The skull-head nodded, the bony fingers locked and unlocked.
“What method do you use?” Hapuseneb asked, already regretting his decision.
“What method does my Lord desire?"
“I don't care about the method. I care about the results."
“The dream method is best, but that could be dangerous. There are some who have not returned from a spell-cast dream."
“Do you dream, or I?"
“You, my Lord. The animal entrails are safer, but do not give so much detail."
“Use the dream method,” Hapuseneb said decisively. “Let's get to it!” he added impatiently.
The sorcerer looked around the bare chamber. They were in one of the least used rooms of the temple, built as a storeroom but at the moment empty. There was no natural light, and an oil lamp flickered dismally from a niche on the wall.
“I need a brazier for burning herbs, and I need a couch for my Lord to lie upon."
Hapuseneb opened the door and called out for these to be provided. The servants who brought them scuttled away from the place fast, made nervous by the ghoulish appearance of the sorcerer and the look of stern determination on the High Priest's face. It was strange he had not used the oracles provided by his own priests. Did he not trust them?
While Hapuseneb lay down stiffly on the couch, every muscle tense, the sorcerer wrote some almost indecipherable glyphs on a small strip of papyrus and then threw it into the flame burning in the brazier. He watched intently as the papyrus caught fire, some of the glyphs disappearing at once, others curling up and blackening slowly, some still visible as the last remnants finally turned to ash. The flame burned green as the sorcerer threw some leaves he had carefully selected from some little bags in the filthy pouch he wore over his thigh.
Hapuseneb grew rapidly drowsy. His limbs relaxed and his head fell sideways. He was asleep.
* * * *
Hapuseneb's dream took him to the bottom of a lake where he fought for his life among the mud and clinging waterweeds. Through the murky liquid he could see the approach of a huge dark form and feared that it was a crocodile. As a child he had had a narrow escape from such a beast, and whenever he had a frightening dream, there was always a crocodile in it somewhere. His mother had taught him to pray to Sobek, the god always depicted in the form of a crocodile. “No one can defend you against him, except himself,” she had said. How could he fight the creature? His darkness seemed to go on forever and his own arms were caught in the weeds, preventing him reaching the knife at his belt.
At that point he woke with a start, and sat up angrily.
“What kind of a dream was that?” he demanded. “It told me nothing."
“It told you that what you suspected is true. You are facing a greater evil than you set out to challenge. You cannot fight it."
“What am I to do then?” Hapuseneb was impressed that the man seemed to know what he had dreamed about, and his disappointment and anger subsided somewhat.
“You can use it against itself."
Hapuseneb frowned. The man's words echoed his mother's, and struck him as significant. But, in practical terms, what did it mean?
“What you have told me so far,” he said irritably, “I could have thought up for myself. I didn't need a sorcerer to come from the desert to work his fancy tricks for this!"
The man began to cackle with laughter.
“If you could have thought of it yourself, my Lord, why didn't you?” he wheezed.
Hapuseneb stood up angrily and strode towards the door. He was as much annoyed with himself as he was with the man. He had always done his own thinking and made his own decisions. Why had he resorted to this ridiculous method? The man had told him nothing he really wanted to know.
But at the door he swung round and looked at him once more. It had been interesting how well the man's comments had fitted his dream, without his having told him anything about it. Perhaps he had been too hasty. Perhaps he should give him more time. He was tempted to ask him more questions, perhaps to delve into the future. Could Hatshepsut hold power forever—or would she fall to the plots of Ra-hotep and Ast.
He stepped back into the room. The old man was packing away the little bags of herbs he had taken out of his pouch, muttering and cackling to himself. His back was to the High Priest. Hapuseneb put his large hand on the skeletal shoulder and swung him round to face him.
“Old man,” he said, trying to see into his eyes. “We're not finished yet.” The eyes gleamed out of the dark sockets for a moment as though illuminated from within, and then went dull.
“I can tell you no more,” the sorcerer said sullenly.
“You can and will,” snapped Hapuseneb.
The old man shook his head. Hapuseneb tightened his hand on his shoulder. It was like holding a brittle stick. A little more pressure and the bones would snap.
“You have seen something more. Tell me about it."
“It will do you no good."
“Tell me."
“I see names chiselled out. I see other names carved in the empty spaces."
“What names chiselled out? What names carved?"
The old man did not answer and Hapuseneb shook him violently. The figure went limp. His eyes closed.
Horrified, Hapuseneb took his hand away from his shoulder and as he did so the sorcerer sank to the floor and lay without movement. He was dead.
Kneeling beside him Hapuseneb noticed the track of a snake in the dust of the floor, and on the dead man's heel there were two neat incisions. Puzzled, Hapuseneb looked round the starkly furnished room. There was now no sign of the snake, nor anywhere itcould be hiding.
* * * *
Hatshepsut was being carried in her golden chair from one part of Waset to another. Respectful crowds were bowing all along her route. She was tired. She missed Senmut, she thought, and she missed the old days. Everything seemed so much more effort now. She idly moved the film of curtain aside and stared out at the people in the street. One man was standing upright behind the bent figures of the others. One man was looking into her eyes.
She went white.
It was Men-soneb.
She dropped the curtain at once and then decided to call her guards and have him arrested. She drew the curtain aside again quickly.
But he was no longer there.
* * *
Chapter 18
Hatshepsut now barely left the palace on the west bank at Waset. If she did it was to visit her temple Djeser Djeseru. She had always been restless and moody, but these days too many of her moods were listless and brooding. She walked among the frankincense trees on the lower terrace and was angry if anyone approached her. Sometimes coming upon her unexpectedly, they would hear her talking to herself like a mad woman.
Hapuseneb was sent for and arrived back as soon as he could.
Ra-hotep was still managing to avoid all efforts to prove that he was implicated in any plot, but Hapuseneb had no doubt that there was a very dangerous situation building up. He had learned that the powerful priests of the sun would side with Men-kheper-Ra when he chose to wrest power from his stepmother-aunt, and that this time would not be far off. Without the backing of the priests of Ra, the attempt would probably fail, but with it, it would certainly succeed. There had been conspiracies before, but each time they had come to nothing because Hatshepsut's officials had picked off the plotters one by one and left Men-kheper-Ra isolated and powerless. But this time things had gone too far. Ra-hotep, with extraordinary cunning, had created a huge groundswell in favour of the young prince among his own priests, not only at Yunu but throughout the Two Lands.
Hapuseneb paced his quarters beside the Temple of Amun-Ra and wrestled with the dilemma, and then, just before Thutiy's message arrived begging him to return to Waset, Hapuseneb had an idea that might swing, once and for all, the balance of power in favour of Hatshepsut. Hapuseneb had remembered that there was something Ra-hotep and the priests of Ra wanted very badly. If Hapuseneb could suc
ceed in getting it into his own hands, he would at last have the means of manipulating Ra-hotep. It was perfect! A matter of using him against himself as the old sorcerer had suggested.
Ra-hotep wanted the fragment of eggshell that was at Khemnu—the relic that was believed to have been part of the cosmic egg out of which the sun god had burst in primordial times. The priests of the sun had always wanted it at Yunu, but the priests of Khemnu would never part with it. Such a prestigious relic drew pilgrims bearing gifts from far and wide. It was the one thing that assured Khemnu a rich revenue and a measure of real power. In ages past, wars had been fought between the nomes for its possession. Yunu had the gold-topped obelisks, the egg of green crystal, the priceless altar of white and gold, and many other treasures of great importance connected with the sun god, but it did not have the actual eggshell from which the god was hatched.
Hapuseneb had seen it many times, and it certainly was very strange. Although only a fragment, it was easy to see that, complete, the egg it came from would be gigantic. It was of stone, curved like an eggshell and lined with crystals of gleaming white and shimmering gold.
Hapuseneb was not sure how he was to get the eggshell away from Khemnu, but he was determined to try. If Hatshepsut could present it as a gift to the great Temple of the Sun at Yunu, it might just change the situation. The gratitude of the priests of Ra would surely be hers forever.
But not a whisper of this must be heard. If it was, the priests at Khemnu would have no trouble in hiding the eggshell as they had done on several occasions before. No one must know about it but the Pharaoh and himself.
He hurried back to Waset, not only in response to Thutiy's call, but in order to put his proposal to Hatshepsut and prepare for the delicate task ahead.
* * * *
Hapuseneb requested an audience with the Pharaoh as soon as he reached Waset, and reported at once all that he had found out and all that he suspected.
She listened to what he had to say about Ra-hotep calmly, but went white when he told her that the old sorcerer had suddenly dropped dead from what was apparently a snakebite, just as Hapuseneb felt he was about to give him the names of the conspirators.
She rose from her chair and paced the room. Hapuseneb watched her in silence, hoping that she would trust him enough now to tell him what was troubling her. He had noticed that it was always the mention of Men-soneb's name that fixed her attention. She seemed hardly concerned that her position as Pharaoh was in real jeopardy from Men-kheper-Ra and the priests of Ra.
At last she sat down again and described the haunting to which she had been subjected and the horrifying moment when Men-soneb had dissolved into a heap of wriggling snakes. Hapuseneb had never seen her so agitated as when she described her concern that some, or at least one, might have got away.
“I was so sure he was dead,” she said. “Yet whenever I go into the city I see him."
“Surely you have had him arrested?"
“I see him, but he can never be found. It is as though he doesn't exist."
“I will find him,” he said firmly. Did this mean her own guards were in the pay of Ra-hotep? Was there no one to be trusted?
He thought back on all those years she had ruled the Two Lands as a great pharaoh should, and the network of magnificent temples she had either raised or restored, through which benefits from the gods could pour into the country. She had brought peace and a quiet prosperity to the people, and freedom from foreign wars. How unfair it was that as soon as she was sad and troubled, everyone was so quick to desert her, forgetting all the good she had done. He knew in his heart that even he had considered joining Men-kheper-Ra's faction, knowing that there the power of the future lay. But there had been too much between them, and he owed her loyalty. Though she was no longer the dynamic and beautiful young woman she had been when he first joined her service, her visions were still worth more than anything the young prince could offer. Her desire had been to create lasting beauty and harmonious communications between all the realms of being. She was indeed Maat-ka-Ra, the spirit of order and light, the daughter of Amun-Ra, the true energy of life.
He realised at that moment that the ambitions he had had all his life were nothing to what he felt now for Hatshepsut. He loved her, not as a means to sexual gratification or as a ladder to his own power and success, but as a being who had been chosen for a mighty task and would have succeeded in it, had she not been so torn between the human and the divine. “At least she tried,” he thought. And then he knew he wanted her to succeed, more than anything in the world. He would stand by her and help her to climb back to strength.
He told her about his plan for giving the sacred eggshell to the Temple of Ra at Yunu.
“It should always have been there,” he said. “You would be doing no more than restoring it to its rightful place."
But she was no fool and could see at once the advantages of the plan and the very considerable disadvantages. She might buy the loyalty of one group of priests by forfeiting the loyalty of another. Hapuseneb reminded her that the priests of Ra were more powerful than the priests of Djehuti, and that Yunu was a greater centre than Khemnu.
He could see that she was hesitating.
“I'm afraid you have no choice,” he said regretfully, and spelled out again the dangerous situation she was in.
Something of the old fire returned to her eyes. “There is always choice,” she said. “And it will be my decision, Hapuseneb, and not yours."
He bowed his head, acknowledging her authority. Indeed, he was relieved to see her assert it again.
He took his leave, but turned at the door.
“It is your decision, Majesty,” he said, “but there is very little time..."
She gestured impatiently that he should leave her alone.
* * * *
The decision was made at Djeser Djeseru. She prostrated herself in the inner sanctuary before the statue of Amun-Ra in its ebony and ivory shrine.
She waited for a long time for a sign, trying to go into the Silence, where in happier times she had communicated with the great Spirit, but she found she could not lose one insistent image: Men-soneb. She was haunted by memories of his face as the phantom in her chamber, as the priest in her throne room, as the man-in-the-crowd in the busy streets of the city. It seemed to her the sanctuary of Amun-Ra was crawling with snakes. She lifted her head and looked round in terror. The paving stones were clear. The beautiful lamps Senmut had designed burned steadily, illuminating the exquisite statue of the god in his golden barque and the rich, jewelled colours of the painted reliefs on the walls. The scent of the incense from Punt was strong and heady.
She pondered for the thousandth time Men-soneb's accusations that she herself had been responsible for the spectre that haunted her. The latest revelation of Hapuseneb would appear to give the lie to this accusation. Men-soneb had surely been used by Ra-hotep to undermine and weaken her. Should she give the precious relic of the sacred egg into the hands of such a criminal, even to save her own skin?
She had let her daughter down by being too busy to take the trouble to understand her. She had let Senmut down by choosing worldly power over personal fulfilment and love. She had let her son down by denying him life because it would interfere with her own ambitions. She had taken Hapuseneb to her bed when she had vowed to her god that she would not lie with a man again, and for reasons that were unworthy. In each case she had wronged people she should have loved because of her obsession to be Pharaoh and to have unencumbered power. But more than any of this she, as female, had taken sole power, excluding the male. On the mundane level she had no qualms that she had done the right thing, but in a much deeper and subtler sense she had destroyed the age-old balance, the male-female partnership, that had always kept the Two Lands in harmony with Maat.
Hatshepsut fingered the bracelet on her arm, the one Amun had asked for all those years ago. She rose to her feet, standing before her god, turning the silver and turquoise circlet round and round
. Was it too late to undo what she had done? Was it too late to make the choice he had offered her? She had tried to have the best of both worlds—and in many instances she had succeeded. But in some crucial ones she had not. She felt she was ready now to make the full commitment she had been so unwilling to make as a young girl. Let Men-kheper-Ra have the double crown to himself. She would be Hatshepsut Khenemet-Amun, Hatshepsut “United-to-Amun", in truth.
When she had made her last obeisance and left the sanctuary, her earthly father's bracelet remained on the top step of the shrine.
Quietly she walked through the colonnaded court of the upper terrace with its scenes of Amun-Ra in magnificent procession, passed through the great doors to the second terrace, where Senmut had had inscribed the story of her expedition to Punt and the scenes of her divine conception and birth.
She paused in the shade of the garden on the lower terrace, listening to the birds singing in the branches of the trees and the fish splashing in the pool. She drew a deep breath and, with it, the strength to do what she had decided to do.
* * * *
Hapuseneb was shocked when Hatshepsut told him that she was not going to rob Khemnu to bribe the priests of Ra. He noticed that there was something very different about her, but he could not quite grasp what it was. She had a kind of calm strength that she had not had before. Even at the time of her greatest power, her strength had always been restless, almost violent.
He tried to persuade her to change her mind, but she would not listen. She gave no reasons, nor did she offer any suggestions as to how they were going to avert disaster by other means. She seemed very quiet and content, as though an old and troublesome ghost had been laid to rest.
He had been trying to locate Men-soneb, but could find no trace of him. As she said, it was as though he did not exist.
Something had to be done, and he decided to do it without her permission. She was clearly not in control of herself or her kingdom at the moment. Her calmness might well be because she had not understood the implications of what he had been trying to tell her.
Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun Page 27