He would go to Khemnu and see what he could do on her behalf. He had her seal ring and the considerable powers she had given him. Who was to challenge him if he claimed to be acting in the name of Pharaoh?
He boldly strode into the temple housing the sacred eggshell, and boldly carried it out. The only one who saw him was a junior priest, who was puzzled but not alarmed. Hapuseneb was known to him by sight—indeed, he had seen him in company with his own High Priest very recently—and he would not have presumed to question such an august official's right to do anything he wished. Thinking the relic was being taken for some ritual purpose, he mentioned it to no one and slept a comfortable and dreamless sleep, while the precious object was already on its way north in Hapuseneb's boat.
* * * *
Late the next day, as Hapuseneb stood on deck, he noticed that the sky to the west was growing unaccountably dark. It was the season of storms and he was not unduly worried, though a little concerned they should make port before the wind rose too high. He spoke to the captain, who was calling all his men out to man the oars.
They were in a section of the river where the desert came down almost to the water's edge and sand dunes were piled against the hills. The captain pointed out several rock chasms that might well serve as funnels through which the wind could tear down on them and wreak havoc with their sails.
They went downstream as fast as they could, but it was not long before not only the dark overtook them, but the wind. It burst suddenly through from the high desert and came screaming and shrieking at them as though it were a host of angry and vengeful demons determined to destroy them.
Hapuseneb clutched the large parcel wrapped in doeskin he had brought with him from Khemnu and braced himself against the wall of his flimsy cabin. The boat rocked and juddered. He heard the captain shouting, the men's terrified yells. How suddenly the storm had come! How strangely it seemed to single out their boat! Hapuseneb found himself praying to Hatshepsut's god, not the ritual prayers he had said a hundred, hundred times, but prayers of his own making—explaining, apologising, pleading for mercy like any superstitious peasant.
“I took it to save Hatshepsut. I took it to save your chosen one,” he shouted, as he was flung from one side of the cabin to the other. The thin wall splintered as he crashed into it and he went sliding out onto the deck, where there was pandemonium. The river had been lashed up into waves almost like the ocean. The air was a wall of violent sand driving into his eyes. He saw one man swept overboard and another stunned as the boom hit him on the side of the head. He crawled back to the comparative shelter of the cabin, still holding his precious cargo. He had never experienced such a storm on the river. They could no longer see the banks, let alone the hills beyond them. It was as though the whole desert had risen up and was bent on burying the Two Lands so deep no one would ever be able to find it. Amulets of every description on hairy chests were being clutched. Prayers to every god in the world were being yelled or whispered or sobbed.
Could it have been the stealing of the sacred eggshell? Hapuseneb wondered. Could it possibly have been? All around him men were questioning their souls. All around him men were wondering about their lives and fearing their deaths.
There was a sickening crash as the boat cracked open against a rock the steersman had not been able to avoid. Hapuseneb was only vaguely aware in the confusion that the captain was tugging at his arm and telling him to jump and make for the bank.
“We're sinking fast,” he shouted. “Come, my Lord."
Still tightly gripping his parcel, which meant he only had one arm free for swimming, Hapuseneb leapt into the river. The water seemed to suck him down. A shattered plank hit him in the face and darkness flooded into his head. His hands, now limp, lost their hold on the great eggshell of Khemnu, which spiralled to the bottom of the Nile and settled into the mud of the river bed, the mud that already held so many secrets and would, no doubt, hold so many more.
Hapuseneb, Hatshepsut's right arm, was washed up onshore and later found with many of the crew—dead.
* * * *
On Sehel Island there was no breath of air moving, no sign that to the north the desert was being whipped up into a frenzy by a storm wind fiercer than anyone living at that time had ever experienced, but Anhai felt a perturbation in her heart as though dark forces were on the move. She woke, startled, from a deep sleep, knowing that she had dreamed something important, but unable to remember what it was. After lying for a while on her back, staring at the ceiling and trying to recall the shadowy filaments of the dream, she arose, drawing a robe around her shoulders. She stepped out into the night and paced in the garden, wondering why she felt so disturbed and frightened when all about her was lying peacefully in the starlight.
She found her way to the centre of her maze and sat on the bench with her back to Hatshepsut's frankincense tree.
“What is it?” she whispered. She tried to see images of Hathor, Djehuti and Imhotep, the guardians of her sanctuary, but strangely, this night they felt like aliens to her. She had so identified with the mythic symbols of Khemet, her ancient home, it had become second nature to her to call on them for help. But this night they did not come to her. It crossed her mind that the gods of Khemet were angry and withholding their support. “Nonsense,” she told herself. But then she remembered the story that was told of how Atum, the Creator, had once been so angry with the beings of the world for the evil they were committing, he unleashed a destructive force which all but wiped out every living thing. The force became uncontrollable and Atum, whose anger meanwhile had abated, had to resort to trickery to bring about the end of the slaughter. Anhai seemed to remember that he flooded the land with red-coloured beer, and the fearsome goddess of destruction lapped up so much of it, believing it to be blood, that she became drunk and incapable of continuing her grisly task. What had always horrified Anhai about the story was that the destructive force was said to be his life-giving daughter Hathor, who somehow became, or was transformed into, the powerful lioness goddess of destruction, Sekhmet. It had taken Anhai some time to grasp the significance of the transformation.
She could not shake the feeling that something bad was happening or about to happen, although there was no sign of it around her. Everything was going well in her personal life. The healing sanctuary had become an active centre for good. There had been some miracles on the spot, but mostly people left so changed in their attitude to their lives that they themselves brought about their own healing when they returned to their homes. There was every reason for Anhai to feel happy and satisfied; none for her to feel depressed and anxious.
In the darkness, her heart returned to her mother Kyra. How comforting it had been as a child to reach up her arms when she was afraid and to be held by her mother, close against her loving breast. How stupid she had been to drift away from her and cause her so much pain. How she longed to make it up to her. In the healing work she was doing she felt she had finally paid her debt. But did Kyra know? Had the ka of her mother seen what she was doing? If only she was here now to comfort her, to tell her not to be afraid, to give her that sense of conviction she herself had had so unshakeably: that no matter what happened, deep down, the core of things was good and could be reached and drawn upon for strength.
A slight breeze rustled the leaves of the frankincense tree, and a beautiful scent wafted towards her. Anhai frowned. It was different from the usual scent of the herb garden. Strong and sweet, it was the scent of spring flowers from a meadow in her lost northern home.
Her heart lifted. Surely Kyra was here? Surely this was a sign?
But, as suddenly as it had come, it went—and Anhai doubled up with a terrible pain in her head. She held her temples and rocked to and fro in agony. What now? “O Nameless One, what now?” she sobbed. The feeling of foreboding and oppression increased a hundredfold. “No,” she cried. “No! No! No!” And then itseemed to her she was caught up in a huge sandstorm, the air raging all around her. For a moment, throug
h the flying sand, she caught a glimpse of a boat on the river, buffeted and tossed and finally smashed to pieces. She saw Hapuseneb struggling, Hapuseneb dying. “No!” she sobbed. She had loved him. Not as she had loved Isar in her youth, but enough to feel his death a painful loss.
But she felt Hapuseneb's death was not the sole cause of the shadow that was darkening her heart. There was something more. Something worse. The Khemet she had known was being destroyed ... Hatshepsut blown away ... the temples of love buried under sand, and the temples of war and retribution standing clear.
And then she thought of her beautiful island, her sanctuary of peace. What of it?
She saw a boat drawing up at the little quay. She saw Ra-hotep's great bulk. She knew her time and the time of all who had supported Hatshepsut and Hapuseneb was over. Darkness was coming. Darkness was even coming to her island.
The pain and the vision ceased. Anhai sat in the still garden and looked around her. Everything was as italways had been. Nothing had changed. Nothing had happened.
She stood up and paced about in agitation. Was this a true vision or a spell fed by some malignant person who resented her in some way. Ra-hotep himself, perhaps? He had been very angry when she went off with Hapuseneb, and she knew he was capable of strong magic. Men-soneb, who had persecuted Hatshepsut—was it he?
“I need to know,” she whispered. “Kyra, you were here, I know. I need you.” She thought of Kyra's triple crystal and wished she had it with her. But her visualisation of it was so strong in that moment of yearning she found that it was with her, to all intents and purposes. It was her strongest link with her mother.
“Beautiful mother, whom I have wronged,” she whispered, and her image of Kyra manifested, but somehow Kyra had some of the features of Hathor, the All-Mother, the earth-womb, the beautiful lady of turquoise and sycamore. She stood before her in the garden.
“You have had a true vision, my daughter,” Hathor's voice, Kyra's voice, said.
“What am I to do,” she cried, agitated, “if Ra-hotep comes to my island and spoils everything I have been working for?"
“Ra-hotep must not come to your island."
“But I saw him, and you said the vision was a true one."
“The true island of healing you have founded is not the sand and rock of this place, but in your heart. You must not let him enter the true island. You must take it away. You must leave, that it might survive this time of darkness."
“Where am I to go?"
“That is your decision. But wherever it is, you must take your island with you. You must never let it go, and you must never let it fail to do its work."
Anhai was trembling.
The figure of Hathor-Kyra had gone. She knew she was alone.
Her decision!
She looked around her and wept to think this green and blossoming sanctuary she had worked so hard to create would return to desert and cease to be. But if what she had seen came to pass, would it not be better to leave and start up somewhere else than have it taken over and run in the way she knew Ra-hotep would run it, for his own glory and to increase his own wealth?
She walked down to the river and stared for a long time at the water surging over the rocks, eagerly thrusting its way north to the great ocean over which she had come to learn humility and wisdom. She wanted to go back; she wanted to go home. Light would come to this land again, of that she was sure. But not now. Not immediately. Should she stay and try to bring it back in her own small way, or leave to bring what she had learned to her mother's people in that other, distant land?
The dawn light was beginning to creep over the sky. The first birds were calling. She was pulled both ways.
She stepped into the river and purified herself, then lifted her arms to the rising sun.
It seemed in that moment it was not Kheper or Ra or Atum, but the Nameless One of Kyra's distant home. The hymn that came to her lips was one she had learned as a child in the Temple of the Sun at Haylken.
She would go home, and everywhere she stopped on that long, long journey she would found a sanctuary of healing. The journey might take a lifetime, but she wanted to be buried with her mother and the friends of her childhood. She had laid the ghost of Egypt in her life, as she had laid the ghost of her guilt in her homeland. She was ready to take up, with a clear heart, the threads of her future.
When Ra-hotep came, he would not find her here.
* * * *
The storm was not confined to the area where Hapuseneb had made his last bid to save his Pharaoh. It raged for hundreds of miles across the country and even battered at the doors of Waset, though in the green city they did not have to contend with swirling sand to the same extent. The western mountains, where Meretseger guarded the valley of Hatshepsut's father's tomb, seemed to be smoking as the plumes of sand spun around the peaks and crags. The trees on her lower terrace at Djeser Djeseru wrestled with the wind, bending with the strain.
Hatshepsut watched the storm from her western palace, her eyes deeply meditative.
“Rage on,” she whispered, “great god of storms. I met you once and I outfaced you. Are you come to test me again?” Had Amun-Ra sent him to see if she was as resolute in her faith as she had been before she started to put worldly power before love?
Day after day the storm lashed the Two Lands. No one had ever known it last so long. In Set's season one could expect a storm of one or two days’ duration, sometimes three. But this time the count went on and on ... ten, fifteen, twenty ... and there was still no sign of it abating. Whole villages had been buried in the sand, temples with them. In other areas, villages and temples long since lost and forgotten emerged. In the cities, day after day the ceaseless battle to keep the sand and dust out of the houses was wearisome. To venture out in search of food was a hazardous and uncomfortable undertaking.
No boats moved on the river. No news, no messages, came or left. Hatshepsut paced the dusty corridors of her palace like the panther Senmut had brought her from Punt, settling to nothing, only pausing from time to time to stare out with red-rimmed eyes at the sand building up in drifts against her beautiful temple.
One day her servants could not find her and ran about the palace, seeking and calling. She had chosen to take the burden of the storm onto her own shoulders, and had gone out to meet Set for the good of the Two Lands.
* * * *
Swathed in fine linen against the abrasive action of the flying sand grains, and bent almost double against the force of the wind, she began to climb the rocky slopes to the north of Djeser Djeseru. Sometimes the firm limestone supported her, but mostly she slipped and slid on the broken slivers of shale, the same shale that had given the excavators of her tomb such trouble. Her plan of having her tomb tunnel dug in a straight line through the mountain had had to be abandoned in the end because of the friable nature of the layer of shale the workmen encountered. The long tunnel had to veer off the true so that it did not in fact lie directly behind the sanctuary of Amun as she had hoped it would. Remembering this now, she smiled wryly to herself. “Like my life,” she thought.
She leant against an outcrop of hard limestone among the shale and drew breath. She had climbed this ridge many times and rejoiced at the view across the plain to the river and beyond it to the sprawling town of Waset, punctuated by the high pylons of the temples with their tall flagpoles of red cedar wood bearing fluttering pennants. How many times had she looked with satisfaction on the gold gleaming from the tips of the obelisks and the winged sun-disks above the gateways? How many times had she watched the white sails in their slow and graceful dance on the river, the flocks of wild geese flying home across the water, the peasants tilling the fields with their slow, lumbering oxen?
But now she could see nothing. She turned her face to the rock and wondered if she had the strength to do what she had to do. For two decans Set had raged at the Two Lands. In the long memory of Egypt this had hardly ever happened before. When the first decan passed she had already begun to
believe that this was no ordinary storm. Pharaoh had become weak. Pharaoh had been more concerned with herself than with her land. The vacuum left by the withdrawal of her attention, her strength, was being filled by the enemy of Life. Her promise to Amun-Ra had come too late. She had already damaged the subtle web of interconnection between the divine and the human, the web that protected and sustained the land. It might now take more than the sacrifice of her bracelet to undo what she had done.
But she would fight Set. She would drive him out, and when he was gone she would work to renew the sacred web.
When she had done that and the Two Lands were safe again, then she would hand over to Men-kheper-Ra and Meryt-Ra-Hatshepsut, his wife.
She forced herself to leave the relatively protective rock and face the driving gusts of sand once more. She climbed and slipped back, and climbed again, determined this time not to weaken.
At last she stood where she could look Set in the eye. She stood straight, every muscle in her body tensed to keep her upright against the blasts of his hot breath.
"I am Set, who can raise a tumult of storm in the horizon of the sky, like one whose will is destruction. Daughter of Amun-Ra—we meet again!" [26]
[26—“I am Set, who can raise a tumult...” from Spell 39, Book of the Dead.]
“For the last time, Lord of the Desert Winds. My Land is not for you. Withdraw into your own domain."
He laughed, and as he did so the wind howled louder than ever. Three trees at Djeser Djeseru were blown down, their roots ripped from the earth, Hatshepsut's magical, protective foundation deposits exposed to the dark raging of the god.
Amun-Ra in his sanctuary stood silently watching his daughter, not listening to the desperate supplications of the priests grovelling at his feet.
She staggered, but regained her balance.
“I know you, dark god,” she cried. “You are as close to me as my own heart."
"Then you will never defeat me."
Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun Page 28