her. She took to it with the same natural grace, the same quiet, thoughtful pride she showed in handling a foreign emissary, presiding over a feast, or sitting the throne of the Great Royal Wife. She lay on her stomach, lifting her soft, pale shoulders with propped elbows. Her collar of jewels swung like a curtain in a breeze, hiding from his sight her sweet breasts, already regaining their shape after her pregnancy, after she had turned the prince over to a wet-nurse to feed. Her neck was slender, graceful, bending gently over the squirming baby. The braids of her wig fell away from her nape as she leaned down to kiss the boy, and she cooed softly, her voice low and soothing.

  The prince caught one of his mother’s braids in his little fist. She pried his fingers away, laughing, the wet-nurse looking on with a fond, plump smile. Amunhotep, the second of his name, grew quickly. He had been a small thing, even for a newborn, when he had arrived in the world. But he was ringed all about by soft folds of fat now, and Thutmose loved to watch the way the boy’s eyes would focus suddenly on a face he recognized, and the little red mouth would open in an early approximation of a smile.

  He approached delicately, faintly regretful to disturb the idyll. Thutmose nodded to the women who bowed to him, murmured Majesty; he greeted Meryet with a kiss on her brow.

  “He can nearly roll over,” she told him. “Watch.” And she blew on the boy’s cheek, making his eyelids flutter, until he turned his face toward her and arched his back, squawking like a baby bird.

  “Nearly,” Thutmose agreed. He caught the babe’s little warm foot in his hand. It was so tiny, so carefully made.

  Amunhotep. Meryet had suggested the name, for she was keenly observant even in the hours after giving birth. S
he saw how Ahmose’s sudden death pained Thutmose, for she had been the only grandmother he had ever known.

  The death pained both the Pharaohs. Hatshepsut had withdrawn into her chambers and seldom emerged when duty did not demand her presence. She never had made amends with Ahmose over the Neferure mess – had never recalled her mother to court, had not, so far as Thutmose knew, spoken a word to her since Neferure disappeared. “A grudge only wounds the one who carries it,” Meryet had said softly when Thutmose tried to explain the state of his family to his new wife. Hatshepsut was surely wounded now, bereft of her mother, made to place Ahmose in her tomb with so many words between them unsaid.

  And so Meryet had named their child Amunhotep, the name of Ahmose’s father, with the hope that the babe would remind Hatshepsut – would remind them all – of the unbreakable bond of blood and the redemption of renewal.

  But it was more than a family name to Thutmose. Amun is satisfied, it meant. And surely this child was proof of the god’s appeasement. More of Thutmose’s women were pregnant now; more children on the way, his house increasing. The succession was secure, the northern sepats well within his control through Meryet’s house. The throne was his, and would remain his. Hatshepsut could rest easy. The god was satisfied, in spite of her sins.

  Thutmose scooped the boy up. Never had his hands seemed large to him before, but now, holding his tiny son, they were as broad as paddles. Gingerly, he tucked Amunhotep against his shoulder and rocked him, smiling into Meryet’s eyes. Would that this moment could go on forever, he pleaded in his heart. Would that I never had to hear another petition, judge another man, fight another battle.

  But Meryet’s eyes slipped from his, slid beyond his shoulder and the baby to the depth of the garden. The smile left her face abruptly. Thutmose heard the pounding of sandals on the pathway, and a breathless call.

  “Majesty!”

  Thutmose sighed, handed the child back to its mother, who tucked Amunhotep protectively against her breast. The baby fussed at the interruption.

  It was Kynebu who came running, Hatshepsut’s chief steward. The man was usually the very image of calm control, but his face was terrible with worry, a mask of twisted grief.

  Hatshepsut. Thutmose was on his feet before he realized he had moved. “What is it, man? Speak!”

  Kynebu, forgetting himself, clutched Thutmose’s arm, as raw a gesture as if they had been brothers alone in their father’s house. “Majesty…a…a good and loyal servant to the throne is dead.”

  Not Hatshepsut, then. Thutmose drew a deep breath of relief. “Who?”

  Kynebu’s head dropped suddenly into his hands, and he gave voice to a low wail of pain. “Senenmut, my lord.”

  Thutmose’s immediate reaction was anger. He had not thought of the steward’s name in nearly two years, not since he had made Hatshepsut send the man away. Then his thoughts were all for Hatshepsut, his mawat, already grieving the death of her mother and the disappearance of her daughter.

  “Does Hatshepsut know?”

  “Not yet,” Kynebu said. “I thought it better to tell you first. I thought…I thought it best to show you.”

  “Show me?”

  “How he died, lord.” The quiet chill in Kynebu’s voice gripped Thutmose’s heart with a fist hard as stone.

  **

  Senenmut’s estates were not far to the north of Waset. Thutmose, tailed by ten of his personal guard, covered the ground quickly in his chariot, Kynebu clinging grimly to the rail beside him, weeping silent tears. They crossed the long causeway that passed above Senenmut’s fields, drew rein in his courtyard – fine and well maintained, Thutmose noted, even through the urgent worry gnawing at him. Grooms appeared from the great house to hold the horses’ reins, their faces red with weeping.

  “Take me to him,” Thutmose said, and Kynebu, ducking his head in obedience, led the way.

  They passed from an outer portico through a room – quaint by Thutmose’s standards – set for isolated living: a solitary couch, a lone table, a single tall harp in the corner, dust clinging to its strings. A niche in the wall held a few statues of gods, but the offering bowl was clean and bright, seldom used. Kynebu hesitated on the threshold of another door. Thutmose could see beyond his guide a plain, serviceable bed, a dressing chest that lacked ornate carving. And the rank stench of blood hit him with a terrible force.

  “Here,” Kynebu whispered.

  Thutmose stepped past him.

  The floor of the chamber was bright with blood, a lake of it, dark and congealing around its edges. A great cloud of flies circled above, singing their unceasing, sickening tune. The man lay sprawled face-down in the pool. His kilt was soaked red; it clung to the backs of his legs.

  “Majesty,” a low voice muttered.

  Thutmose whirled. Nehesi stood, his dark face rather blanched, his eyes dull with sorrow.

  “I have stood vigil ever since Kynebu told me. I have allowed no one to touch the body.”

  “Why?”

  A strange question – Thutmose knew it sounded both strange and childish the moment it left his lips.

  “I wanted you to see it first. To see the manner of his death.”

  Thutmose did not need to roll Senenmut’s corpse over to see the manner of his death. He had spent enough time on the battlefield to know. Only the vein that tracked up the side of the throat would bleed so profusely, forcefully enough to create a lake of blood.

  “His throat was cut.”

  “Ah, Majesty. By a knife.”

  A chill fell into his ka so intense that Thutmose’s legs tremored. He stare around the room, and noted a line of bloody prints leading out into the garden. The footprints were small – so small only a child could have made them, or a very small woman.

  “Neferure,” he said.

  Nehesi nodded.

  “Very well.” Thutmose gripped his self-possession desperately, grateful his voice did not shake. “Kynebu, tell one of my guards to take you back to the palace. The Great Royal Wife and my son are to be placed in secure chambers, with my personal guard to watch them at all times. At all times. Am I understood?”

  “Ah, Majesty.” Kynebu fled the house, obviously grateful to be gone, grateful for work to which he could turn his mind.

  If only I could shut out this horror as easily as he, Thutmose thought.

  “Summon the poor man’s servants, Nehesi. They must take his body to the palace enbalmers. I will pay the cost myself. He will have all the funeral rites of a noble – of one who was loyal to the king.”

  Nehesi’s jaw tightened. His eyes closed briefly – his only concession to grief. “We went to Punt together,” the man said at last. “He was my brother – my brother in service to our lady.”

  Thutmose laid a hand on his arm, the only comfort he could think to offer. “I know.”

  “Who will tell her?” Nehesi asked.

  “I suppose I must, though it pains me to think of it.”

  “If you will allow it, Majesty, I will come, too. This is a burden one man should not carry on his own. Not even a king.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Hatshepsut took three with her to Djeser-Djeseru, and no one else.

  Batiret, her scarred arm strong beneath Hatshepsut’s quaking hands.

  Meryet, pretty and fine, young and worthy, still untempted by life, unmarked by sin.

  Sitre-In, hobbling on a staff of ebony wood, most of her teeth gone, a little sack of myrrh swinging from her hand.

  They sat silent around Hatshepsut beneath the canopy of her boat, folding their bodies around her, shielding her from the eyes of the people and the gods. They touched her with gentle hands, they whispered to her in sympathy, in love, but she and her kas were far distant, beyond their reach, drifting.

  Batiret guided her ashore, and Hatshepsut stood on the quay, gazing at her temple with dull eyes.

  This is all that is left of him, she thought. It is all that is left of me.

  They walked with her down the
long avenue, the paving stones bright in the unforgiving sun. She went at a dawdling pace, absently trailing her hand along the base of a seshep statue, then the rough bark of a myrrh tree, the stone of a statue, the hot dryness of a tree. She remembered the soldiers crying Seshep! in a long-lost place, a place that had never been, shouting the name to a woman who had never been, and never would be. That woman was rent by the lion-claws of grief – a lifetime of it, piled one loss upon another, one duty upon another, one sin upon another. When she pressed her hand to her face to rub at her tears it smelled sweetly of the trees’ sap. Like our salvation, her heart whispered to Senenmut. She saw him smiling at her beneath Khonsu’s white eye, heard the whisper of millions of dark leaves. And his laugh turned into the call of a hunting cat, the black of his eyes to smoke rising on a fire in Punt.

  Hatshepsut climbed the ramp to her temple’s terrace, where her own face smiled at her from countless seshep. She had never looked so at peace, so strong. She turned in the midst of the statues, bewildered, circling to take in the sight of her own self. She was stone – hard and unchangeable, and yet she was changed.

  She had meant to go with her ladies into Amun’s dark sanctuary, to throw herself down in the god’s presence and admit defeat, weep in abasement, beg for mercy. But she passed the door, and her ears caught the sound of a chisel, light and far away, a happy ring. She sank to her knees behind the door and found with her fingers his name, traced it in the cold, pale stone.

  Senenmut.

  A wail ripped from Hatshepsut’s throat. She screamed her hurt, screamed her losses, one long, ragged, wounded cry that went on and on into eternity, until she drew a burning breath and screamed again, rocking. She fell against the wall, let her tears run into the symbols of his name, and she sobbed against the stone, “Live.”