The day was fine and hot, and already the people of Thebes lined the road to the temple, the soldiers in full regalia having already taken up positions to guard the royal progress. The Imperial flags flew all over the city, and boats from Memphis and Hermonthis, Assuan and Nubia, Buto and Heliopolis crowded the wharfs with their cargoes of dignitaries and nobles. All the apartments in the palace were full of visitors. The Viceroys and the Governors of conquered nations filled the halls with their strange slaves and odd languages, and over all expectancy hung like a cloak.
Hatshepsut nodded and left the water, standing while she was toweled dry and then lying on the table to be oiled and massaged. Her Steward Amun-hotpe arrived with her morning cup and made his report. Everything was going smoothly. Her hairdresser and her tiring-woman waited in the anteroom.
Her father was being dressed in his own chambers, and in the apart-
ments of the wives and concubines of Pharaoh, Mutnefert fluttered here and there, eating nervously, her jewels strewn over her couch as she tried to decide what to wear. She had recovered from her disappointment. Indeed, even if she had not, this day was a festival not to be missed by anyone who was anyone, and she was ready for peace once more. Thothmes, her son, sat in his own small apartment, talking to his scribe. In the months of his enforced northern tour he had had time to think, and he had decided that no end would be gained by sulks and outraged silences. He, like his mother, had put aside bitterness; but unlike her, he was biding his time. His trip had changed him. Some of the fat had been burned from him by fiery days always on the move, and away from his mother, his women, and his fine foods he learned a dangerous patience. He had been thwarted, but it would not happen again. He would wait, for years if necessary, but he would be Pharaoh. His sister would not stop him. He brooded even on this, her coronation day, but whereas his emotions had once shown on his face, now he chatted amiably with the scribe while his thoughts ran on of their own accord.
Hatshepsut sat in her loose gown while her hair was dressed carefully, pulled back from her face and piled high so that the crown would sit on her head easily. She should have been shaved, as every pharaoh was, and received the crown bald, but she had rebelled at this, and her father had agreed to let her keep the heavy, blue-black tresses that the woman now wound about her arm. She watched herself in the burnished copper mirror as the paint was applied, and what she saw pleased her: a high, wide forehead; straight brows that were being lengthened to her temples with kohl; large, almond-shaped eyes, with a depth of calm and wisdom, staring critically back at her; a thin nose that swept straight and true; and a sensual, mobile mouth that seemed to quiver on the verge of a smile. The chin betrayed her. It was square, stubborn, a forceful, uncompromising chin that warned all of a will indomitable and a thrusting surge for power. She closed her eyes as the kohl went around them, thinking of the ancestors and the gods who had blessed her with the most beautiful face in the world. She did not smile when she opened her eyes again and saw her reflected image, golden in the copper, dark and mysterious, the fine bones revealed now that her hair was pulled away from her face. The image stared back at her, a mocking, haughty stranger.
She was carried to the temple on a great litter, sitting on a high-backed throne, her Fan Bearer standing behind her. Above the exquisite head the red ostrich plumes waved, and the breathless crowds caught a glimpse of her body, encased in molten gold, before they bent to the dusty roadside. When they rose again, they saw only the sun on her hair and the back
of her throne. Behind her walked the bluest blood in the kingdom: Ineni and his son; the Vizier of the North and his son, grave, stately Hapiiseneb; Thothnies; and the portly Vizier of the South, deep in conversation with waggish User-anuin. The young Djehuty of Hermopolis strode along arrogantly, looking neither to right nor left, Yanui-nefru of Nefrusi behind him, the mantle of his blood pulled tightly around him, a handsome and proud youth. The wealthy landowners, the old and newly rich, paraded slowly in their jewels and fine linens. Senmut came behind them, his head covered with a long wig, his new linen falling about his ankles. Ta-kha'et had carefully made up his face and anointed him with perfumed oil, but he did not yet have the badges of his latest office, and no staff bearer paced before him. Although his head was thrown back as his gaze traveled among the crowd, he did not smile, for his thoughts were on the gleaming, painted Goddess high on the throne that moved before him. The populace took him for a young noble, so withdrawn and stern was his face.
The mighty temple doors stood open, and before them the High Priest, in leopard skin and plumes, waited with his acolytes. The litter stopped, and as Hatshepsut got down, she sparked golden light with every movement. As she watched her father approach, she was motionless as a stone. Her Father's great image towered above her, and the priests crowded beyond, in the outer court, while the smoke from the incense poured out steadily above the temple. Thothmes held out an arm. She linked hers with his, and they went in, preceded by the High Priest, the nobles swarming after to pack the inner court.
The sanctuary doors had been thrown open, and all craned for a glimpse of Amun the Mighty. Hatshepsut, watching her father walk toward the God, thought of her own cold vigil here not so long ago when the temple had been a frightening, lonely place, a place of dark secrets. Then she had worn only a peasant's linen; now, in cloth of gold that weighed her down, she shifted her shoulders and lifted her chin. None should find less than a King this day.
Thothmes was on the golden floor now, laying his Flail and his Crook at the feet of the God. His words floated back to the company.
I am before you, King of the Gods. I prostrate myself. In return for what I have done for thee, do thou bestow Egypt and the Red Land on my daughter, Child of the Sun, Maat-Ka-Ra, Living Eternally, as thou hast done for me.
He rose and stepped aside, signaling to her with his eyes.
She fell to the floor and began to crawl toward the God. The hammered
gold tiles smelt of incense and flowers and dust, and oddly she thought of her mother as the agonizing inches were covered. She wrenched her mind back to the God, to his beauty, his providence, beginning to pray under her breath as the feet drew nearer. Sweat gathered between her shoulder blades, and she struggled on. The silence of the prostrate, watching nobles was so deep that her breath could be heard, rasping into the incense-laden air. At last her questing fingers found him, and she lay on her stomach before him, her cheek to the floor, her eyes shut until she felt her strength return.
She looked up at the faint smile in an agony of pleading. ''Show me your favor, Amun, King of All the World!'' she cried, her voice echoing to the silver roof. She waited, her eyes on his smooth face. Out of the corner of one eye she saw her father's feet and beside him the legs of the new High Priest. The leopard draping his body hung head down, the lifeless teeth bared in a cunning grin, and Hatshepsut, her thoughts turning to Menena and the other exiles in the north, wondered how many of the priests hid just such a face under the solemn mask of ritual. She began to grow anxious. There was a deep hush throughout the hall, and no one moved. All eyes were fixed on Amun as the smoke from his mighty crucibles wreathed about his face and caressed his plumes.
Senmut was caught by the rising excitement. From his place far back in the hall he could see little but the heads of the standing Pharaoh and the High Priest. Of Hatshepsut he saw nothing, but he could see the God seated on his throne, aloof and somehow cold, and Senmut could not tear his gaze from those golden plumes. A superstitious awe crept over him, prompted not so much by the God's own presence as by the stiflF, expectant people, and he wished himself far away from the influence of a God who could hold his people immobile, mindless, awaiting a whim.
Suddenly, Senmut felt his head begin to spin. A crescendoing roar left the throats of the audience as Amun slowly, regafly, with infinite grace, bent his golden head. Senmut felt the palms of his hands grow sticky and his skin crawl with a shiver of cold, but everyone else was on their feet, dancing. Abo
ve the melee he heard the chuckle of castanets and the music of the sistrums. When the noise died away and he could see again, he quietly got up onto the base of a pillar, giving himself a small edge over his companions. He could see her, standing pale and triumphant at the feet of the God. Thothmes was shouting:
My daughter who loves thee, who is united to thee, beloved, thou hast transmitted the world unto her, into her hands. Thou hast chosen her as Queen!
As Buto and Nckhbct, Goddesses of the North and South, came forward on silent feet, carrying tlie Double Crown between them, Hatshepsut clenched her fists, the words of her father ringing in her head. The world! The world! The world! she thought exultantly, and while the goddesses spoke to her of the Red Crown of the North and the White Crown of the South, she hardly heard them. To you. Mighty Amun, and to you. Mighty Thothmes, Beloved of Horus, I offer my thanks! She felt the weight of the Double Crown on her forehead, and as she put up a hand to steady it, she saw Senmut, higher than the rest, one long arm about a pillar, and their eyes met and locked for an instant. His face served to bring her up short, and she went through the rest of the ceremony with proper attention, trying to still the wildfire of success that raged within her.
From the depths of the sanctuary the God's voice boomed, the second wonder of the day.
Behold ye my Daughter Hatshepsut, Living. Be ye loving toward her and be ye satisfied with her.
Again Senmut felt his heart grow cold. He did not wish to serve this God, only the Daughter of the God, and he stepped down from his pillar and sat instead, looking at the floor as the rite neared its close.
Water was sprinkled on her, cool to her straining neck and pattering, shining, onto her feet. Then the heavy, jeweled robe was put on her shoulders, and Thothmes took the Crook and the Flail and put them in her hands. She grasped them fiercely, cruelly, her knuckles white as she held them to her breast, and Thothmes, looking into her dark eyes, understood and let them go easily.
He led her to the throne, from under which peeped the Blue Lotus of the South and the Papyrus of the North, and as she sat carefully, the lovely fragrance of the lotus filled her head.
The Chief Herald began to read her titles: Divine of Diadems, Favorite of the Goddesses, Fresh in Years, Horus, Living Forever, Maat-Ka-Ra, Who Liveth Forever. And her mother's titles, given to her at Heliopolis, were again repeated, every one. He had finished and was about to bow and step away when Hatshepsut held up a glittering hand. A startled silence fell.
''All the titles are mine by right of my divine birth," she said, her voice very clear and cold. ''But my name I wish to change. Hatshepsut, Chief of Noble Women, is very well for a princess, but I am queen. Now I shall be called Hatshepset, First Among the Favorite Women."
Senmut smiled to himself as she began the ritual progress around the sanctuary, straight-backed and slow-moving because of the weight of the crown and the robe that brushed the golden floor. How like her, his defiant little princess, still shouting her superiority to the winds and the gods!
He slipped from the hall and went to find Benya, who had decided to go fishing, seeing that the river would be deserted. Senmut felt as if this was the last day of his freedom, and though he was buoyed by the prospect of his new work, he looked back on a youth almost over and all the free minutes gone—gifts more precious than gold.
The feasting went on all night. Dancing in the streets and drinking, the population of the city wandered in and out of their homes and places of business until the sun rose. At the palace the guests thronging the halls overflowed into the gardens. Lamps hung in all the trees, and seats and cushions were placed on the grass so that all could enjoy the warm spring air. Hatshepsut, Thothmes, and the visiting nobles sat together on the dais, almost buried in flowers, and Senmut found himself placed with the young men, Menkh, Hapuseneb, User-amun, Djehuty, and others, who drank and called for songs, applauding and shouting raucously, eating constantly. Senmut soon finished his meal, and he sat back and watched all, that cautious other self quietly pleased with the antics of the hundreds of other diners. He had fallen into a reverie when Hapuseneb pulled his chair closer.
The young man was heavily perfumed, his cone already coating his broad chest with glistening oil, but he was not drunk. The steady gray eyes looked into Senmut's with friendly appraisal. **I hear that you have a new position, Senmut," he said.
Senmut nodded briefly. He was still not at ease with this quiet, self-contained youth, and he stirred and became alert, waiting for the next words.
*Tou and I must learn to work together," Hapuseneb went on softly, ''for I, too, serve the Queen with devotion and have pledged her my life. My father is a dying man," he said. Senmut glanced swiftly to the high table, where the spare noble was quaffing wine. ''Soon I will take up his staff as Vizier of the North, which means that I must travel for Pharaoh a good deal and will not always be at hand if there is need."
This man knows something I do not know, Senmut thought anxiously, putting down the cup he had just taken up. Hapuseneb continued to watch him, smiling, but Senmut knew he was being swiftly gauged.
"The young Thothmes has opened correspondence with Menena, he
that was dismissed from his office by Pharaoh. What this means, I am not sure. Time will tell all. But to you, beloved of the Queen, I offer my household, my messengers, and my spies so that if I am away and yet needed, you may act as I would myself." He looked up at Hatshepsut, laughing under the Double Crown, and back to Senmut. "As long as Pharaoh lives, she is safe. Need I say more?"
Sennuit shook his head swiftly, wondering if it had been difficult for this young aristocrat to unbend enough to make such an offer. Hapuseneb did not wait for an answer but quietly removed his chair and began talking to User-amun, and Senmut went back to his wine. He had the uneasy feeling that his life would shortly become very complicated and that he would have to walk with the utmost caution. He was suddenly tired, wanting his bed and the warmth of Ta-kha'et's body, and he left the hall before the revelry was over.
Hatshepsut saw him go, but the troop of Keftian dancers, specially invited, had begun their songs, and she did not follow him.
So Hatshepsut became Queen. Thothmes looked forward to spending his last years talking over old times and playing draughts under the trees in the garden with his old campaigner, pen-Nekheb. He also looked forward to inscribing for posterity the last injunctions of his reign on his finished works of art. He had no particular wish to linger in Egypt. He was tired, bruised by old battles and worn by the strain of government. He wished only to go to the God in peace. If his conscience smote him when he thought of the death of his elder daughter, he did not show it, nor did he bother overmuch with his one remaining son. He told himself that he had done all that he could to secure the future of his country through his able daughter and that Thothmes the Younger could content himself with the pursuits of pleasure.
For several months Hatshepsut joined her father every morning in his homage to Amun and later in the audience chamber, hearing dispatches, dictating instructions to the Governors, settling squabbles. Hatshepsut's coronation had seemed to unleash a torrent of strength in her, and she passed from duty to duty like a demon, driving herself and her servants with fanaticism, the nimbus of power about her an almost palpable thing.
Hapuseneb's father died one afternoon while out hunting, and Hapuseneb was sworn Vizier of the North and immediately left Thebes on a tour of his provinces. Senmut struggled with his new responsibilities in the temple, rushing from thence to the site in the valley, where already hundreds of slaves toiled and Benya sweated and cursed under the broiling sun, the hole in the face of the mountain growing wider—the first shrine.
Hatshepsut attended the Stretching of the Cord. She held the white-painted rope as the boundaries of her monument were paced and laid the first stone. In this first frantic year she did not forget her promise to Hathor and the other gods whose poor, broken shrines she had watched slip by on her progress up the river. She told Ineni
to take the work in hand. When Hapuseneb, who had also been an architect once, returned from the north, she asked him to tunnel another tomb for her in the royal valley; the little one her father had chosen for her was no longer worthy, now that she was Queen.
But she left her valley to Senmut. Whenever she could get away from the palace, she went across the river, sitting high above it under her canopy, watching the men slaving like giant ants as the first wall of the first terrace went up, the Black Wall of Hathor. At night she dreamed of it complete, sleeping in its mysteries under a white sun.
She did not neglect her new responsibilities in the temple of Amun, either. More than ever, as she matured, she felt the God's hand upon her. She loved to dance in the temple with her priestesses, festooned in flowers, as the sacred myrrh perfumed the air, and in the dead minutes of each day, the times when nothing was required of her, she would sit on the balcony of her bedroom and pray, touched gently by Ra as he passed overhead.
She knew that there was no one like her in the whole world, and her lordly isolation of spirit awed all who served her. Thothmes watched her flowering with sleepy contentment and soon left her to govern alone, though often she would seek his advice, coming to him over the grass in the cool of the evening and sitting at his feet while they talked desultorily. She often invited Senmut to accompany her, and Thothmes, who approved of the proud young man, made him welcome.
She had refused almost hysterically to occupy Neferu's old apartment now that she was Queen. Neither did she want her mother's rooms. She was building a new palace for herself, connected to the old by many wide avenues and halls. She ordered Neferu's apartment redecorated so that Senmut could be near her.
Senmen arrived from the country, shy and confused in his coarse linens and provincial accent. Senmut put him in his old apartment, where he went to earth like a desert fox, bewildered by this brother who had become as beautiful and powerful as a god. There Senmen stayed until he became used to the palace.
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