He looked uncomfortable, but had to answer. "I do not really know. Highness, but something is happening in the apartment of Her Highness Neferu, and the Royal Steward just asked me if any had entered your rooms this night."
Her mouth went dry, and the vision of Neferu the fawn rose unbidden, a face contorted in fear, the soft mouth open, calHng her in desperation. Without another word she spun on her heel and began to run down the hall. Behind her the guard sputtered, ''Highness! Princess!'' He stood irresolute, not knowing whether to run after her or to rouse the sleeping attendants. He chose to run and pounded after her, but she was fleet. He followed only her shadow, which snaked along the walls, lengthening between the torches only to snap to her again as she rounded corners and fled under the flames. It seemed a long way to go in the night, with the wind screaming and the darkness reaching out to her from the entrances of branching passages, but she ran on, calling to Neferu under her breath as her arms pumped and her legs carried her.
She burst past the Imperial Guards who thronged the entrance to Neferu's rooms and came up, panting, into the older girl's ornate reception hall. It was empty. From beyond, in the bedroom, she heard the sound of chanting and saw incense, thick and gray, drifting through the open door. With a sob Hatshepsut forced her body to go forward. She fell into the other room and stopped abruptly, her heart beating so violently that it seemed about to tear her throat.
The room was full of people. The priests clustered around the couch like dim, white birds, the High Priest chanting and his assistants holding incense burners that glowed gold in their hands, the smoke rising in a cloud that made the air, already close and hot, a choking haze. At the head stood her father in his simple sleeping kilt, his big body naked. As she skidded to a halt, her hands at her throat, he glanced up but seemed not to recognize her. All at once he was an old man, his face seamed, his eyes sunken. Aahmose sat in a corner on a small stool, wrapped in a transparent cloak that floated about her on the floor. She held Neferu's little silver crown surmounted with the likeness of Mut, absently turning it over and over in her hands, her lips moving in prayer. The Chief Steward and other members of Pharaoh's suite stood together by the door, whispering anxiously.
None of them paid the slightest attention to Hatshepsut as she crept closer to the couch. She elbowed her way past the acolytes and past Menena until she could reach out and touch the cold fingers that hung over the edge. ''Neferu," she called softly, standing silent, an ache of love and a seed of fear building inside her.
The Royal Physician had placed a square of linen over the thin breast of the girl on the couch, and on it he had placed powerful amulets. His pots and pestles and jars lay beside him on the table, but now he knew that only the gods had the skill to heal. He knelt by Neferu, gently tying
the magic cord around her wet forehead and preparing the incantations that would drive the demon from her slight body. But he knew in his heart that nothing would avail, that Neferu had been poisoned, and he glanced up at his royal master. Pharaoh's gaze was fixed on his daughter's face, and only his fierce grip on the gilded headboard betrayed any emotion. The physician went back to his spells, distressed. He had not been able to make Her Highness vomit. If she had, there would have been a chance. But the doer of this deed knew his work well, and the pain ate away at Neferu's life with fiery inevitability, despite half a night spent in feverish attempts to save her. She was sinking fast, and the mood in the room had changed. The wind continued to howl.
Suddenly, Neferu opened her eyes, and the physician sat back on his heels, startled. Hatshepsut could see the sweat-streaked face, gray in the lamplight, and she flung herself down beside her sister and buried her head in the pillow. Neferu moaned and motioned weakly.
Thothmes spoke into the new stillness. ''Raise her. Place a cushion beneath her head."
As the physician lifted the lolling head and settled another pillow on the couch, Hatshepsut looked up, trembling. ''I heard you calling me, Neferu, and I came. Oh, Neferu, are you going to die?" Neferu closed her eyes as a spasm of agony gripped her, and Hatshepsut began to cry. ''Don't die. Please don't. What about the fawn? What about me?"
Neferu turned her head, and her eyes opened again. When she spoke, it was with great effort, and a line of scum gathered about her mouth. Her pupils were dilated, and in their depths Hatshepsut read panic and a great sadness. "Do you remember Uatchmes and Amun-mes, who died, Hatshepsut?" She was whispering, her voice a thin flutter, like the wind in winter reeds along the marshes.
Hatshepsut shook her head dumbly.
"Do you remember grandmother, who died?"
Hatshepsut did not stir. She held Neferu's hand, afraid that if she replied, the sobs welling in her throat would break out and fill the room. She concentrated on holding down, holding on.
Neferu paused, her breath hot and quick on Hatshepsut's cheek as she roused herself for a last effort. Already the gloom of the Judgment Hall was seeping into her mind, and its cold winds tugged at her limbs. "You will remember me, Hatshepsut. You will remember this night, and you will learn. My dream spoke true. Anubis waits for me beside the scales, and I am not ready. I am not ready!" Her eyes bored into the little girl's head with a feverish intensity, and the sobs died in Hatshepsut's chest as she tried to read their message. "Take this that I give you, Hatshepsut,
and make it worthwhile." Her gaze left Hatshepsut and ranged the room until it found Menena. ''I did not ask a destiny. I did not want it. You take it, Hatshepsut, and use it. I want only—peace—"
The last words were a sigh, and Hatshepsut found herself looking into eyes that no longer saw her but were glazed with some far vision, filling her with grief. She took the cold arm and shook it, shouting, ''I do not understand, Neferu. I never understand! I love you!"
Neferu's head began to thrash on the pillow amid its welter of sticky black hair, and the broken murmurings were unintelligible.
''She dreams," Thothmes said, his voice low but even. ''She is near the end."
Hatshepsut got up and thrust a fist under his chin, the tears pouring down her face. "No!" she shrieked at him. "Neferu will never die!" She turned and fled the room in terror. At the door to the apartment her guard waited, but she turned from him, taking Neferu's own passage to the gardens, running with the speed of a hunted leopard. Before her guard had crossed the hall to the passage entrance, she was out of the palace and tearing down the avenue in the darkness.
^^^^
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11ic wind caught her as she left the lee of the wall, and she staggered, striking her shin against the rough reliefs and grazing her elbow, but she hardly felt the pain that shot up her ankle. The paving continued broad and flat to the river, so she soon turned aside into the comforting secrecy of the trees, following winding paths that showed up as pale ribbons, even in the driving blackness of wind and sand, taking her deeper, away from the formality of flower beds and waterfalls and into a rougher, lonelier part of the estate. Even under the protecting arms of the sycamores the wind found her and buffeted her, so that she soon had to slow down. Her eyes, nostrils, and panting mouth were all full of sand; but she struggled on, the fury within her a physical force that drove her until she could run no more. Just when the stabbing pain in her side and the whistling of her lungs grew so great that she was ready to drop to the ground, she burst out of the trees and found herself at the feet of one of the lowering statues of her God-Father that fronted the pylons at the entrance to the temple. She knew that straight ahead of her now, beyond the great temple gates and the other pylon and another belt of trees, was the Sacred Lake of Amun, the lake on which his Boat was moored. After a moment she stumbled on, thinking only of the water. Whether to drink, or to purify herself, or to fling herself in she did not know, but she ran on, the rage smouldering now, being replaced by a slow-rising wave of sorrow. Neferu! Neferu! Neferu! In all the pampered years, the adoring, worshiping years, she had never faced an emotion such as this one that drove straight to the center of her bei
ng and stayed there, leaving her open to the pain.
She was at the lake before she knew it, and her knees buckled as she fell from the edge, her arms outstretched, the water closing over her head. Immediately the wind noise ceased, and the calm was stupendous. The sand and grit fell quietly from her body, the water wound itself around her in coolness, and she floated, her eyes closed, the singing in her head now reduced to a hum. O Amun, my Father, she thought blissfully. She felt him come close to her as her breathing slowed, and she began to drift. The wind was tearing whitecaps on the lake, and her body rocked gently under the swell as though she herself was the Sacred Barque, waiting for
the God to make his journey. She let out her breath until only her face rose above the water. I could stay here forever, and never have to go back, she thought. At those words her dream came back to her, and she began to cry again, softly this time, not only for her own loneliness to come but in genuine grief for Neferu herself, for the years of sunlight and happiness lost.
The next moment she felt her shoulder gripped by a strong hand. She gasped and went under, losing her breath and choking as she rose again to the surface. She began to struggle, but the hand tightened its hold and, coughing and fighting, she was towed inexorably to the bank. She felt two hands encircle her, and she found herself dumped unceremoniously on the grass. Catching her breath at last, she began to shiver. She could not see her assailant in the darkness and was tensing herself for flight when her arm was gripped again and he spoke.
"Do you know what could happen to you if the priests caught you in the Sacred Lake? What were you doing?" He was only a vague black shadow against the deeper shadows of the cloud-covered sky and the black bulk of the temple. His voice was young but stern. She began to be afraid, and she wrenched free her arm. She turned to run, but he grabbed her once more and swung her over his shoulder in one quick movement, stunning her. ''No you don't," he said. By the time she had recovered her wits, he was striding along toward the west side of the temple, bouncing her around like a sack of grain.
They skirted the lake, and soon Hatshepsut lost all sense of direction. She had never been behind the temple to the maze of servants quarters, granaries, kitchens, and storerooms; and as she was carried through trees, down alleys, and through cramped doorways, she was utterly lost. She knew by the way the grass turned into paving and then into a beaten dirt track, and by the way the wind was suddenly cut off only to hit her again, that they moved between buildings. Once she saw painted paving stones that rushed dizzily beneath her, seeming familiar. By the time he set her on her feet in a narrow, dark hallway fronted by many closed doors, she was utterly lost and trembling with apprehension and the aftereffects of her dousing. He took her by the hand and quickly led her down the corridor, surefooted in the moonless passage. He pushed open a door near the end and pulled her inside, closing it and locking it after her. He left her, and she heard him fumbling about until suddenly a light sprang up, revealing a small, whitewashed cell, a pallet on the floor, a rude chair, and an unfinished wooden trunk that obviously served as table as well as clothes box, for the man placed the lamp on it.
He turned to look at her, and she stared back, her fear evaporating. He
was not A mail after all, at least not a full-grown man, iMit rather young, about Ncfcru's age, with strong, even features and a penetrating ga/e. His shaved head told her something, and the nuiddy, stained, white Hnen that stuek to his long legs told her the rest. This was a young priest, so she must be somewhere witiun the temple precincts. She began to feel better. It was not nice to be snatched from the fanuliar and suddenly find one's self in a strange and menacing world of rough hands and disrespectful words, especially on a night that was dreadful and unreal enough without the added strain of being lost.
"You are shivering still," he said, his voice deep with the tones of a manhood half-realized. 'The air is very hot, but the wind can kill." He took a tattered woollen blanket from the pallet, and before she could protest, he had gone down on one knee and was rubbing her vigorously just as Nozme used to do.
The shock of this brisk and businesslike handling knocked the last vestiges of dream from her, and as her skin began to glow and her teeth stopped chattering, she was able to look at the events of the night clearly and without the dregs of the merciful waking sleep that had carried her to Neferu's side and out again into the wildness of the night. Neferu was dying. Neferu was probably dead, and Hatshepsut, standing limply as this extraordinary young man brought new life to her limbs, looked into the black and gaping hole of the future. Along with the certainty of Neferu's death came another grim thought. She shuddered involuntarily so that the boy stopped rubbing and looked up at her. Now she, Hatshepsut, was the only royal girl left. The implications were too fine for her mind to grasp as yet, but she remembered her mother's patient words: **It is in us, the royal women, that the God's blood flows. ... no man can be Pharaoh unless he marries a royal woman." The words of Neferu, spoken such a short while ago, were still jumbled in the girl's thoughts, but she recalled the homely face drawn in pain, the big eyes. Again, unbidden, the tears began to flow.
Senmut gently wrapped the blanket around her heaving shoulders and pushed her down on the pallet. 'There," he said, drawing up the chair and sitting so that the light fell across his face, outlining its planes, the hollows and highlights flitting and changing as he spoke. ''Now do not be afraid. Tell me what you were doing by the lake, or even in the temple grounds for that matter. Did you fall in by accident?" She did not reply but sat still, looking at the plain floor, her face tearstained atop a huddle of brown blanket. Senmut regarded her with impatience and pity. "Come. You must talk to me. If you do not tell me how you came to be in Mighty Amun's Lake in the middle of a foul night, then you will have to tell the
Master of Mysteries and bring disgrace or worse upon yourself and your family. If you strayed there by accident and fell in, then I can take you to your home and say no more about it, though how you managed to pass all the guards between here and the city is quite beyond me. Now will you speak? Or will I send for my phylarch? Was it an accident?''
Hatshepsut could not stop the flow of tears, and her nose was running as well. Bending her head, she wiped her face on the old blanket and blew her nose. She began to cry afresh and could not find her voice.
The young man waited. 'Tou need not be afraid," he repeated, 'i am not going to hurt you. For Set's sake, stop crying!" He did not know why, but something about her made him feel uneasy. The fine-boned little face with its square, stubborn chin; its wide forehead; and its thin, aristocratic nose reminded him of someone—not in the actual features, but in the way she held her head on its long neck and in the way she lifted her chin, looking at him with solemnity. Strange child, he thought. Perhaps she had not been about to drown after all. He lifted the wet robes away from his calves and suddenly remembered the flagon of wine he had filched from the kitchen the night before. Breathing a prayer of thanks, he moved the lamp and, after rummaging in his chest, brought out a crude wooden cup. He replaced the lamp, reached behind his chair, and brought out the flagon, filling the cup and holding it out to the girl. ''Here, drink some wine. It will make you feel better."
She stopped snuffling, and her hand shot out. Without a word of thanks she took it and drank, sighing and wrinkling up her nose. She handed it back. 'That wine is cheap. It tastes bitter."
"Ah! So you have a voice, then?"
She wiped her face again and sat straighter, one hand clutching the blanket to her chin.
''Now for the last time, little one, did you fall in the lake by accident?"
"Yes. No! I am not sure."
"Whose house do you serve? Are your parents slaves in the city?"
"Certainly not! I live in the palace."
"So you work in the kitchens? In the Good God's harem?"
The black eyes beneath the swollen lids flared at him. "How dare you speak to me like that! If I wish to bathe in my Father's waters in the middle of
the night, that is no concern of yours, priest! And what were you doing there, anyway?"
Senmut had in fact been on the way back to his cell after one of his frequent forays to the kitchens, having consumed cold beef and honey cakes in the lee of the outer court of the temple. To avoid the guards, he had been walking around the lake. It was only by the merest chance that
he had heard the splash as she fell. He looked at her more closely, an awful doubt growing in his mind. For the first time he noticed the bedraggled youth-lock hanging from her shaved head, still wound with ribbons of white and blue, the colors of the Imperial family. He closed his eyes. "O merciful Isis, no," he breathed. 'Tlease, no."
The tiny mouth was tight when he opened his eyes again. "Do you not know, then, who I am?"
He shook his head slowly. "I thought you were drowning. I thought you were a slave who had wandered where she should not. I wished only to save you from disgrace."
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