Child of the morning

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-

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  Thothmes went grudgingly to war on three more occasions in the years that followed, and Hatshepsut watched him go each time with relief. He saw no engagement, drew no blood, but at least he led his troops and was proud of the fact. His generals easily scattered the hooknosed and warlike desert tribes, the Nine Bowmen, teaching the dwellers of the Eastern Desert a salutary lesson in Egyptian military might. During the periods that he was away, the work on the ephemeral, dreamlike temple in the valley went ahead in great spurts. On every return Thothmes insisted on going to see it. It rapidly became neutral ground for him and Hatshepsut. He was fanatically interested in the matter of building, and Senmut's masterpiece intrigued and excited him. Senmut sometimes pitied the plump, wheezing young Pharaoh, who would sit with frank admiration in his eyes while before him the valley swarmed with life. Thothmes had the soul of an architect, and sympathizing, Senmut showed him the plans and listened to his comments and hesitant advice, feeling the pathetic little bursts of jealousy in the man as Hatshepsut coolly and rightly pointed out the glories of her homage to posterity. In her valley, which was cupped by the lordly cliff of Gurnet and worshiped by every stone rising under the cracking, straining muscles of the workmen, she and Thothmes were able to talk together of things other than the pinpricks that drew blood, both looking forward to the day of dedication, when they would walk together for the first time up the long, smooth ramp, bearing incense for the God.

  Thothmes was building in his own right, and he shared his projects with Hatshepsut. At Medinet Habu he was beginning a small memorial temple to himself, and he asked her if she would lend him the skill of her architect. She teased him a little, wanting to know which of her servants he wanted, but in the end she gave him Senmut in a gesture of good-humored tolerance. Senmut laid out a ground plan to Thothmes' specifications, but it troubled him, and one night he took it to Hatshepsut.

  She glanced at it once and burst out laughing. 'Toor Thothmes! Did he draw this?"

  *i drew it. Majesty, but Pharaoh told me what he wanted."

  "Oh, poor Thothmes," she said again, her laughter dying away. They looked at each other for a nnoment before she handed the scroll back to him.

  "Let him go ahead," she decided, "for he can neer equal my great uork m the valley, even though this plan is ver' similar. Medmet Habu is a very- different site and will lend itself to a ver- different temple. How foolish he is' He has a good eye and could ver' well design works of great originality, but so much overlays his gift."

  Senmut also helped Thothmes uith his new temple to Hathor. "It will be," Thothmes told him uith a sidelong glance, "an act of thanksgiing to the Goddess for my dear Aset." So Senmut found himself designing for a woman he instinctively disliked and a Pharaoh he desperately tried to respect, yet somehow he found the strength to add Thothmes' demands to the list of tasks to be done each day.

  He loved the little Princess Neferura. She was as pretty and fragile as a flower, and when he played with her on the floor of the nurser- or watched her as she careened drunkenly about the garden, he felt the pressures of his offices recede. After all, he thought, I have fulfilled all my ambitions, and the care of this child is the sum and proof of all my strivings. But somehow, as he listened to the deep whisperings of his heart, he knew that there was more, much more, and that he had only just begun to test his limitations. His roots began to trouble him, and he thought of his father and mother, still on the acres where he had toiled as a boy. Finally he asked for permission to isit them. Hatshepsut had taken one look at his tired face and agreed, and he and Senmen had left Thebes in Senmut's gilded barge, covering the miles in half the time that it had taken him and his father to walk the distance. He found his parents to be old but kindly strangers, bewildered by the two perfumed, painted men who spoke in cultured accents of things they only dimly understood and whose white and yellow tents billowed over the ground outside the mud house, filled with haughty, scantily clad slaes and beautiful, precious things. Hat-nefer, his mother, and Ta-kha'et liked each other, and Ta-kha'et spent much of the time perched on a wooden stool in the dingy-kitchen, filling it with her sweet scent, swinging her tiny feet in their jeweled sandals as she told Hat-nefer of her life and gave the silent old woman a picture of her son's life also. But Senmut and his father found many long, embarrassing silences that could not be filled as they sat together on the edge of the river in the evenings, silences that hurt but could not be healed.

  When Senmut left, he kept the promise he had made to himself many years ago, and at last he and Ka-mes were able to laugh as he told them

  of the splendid tomb he was preparing for them so that the gods would not forget them, but at the offer of gold and slaves to till the land, Ka-mes shook his head. ''I am a peasant and the child of a peasant," he told Sennmt, ''and if slaves worked my land, what would I do with myself? I would grow old quickly and die before my noble tomb was ready."

  The two men smiled at one another and embraced, Ka-mes crushed by the strength in the arms of his handsome son. Senmut and Senmen sailed back to Thebes rested, Senmut eased in conscience and Senmen only too happy to leave the arid, poverty-stricken farm and return to the life of the palace.

  As the whole of Egypt slowly began to revolve around Hatshepsut and she was more and more satisfied that there was no corner of the land that did not do her will, she began also to cover the earth with her monuments —stelae, obelisks, pylons, stone upon stone of every kind, marble, granite, gray and pink sandstone. Everywhere she reminded the people who it was that held them under her holy feet, and Thothmes continued to feast and hunt, oblivious of her growing popularity and power. The God's feasts came and went, and he and she walked Thebes beside the golden idol, praising and worshiping Amun many times as the seasons changed and the immutable traditions were observed. Little Thothmes entered the service of Amun as a temple acolyte under the wary eye of Menena, and now Hatshepsut saw him whenever she went to perform her prostrations, a blunt-featured, belligerent chunk of a boy who watched her with interest, fingers clutching the golden incense crucible, and often she could not pray because of the intensity of his gaze. Neferura grew also, graceful and with the sweet composure of her Grandmother Aahmose, and Hatshepsut made sure that on all public occasions the little girl was dressed richly in the garb of a Princess and appeared before the people.

  No more words of love had passed between her and Senmut, but the depth of their emotion for one another reached new levels, forced under as it was by the need for the maintainence of vigilance. She commissioned her personal sculptor to do a huge statue of him holding the Princess. For months Senmut sat for the work, and the sculptor knew his subject well, for when completed and uncovered for Hatshepsut's eyes, the statue smote her and all who stood to watch the moment. The artist had chosen black granite, and the Steward's serene, powerful face stared back at them with a force of protective warning and calm untouchability above the imperious little head of Neferura. The granite had been sculpted in one mighty, uncompromising block so that only the two heads, one above the other, appeared from under Senmut's long robe, where the Princess was sheltered, and the whole shone darkly, its smooth surfaces cold to the royal hands that ran gently over it. Hatshepsut was very pleased and had it set

  outside the nursery door so that all those who passed in and out were reminded that they if they harmed Neferura, they would do so at their peril.

  Thothmes also commissioned a work, a statue in ebony of his mother, Mutnefert; and when it was finished, he stood it in the middle of his gardens. She was seated, with her hands on her knees and her eyes staring into the distance. The artist had tactfully reduced her weight and made her more beautiful than she had ever been in her youth, but Thothmes loved it and had Mutnefert present when Menena blessed it. On the pedestal he caused to be inscribed ''Wife of a King, Mother of a King," and Mutnefert sailed back to her apartments on a cloud of pride. But Hatshepsut thought it a little ridiculous, and the bulky thi
ng spoiled her walks, forcing her to ponder whether perhaps young Thothmes would one day raise another statue and carve it with the same words. Often she fancied in the twilight that it was not Mutnefert's smiling, vacant countenance that she passed under, but the thin, worldly face of Second Wife Aset.

  So time passed, the Night of the Tear came and went, and four times the Barque of the God sailed forth with its garlanded burden. Hatshepsut approached her twenty-fifth birthday with indifference, seeing no change in the face that stared back at her every morning from the gleaming surface of her mirror, and the occasion came and went with the same slow, measured pace of all the days that were filled with the routine of government.

  She took Nefcrura over the river to the shrine of her namesake. In the silent little temple, standing with Ani the priest before the statue of Neferu-khebit that had been smiling now for more than a decade, she told her daughter of the aunt who was now gone. The child made her own prayers, the black youth-lock trailing its ribbons on her thin shoulders, her aquiline, imperious nose pressed to the cold stone feet.

  Hatshepsut, watching the perfect, oval face with the dark eyes and well-formed mouth that so perfectly reflected her own features, was seized by a flood of memories and a sensation of being trapped, imprisoned, that would not go away. She struggled with her depression for some weeks, burying herself in work. Then one night she seemed to make up her mind. She dressed herself and painted her face with care, sent for two Followers of His Majesty, and walked to Thothmes' bedchamber. As she waited impatiently to be announced, she heard voices within; and when she was admitted, she saw the door behind the royal couch close quietly. No doubt Aset would go to bed alone this night.

  Thothmes was on the couch, wine in hand as usual, his head naked and

  shining. The room was full of Aset's pungent perfume, now mingled with Hatshepsut's own myrrh as she went forward and bowed. He sat bolt upright, watching her; and when she rose but did not speak, he was forced to clear his throat and ask her what she wanted. He did not trust her. This new vision of a beautiful, abject woman, clothed in yellow, waiting with eyes lowered and head bent, made him wary. He swung his legs over the edge of his couch. ''What are you doing here?" he growled ungraciously, setting his cup upon the table with a click and folding his arms.

  She stirred, but did not straighten. *'I wish for comfort, Thothmes. I am lonely."

  He grunted, taken aback, but already her perfume and her words were having their eflfect, and he felt the old desire stir in him.

  '*I do not believe you," he said flatly. ''Since when have you ever needed my comfort? And if you are lonely, which I doubt, what of your flock of adoring geese?"

  "Long ago you and I comforted each other," she answered calmly, her voice still quiet, "and I confess that I have begun to dream of your body, Thothmes. I awake in the night, a heat on me, and I cannot rest for thought of you."

  Now she raised her head, and beneath the imploring quiver of her sensuous mouth, the pretty, eloquent gestures of her red-painted hands, he saw it, a quick gleam of mockery, quickly quelled. He got off the couch and shouted. "You lie, you lie! You do not want me at all! You are here for quite another purpose, and you cannot hide from me, Hatshepset. You banished me from your bed, and I have never known you to go back on your word."

  She stepped to him, putting her hands on his shoulders; and as she replied, she kneaded them slowly, her fingers leaving them to travel to his soft belly. "But I did not exactly swear by the God."

  "Yes, you did! Leave me alone!" But he did not push her away.

  She moved closer, putting her mouth to his neck. "I spoke then in the heat of anger," she whispered. "Now let me speak of another fire."

  With his last shred of control he grasped both her arms roughly in his and pulled her down, sitting beside her on the couch. On the door behind them came a knocking, and he shouted for whoever it was to go away. Then he looked at Hatshepsut. She was smiling at him, her hair in disarray and her cheeks flushed, panting a little, and he caught a glimpse of teeth behind the open mouth.

  "I do not like to be made a fool," he said heavily. "I will kick you out of this room unless you tell me truly what you want." She smiled all the wider, knowing that he had never in his life kicked anyone. "Tell me!"

  he demanded, already hoping that she would so that he could toss her on her back on the couch, and he shook her arms.

  ''Very well, but I did not lie to you before, Thothmes. I really do want to share your bed tonight."

  'Why?''

  **How astute you are becoming, brother of mine! Can you guess?"

  ''No, I cannot. I do not like playing games with you, Hatshepset, for I always lose."

  "And you will lose again, for already you can hardly wait to make love to me. Well, I have decided that I want another child."

  "Is that all?"

  "All! It is a great deal, a very great deal. But in answer to your question —yes, that is all."

  He watched her for any hint that she was making game with him, but she continued to regard him with wide-open, liquid, innocent eyes, and finally his shoulders slumped. "Why do you want another child? Thothmes and Neferura have secured the Horus Throne."

  "In your mind, perhaps, but not in mine. I may have changed my mind about admitting you to my bed, but I still forbid you to take Neferura and marry her to Thothmes."

  "In the name of all the gods, Hatshepset, why, why, why? What demon drives you? What takes place in that incomparable head of yours? Thothmes has the makings of a mighty Pharaoh, and Neferura is beautiful and will make a good consort. What is wrong with that?"

  "Thothmes has the makings, but I did not make him," she said softly, her eyes narrowed, "and there will be more to my Neferura than beauty and willingness to walk behind Pharaoh every day. I want a Pharaoh of my own blood, and only mine, on the throne of Egypt."

  He looked at her admiringly. "You are bewitched," he said. "So you want to make a son with me, to marry Neferura and rule."

  "Exactly. My son and my daughter, gods together."

  "It may be that we make a girl."

  "I must take that chance. This must be done, Thothmes. No spawn of Aset will wear the Double Crown as long as I can prevent it."

  "You flatter me!" he said sarcastically.

  With an exclamation she touched his thigh. "I did not mean any insult to you. You and I sprang from the same royal loins."

  He shrugged. "I am Pharoah, and I do not really care what you say, for you cannot deprive me of my rights." His lip stuck out.

  "Dear Thothmes!" she said gently. "Have I not always given you the respect due to Pharaoh?"

  ''No you have not, but it does not matter. I have you in my blood, Hatshepset, h'ke some vile poison; and in all the years we have been apart, I have not succeeded in ridding myself of the longing for you."

  'Then pour me wine and lock the doors, and we will make up for all the time lost to us by my foolishness."

  He picked up the gold-chased jug and did as she wanted, not wondering, in his vanity, at her eagerness. They linked arms and drank slowly. When she felt the warmth of the wine fill her veins and the giddiness in her head begin, she closed her eyes and lifted her mouth for his kiss, knowing that in a few moments her distaste for his body would disappear, engulfed in the dark tides of her own deep passions.

  With agony she waited for the signs of pregnancy, harrying her physician and watching herself impatiently; and when at last she knew that once more she would give Thothmes and Egypt a child, she went immediately to the temple to beg Amun to make the seed in her male. The country rejoiced. But Aset received the news in an ominous silence, taking little Thothmes on her lap and hugging him with a ferocity that frightened the child, and she made no reference whatsoever to her royal lover of the expected birth. Thothmes himself was neither pleased nor angry, determined not to offend Hatshepsut again so that he could go on enjoying the delights of her strong body, and she received him willingly, using him gratefully as the depression li
fted and left her.

  As time went by and again she became lethargic, she began to wonder what she would do if the child was female. Amun had made no promises, and even in the privacy of her own room, kneeling night after night before his shrine, she had felt no glow of certainty in answer to her prayers. She ordered more sacrifices made to him, and she had Tahuti make new doors for the temple, copper and bronze inlaid with electrum, so that the God should know of her devotion to him. When they were hung, she was present to make the offerings, standing dwarfed by the enormous wings that blazed under a white-hot Ra, the flashing of the deep brown, shimmering metal easily spotted a mile and more across the river.

  As her time drew nearer, her anxiety spread to those about her and from them to the whole of the city, so that Thebes and the palace and the priests in the temple all seethed with speculation. Senmut did his best to keep her mind busy with the aflfairs of each day, seeing his own secret strivings mirrored in her, but even in his company she could not rest. She felt bitterly that this was her last chance, that only by giving Egypt a Pharaoh who was both male and fully royal could she bear the thought of hiding her omnipotence behind Thothmes for the rest of her life.

  At last it was time, and once more the Princes of the country were summoned to the royal bed. The birth was more rapid this time. Hatshep-sut, pacing from couch to wall and back again between bouts of pain, in a fever of doubt and impatience, barely had time to lie down and be prepared before the baby came, wailing and thrashing, into the world.

  There was a moment of breathless waiting, and then the midwife turned, smiling, and the physician began to pack his drugs away. ''Another girl! And a beautiful one!''

  Hatshepsut uttered one long cry of protest and buried her face in the pillows, and the men filed out silently, pleased with a new Princess and mystified by the Queen's reaction, for another girl was surely proof against the sudden death of Neferura and ensured that the Crown Prince would be legitimized when the time came.