Child of the morning

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-

''Is she here?"

  Thothmes pointed. "Over there. Now go away. I have enough on my mind without your jibes."

  Second Wife Mutnefert, piled in the jewels that she loved, was stuffing food into her mouth with single-minded purpose. Food had always been her weakness, and now it was her passion. The voluptuous curves that had first attracted Pharaoh to her were turning into rolls of unsightly fat. Compared with the dainty and gentle Aahmose, Mutnefert was gross, but she could still laugh, and her faculty for enjoyment was undiminished. Hatshepsut thought that Mutnefert was stupid, and she shrugged as she sat down. Men. Were they worth understanding? Her food was cold, and she pushed it away.

  "Shall I get you something hot. Highness?" her slave asked.

  She shook her head. "Bring me some beer."

  "But Your Highness will not like it."

  "I liked it before. Don't tell me what I will or will not like." Over the rim of her cup she saw Hetephras slip back into the hall and bend to whisper something in her mother's ear. Aahmose nodded and continued to eat. So, thought Hatshepsut, it can be nothing too bad.

  Menkh and User-amun had finished their meal and were wrestling on the floor, rolling about among the diners, and Menkh's mother was quaffing wine like a soldier on leave. There was no singing. Pharaoh had a headache. So the music continued to be soft, and the people continued to eat and drink and laugh, and the hours dragged by. Hatshepsut finally sat with her chin in her hands, her head spinning a little from the strong beer, waiting for Nozme to look her way and nod that it was time for bed. At last her father pushed back his table and rose. All those who were able rose, too, and bowed.

  He stalked over to her and offered her his arm. "Come, Hatshepsut. Time for our talk. And then you must get to your couch. There are circles under your eyes. Nozme!" The woman rushed up. "Come with us." He swept them out of the hall and down the corridor while the music began again behind them.

  Pharaoh's private reception rooms and sleeping quarters were as sparsely furnished as the rest of the palace, but there was no mistaking the seat of power. At the doors two statues stood, sandstone overlaid with gold, frowning forbiddingly at all comers. Within, beyond the doors of

  beaten copper depicting Thothmes' coronation, was a suite whose walls, winking in the light of many golden lamps, held silver gods and golden trees and birds and whose fluted pillars soared to a ceiling inlaid with lapis lazuli. Gold was plentiful. Gold was holy, a gift of the God, and Pharaoh's couch was of gold, the feet four great lion's paws, the head a likeness of Amun himself, guarding his son with a protective smile. In the corners of the room four gods towered, frozen in midstride, their heads adorned with golden crowns, their shadows flowing across the endless floor. It was a room to inspire a little girl with fear and pride.

  Thothmes sank into the gilded chair beside his couch and motioned to his daughter to sit. He eyed her for a moment in the steady yellow glow, and she stared steadily back at him, dizzy from the beer, her hands tensely pressed together between her brown knees. He was really a little frightening, this father of hers, with his bald head; his powerful, thick shoulders; and his aggressive, forward-jutting chin.

  ''Hatshepsut," he said at last. She jumped, startled. ''I am going to teach you a lesson that I hope you will never forget, for if you do, you may be very, very sorry in the years to come." He paused for a suitable reply, but though she opened her mouth, no sound would come out, so he continued. 'There is not one moment of any day that a thousand people do not know where I am, what I am doing. I speak, and they obey. I keep silent, and they tremble. My name is on everyone's lips, from the smallest acolyte in the temple to my lordly advisers, and the palace buzzes continually with rumors, conjectures, speculation as to my next action or the fruits of my mind. I am surrounded by plots, counterplots, suspicions, petty intrigues. But I am Pharaoh, and my word means death—or life. But one thing they cannot reach, any of them, and it is this which ultimately means power." He tapped his head with one ringed finger. ''My thought. My thought, Hatshepsut. No word of any import do I utter without careful thought, for I know that once spoken, my words are repeated throughout the country. And this is the lesson that I wish you to remember. You must never, ever again blurt out to me or to anyone else your own hasty fears or conclusions in front of anyone who is not your most trusted friend. And believe me, in the end there is no one to whom a Pharaoh may turn. At the pinnacle of power he has only himself to commune with. Do you realize that even now your words to me this afternoon are being whispered back and forth in the kitchens, in the stables, in the cells of the temple? Neferu-khebit is unhappy. The Princess does not wish to marry young Thothmes. Does this mean that the Great One has chosen his son as his successor? And on and on. You have done harm today, daughter. Do you know that?" He leaned toward her. 'The

  time is fast approaching when such carelessness could cost you very dearly. For I have not yet chosen Thothnies to succeed me. No, and my decision is not easy. The priests are powerful, and they press me with requests for an answer. My advisers become restless as my years lengthen. They, too, worry. But my answer is stayed. Do you know why, little one?"

  Hatshepsut found her voice. ''N—no, father."

  Thothmes leaned back and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. When he opened them, he fixed her with his dark, level stare. *Tou are not like your mother, the sweet-smiling, submissive Aahmose, though I love her," he said. *'Nor are you shy and pale like your sister Neferu, or lazy and ease-loving like your royal half brother. In you I see the undiluted strength of your Grandfather Amunhotep and the tenacity of his wife Aahotep. Do you remember your grandmother, Hatshepsut?"

  ''No, father, but I see Yuf from time to time, wandering around talking to himself. He is like a dried-up old prune. The children laugh at him."

  'Tour grandmother's priest was a very great and powerful man long ago. Be sure that you treat him with respect."

  "I do. I like him. He gives me sweetmeats and talks about the old times."

  "And do you listen?"

  "Oh, yes! I love the stories about how my ancestor the God Sekhenenre led our people against the evil Hyksos and gave his life on the battlefield. It is all very exciting!" The childish, piping voice rose. "How noble he must have been!"

  "Noble indeed, and brave. I think that you resemble him very much, my dear, and one day you, too, shall be as he was, able to draw men to you in power. But you have much to learn."

  The makings are there, he told himself. And is it up to me?

  "But, father," Hatshepsut said timidly, "I am only a girl."

  "Only?" he almost shouted. "Only? What is this word? Never mind, Hatshepsut. Grow and bloom, but remember my lesson. Do not let your tongue run away with you again. And do not think," he concluded with a half smile, rising, "that Neferu's behavior escapes my notice, even though your mother would like to think that sometimes it does. I will deal with Neferu when the time comes. She shall do my will, like everyone else. Nozme!"

  The nurse entered and stood waiting, eyes downcast.

  "Take her to bed, and continue to guard her well. And as for you, my little firefly, meditate on the words of the Great God Imhotep. 'Do not let your tongue be as a flag, flapping in the wind of every rumor.' "

  "I shall remember, father."

  "See that you do/' He bent and kissed her on the cheek. ''Good night/' "Good night/' She put her palms together and bowed. "And thank

  you." "Oh?"

  "For not screaming at me, even if I am a trial at times." Pharaoh laughed. "I am glad that you listen to your teacher as well,"

  he said. He patted her, and she ran to Nozme, the doors closing softly

  behind them.

  ^^k

  ^>kV

  Fourteen nights after Hatshepsut had gone to bed chastened by her father and giddy with alcohol, a young man sat on the edge of his straw pallet, unable to sleep. It was the month of Pakhon, and the air was thick and tense with heat. The river had begun to rise, to flow more swiftly. The normally placid sil
ver water was becoming red, and the sound of its passing was a loud murmur that should have sung him to sleep like a lullaby but instead irritated and annoyed him as he tried to rest. At last he rolled onto the mud floor and perched, sweating and hungry, on the foot of his bed. His back ached. So did his knees. For a week he had done nothing but scrub floors in the apartments of the sem-priests, those men responsible for funerary arrangements, and he was angry. It was not for this that he had come to Thebes three years ago with his precious sandals and his one good kilt wrapped together in a piece of sacking. He had been excited then, anticipant, dreaming of a swift rise in the priestly ranks until perhaps Pharaoh himself would notice him and overnight he would become—what? He ran a hand over his shaved head and sighed into the dark. A mighty builder. A man who could make royal dreams a reality in stone. Ha! Those three years had been spent as a we'eb priest in training, the lowest of the low, washing, sweeping, running errands between his master here and his master two miles to the north at the temple of Luxor. The visions of wealth and recognition had faded slowly, leaving bitterness and a naked ambition that troubled his sleep and elbowed out his natural gaiety.

  I will not give up, he vowed fiercely to the blank, invisible walls. There must be something more for me.

  He thought of his teacher in the little village school at home where his father eked out an existence on his few acres of land. 'Tou have a quick mind," he had said, **and a broad grasp of the essentials of a problem. Can your father not get you enrolled at a temple school somewhere? You are suited for a career, Senmut.'' And this when he was only eleven.

  His father had left the farm with him and brought him to Thebes, where one of his mother's brothers was a sem-priest. After days of waiting and being jostled about from here to there and having his sandals stolen

  right from under his nose by a grinning, dirty street urchin, he and his father had at last been granted an audience with the Overseer of the We'eb Priests. Senmut did not remember that interview very well. He had been tired and afraid, wanting only to go home again and forget the whole thing. But, speaking softly, his father had pushed him forward and had shown the scroll of his progress given to them by the teacher. The great man, who was clad in dazzling white and smelt like the Goddess Hathor herself, had grunted disparagingly, with boredom, but had at last allotted Senmut a cell and a priestly linen. He had taken leave of his father with regret, embracing him tearfully and thanking him for all his care.

  The older man had smiled. ''When you are a great man, a vizier perhaps, you can purchase a good tomb for your mother and me so that the gods may remember us." He spoke half jokingly, half sadly. He did not believe that his son would ever do more than serve menially in the temple, eventually perhaps as a Master of Mysteries, but no more. He had no illusions about the cold and dangerous world Senmut was to inhabit. Kissing Senmut on both cheeks and admonishing him to do good to all men, he went home to his crops, not knowing which god's protection to implore for his son. He would need the care of them all.

  Ah, Thebes, the young man groaned as he rubbed at his sore knees, how I was ravished by you when first I saw your golden towers winking on the horizon, beyond the great river! I remember awakening on that last morning, when Ra was a flush of red-pink glory from hilltop to desert. As I rose from the ground, I saw the flashes of light, now here, now there, between the palms and the pomegranate trees. I said to my father, ''What in the world is that?''

  "That is Amun-Ra, kissing the gold-tipped towers of his city," my father replied.

  I was struck dumb with wonder and awe. I love you still, but I am no closer to your mysteries than I was on that faraway morning, although I no longer fear you, Senmut sighed.

  He had spent the days since predictably, in hard work: in the mornings, at the temple school, doing work that he loved, and in the afternoons doing the chores that he loathed as his routine became more and more rigid.

  Sometimes he wished that he had it in him to train to be a scribe, as the priest who was now his teacher wanted him to do, for a scribe never had to get down on his hands and knees. He was exempted from all physical labor and had nothing to do but follow his master about and scribble notes or sit in the markets of Thebes and wait to be hired to write letters. But Senmut knew far down in the secret places of his being that

  as a scribe he would shrivel up and die because he would be denying that force within him that cried out for something better, something more worthy. But what? he asked himself wearily as he rose from his pallet and groped about in the dark for his cloak. Surely not a priestly overseer, a phylarch, whose days are spent in frantic organizing.

  When I first saw this city, with its lordly towers and pylons, its wide, paved avenues and innumerable statues, I thought I knew. Then I would wander in the long evenings, in and out of beershops and taverns, down to the docks, watching the fishermen curse and jockey their slim papyrus craft to the best moorings, watching the craftsmen sit before their ships, plying their trades, watching the slaves mount the auction block and the nobles being carried by on their handsome litters, watching, watching, always on the outside, always a stranger. Now I watch no more. Now I have fourteen years behind me and perhaps five times that number before me. Already I am a prisoner.

  He drew his cloak about his shoulders and stepped barefoot from his cell, walking quietly past the rows of similar rooms down the long hall. There was moonlight, splashing cold between the pillars, and he could see where he was going. He paused to check the water clock outside his phylarch's door. Still five hours to sunrise. Smiling at the young man's snores, Senmut passed out of the hall and into the courtyard like a wraith. To his left the bulk of the temple now reared, still separated from him by another block of priests' cells and a plantation of sycamores. He swiftly turned away from it, knowing that there he might encounter movement. He wanted the kitchens and something to eat. His stomach drove him on, growling a protest. He reached the end of the line of rooms and turned the corner, away from the sacred precincts. A few moments of steady walking brought him to another group of buildings. He quietly slipped between the dark conical hulks of the granaries and turned in at the little doorway that heralded the kitchens. He was in a narrow passage down which the slaves passed each day, carrying grain. The darkness was absolute. He groped his way for a few more feet and was suddenly in a large, airy room with many high windows through which the moonbeams melted. Opposite him was a black hole in the wall, the beginning of the walk that took the cooks directly into the temple with the God's meals. Everything smelt faintly of grease. He moved cautiously, for the sleeping kitchen staff was not far away. On his left stood two tall stone ewers, placed so that the breeze which funneled through the passage could cool them, one containing water, the other beer. He picked up the jug that sat between them and hesitated for a moment, his thirst raging; finally he decided on the water. He quietly removed the wooden lid from one

  of the ewers, drew, and drank quickly and deeply, replacing the jug with scarcely a clink. He slipped among the tables, raising covers, lifting cloths, and it did not take him long to discover a couple of cold roast duck legs and a half loaf of flat barley bread. He did not think that anyone would miss such a tiny portion of the vast amount of food that was waiting to be distributed among the God's slaves in the morning. With a last glance to see that he had left nothing disturbed, he thrust his meal under the concealing folds of his cloak and crept back down the passage to the open air.

  He stood for a moment, wondering whether to take it back to his cell and eat there, but his tiny room would be like an oven and dark as well, so he began to walk in the direction of the temple gardens, where there were trees and where there was less likelihood that the guards patrolling the paths that wound down to the Sacred Lake would find him. He knew the movements of them all, the changes of the watch, the routes they took, and he waited in the shelter of the first pylon while a couple of them strolled by, deep in conversation. As their backs were swallowed up by the night, he glided acro
ss the avenue and disappeared under the welcoming shadows of a grove of palms.

  As he darted from tree to tree, he sniflfed the air. A country boy to his very bones, he could forecast a change coming in the weather, and he did not like the feel of this change. Close to the ground the atmosphere was so thick and stifling that a breath required almost conscious effort; to move was like wading through a solid wall of water. But above the black, trembling fronds of the palms, the air was disturbed, and the stars were partially hidden by a thin mist of clouds. He knew the signs. It was not often that a khamsin blew this far south, but he felt sure his instincts spoke true. Within hours the burning, destructive wind would begin to trouble the surface of the desert. Until it blew itself out, there would be nothing to do but shut doors and cover windows. And then? He groaned aloud. More work for him to do, sweeping out the sand that would seep into every corner of every building in the precincts.

  He chose a tree with a large, bellied bole and sat with his back against the side opposite to the path. In the distance there was a thin, silver, shifting line of light that was the moon on the waters of Amun's Lake, but from where he crouched, he could see nothing of the temple itself or the towers of the palace beyond it. He was in a world of peace for a while, safe in the friendly shushing of leaves that greeted one another in the dimness. He took out his leg of duck and bit into it happily, savoring each mouthful, for being worked like a slave, he was hungry all the time.

  Within minutes he was tossing away the picked bones and starting on

  the bread, which was a trifle stale but nonetheless delicious. He had just finished the last crumb that had fallen on his cloak and was about to use the cloth to wipe his mouth, when some sense born of the long nights tending goats in the vermin-ridden hills that bordered his father's farm made him suddenly sit upright, his heart pounding. For a while he heard nothing. He had begun to relax when he heard soft footfalls on the grass and the subdued murmur of voices. He sprang to his feet lightly, noiselessly, and pressed himself tight to the rough bark of the tree, his hands folding the cloak against his body. The voices came nearer, hardly more than a whisper. He shrank farther into shadow, blending with tree and night, until even his rapid breathing had slowed and taken on the stillness of the hour. It was thus that he had trapped the big cats that came after the baby goats. It was this immediate reaction that saved him, for seconds later two hooded forms stooped beneath his tree only a few feet from where he stood. Although he dared not move to see who it was, he knew they were not guards. There was no clink of metal on metal, and besides, guards would have spoken aloud and walked without fear. These two had crept so quietly that they had almost tripped over him. He screwed his eyes shut and offered a quick prayer to Khonsu. Perhaps in a moment or two they would move on, before his trembling muscles played him false and he inadvertently made a sound. He continued to breathe quietly, shallowly, willing his lungs to operate slowly. The two faced each other, shapeless in the night, their whispers reaching him indistinctly.