beseechingly, and 1 liotlmics looked up at her. "Change nothing, Golden Horns! Do not meddle with Maat! War and nuirder will be the price!" Her voice rose and abruptly died, and the room fell silent.
Thothmes sipped the wine, savored the bouquet, and plunged his hands into the water bowl. He began to smile. He went to her couch and sat down heavily upon it and, with a peremptory wave of his arm, ordered her down beside him. She came, trembling, and he drew her head close to his and kissed her. "Shall we, then, make another royal daughter? Or a son? Shall 1 recall my sons from the desert and make them enemies one to another by cleaving them apart with the Crook and the Flail? Shall I make haste and take Thothmes and little Hat to the temple to be married?" His grip on her shoulder was no longer a caress, and his face hardened, but his anger was not directed at her. He looked to the shadowed corners of the room. "They thought to make of me a senile fool to be manipulated like a cowering Nubian eunuch.
"Well"—his grip relaxed, and he lay down, drawing her with him until they lay side by side on the golden bed—"I am Maat, gentle Aahmose, and only I. And while I live, Egypt and I are one. I have made my decision. Indeed, I made it weeks ago, while Neferu still lay in the House of the Dead. I will not have Thothmes, my brainless, soft, mother-loving son, to sit on my throne and govern my country into a shambles. And I will not put a painful, irksome bridle such as he on my little Hat. The chains she shall wear shall be golden. She is Maat. She, more than I, more than stupid Thothmes, is the Child of Amun. I will have her for Crown Prince, and I will have her tomorrow." He heaved himself up and rolled over. She quivered as she felt his weight. "The priests know what they can do with their objections. The people of Egypt love and honor me. They will do my will," he said, bringing his face close to hers.
Yes, she thought as he sought her lips again, yes, but when you are dead, Mighty One, what then?
Thothmes' announcement on the following day rocked the country as no event had done in two hundred years of occupation, war, and privation. The Royal Heralds sped north and south, dropping their news into the provincial cities and towns like human torches, igniting Memphis, Buto, Heliopolis, and sending the inhabitants running into the streets as if it were a gods' day. In the fields and on the farms, the peasants listened, shrugged, and bent to the sowing once more. The Cood Cod did what was right, and their interest ceased at that point. South in Nubia, west in the desert, the men of Kush and the nomad Shasu heard the news with wary ears, their noses set to sniff the wind of change blowing in Egypt,
whether it be the first stirrings of the death throe or a tightening of the grip of power. But in the palace the young Thothmes heard his father out in a stony silence, his handsome face betraying nothing of the unrest that now crystallized into hatred. Mutnefert, his fat mother, tore off her clothes and rolled in the dirt of the palace gardens, her hopes thwarted and her future uncertain.
Only Hatshepsut received the news without passion. She heard her father's words without expression, her wide, dark eyes on his face. She nodded coolly. ''I am now the Crown Prince Hatshepsut?''
'Tes."
''I will be Pharaoh?"
^Tes."
'Tou have the power to make it so?"
He smiled. 'Tes again."
''What of the priests?"
The question startled him. He looked down at her in her grubby kilt, the ribbon in her youth-lock undone, one tiny sandal unfastened, and felt a wave of affection mingled with awe. Sometimes she seemed unfathomable to him, not a child but one who communed directly with the God and carried his aura with her. He felt the will of her, the questing, unformed power in her, waiting for fruition, for purpose.
He answered her as if she were one of his ministers. ''I spoke with Menena in the night. He is not happy. In fact he is outraged, but I pointed out to him that it is my prerogative to put another High Priest in his place."
He had done more than threaten Menena, but he knew that to tell Hatshepsut the true cause of her sister's death would be to load the small brown shoulders with more grief than they could bear. Besides, he was reluctant to expose an affair so sordid that it could easily erupt into a major scandal. He only knew that his little flower must not suffer, although he felt guilty of his own relief at Neferu's passing.
A priest of the temple had come to him in the early hours, whispering of secret meetings at night under the trees, Menena and another, and the bribery of sorcerers. Thothmes had listened with satisfaction and had sent for Menena. He had looked at the face of his one-time friend with loathing and some admiration, for Menena had not betrayed his fear by so much as the twitch of an eyebrow.
The High Priest had made his prostration and was told to rise. He had waited politely, standing with his eyes fixed on the wall somewhere beyond Thothmes' helmet, his hands hidden in his robe. For the last time Thothmes saw the man who had once been father, brother, and confi-
dante to him, the man to whom he had given great power out of gratitude and love, the man who had been, in the end, corrupted by it. Thothmes' regret had welled up and then evaporated.
"I know all," he had said quietly, his voice the gentle purr that always sent his servants scurrying. "How clumsy of you, old friend! With Neferu-khebit dead and my son married to little Hat, great powers would come to the priests of the temple in the event of my own untimely passing." He had strode to Menena and had thrust his face so close that Menena was forced to meet his eye. ''And what of my own passing, old crow?" Thothmes had hissed. ''Were you ready to connive at my own death also? Speak! Speak to me if you value your life!"
Menena had stepped back and dropped his gaze. He smiled, ''Mighty Bull, as the God you are all-seeing and all-knowing. What need have I of words? And if I speak, do I not bow my head to the executioner?"
Thothmes had glared at him for a moment more before exclaiming in disgust, "You priests! You scheming, glib hypocrites! And to think that you—you of all my servants—should come to this!" His voice rose, and the veins across his forehead bulged. "You were my friend! My ally in all adversity when we were young together! But you have become a snake, Menena, a foul, slimy, evil thing. You and I have no more to say to each other. Because of our former friendship, I will not have you killed and I will not have your name dishonored forever. You are exiled. In two months, be gone. I, Thothmes, Beloved of Horus, order it to be so until time is ended." He had paused and walked away, standing by his table and staring moodily out into the darkness. "Take your stinking friends with you," he muttered. Suddenly Menena chuckled. Thothmes looked up, startled, his face brick red with new rage, but Menena was already rising from his bow and sidling toward the door.
"Majesty, all that you say is true, every word. But do not think less of me than you think of yourself. For behold! Have I not unwittingly done you a great favor? My heart may be black and consumed with ambition, as you say, but what of your own? And on whose behalf do you growl and shake? On behalf of Thothmes, your son?" He had snickered again and sailed out.
Thothmes had grasped the wine jug and flung it at him as he closed the door. The cedarwood had cracked and little flakes of golden inlay had floated to the floor. He had sat down heavily, panting and trembling. I am growing old, he had thought.
Now, remembering that painful moment, anger quickened his heartbeat.
"The priests mill about, but their duty is to the God, and you are the Ghild of the God. Is it not so?"
She smiled, he smiled, and they held hands and walked in the garden, admiring the flowers. Thothmes felt ridiculously young again, his head lightened of its load, and for Thothmes the Younger he spared not a thought. I will give him a wife, two wives if he likes, and make him a Viceroy somewhere. But he shall not have my Hat, he told himself happily. He knew such thoughts slipped from beneath the iron discipline of statesmanship and did not belong in a Pharaoh's head, but for once he had followed his heart instead of his head, and he was glad. He would teach her to rule, and together they would go on.
He said suddenly, ''Is
there anything special that you desire, Hatshep-sut? Any favor I may perform? I have not put a happy or an easy load upon you."
She thought for a moment, chewing a stalk of grass. Her face lightened. ''A favor? Yes, father, for I owe someone a great favor and am not sure how to pay it. It would be so much easier for you to do."
''What can you possibly owe to anyone?"
"There is a young we'eb priest who did me a kindness a little while ago. Could I ask him if there is anything he needs?"
"Certainly not! What have you to do with a peasant?" He began to scowl, his foot beat a rhythm on the brown path, and the servants hovered, ready for flight or blows.
Hatshepsut spat out the mangled piece of grass and faced him, her hands on her hips, matching his frown. One of the attending girls tittered.
"You promised me a favor, and you have heard what I desire. Pharaoh does not go back on his word. Are all priests not worthy of your glance. Mighty Horus? And this little we'eb, this peasant, did me a great service, such a service that if he had been a noble in your house, you would immediately have made him an Erpa-ha Prince!"
Thothmes' foot was stilled. His eyebrows shot up. "Indeed? An Erpa-ha? Such generosity! For such an honor he must have saved the life of the Crown Prince, at least!"
She stamped her foot to hide the shock of his shrewd probing. "May I speak with him? Order him to my room? Please?"
"This is most interesting, little girl. I think by all means you may summon him. Do it tomorrow, and I shafl come and grace this—this peasant with my august presence."
"No!" She swallowed, furious that now, as on that dark night when the khamsin blew, she was in dangerous and unpredictable waters. "He would be afraid if you were present, father. He would not speak, and then I should never know what desire lies closest to his heart."
Thothmes shook his head."Do what you will!" he replied brusquely.
**but you must couic to nie afterward and tell me all that passes. Most strange, a Prince and a we'eb priest."
He swung back to their walk, and she trotted along behind him. In truth she had forgotten all about Senmut until her father had begun to talk of favors, but now she was excited, and she began to plan her audience. Suddenly she stopped short. She could remember the voice—rough, almost manly, probing, kind—it made her feel warm to think of it, but his face was utterly gone from her mind.
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The opposite was true for Senmut, scrubbing in the temple on his hands and knees. His days had been harried, his nights haunted and dream-ridden. It was always the Princess that he saw, pointing an accusing finger at him while the fearsome Followers of His Majesty rushed in to arrest him. But as the period of mourning for poor Neferu had continued and nothing happened, Senmut was not able to relax, for his culpability in the face of the poisoning was undeniable and kept him miserable. But at least he had begun to go about his duties without the tension of impending arrest making his spine prickle, his days running together, one like the next.
I have been a fool, he had thought, imagining that somehow I could be more than a servant in the temple. There was a time in this country when even a peasant had a chance of something better, but now only priests, princes, and nobles rule, and I must put all daydreams behind me and settle to my humble duties.
As he had told himself these sensible, calming words, ambition had stirred in him again, and he had sat back on his heels, mopping his forehead and groaning aloud. It was no good. He would never be the model of a little we'eb priest, as his father had hoped, nor could he face the thought of applying for study as a scribe. The incident with Hatshep-sut had scared him, and a few days after her escapade he had almost gone to the Chief Scribe of the Temple and applied for admittance, but on the very threshold of the great man's door he had paused, then turned and run back to his cell in horror.
Keep dreaming, his heart told him. Keep hoping for the luck that only the gods can bestow. And keep hoping also that the little Princess is light of mind and will forget that a peasant presumed.
Finally, he stood with his fellows to watch the royal family return from the Necropolis. Benya was with him. That irrepressible young man had returned from Assuan the week before, knowing nothing of the tragedy that had overtaken the palace. He had been supposed to go north with the new-quarried stone, upriver to Medinet Habu, where Pharaoh was building, but nothing could move in the months of mourning for the
Princess. So he and Senmut had ranged throughout Thebes, drinking, talking to the traders and artisans in the markets, standing in the metal-works of the temple to watch the white-hot electrum being mixed and poured, observing the attendants hammering the precious metal into sheets with which to cover the vessels of the God. They could not go to the jewelers, but they spent many hours at the stonemasons' yard, both eager for knowledge. They fondled the granite and limestone that waited to be formed. They manned the huge saws and sweated happily over the jeweled drills that bit so satisfyingly to expose pink and gray marbled convolutions, crystals that sparked in the sunlight, soft alabaster that glowed like sugared honey.
The engineers knew Benya, his thirst for the heart of each rock, his ready wit, and his inexhaustible capacity for work. But Senmut asked questions they could not answer, and his intense probing tired them. They could tell him of the veins in a rock face, and where to drive the wet wooden pegs to cause a true and proper split, or which stone would stand the strain of a certain type of construction and which would crack or crumble; but of ideas, conceptions, perspective, innovations, proportions, all that followed their work or preceded it, they knew nothing.
*Tou need to talk to one of those,'' he was told by one irritated workman who indicated with a jerk of his fat elbow the group of tall, white-clad men in short wigs who were gathered in the shade at the far end of the pit, talking over a mountain of scrolls. 'They'll tell you all you want to know." He laughed.
Senmut looked and turned away. Architects, the most respected, honored, and lauded men in Egypt. The great and legendary Ineni spoke with the One every day. He held so many posts that he needed his scribe to tell him what they were. But for Senmut there would be no welcoming smile, no sharing.
So he and Benya learned of Thebes. Benya sometimes went oflF on his own, loving the rough, pulsing night life of the brothels, but to Senmut women were still only his mother, his cousin Mut-ny, and the little beggar girls, thin as papyrus sticks, who threw mud at him in the street. He had no time to discover sexuality and not much inclination. His was a sensuous personality, his appreciation one of lines and curves, the swing of hair, sunlight on white teeth. His strivings were still introverted, obscure. He sat alone in his cell at night, thinking of the buildings he would erect: the deathless, breath-catching monuments that would say, ''I, Senmut, did this," to the end of time.
Vain meanderings, he told himself. Sick and fevered dreams.
Two days after Neferu's interment, he and Benya sat under the trees beside the pylon that marked the entrance to the temple. The morning was fresh, and the smell of wet earth was in the air. Spring was slipping into summer, and in the grass around the two boys the daisies and bright cornflowers nodded together. Along the Nile the reeds rose green in the marshes, and the trees—date, pomegranate, tamarisk, the fragrant persea —showed cool green leaves to the new blue sky. Soon the granaries would be full again, and the women would pick the flax and the cotton and begin to make clothes.
Benya had come to say good-bye. Work had begun again on the temple at Medinet Habu, and he had packed his bag and sought out Senmut while the boats were being loaded with equipment and the stone was being settled and strapped to the rafts.
''How long will you be gone this time?" Senmut asked him. He was dismayed to face again his solitary round of chores.
Benya flung himself down beside his friend, the wind ruffling his shining black hair. He lay back with a sigh of satisfaction. ''What a morning! It will be good on the river today, nothing to do b
ut sit for hours and hours and watch the water. I do not know when I shafl see you again. Perhaps when the construction crews move in, in a couple of months' time. There is still much cutting to do, and my master hates a job that is hurried. When the heat comes and the peasants arrive to labor, then I shall come sailing back."
Senmut looked with envy at the lean, healthy body and the contented, smiling face. "And what shall I do until then? I suppose I ought to go home for a few days and see my family," he finished doubtfully.
Benya shuddered. "What? Leave Thebes—beautiful, ravishing Thebes in the summer—for a farm? Senmut, you have a disease!"
"Thebes has not yet ravished me," Senmut retorted sourly, and, as if in instant derision, the horns atop the temple brayed rudely, signifying that it was the middle of the morning. "I wonder if I would have done better if I had stayed with my parents and Senmen and broken my back in the fields instead of on Mighty Amun's floor."
"O Mighty Amun," Benya intoned with a laugh, his eyes closed, "may Senmut get off your floor and onto your knees. Oooooh, King of Gods."
In spite of himself Senmut laughed, and his mood lightened. Dejection was not natural to him after all.
"What you need is a pretty, singing girl," Benya went on, "to amuse you and flatter you and keep your mind on something more than soap and water. I know just the one. A delicate dish belonging to that greasy Libyan
—what was his name? For a paltry fee I could arrange. ..." He chattered on, unaware that he had lost his friend.
Senmut had had a sudden picture of the Princess Neferu and her ladies, walking to the temple, sistrums in hand, to do homage to the God. Am I never to be free of her? he wondered. As Benya stopped talking and rose in one lithe, easy motion, Senmut leaned against a tree and looked out upon the gardens toward the guarded path to the palace.
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