Child of the morning

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-

  For Hatshepsut it was a time of extreme boredom interspersed with bouts of extreme grief. She spent a great deal of time in the Royal Zoo, watching the baby fawn grow, feeding the birds, and walking with Neba-

  iium from cage to cage as he watered and fed his charges. She sat with him on his little lawn in the shadow of the walls, shredding the little white and yellow daisies that sprinkled the grass and asking him abont all things that grew or flew or prowled in the land. He was a simple man, solitary and happy and full of the knowledge of natural things. His heart went out to the little girl who seemed to be suddenly adrift full of uncertainty. He spoke to her of the habits of birds and the kinds of flowers and their care. He told her of the hiding places of the desert deer, and she listened eagerly. Sometimes she would come to his door wanting only to be silent, and he would sit and watch her impassive face and restless fingers, feeling something of the pain and doubt inside her as he felt the needs of his animals, but he could offer only his company and the warm goat's milk he collected every day. Often she came alone, without guard or slave. On these occasions he prayed that the One had granted her permission to wander as she chose, but he doubted it and swallowed his fear. She needed him in an odd way. He remembered Neferu and was silent also.

  There was no school. Royal Tutor Khaemwese sat in a corner of the gardens and slept in the sun. Young Thothmes spent his time with his bewildered and angry mother, and the nobles' sons, who normally would have shared the schoolroom with Hatshepsut and Thothmes, stayed home, enjoying a holiday.

  Aahmose kept to her rooms, eating alone, with only Hetephras to serve her. She spoke to no one of her private grief. She had been born into palace society, her father had been Pharaoh and his father before him, and she knew well what was required of her. Royal death was like royal life, fraught with sudden changes of fortune and direction. She prayed a great deal to her beloved benefactress, Isis, kneeling before the shrine she had had set up many years ago in her bedroom. Often it was for little Hatshepsut that she prayed, not Neferu, who surely even now accompanied Amun-Ra in his Heavenly Barque and needed the prayers of no one. For her small daughter she carried anxiety like a new child in the womb, and its stirrings filled her with an uncharacteristic dismay.

  As for the Mighty Bufl of Maat, he took to pacing the halls and corridors of his domain in the middle of the night, discomfiting servants and startling the guards who watched over the silent, dead hours. In the day he himself went to the temple to perform the sacrifices often done by his priestly substitute. He knew now what he wanted, and it was not that Thothmes should rule. He had debated, during his nocturnal ram-blings, whether or not to recall his sons Wadjmose and Amun-mose from the border and put the crown on one of their heads, but he had finally rejected that idea. Both men were in their forties and had been soldiers

  since their early years. Not that that mattered. A soldiering Pharaoh meant a strong and decisive rule. But he recoiled sentimentally from the necessity of marrying one of them to Hatshepsut, a girl of ten, although that solution was better than the mad scheme with which he toyed. Besides, both men had wives and families on estates outside Thebes; both men had been away from any politicking for many years; and—and— And it is not my will, he told himself as he knelt before his God in the darkness of the great sanctuary. My will is also the will of Amun, but to will is a long way from making to be. He continued to make offerings and to measure the echoing halls of his palace with steady feet.

  At last, in the middle of the month of Mesore, when the river had begun to shrink again and the rich, black land rose in its place, the funeral cortege gathered on the east bank to take Neferu home. It was a silent company that watched her coffin being hauled aboard the waiting barge along with everything that had linked her with life. The morning was fresh and sunny, and the air smelt of wet earth. The river ran fast, and already young green things were pushing through the waterlogged ground in the gardens. The priests, mourners, and family embarked for the short trip to the west with their eyes downcast, each wrapped in his or her own thoughts. On the far bank the sleds and oxen waited, motionless, and as the barges drew swiftly to their mooring, the poles of the boat slaves gleaming wet in the sun as they rose and fell, Hatshepsut began to tremble.

  The days of mourning had brought her a precarious peace, and she had begun to feel at ease with life again, but the sight of the huge red beasts, held still by the unmoving and somehow sinister servants of the Necropolis, filled her with the same panic that had catapulted her from the dying Neferu's side and into the Sacred Lake. Her fingers sought the warm comfort of her mother's hand.

  The boats bumped the bank gently, the ramps were run out, and Hatshepsut, Aahmose, and Pharaoh stood waiting while the coflSn and chests were dragged ashore.

  Mutnefert and her son stood a little apart. Hatshepsut was aware of the cautious, sidelong glances young Thothmes kept sending her way, but her anxiety deadened the stab of annoyance she felt. She deliberately turned her back on him and pressed closer to Aahmose.

  Thothmes watched her sullenly. His mother had told him that now that Neferu was dead, he would have to marry Hatshepsut if he wanted to be King. He had been disgusted, but the mood of rebellion had not lasted long. As usual he had hidden it beneath the soft cushion of his sluggish

  thoughts, and only his snlkincss remained visible.

  Miitncfcrt was almost unrecognizable on this day. She was swathed in volununous folds of blue, unadorned by jewels. She watched her royal husband covertly, a glint in her eyes. She was confident that before too manv days had passed her son would be Crown Prince and would easily subdue the streak of wildness in young Hatshepsut once the two were wed. The death of the Princess was not such a disaster after all, she thought, though naturally it was a pity. Mutnefert knew that Neferu would have been a far more dutiful and biddable wife than Hatshepsut was likely to be, but it could not be helped. It simply meant that they must all have patience. Nothing had been lost but time.

  The funeral procession formed. First the dozen slaves, carrying on their shoulders pink alabaster jars containing food and precious unguents, then more slaves, with Neferu's clothes and jewels in long cedarwood boxes. The sledge on which the four canopic jars stood came next, the jars containing the dead girl's viscera, each stoppered with a likeness of one of the four Sons of Horus. Before it would walk a priest, chanting, and behind it would come the sledge holding the coffin itself, surrounded by priests. There was some whispering as the procession formed, and Hatshepsut went with Aahmose and Pharaoh to stand behind the coffin, still clutching tightly to her mother's reassuring hand.

  Her grandmother's funeral had not been like this. She could just remember that under the mourning wails, prescribed by custom, the atmosphere had been happy—the escorting to rest of an old and noble woman who had lived long and fully and who now wished to go to her God. But here, waiting while the ladies of the harem in blue mourning dresses took their places at the end of the straggling cortege, feeling the sun gain strength, she sensed true sorrow and regret for the girl who had been little more than a child and whose days had held more than their share of misery.

  Menena came and bowed before Thothmes, and Thothmes grimly gave the sign for the ceremony to commence. The oxen strained in front of Hatshepsut, and the sledge started forward with a jerk. She began to walk, hearing behind her the high, grief-filled keening as the women scooped up earth, placed it on their heads, and wept. She kept her eyes on the heels of the priest in front, not wishing to watch the swaying coffin, not wishing to think of what was within. Above them all, in the high, blue sky, two hawks wheeled, wings outstretched to catch the gliding winds, their cries the only sounds above the faint murmurs of the priests. All along the funeral route the people of the Necropolis crowded and stood silent, bowing like wheat in the wind as Thothmes passed but otherwise remain-

  ing stiff. Hatshepsut saw them from the corner of her eyes, white robes stirring in the breeze, a population of ghouls. All at once the voice of N
eferu's own priest, the young and vigorous Ani, arose, clear as the notes of a trumpet on the morning air. ''Cry joy for her, for she hath captured the Horizon!" There was triumph in his song, and a greater sorrow than anyone else could feel. As the others responded, ''She lives; she lives forever!" Hatshepsut began to cry. She felt her other hand suddenly enfolded in her father's big fist, but she was not comforted.

  At the gaping entrance to the tomb, where servants waited to assist, the procession came to a halt. The crowds had been left behind. The women fell silent but for a low, broken babble, and the coffin was lifted to the ground and stood upright. For one heart-stopping moment Hatshepsut, looking up, fancied that the golden lid would swing back on its hinges and Neferu herself would step forth, but nothing happened. The hawks screamed once more and wheeled away toward the sun, and the sem-priests gathered in a group to pour the libations. Menena came forward, Sacred Knife in hand, and the Ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth began.

  For four days and nights the cortege camped outside the little temple and the raw, new hole in the cliffside. The blue and white tents flapped and tugged gently at their pegs like ungainly, tethered birds; and hour after hour the clustered priests murmured, censers cupped in their hands, the gray smoke rising in hazy columns that wavered and disappeared into the limpid desert air.

  Hatshepsut sat cross-legged in the shade of her mother's canopy, her chin in her hand, gazing moodily into space or watching the red sides of the cliff for signs of animal life. At that time of the year the slopes should have yielded glimpses of young deer or ibex, crane or swallow, or even the sleek, undulating shadow of the mountain lion, but the sullen rocks remained silent and at midday began to shimmer. The girl crept away to cool herself in the river. Twice one of the hawks found her and circled slowly, warily, while she knelt and did him homage, Howatit the Mighty, Lord of the Sky.

  She thought of her sister as his lazy wings beat the air in great circles. Neferu had also lain by the lake and watched the sky turn from blue to red and the birds gather in the evening. Had he come to her, too, watching her with his black, unwinking eye, waiting? Hatshepsut did not fear him, here in the dazzle of a spring day. As he screamed once and flew toward the palace, she rose and shook the water from her feet, padding through the marshy ground, bemused. It did not seem possible that

  anything conld suffer or age or die in the elanior of spring, and she walked hack to the tents and to the quiet, soft-moving people with a tired ache in iicr Pcrha|)s iier fatiier was right. Perhaps Neferu had been weak.

  The coffin still stood against the rock, and the priests still sang. She went to her tent and lay down, and the tears ran down her hot cheeks. She felt altogether alone.

  Finally, at sunset on the fourth day, the people gathered outside the grave, and the priests and attendants of the Necropolis took Neferu into the mountain. Thothmes, Aahmose, and Hatshepsut followed, shivering a little as the chill darkness welcomed them, their arms full of flowers, their feet bare. The narrow passage ran straight for a while and then plunged downward and began to twist. The grunts of the perspiring men, the flickering light of the torches, and the slow, reluctant grind of the coflSn on the sandy floor brought a rising beat of panic to Hatshepsut's throat.

  She walked last, but for a servant, and her shadow leaped and gyrated on the rough walls around her. She fixed her gaze on her mother's gently swaying hips, and when they reached the cold burial chamber at last, she was taken by surprise. Aahmose picked a petal off her linen and let it fall, turning and smiling in sympathy, but Hatshepsut was looking around with dismay. Neferu was being lifted into her stone bed, and the men stood ready to seal it shut. All around her lay her treasures, already strange, already gray with the color of death, formal and oddly untouchable, as if imbued with a hostile and jealous life of their own. The party waited, Hatshepsut not daring to move for fear that she should touch something and trigger—what? The creaking of the coffin lid? The thrusting of now-withering hands against the frail wall of the bandages?

  Finally the men stepped back, and Menena intoned the last ritual, his voice losing its sonorous, weighty tone and falling flat and muffled in the solemn, waiting stillness. Aahmose felt her eyes begin to prick but dared not cry. Thothmes stood as if the magic of the tomb had turned him into the same stone from which the huge, painted guardians were carved; but his mind was ranging far and feverishly, and behind his expressionless eyes he hunted, scenting his prey. The High Priest fell silent, turned, bowed, and left them. Thothmes strode forward and laid the flowers on his daughter. Aahmose followed suit, and they went into the passage.

  Hatshepsut was alone. It was her turn now. She approached Neferu, conscious all at once that the quality of the stillness had changed, become

  impatient, as if poised on the brink of some terrible, dumb outburst, and she was afraid. *Tou are not really dead, are you, Neferu?'' she whispered. Behind her the slave holding the last friendly light shuffled uneasily. She flung the flowers to the floor in a shower of green and pink and ran after Pharaoh, cafling his name in the pressing darkness.

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  They returned to the palace with great relief, crossing the river hurriedly and scattering to their rooms, hungry for warmth and food and diversions. Thothmes, Aahmose, and Hatshepsut dined together in Aah-mose's chambers, sitting on cushions scattered around the floor, surrounded by many lamps, and eating heartily, the slaves gliding back and forth over the cool tiles with wine and roast goose and sweet, hot water. Even Thothmes himself unbent now that the mourning was over. In the morning he would send for his spies and the ferreting would begin, but now he smiled and teased them, looking upon them with the fond eyes of a simple family man.

  For Hatshepsut the dark mysteries receded. Neferu was gone. It was time to look forward again, to school and her friends and to Nebanum and the animals. When the meal was over, her mother sent for the musician who had played so engagingly upon the strange new lute, and the woman came and showed the little girl how to make a melody. Hatshepsut was delighted. ''I must have one for my own!" she said. ''And you must come to the nursery every evening and teach me some more! I would like to learn the barbaric and marvelous songs of your country. Will that be acceptable?'' She turned to Thothmes, who nodded indulgently.

  *'Do what you like,'' he replied. ''As long as you are diligent in your lessons and obey Nozme, you can have a thousand interests. Go now," he said to the woman, and she bowed and blushed, walking to the door with her lute under her arm. "Fine people," Thothmes remarked to Aahmose. "In spite of the taxes my nomarchs levy, they still find time to make most marvelous music. There are northerners singing and playing in every beerhouse in Thebes now, and blind Ipuky is also taking lessons on this lute. Well, Hatshepsut"—he rose from his table, and she rose, too—"back to school tomorrow. Sleep well."

  She bowed, making a face. "And back to lazy Thothmes!" she groaned. "I would rather be hunting on the marshes with you this spring, O my father, than sitting beside that grumpy, boring boy."

  A look of satisfaction brushed Thothmes' face. "Is that so? And would you also rather have the reins of the chariot in your grasp than the reed pen?"

  Her eyes flashed with excitement. ''I would! Oh, I would! How wonderful that would be!"

  *'And what of the reins of government, My Little Flower?" he went on. Aahmose smothered an exclamation and sat upright. ''What of a country on which to carve your name, Horus fledgling?" He was half smiling, the heavy eyes lidded, and she looked at him with astonishment.

  'There are many things I do not understand, father, but this is one thing I am beginning to learn. A woman cannot rule. A woman"—here she glanced at her mother, who carefully avoided her eye—"is never Pharaoh."

  "Why not?"

  "Now that is something I really do not understand!" She laughed. Then she sidled up to him, stroking his arm. "May I learn to handle the horses? And cast the throwing-stick?"

  "I do not see why a few sim
ple lessons could not be tried. The throwing-stick first, for the horses need a strong wrist."

  She danced to the door and to Nozme, waiting outside. "Thothmes will be angry! He will be so cross! Thank you. Mighty Horus. You will not be disappointed in me."

  They listened to her excited babbling and Nozme's intermittent comments until the sounds faded. When it was quiet, Aahmose turned to her royal husband. "Great Pharaoh, I have upon occasion, because of my position, been allowed to offer you an opinion. May I do so now?"

  Thothmes regarded her with wine-misted affection. He nodded. "Speak. You know how I value your words." He picked out a nut with blunt fingers and tossed it into his mouth.

  Aahmose left the floor and settled herself into a chair. "I do not know your mind on this subject of the accession. True, I did not know it before, but while Neferu lived, there was no problem. Thothmes would reign, with her as his Consort, in the manner and tradition of our forefathers and in the Way of Maat. But suddenly nothing is easy. Egypt is left with a royal son but no daughter of an age to legitimize his claims, for surely little Hatshepsut is too young to marry. And while we wait, you, my dear husband, grow older." She hesitated, twisting her hands together nervously while he crunched the nut audibly and stared into space. When he made no comment, she continued, her voice high and her words hurried. "Tell me your thoughts. Noble One! I suffer! I know how you see Thothmes. I know what a disappointment it is to you to have such a one for an only son, and Wadjmose and Amun-mose grown men with lives and families far from Thebes. Will you recall one or the other? You cannot, surely, be thinking of putting the Double Crown on Hatshepsut's head! The priests would not allow it!" Suddenly she flung out her arms