Thothmes was sitting beside the lake with his wife, his scribes, and his slaves, relaxing before dinner and watching the water ripple pink in the late-afternoon breeze. As Hatshepsut, barefooted, quietly approached him over the warm grass, he was speaking to his old friend Aahmes pen-Nekheb, who stood awkwardly before him, embarrassment visible in every portly line of his body. Thothmes was obviously annoyed. He continued to gaze out over the water, and his voice rose to Hatshepsut in spurts of irritation. ''Come, come, pen-Nekheb, you and I have spent enough time together both on the battlefield and off it. You have no need to fear me. I only ask you to speak your mind and stop shuffling about like a delinquent schoolboy. Have I not asked a simple question? Do I not deserve a simple answer? I wish a report on my son's progress, and I wish it now."
Pen-Nekheb cleared his throat. ''Majesty, you have indeed been beneficent to your humble servant, and if your humble servant is to incur your wrath, then your humble servant apologizes beforehand— ''
Thothmes brought his beringed hand down on the arm of his chair with a little slap. "Stop playing games with me, old friend. I know your pride, but I also know your ability. Wifl he or will he not make a soldier?''
Pen-Nekheb began to perspire beneath his short black wig. He scratched at his head surreptitiously. "Majesty, let me then say that His Royal Highness has not been in training for long. Under the circumstances his progress might be considered to be satisfactory—" His voice trailed oflf, and Thothmes at last turned his head and motioned the older man to the ground.
"Sit. Sit! What is the matter with you today? Do you think that I have put you in charge of the training of my son because you are good at gardening? Give me a report that is clear and short, or you can go home without your dinner."
Aahmose turned aside to hide a smile. If her husband loved and trusted any man, it was this big, ugly soldier perched uncomfortably on the ground a respectful distance from them. Though she thought it unfortunate that Thothmes should choose to discuss such a matter on an empty stomach, the situation did provide humor. Her life had been short of humor lately.
Pen-Nekheb seemed to have made up his mind. His shoulders squared. "Majesty, it pains me greatly to have to tell you this, but I do not think that young Thothmes has the makings of a soldier. He is clumsy and soft, although he is but in his sixteenth year. He has no love for the discipline involved. He is—" the man gulped and continued desperately, "he is lazy and afraid of the cut, the thrust of the work. Perhaps he wifl excel at his studies?" he concluded hopefully.
In tlie long silence that followed, one of the female slaves giggled hysterically and was abruptly cut off. Thothmes did not reply. As the color mounted slowly in his cheeks, his gaze wandered to the palace walls, to the lake, and to the bent head of his wife. Those about him waited in trepidation, knowing the signs. Grunting, he noticed his daughter, waiting and smiling at the edge of the crowd. He waved her forward, and all sighed with relief. The storm was reduced to a swift puff of wind.
**I will come myself to the training ground," Thothmes said. **I will come tomorrow, and you will put my son through his paces. If you are wrong, pen-Nekheb, I will have your Staff of Office. Hatshepsut, my dear, come and give me a kiss and tell me what you have been doing today."
She ran to him and climbed onto his knee, nuzzling his neck. *'Oh, father, you do smell nice." She bent down and kissed Aahmose. ''Mother, I saw the baby gazelle. Nebanum let me feed it. And Thothmes nearly got another thrashing at school this morning—" She sensed her mistake immediately with the swift intuition of a child. She saw her father's face darken. ''Only nearly," she went on quickly. "Neferu saved him—" Pharaoh began to breathe heavily, and Hatshepsut hastily scrambled down from her father's lap, seeking refuge beside Aahmose. She decided to have one more try. Really, she thought, this day began so nicely, but it is ending like one of Nozme's horror stories. "Father," she piped, "it would be so kind of you if you would make Thothmes marry someone else. Neferu doesn't want him, and she is so unhappy—" She stopped suddenly, seeing the look of blank amazement on her father's face give way to dawning anger. Conscious of the breathless silence that surrounded her, she began to hop from one foot to the other. "I know, I know," she said. "I am too full of other people's business—"
"Hatshepsut," her mother bleated, distressed, "whatever has come over you today? Have you been drinking the servants' beer again?"
Her father rose, and the whole court rose with him. "I think it is time," he said heavily, "that you and I had a little talk, Hatshepsut. But now I am tired and hungry. I have had a bellyful of the problems of my erring children." He glared at pen-Nekheb, then at his luckless wife. "Aahmose, find out from Nozme what has been going on here; I want to know tonight. You, Hatshepsut, come to my rooms before you go to bed. And hope that you find me in better humor." He scowled at them all and swung away, his coterie drifting after him.
Pen-Nekheb got up with difliculty and began his evening stroll around the lake before dinner. The Great One's short bursts of ill humor did not distress him overmuch, but it had been a sweltering day, and his bones felt as brittle as sedge weed.
Aahmose smiled at her daughter as they walked to the royal apartments together. 'Tou have been very tactless today," she said, ''but do not worry. He is not angry with you, only with Thothmes. By tonight he will have little to say to you. He would be lost without you, Hatshepsut," she finished sadly. ''He guards your welfare like a hawk. Poor Neferu."
"Mama, I, too, am tired and hungry. Nozme made me wear starched linen, and it is scratching me. Can we talk about something else?" Hat-shepsut turned her large, dark eyes toward Aahmose, and the woman sighed.
Amun, she prayed silently as they entered her big, cool apartment and the slaves moved to light the lamps, she is your daughter. In truth, she is your very Incarnation. Protect her from herself.
To any lone fisherman bobbing in his little reed boat on the Nile in the dark, the palace at Thebes must have looked like a vision of the promised glories in the Paradise of Osiris. At nightfall all the thousands of lamps were lit—suddenly. It was as though a giant had flung a handful of bright, glittering stars at the ground and they had settled, singly and in clusters, upon the vast halls and many wide, paved ways of that kingdom within a kingdom, their reflections eddying and dancing upon the swift-flowing river far into the night.
The estate itself covered many acres of gardens and shrines, summer-houses and stables, granaries and servants quarters, and of course the main body of the palace itself, with its vast halls for receptions and dining and its pillared porticoes and walkways alive with color and paved with the likenesses of fish and fowl, hunters and hunted, and green things—all that made life a joy. The whole lapped right to the edge of the temple, with its frowning pylons and many dwarfing statues of the God's son, Thothmes, who was seated with his hands upon his monolithic knees, the calm faces all alike and staring over an invincible domain.
The gardens, too, were lit, dusted with glowing lamps, as the wives and the semiwives, the concubines and the nobles, the oflScials and the scribes strolled to and fro in the sweet-scented nights, their way lit before and behind by their naked, perfumed slaves.
On the river floated the Royal Barge, delicately crafted of gold and silver and precious woods, tied to the foot of the broad steps that led out of the water and onto a broad, paved courtyard lined on three sides with tall trees. Between those trees ran the avenues that led to the white and golden halls that held the heart of Egypt.
The fisherman would not linger on the west bank of the river. Over there the Necropolis, like the palace, also stretched for many acres.
sprawled between the river and the tumbling dun cliffs that kept the desert out. The lights across the river, the lights in the homes of the priests and artisans who labored on the tombs and temples of the Osiris Ones, were subdued, more scattered. The night wind moaned softly in the deserted shrines, and the living locked their doors until Ra summoned them to another day of toil in the ho
mes of the dead. The soaring pillars and empty houses, scattered with offerings of food and wilting flowers for those who still inhabited their last resting-places, were like an imperfect, distorted, and rather sad mirror image of the vibrant, pulsing life that was the Imperial city of Thebes.
The evening wind had dropped, and the night was still and hot as Hatshepsut, Nozme, and the nursery attendants made their way through the torchlit corridors, lined with motionless guards, to the dining hall. Tonight there were no foreign delegations to be feted, but the hall was full of guests and nobles, favored officials and friends of the royal family. The sound of their chatter and laughter echoed and swelled toward the girl long before she pattered through the doors and waited while the Chief Herald solemnly intoned her title. 'The Princess Hatshepsut Khnum-Amun."
The company stopped talking for a moment, bowed, and then continued their conversations. Hatshepsut looked for her father, but he had not yet arrived. Neferu was nowhere in sight either. However, there was User-amun sitting on the floor in a corner with Menkh. She made her way over to them, dodging slaves who were pouring wine and settling the diners with cushions or little chairs. On the way she picked up a lotus flower that someone had dropped and began to wind its stem through her youth-lock. Immediately the thick, heady perfume began to fill her nostrils, and she inhaled it delightedly as she crossed her legs and sank to the floor beside the boys. ''Greetings. What are you two doing here?"
Menkh nodded halfheartedly and winked at User-amun. They liked Hatshepsut, but she seemed to be everywhere and into all their schemes whether they wanted her to be or not. Since the abortive running-away episode they had done their best to keep clear of her, but she popped up in the most unlikely places. Whatever else she might be, she was not boring.
User-amun, as the son of one of the oldest and most aristocratic families in the country, treated her as an equal. His father, the Vizier of the South and one of the two most powerful men in the land under Pharaoh, was away on an inspection tour of the nomes under his care, and User-amun was living in the palace for the time being. He bowed extravagantly from
the waist. "Hail, Majesty! Your beauty is more dazzling to behold than the beauty of the stars. Ah! My eyes fail, and I cannot look thereon!"
Hatshepsut giggled. ''One day I will make you repeat your words with your mouth to the dust, User-amun. What were you talking about?"
''Hunting," User-amun straightened and replied promptly. "Menkh's father is taking us out tomorrow, early. We might even get a lion!"
"Pooh!" said Hatshepsut. "Even men have trouble killing a lion. You have to find one first."
"We are going into the hills," said Menkh. "We might even camp out all night."
"Can I come, too?" Hatshepsut asked eagerly.
The boys chorused, "No!"
"Why not?"
"Because you are a girl, and because the One would never let you," said User-amun reasonably. "Little princesses never hunt."
"But big princesses do. When I am big, I shall hunt every day. I shall be the best hunter in the kingdom."
Menkh smiled. Hatshepsut's love for animals would never allow her to hunt more than ducks, and she knew it. But even at the age of ten her pride insisted that she best everyone at everything. "What were you doing all day?" he asked. "I didn't see you anywhere."
"Getting into trouble," she groaned. "Ah! Here comes father and mother. Now we can eat."
Every forehead touched the floor. The Chief Herald's voice rang clearly. "... Mighty Bull of Maat, the Living Horus, Favorite of Two Goddesses, Shining in the Serpent Diadem . . ."
Hatshepsut whispered to Menkh, "Do you think that your mother will get drunk again tonight?"
"Oh, hush!" he whispered back fiercely. "Can't you stay quiet for one moment?"
"No, I can't! I'm hungry! I've been hungry for simply hours!"
Thothmes gestured, and the court rose and began to talk again. The guests found their seats, each at his or her own low table, and the slaves began to move among them, their platters heaped high. Hatshepsut's slave came and bowed. "Roast goose. Highness? Beef? Stuffed cucumber?"
"Something of everything!" As she ate, she looked anxiously around the room for Neferu, but there was still no sign of her. At a nod from her father the musicians filed in, a man with a tall harp and girls in long pleated skirts with cones of perfume on their heads, their instruments tucked under their arms. Hatshepsut noticed with interest that the girls
were going to play the newfangled lutes brought from the wilds of the northeast. She made a mental note to get one of them to come and play for her in her room later on, but she remembered with a sinking heart that she had an appointment with Pharaoh. As the music began, she pushed her dish aside, dabbled her fingers in the water bowl, and wiped them on her kilt. She crept between the diners to her mother's side. Her father, a few feet away, was deep in conversation with Menkh's father, Ineni, his architect, but her mother smiled at her and motioned her to a cushion beside the table.
'Tou look very pretty tonight," Aahmose said. *Tou should wear flowers in your hair more often. They suit you.''
Hatshepsut knelt on the cushion. ''Mother, where is Neferu-khebit? If father sees that she is not here, he will be really angry. I'm the one he wants to reprimand tonight."
Her mother put down the piece of pomegranate she was raising to her lips and sighed. 'Terhaps I should send someone to look for her. Was she upset today?"
'Tes, she was. She told me all about a horrible dream that she's been having. Is she going to be ill?"
Aahmose sipped her wine. The music was a muted, gentle twanging ripple over the babble of the guests, and her husband's booming laugh rang out, followed by another. It was wonderful what food would do to a man's disposition, Pharaoh not excepted, she thought. She swallowed the wine and turned to her daughter. ''I do not know, dear. I think not. But yesterday she and I went down to the river, and pen-Nekheb's greyhounds were running up and down the steps—swimming, you know. One of them came to her and jumped up. She began to scream and beat at him with her fists. You know how your father hates sullen, brooding women. I did not tell him about it, but it was a nasty experience."
''She has been dreaming of Anubis."
"Oh? That would explain it. But she has also taken to wearing the Amulet of Menat. Why is she being so silly? What does the Chief Daughter of mighty Thothmes have to fear?"
Me. The word popped unexpectedly into Hatshepsut's head, and she kept very still, her heart beating wildly. Me? Bah! Neferu has given me her fear.
Aahmose signaled to Hetephras, her personal servant and companion. "Go along to the Princess Neferu's apartments, and find out why she is not here tonight," she ordered. "And go quietly. I do not want Pharaoh to have the answer before me, Hetephras, do you understand?"
The woman smiled. "Perfectly, Majesty," she answered, bowing. She slid away.
''Mama, why does Nefem have to marry Thothmes?"
Aahmose flung up her hands. ''Oh, Hatshepsut, must you know everything? Very well, I will tell you. But you will not understand."
"Is it a mystery?''
"In a way. Your immortal father was only a general in my father's army until my father decided to make him the next Pharaoh. But in order that he might be Pharaoh in truth, he had to marry me because it is in us, the royal women, that the God's blood flows. We carry the royal strain, and no man can be Pharaoh unless he marries a royal woman, one whose mother has the pure blood of kingship and whose father was Pharaoh in his turn. That is the way it will always be. That is rightness, a part of Maat. Neferu-khebit is full-bloodedly royal, but Thothmes has royal blood only through your father, and Second Wife Mutnefert is only a noble's daughter." She did not speak with disparagement, but matter-of-factly, for these were the unalterable things of life. "Your father has not yet designated his heir, but it will probably be Thothmes as the only surviving royal son. If so, then Neferu must marry him to make him Pharaoh."
"But, Mama, if we women"—her mother
smiled—"if we women have the blood and men have to marry us to rule, why bother with the men at all? Why can't we be Pharaohs?"
Her mother laughed at the little face screwed up in concentration. "That is also Maat. Only men can rule. No woman can ever be Pharaoh."
"I will."
Again the words came without volition, of their own accord, and Hatshepsut again felt her heart flutter. The fear of something brooding over her like a storm-filled cloud was back, and she began to tremble.
Aahmose took the cold hands in her own. "Little girls have big dreams, daughter, and you only dream. You can never be Pharaoh, and I know very well that if you thought about it, you would not want it either. But suppose that women did rule? Neferu is older than you. She would come to the throne."
"She would not want it," Hatshepsut replied slowly. "Not at all. Not ever."
"Go back to your table now." Aahmose was tired of the stream of questions. "Your food must be cold. I will tell you how Neferu is when Hetephras returns, but don't worry about her. I think that she is stronger than she looks."
I don't, Hatshepsut thought as she rose. Aahmose, still smiling, went back to her meal, and Hatshepsut wended her way to her own corner. On the way she passed Thothmes, and on an impulse she crouched beside him. "Are you still grumpy, Thothmes?"
"Leave me alone, Hatshepsut, I'm eating."
''So I see. Shall I spoil your appetite? Did you know that tomorrow your father himself will appear on the training ground to watch you trip over your feet?"
''I know. My mother told me."
Child of the morning Page 3