She smiled suddenly, and her whole face lightened. It was an infectious smile, full of humor and friendliness, but he could not smile back. He knew that she could mean his death. He had laid coercive hands on royalty, and his life was forfeit. 'That was kind," she mocked. 'Tou, a little we'eb priest, wished to save me, the Princess Hatshepsut, from disgrace." She settled back, leaning against the wall with eyes alight. ''How exciting! Did you really think I was about to drown?"
He swallowed. "Yes, Highness."
'Then I pardon you." She waved a hand airily. "You are a true son of Maat." Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. "But now what will you do with me? The guards will be searching, for they know I ran away. My father will be roaring, and Nozme will be crying because she knows she will be beaten for not staying with me. But it was not her fault. I crept out of bed while she slept."
Senmut's heart sank even farther. So this is what you brought me to, O my father, when you and I made the long journey to the holy city, he thought. An ignominious death for me and disgrace for you. He said aloud, "Highness, may I be permitted to ask one question?"
"I should think," she retorted waspishly, "that after laying hands on me in the lake and tossing me over your shoulder, after trotting me all over the estate and rubbing the skin off me with your nasty old blanket, you would not hesitate to put to me another question. Well," she finished admiringly, "you do have strong shoulders." She sobered. "I ran because—because dear Neferu—" she started to cry quietly, looking away, and Senmut watched in helpless anxiety. "My lovely Neferu is dying."
Premonition and horror crawled over his skin and up and down his spine like the soft, hairy feet of deadly spiders. His hands clenched on the arms of his chair. So it had come. And so soon. And he had done nothing after all but bury his head in the sand of his own security like one of those foolish Nubian ostriches while out there in the white-gold purity of the
palace a girl choked toward death, her body wracked and tortured by the poison that he, Senmut, might just as well have administered himself. How fitting. Mighty Amun, is your judgment, he thought. I am to die, and I deserve to die, but not for the crime of which I shall be accused. He suppressed a wild desire to burst into hysterical laughter.
The little princess was curled into the wall, her head on her arms, sobbing aloud now as if the ugliness could be washed away with her tears. ''She called me—in my dreams—and I went, and there she was, so sick —she will die—oh, Neferu, Neferu—" Finally she sat up, holding out her hands to him. 'Tlease, priest, could you hold my hand? I am so afraid, and no one understands, no one."
What difference can it possibly make? he thought grimly as he slid from his chair and sat beside her on the pallet. I have touched her once already, and I am a dead man. He put his arms around her and held her close, soothing her, feeling the shoulders, fragile as a bird's wings, heave with her sobs. She buried her wet face in his neck and clung to him as though she really was drowning and he was the only rock that could save her. ''Hush, little Princess,'' he murmured, stroking her. "Life goes on. We live, and we die, and only the gods know when. Cry out your tears." He suddenly felt the irony of his words and said no more.
She fell asleep at last, her head resting on his shoulder, and he left her in peace, watching the flutter of long eyelashes on her brown cheek. After an hour he shook her gently, and she stirred, groaning.
"Come, Highness, it is time to go. The wind is dropping, and tomorrow may be a fine and sunny day." He stood her upright and gave her more wine, which she drank without comment, swaying a little from sheer exhaustion. "I will take you back to your father. Perhaps you should keep my blanket around you." He tightened his belt and ran a hand over his shaved skull, but when he turned to go, he found her eyes on him, regarding him with speculation. Already the dim light of dawn was creeping toward them, and in the pale daylight she seemed empty but somehow older, as if the essence of childhood had flowed away with her tears and would never come again.
"What is your name?" she asked him.
"Senmut, Highness."
"Senmut. Senmut, I will return alone, as I left, and I will not take your blanket. You think I do not know what father will do to you if he knows what you did tonight? Only lead me back to the lake, and I can find my own way from there. And do not fear. My father taught me to keep my own counsel, and I believe I am just learning what he meant. I will not speak of you to anyone."
"Princess, it is right tliat the One should know now, before gossip and rumor tell him and not my lips."
"Nonsense! Gossip feeds on fact, or so my mother says, and the facts are known only to you and me. I will not speak, I tell you. Do you doubt my wordi^"
He did not. She radiated the unconscious arrogance of royalty as she unwound the blanket and let it fall. He bowed, and without another word they left the room.
Outside all was still. The last dying gasps of wind sucked at their knees as they padded silently across the courtyard and vanished into the shadow of the granaries, but above them the sky was milky white with dawn and very clear. Not even a mist hung about the obelisks and towers of the temple, and the two of them hurried through the trees and came at last to the grassy edge of the Sacred Lake, whose waters scarcely rippled in the morning hush.
They stopped and faced one another. Hatshepsut drew deep breaths. "The khamsin is over. It blew for her, for Neferu, and it has taken her. I know it. Thank you, Senmut, for risking your life for me. I know that is what you did, and when you found out who I was, you did not flinch, but comforted me like a brother. I shall not forget.''
As he looked into the earnest little face, he felt no temptation to laugh. Instead he knelt and kissed the grass at her feet. "Highness," he said, ''you are the bravest lady I have known, and the wisest. Long life!"
She laughed. "Get up, get up! Truly, your prostration is far more noble than the cheek of that silly User-amun. Now I had better start running before father decides to execute the guards piecemeal!"
With a wave she was gone, running like a deer toward the trees on the other side of the sphinx-lined avenue, her naked body gleaming in the new rays of the sun.
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She was seen streaking across the grass toward the western portal of the palace, and by the time she flew in her own door, her father was waiting for her, alone. Already the slaves were at work, sweeping out the runnels and little hills of sand that had been deposited everywhere, but none sang at their labors and the waking inhabitants were quiet. A sense of doom hung in the air, although Ra danced on the golden dust raised by the sweepers and leaped across the mosaicked floors and between the white pillars. Hatshepsut sensed the oppression even before she knelt to Thothmes in apology and felt his cold gaze upon her.
He had been bathed and was girt in yellow linen. Only a simple gold and blue faience pectoral, two hawks flanking the Eye of Horus, hung on his breast, and his head was covered with a black and yellow striped leather cap whose sides rested on his shoulders and whose front band held the kingly rearing cobra, the Uraeus that gleamed on his massive forehead. He had not slept, nor had he eaten, and he looked to be an old man, his eyes rheumy and bloodshot under the fresh black kohl. He did not bid her to rise, and she stayed with her nose to the floor, trying to catch her breath. He began to pace.
''Where have you been?"
''Wandering in the gardens, father."
"Is that so? For the last four hours?"
"Yes, Mighty Horus."
"In the dark? In the wind and the sand?"
"Yes."
"You lie," he said easily, as if he were tossing off a remark to his wife in the middle of a morning walk. "The gardens have been searched time and again since you left my presence, and my captain awaits a flogging because you were not to be found there. Now answer me!" His voice hardened. "I am your father, but I am also Pharaoh. I can have you whipped, Hatshepsut. Where were you?"
She saw his feet come close and straddle her head. She was getting a crick in her neck from
her awkward position, and the smell of new bread wafted about from somewhere in the room, reminding her how hungry
she was, hut she kept very still "1 chd go to the gardens, father, hut then I ran on, uito the temple."
The royal foot hy her left ear hegan to tap. "Oh? Do you not think it strange that the temple guards, who swarm the precincts like husy ants at all hours of the day and night, are still seeking you?"
"1 i\i go to the temple, father, hut not inside. I went—I went to the Sacred Barque, and 1 walked the ramp and lay inside, where the wind could not reach me." She was very glad now that her face was hidden from him. She had not yet learned to lie without a tremor.
"Indeed? And why did you do that?"
*'I wanted to he close to my Father. I wanted to think about—about dear Neferu."
Thothmes was suddenly still. He walked quickly away from her and sat down in her low nursery chair. ''Get up, Hatshepsut, and come here," he said kindly. "You have caused me moments of extreme anxiety this night, and I have heaped my anger upon soldier and servants ahke. When will you learn prudence? Are you hungry?" She scrambled up and ran to her table as he twitched the linen cloth aside, revealing hot bread and smoked fish and a wet green salad that smelt of onion and papyrus shoots and set her mouth to watering. "Eat then." He did not call a slave to wash her hands, and she did not care. I have washed my whole self in the waters of my Father, she thought, and sent a guilty glance to Thothmes' face as she crossed her legs and sank onto her cushion, breaking the loaf with eager hands. He waited patiently while she ate the last scrap of fish and drank the last dribble of milk from the cup. When she had finished, he said softly, "Neferu is dead, Hatshepsut."
Her head dropped, and she nodded faintly. "I know, my father. And she was afraid, long before this night. She dreamed such terrible things. Why did it have to be her?" She looked up at him. "She only wanted to be happy."
"We must all die, Hatshepsut, some early, some late, but we all come to the feet of Osiris in the end. Neferu was not happy with her life."
"But she could have been. If you had not planned that she should marry Thothmes. If she had not been First Daughter—"
"Do you wish to alter the unalterable, my daughter?" he chided gently. "She was First Daughter. There is no other son to be Pharaoh after me. Would you have me excuse Neferu her destiny and then put Thothmes aside?"
"You have not excused Neferu her destiny," Hatshepsut replied. "Her destiny was death."
Thothmes looked into the calm, limpid eyes with a start and saw a
change in their depths. He was a man with sharp perception, perfected over the years by the weight of rule. The circumstances of Neferu's death pointed, in his mind, to the one conclusion that both relieved and smote him beyond all reason. He had seen violent death many times in his career, and he knew the work of poison when he saw it. He also knew intimately the lives and aspirations of his ministers, and more than once he had overridden the subtle pressures of manipulation. He had no doubt that here was one more attempt to warp the course of his kingship or to glut the ambition of priest or official, and the knowledge had started a slow fire in him that would burn until he knew all. But there was the relief as well—relief because a decision that was tearing him apart was now taken out of his hands for the time being and could be left for a while. Though Neferu had been the second most important woman in Egypt and his own royal seed, he had never understood her and had dreaded the proclamation that would leave his beloved country in the hands of an insensitive pudding of a boy and a mooning, gutless girl. Not for this had he risked his life time without number and plotted and done his share of the plundering of ka and body. He almost wished never to know the truth of his daughter's death, for it suited his purposes very well. But the tortuous planning behind it, the extension of someone's plots into a future that might endanger his dynasty, for this he must quietly sniff about, ferret out, even though he might never accuse anyone or bring them to the Courts of Justice. He spoke in his mind to the shadowy form who had held the evil cup to Neferu's lips: I will teach you anew who is the power in Egypt. I am Maat, and my wish is the wish of the God. Now Hatshepsut, his darling, was First Daughter, and now he could breathe. In the back of his mind a new plan was gathering, dim as yet but forming rapidly.
**No," he said to the resigned face before him. *'It was her destiny to be Divine Consort, but she would not. She gave that destiny to you with her own words, do you remember, Hatshepsut? *I did not ask a destiny. I did not want it. . . . take—' "
She remembered with a sickening jolt. '* Take it . . . and use it,' " she finished. ''I still do not understand. Neferu was always saying things I could not follow, although I tried very hard."
Thothmes lifted the table away from her and drew her onto his knees. ''Neferu was carried to the House of the Dead two hours ago," he said quietly, ''and that is a very serious thing for you, little one. You are the last royal lady." He felt her body stiffen.
She turned her head away and finally said in a muffled voice, "Great One, will you make me marry Thothmes now?"
"You are too young to speak of marriage. Do you not like Thothmes?"
"No. He is boring "
'Hatshcpsiit, you have many years before you, and in those years you will come to understand the responsibihties that Neferu refused to face. Because she did so, she died, do you understand?"
"No," she rephed wearily. "Of course not. I never do."
"You are cast in a different mold," he went on. "Amun himself protects you. But even so, from now on you must be very careful of all you do or say. And do not worry about the future. That is in my hands, but if I see the necessity of your marriage to Thothmes, you will obey, will you not?"
"If you order me to."
He shook her gently. "You have blatantly disobeyed my orders before! But I speak of what may come, and it is the present that must be faced. Tell me, what were you really doing tonight?"
She wriggled from his grasp and stood before him, her hands clasped demurely behind her back. "I am sorry, father, I cannot tell you. But I did not do wrong."
"Very well." He dismissed the subject, knowing that he would get nothing more from her. "Now the period of mourning begins for Neferu. There will be no school, and you will not see any of your friends. Your mother is sleeping, and I suggest that you do the same. You look very tired. And do not expect to see Nozme for some days. She will be engaged in the duties of a kitchen slave in order to learn that I, Pharaoh, who made her Royal Nurse, can now make her Royal Kitchen Assistant."
Hatshepsut smiled. "It was not her fault that I ran away."
"You were her responsibility." He clapped his hands, and Second Royal Nurse Tiyi appeared, bowed, and waited. "Put her to bed, and keep her there all morning," Thothmes ordered. "And see that you do not leave her for a moment." He bent and kissed Hatshepsut.
She suddenly wound her arms about his neck. "I love you, my father."
"I love you, too, little Hat. I am glad that you are safe."
"How could I have been anything else, with two such powerful Fathers to protect me?" she said solemnly. The ever lurking smile broke out, and she left him, placing her hand in Tiyi's and walking sedately to the door.
For seventy days, while the Inundation rose to its peak and all the land became a vast red and brown lake dotted with islanded villages and trees that seemed to float, stunted, on the calm tide, Neferu's hollow body lay in the House of the Dead being reverently prepared for its new habitation. The smooth, sallow flesh that had warmed to the sun and felt the touch of gold and human hand, now knew a very different peace from that which the girl had sought. As the sem-priests wound the thin limbs with fine
linen and filled the cavities not with food or wine or love but with natron-soaked cloths, the unseeing eyes gazed upon them with blind resignation. In the temple workshops the artisans put the final touches to the coffins in which she would lie. Over the river, their tasks hampered by the water that lapped to the door and trickled
between the paving stones, the painters, sculptors, and stonemasons were laboring day and night to complete the little mortuary temple begun by Neferu herself so that in afteryears, she could enjoy the offerings of the people who would bring their griefs and desires to her. But not so soon. Not yet. There was something pitiful in the half-completed biography that took rapid shape along the outer walls, the hastily laid sanctuary floor, the statues surrounded by dust and chips as the men sweated to finish all before Neferu passed on her way to the cliff behind, to the dark silence of the rock tomb whose entrance would be hidden from all eyes save her own.
It had been a good flood. Taxes would be up and crops plentiful. The fellahin, unable to work the land during these months, had slaved instead on Pharaoh's building projects. They still received their bread and onions, and they were cheerful. In the glare of the sun the country seemed full of birds, and dragonflies, their gossamer wings quivering blue and mauve, darted on the surface of the drowned fields, waiting for the mosquitoes that bred with fearsome rapidity in the still water, bringing disease to man and beast. Egypt made strong music then, the music of fecundity and rich life. But deep within the House of the Dead Neferu's cheeks were stuffed so that she appeared only to sleep, and at last the bandages fell across her eyes forever.
There was no music and no laughter in the palace. In Neferu's apartment the servants gathered together all her belongings—the clothes, the dishes, the furniture and cosmetic jars—all she had needed and would continue to use in the lonely privacy of her grave. Her gay jewels were wrapped and placed in their golden caskets, and her crowns lay empty in their lined boxes. In the nursery Nozme and Tiyi packed her old toys— the red and yellow leather balls, the spinning tops, the wooden dolls, and the little painted geese—and the tiny spoons with which she had been fed as a baby and the ribbons and kilts she had worn as a child. Her wigs were burned in a short and poignant ceremony, and at last the big rooms stood vacant and somehow transient, waiting for another occupant, another royal Heiress. The doors were locked and sealed, and the sunlight swam within, liquid gold flowing into every corner, Ra seeking his lost Daughter.
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