In the summer such a walk would have been torture, but at this time of the year it was a pleasant jaunt. The litter swayed along under their gold-tasseled canopies, the road running straight and true to the little pass in the rocks that slowly drew nearer. Suddenly they were traveling over rock, in deep shadow, and just as suddenly they were free to look out upon the village of Cusae. There was not much to see. A few mud huts, inhabited, for smoke rose in lazy spirals from the roofs; struggling fields marked by scraggly thorns and stunted acacia and palms; the ruins of stone houses once inhabited by the rich, who had deserted the town with the troubled times of occupation. Thothmes spoke, and they walked on, for on the edge of the settlement a little temple lay, its six pillars touching the blue sky with delicate fingers, gleaming white in the morning light. The walls of its outer court lay in ruin, the stones jutting out of the windswept grasses like the bare and broken bones of the earth itself. Within the line of the wall Hatshepsut could see what once had been a garden, now only a collection of dry sticks, and a matted brown carpet of dead lawns.
**I will wait for you here," Thothmes said. The procession came to a halt. ''Go forward, for that is the temple of Hathor, and to her you owe homage."
Obediently Hatshepsut slid off her litter and left them. The sand was hot to her feet and hard to struggle through. But before long the ground grew firm, and she knew that beneath her lay an avenue, long buried. She soon passed the doors of the outer court, which lay half buried in sand, and entered the hall. The paving stones were cracked and heaved asunder, the desert thorns thrust up between them; and all around lay broken columns, the colors faded to a dirty gray or muddy yellow, chipped and eaten by the passing years. She picked her way toward the sanctuary and the white pillars, but as she drew nearer, she saw that the pillars were a mockery, a false and heartbreaking travesty of what had been, for behind them was nothing, only empty desert, shaking in the sun.
She turned, near tears, feeling the infinite, pathetic loneliness of the place. Someone shyly touched her hand. She looked down. Four children had crept after her and stood gazing at her with the wide, unblinking stare of the very young. One had a crude bow fashioned from papyrus, and another had made a spear of a thorn branch and had tipped it with wood. All were thin. Their bones stuck out of their bodies like the jagged stones that lay about them, and they were the color of the brown, withered, unidentifiable dead plants under their feet. The little girl who had touched her drew back, her finger creeping into her grubby mouth. Hatshepsut wanted to laugh in spite of herself. ''What are you children doing
here?" she asked them severely. ''Do you not know that this is a holy place?"
They continued to watch her uncomprehendingly, until one of the boys spoke. "We come here to play," he answered defiantly. 'This is our garrison, and we are defending it to the death, for Pharaoh. Have you ever seen Pharaoh?" he finished, noting the fine linen, the jeweled sandals.
Before Hatshepsut could reply, the same little girl tugged at her kilt. "I know why you are here," she whispered. "Have you come to see the pretty lady?"
Hatshepsut looked into the wide, innocent eyes and repressed an instinct to reach for her amulet. She nodded. "Yes, I have. Can you take me to her?"
The child reached up a dusty hand, and Hatshepsut's closed around it. Together they walked back to the outer court. The girl picked her way unerringly through the tangle of stone and brush and stopped at last in a corner where a portion of the wall was still standing, one stone holding up the others. "There she is," the girl lisped and ran back to her friends.
Hatshepsut bent in wonderment. At her feet lay a crude basket, containing the remains of a food oflEering: dry bread, wrinkled fruit, a withered lotus blossom. Against the wall, hidden by fallen masonry, was the Goddess Herself, still arrayed in blue and red and yellow, smiling fixedly into Hatshepsut's startled eyes, her cow's horns rising like wands. One was still encased in gold. Hatshepsut turned swiftly, but the children had run away. She fell to the earth and kissed the feet of Hathor, her heart warming toward the woman who came still to perform lonely homage, leaving her pitiful offerings for the gentle, smiling Goddess. She sat back and began the prayers, the words coming to her tongue with difficulty, for she had not prayed to Hathor since her childhood, when she doubted that she would grow tall and beautiful. She asked for patience and for the blessing of the Goddess on her reign. Hathor, with her soft, bovine smile, seemed to be forbidding all worry and all preoccupations. "Make me beautiful even as you are beautiful, and I will lift that which is fallen and restore the priests and bring incense again to glorify you," Hatshepsut promised. She rose, kissed the feet once more, and left the court, walking swiftly.
Beyond the outer door the children huddled, waiting, and on an impulse she stopped.
"Would you like to meet Pharaoh?" she asked.
They goggled at her, speechless. Then the boy spoke up. "You are making us to look silly!" he said. "What would Pharaoh be doing out here, far from his throne and his crown?"
"Nevertheless, he is here," she retorted, sweeping down an arm and holding him. "Gome with me."
With many dubious looks and whisperings they followed her. In a matter of minutes Thothmes saw her striding toward him, accompanied by a rabble of peasant children. He got off his litter with a grunt.
''Father/' she shouted, ''here are the children of Cusae to meet with Pharaoh!*' She came up smiling and panting, her hair in disarray and her kilt smudged. Behind her the children looked up at this short, mighty man with the black, glittering eyes, hanging back, until they saw that he did indeed wear the flaming Uraeus of royalty on his leather helmet.
"Get down. Get down!" the boy whispered fiercely to the others. "It is indeed he!" They knelt as they did in their games, faltering, not knowing quite what to do.
Hatshepsut bent and patted their heads. "Up now. This is Pharaoh. You can tell your mothers and your fathers of this day!" She was excited and flushed.
Thothmes laughed at her in spite of himself. "I send you to seek the Goddess, and you find a gaggle of Nile geese!" he growled. "Well, all of you, what say you now? Here, boy, show me your bow." With one stride he was upon the lad and had swept it out of his hand. "You made it yourself?"
The child gulped. "Yes, Mighty One."
"Hmm. Can you shoot it?"
"There is something wrong with it. I cannot get the right wood, and the arrow will not fly far."
Thothmes flung it to the ground. "Kenamun!" he barked. His captain detached himself from the group of smiling soldiers and came forward, bowing. "Give the boy your bow and your arrows."
The articles were handed over, and the child's eyes grew wide as he took them with eager, trembling fingers. The bow was as tall as he, but he plucked the string, and it hummed. "Oh, thank you, Mighty Horus, Majesty!" he stammered.
Thothmes smiled. "Remember this day," he said, "and when you grow older, you may bend that bow in my service. Now I want lunch," he said, and the litter bearers jumped forward. "Come, Hatshepsut, before the whole population rushes forth to denude my men of all they have."
They got back on the litters and set off. When Hatshepsut looked back some minutes later, she could see the children standing as she had left them, four tiny dots against a wide horizon, the pillars of Hathor gleaming white behind them.
"Today we come to the great plains of the pyramids," Thothmes said as they stood together in the bow.
Two weeks of steady sailing were behind them. The trip had begun to
acquire the properties of a pleasant dream for Hatshepsut: days of sunbathing, eating, and desultory conversation while the country slipped by; nights of deep slumber, rocked by the lapping waves in some hidden, deserted bay. it was indeed a beautiful land, her Egypt, a green and fragrant flower, a gem, more beautiful than she had ever imagined. If they had turned back now, she would have been satisfied.
Thothmes continued. ''It is this plain, more than any other wonder, that I wish you to see, for only then will you feel
your destiny, Hatshepsut. You will be amazed. Your ancestors built on this plain, but I will say no more. Watch the western bank, and you will see the hills draw back and become invisible."
The morning wore on, and Hatshepsut wanted to go and sit down in the shade, but her father remained immobile, his face strangely still, gazing before him and to the west.
At last she could wait no longer and turned to him with a request to have a chair brought, but at that moment one of the sailors gave a shout.
Thothmes drew in his breath with a great hiss. **See, far to the west and yet on the horizon. It is the first!"
She looked. A shape loomed, small and far away, flat-topped, yet rising startlingly from the plain that had begun to open out. There was no cultivation here, no houses; only a straggling strip of green reedbeds ran between river and sand. The pyramid was like a boulder dropped from the sky. Chairs and parasols were brought, and they sat down but did not speak; the sailors and servants were silent, too. The shape came closer, became clearer, until nothing else in view mattered in the least. Hatshepsut could see that behind and beyond it others rose, still hazy and miles away, and an excitement began to grow within her. They were abreast of it, and she saw that it was surrounded by dry causeways and broken stone, its flat top and stubby feet somehow still speaking defiance to the havoc wreaked by weather and man.
''It was not always thus," Thothmes said as they passed it slowly. ''Once it was sheathed in the whitest of limestone and shone as the Sun in all his glory. None knows now what God lies buried there, but it is said that Senefru rests beneath the stone."
Another pyramid glided toward them, its peak sticking into the sky with a point like a lance. Hatshepsut held her breath. It did not seem to her that any man could build so, and the knowledge that these men who were more than men were her own ancestors stirred her profoundly. She remembered the little pyramid of Mentu-hotep-hapet-Ra, but against it these were crude giants, massive and infinitely strong.
As the boat glided past them, Thothmes said, "There is more to come.
You have seen but the beginning. From here to Memphis, a day's gentle sailing, the desert is thick with them, small and large. Quite a sight, is it not?"
He turned jocularly to his daughter, but she had not heard him. Her eyes followed the slow, majestic passing of the tombs, and her face was immobile.
They reached Memphis the same night but moored a little way upriver to sleep. By the time the anchors were cast, it was quite dark, and nothing more of the pyramids could be seen. But Hatshepsut could hear the city as she lay on her couch. The rattle of boats at the docks, the human hum, the cacophony of night sounds were becoming unaccustomed noises, and she could not sleep. Her father had told her little of the city, but she knew that it was beautiful and that it had once been the capital of Egypt when Buto, that oldest and most mysterious of cities, fell from favor. The sounds of it made her a little homesick for Thebes and her cool apartment and the faces she knew, and she turned restlessly under the warmth of her mantles. All at once she wondered how Senmut and Ta-kha'et the slave were. At that thought her mood lifted, and she laughed softly into the darkness. Her mind moved from Senmut and across the river to her valley, lying silent under the moon. She still did not know what to do there. The pyramids she had seen had jolted her into a new awareness of what could be accomplished, and she vowed that Senmut must equal the achievements of the gods for her. But how? And in what way? The sights of the day had drained her, and she wanted to sleep, for the next day she must put on royal robes once more and receive the homage of the Viceroy. But sleep escaped her.
When day dawned, she wrapped herself in her cloak and stepped out into a forest of gray-green date palms. She blinked in confusion, stepping to the side of the boat on chilled bare feet, but it was so: tree upon tree upon tree, wrapped in the mist of early morning. As she breathed the good smell of wet, growing things, the sun shook off its skirts of trailing mist and rose free, glinting on something white that she only vaguely glimpsed through the trees. Shivering, she backed into the cabin, closing the flap behind her, and stepping gratefully into the basin of hot water that her slave had prepared. She let herself be bathed. She had agreed to put on a sheath for this day, and after her bath she stood still while the girl slipped it over her head and smoothed it down her thighs. It was of white linen, stitched all over with golden leaves, and its thick border of layered gold brushed her ankles. She raised her arms, and the slave pulled the belt tight, a golden rope encrusted with large pieces of lapis lazuli and tasseled with gold thread. She sat while her makeup was applied: gold paint for her
eyelids, kohl to rim her eyes, henna for her lips and for the palms of her delicate hands. 1 ler hair was brushed, and the heavy ceremonial wig—a hundred long black braids that hung stiffly to her shoulders and brushed the back of her neck—was lifted and settled into place. She moved her head uneasily while her jewel box was brought to her. She lifted the lid and considered. She would have liked to have worn something light and pretty, the silver links perhaps, or the blue faience flowers, but she chose a golden breastplate: two royal Horus birds facing one another with the double crown on their heads, joined by serpents writhing about twin ankhs, the whole picked out in feldspar and carnelian and resting heavily on her breasts. For her arms there were bracelets of electrum, and for her head a small cap of gold tissue, covered in feathers of turquoise.
When she was dressed and her slave had put on her her sandals, she went and found Thothmes waiting for her and the boat already nearing the landing stage. He too was dressed for ceremony, in gold, soft blue, and white leather. His face was carefully made up, and he greeted her absently, his eyes on the solemn assembly of dignitaries that was ranged about the water steps. Behind them a broad avenue ran to the shining white wall enclosing the city and the bronze gate that now stood wide. Beyond that Hatshepsut could make out houses and obelisks and the gardens of a temple.
'Tou see the famous White Wall of Menes," Thothmes told her, ''and far to the rear the pylons of the home of the God Ptah's wife. We will dine this morning with the High Priest of Memphis, but before that we must go into the temple and do homage. How happy Thothmes would be to see this!"
Happy indeed, as I am, thought Hatshepsut, for she and Thothmes, despite their mutual dislike, shared in their worship of Sekhmet, the Lion-Goddess of Memphis.
They had arrived. The ramp was run out, and the horns sounded from the wall. She and Pharaoh walked slowly down it to the assembled priests, who were on their faces. They waited while Thothmes' Chief Herald called his titles, and afterward the High Priest crawled toward them and kissed their feet.
''Rise, fortunate one," Thothmes said. The High Priest got up, bowed again, and welcomed them gravely.
Hatshepsut saw that he was a young man, plump, with a crooked nose and lively eyes. He was very nervous, the perspiration gathering on his forehead under the headdress of his office.
Thothmes answered him. "Happy is this day! All Egypt rejoices at the progress of the Flower of Egypt, who goeth abroad in the land for a vision
of its delights. Happy is the city of Memphis, beloved of Ptah!" When he had finished, they followed the High Priest through the gates to a tumultuous welcome of shouts, waving arms, and kneeling people. The whole city seemed to be a festival. Children ran before them, covering the way with lotus blooms; and when Hatshepsut bent and picked one up, inhaling its scent and holding it in her hand, a great roar went up. It was a day like no other for the dwellers of the city. The God and his Daughter would be with them for two days, and in that time the shops and the school would remain shut, and everyone would keep to the streets in the hope that they might catch a glimpse of the tall, lithe Prince, whose beauty and arrogance were already the talk of Egypt, and of the man who had already become a beloved legend to his people.
The royal apartments in the temple complex had been opened and prepared, and in the banqueting chamber the sun poured onto the tables, the flowers, the carpets, the cushi
ons, and the cups for the wine. The slaves waited anxiously to serve, and the hot water steamed in the washing bowls. A brazier had been lit to disperse the night's chill, and Hatshepsut thankfully sank onto her cushion beside it, holding out her hands to the blaze. She had scorned a cloak on the boat so that the people could see her better, and now she was cold. After more speeches and prostrations a bell was rung, and breakfast commenced. Hatshepsut was delighted to see that all her favorite dishes were brought before her: cucumbers stuffed with fish, broiled goose in sauce, and salads of all the young shoots. She complimented the High Priest on his efficiency.
''What is your name?" she asked him.
'Ttahmes, Highness. My father is Pharaoh's Viceroy and was named for him, Thothmes."
'Tou must serve the wife of Ptah with diligence, else you would not have become High Priest."
The full face blushed, and Ptahmes bowed. ''I have done what is good in the eyes of the God, and he has rewarded me." He looked with frank curiosity upon the face that had been described to him in such detail by friends whose business took them to Thebes. While the full red mouth smiled openly at him and the eyes, blacker and more exotic than a summer night, looked into his, he thought how none of the descriptions had done her justice. There was so much of her that could only be appreciated in movement, the graceful raising of a hand, the gracious inclining of the tall neck. And when she spoke, her voice was pitched low, so that one listened more to the music than to the words.
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