Child of the morning

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-

  "And he is dead!" Hatshepsut flashed back. "While he yet lived, I was Egypt, and I am still Egypt! Little Thothmes would be as soft silver in your hands, and between you, you would milk my beloved country dry. Did you think that at your call the priests and soldiers would follow? Have you been wandering in blindness for the past seven years?" She flung up her hands. "This has been your last chance. My patience is becoming exhausted. I wish to hear of no more plots. If I do, I will have no hesitation in charging you with treason and having you both executed. You are a danger to the country you both profess to love. Now get out."

  Aset would have spoken again. Her mouth was working and her eyes spat venom at Hatshepsut. But Nehesi moved forward, and they bowed hastily and went out.

  "You are too lenient. Majesty," Senmut said. "Snakes should be trampled underfoot."

  'Terhaps/' she said wearily. ''But I do not wish to deprive my nephew-son of his natural mother so soon after the passing of his father. I do not believe that Menena can do much without Thothmes to back him. Nehesi, make sure that the Followers of His Majesty keep them well guarded at all times. Senmut, I want the name of every priest serving in the temple, from the smallest acolyte to Menena himself, and the persuasions of each one. I have not yet made up my mind what I shall do, but I am loathe to give the crown to Thothmes yet."

  ^?4

  -Vkv

  It took her two years to make up her mind. In that time she ceaselessly tested her hold on Egypt, pulling gently on a rein here, snapping a trace there, drawing tighter a trailing leather strap. Then it was Mechir, when the earth was covered between the palms and acacia with a lush, waving carpet of green crops and the young birds struggled to fly from the nests along the riverbank. Canals new and old crisscrossed the swaying fields, full of calm water that mirrored the soft, late spring sky. The Nile hippopotami and their young lay contentedly in the mud, yawning now and then for sheer delighted ease.

  The temple in the valley was complete. The last of the conscripted laborers had gone back to their villages and farms. The rubble had been cleared away, and the remaining mud huts had been razed. The lovely, liquid building glowed, shimmering in its hot stone cup, waiting for the feet of the Holy One to grace its gold and silver floors. Hatshepsut had commissioned the brooding Tahuti to construct another shrine within its walls, the shrine of Nubia, in secret, dark ebony, to commemorate her victory there. He had also designed inner doors of cedar and bronze, but it was in the creation of the great outer doors that he had displayed all his skill. They were of black copper, solid and a little forbidding, daunting those who would come in later years with anything but love in their hearts. They were inlaid cunningly with electrum, the amalgam of gold and silver so loved by Hatshepsut. Now they stood open, taking the light of the sun and transforming it into deep shafts of muted gold that pierced the trees, and she thought of them as she stood on her balcony on the morning of dedication.

  The priests had chosen the twenty-ninth day of the month as the auspicious day. She stood, looking over the garden, saying her morning prayers. Behind her, in her bedchamber, her servants laid out the short kilt whose pleats were lined with gold so that as she moved she would spark light, and the ceremonial wig of gold and blue braids, and the belt of knotted gold rope studded with tiny carnelian ankhs. She watched the priests gather in the courtyard before the first tafl pylon, milling in its shadow, their white linens dazzling in the sun. Though she caught a

  glimpse of Mcncna in his leopard skin, her words of praise to her God did not falter.

  A sense of fate was on her this morning, a feeling that today her destiny would change onee more. She felt the power fill her and mingle with the blood that coursed through her veins. She knew herself to be immortal, standing high above the world, naked, benisoned with the sun that poured unceasingly over her honey-colored skin. The treetops seemed to dip and toss in homage to her as her prayers took to the wind. At last she had finished. With a final sweeping glance over the grounds and the river and, across it, the Necropolis dancing on the heatwaves she walked into the cool shadows where the women waited to clothe her.

  She stood still while the kilt was fitted around her waist and the belt and the heavy jeweled collar that swept down to her breasts were gently fastened. She held out her arms while her bracelets and bands were slipped on, her mind wandering over the years of waiting while, day after day, the stones and pillars were cut, polished, and erected and the times she had stood with Senmut and Thothmes while the terraces took shape. She thought proudly of the marvels she had seen with her father. Thus have I answered you, gods of the Plains. I give you my monument, a work far greater than any I have yet seen. I am content.

  She sat, holding her hands palms upward so that they could be painted with the red henna. While they dried, she lifted her feet, and the soles and nails were painted also. Her golden sandals were put on, the jaspers on them already greedily sucking all light from the room and throwing it out again, as red as living blood. Her face was made up and powdered with gold dust that stuck to her lips and eyelashes and the thick black kohl that rimmed her eyes. As she gazed at her glittering image in the mirror, she was reminded again of her haughty ka. She smiled, thinking of him leaning negligently over her shoulder while the wig was lifted and settled on her head and the Cobra Coronet was slipped into place. She was changed into a Goddess, the golden, shining symbol of a golden, shining country.

  Senmut and the others were waiting for her on the water steps. A hundred boats, beribboned and beflagged, waited also to take the court and the priests across the river. He was attired as the Prince he had become. His helmet was white leather embossed in gold. His bracelets and bands of office shone startlingly against his dark brown skin, and a great gold pectoral of linked chains and turquoise scarabs covered his shoulders, his neck, and his back. On the smooth, deep chest rested the emblem of the Erpa-ha Princes, the Hereditary Lords of Egypt. Before him his staff bearer waited, a white, gold-tipped stick in his hand. Ta-kha'et stood with

  the women, still cuddling the cat, which now wore a collar of crystal. She was in a filmy blue linen sheath. It was only when Senmut was about to embark that he noticed and wondered why she should wear the color of mourning on such a happy day.

  One by one the boats were poled across the Nile, now a clear, swift-flowing river that was still sinking and would not reach its lowest ebb until high summer. On the opposite bank the crowds began to form into a procession, laughing and chattering under the vast canopies and flags that lined the road that had once been only a track. Hatshepsut took the lead. She had decided to walk, so all had left their litters behind. As she saw Senmut about to slip into line with Hapuseneb, Menkh, and her other glittering ministers, she beckoned him. He came quickly to the front of the ranks, a question in his kohl-ringed eyes.

  ''Where is Neferura?"

  ''She walks with the women. Majesty, surrounded by the Followers of His Majesty, and Nehesi walks beside her. The little one is on a litter. I thought it best that she should ride."

  She nodded. "Good." Meryet-Hatshepset was only three, and such a progress, however slow, would tire her. Hatshepsut moved to one side, smiling. "This is your day as well as mine. Noble One. I have decided to share my glory with you. You may walk beside me." Shocked, he stepped to her side. She signaled for the horns to sound. "Without a doubt," she continued as they began to move, "your hand is in the temple as well as mine. I have thought on it, Senmut, and I want you to inscribe your name within the holy walls so that men may know how highly I have placed you and in what esteem I hold you."

  He turned to her and bowed. They strode on, but his mind seethed. Such an honor was so rarely bestowed that he could think of only one other instance of it, and that was on the plain of Saqqara where King Zoser had allowed the God Imhotep to sign his mighty works with his own name. It was a gift that went beyond this world, for the gods would see the name on a place where only royal names were cut. They would judge him as a King. He knew where he wanted to
put that name and the story of his life and his titles; he would put them behind the door of the inner sanctuary, where none would see them save the gods and the royal people who were the only ones allowed to enter the sanctuary and close the door, a privilege that not even the priests enjoyed. "You honor me indeed. Majesty," he said lightly.

  She laughed, turning her golden head to meet his eye. "I have not finished with you yet, proud and mighty Prince!" They reached her first and only pylon and passed beneath it, joking and bantering all the way.

  She stopped, drinking in her masterpiece with greedy, worshiping eyes, and the whole procession straggled to a halt behind her. Another hundred paces and the first ramp rose gently to the roof of the first terrace. Below it, on each side, the pillars stood in neat rows, letting the light flow between them and on into the echoing vastness of the first hall. With fifty paces more the second ramp rose. Again it led to the roof of another hall whose white pillars gleamed. It brought the eye to the final pillars of the shrines and on gently to the top of the hill, as if temple and valley and cliff were one, a strong and mellow harmony of natural stone and man-made melody.

  No gardens were yet laid. The avenue that Hatshepsut had planned, which would run to the very edge of the river, was still only in her mind; but the rock and stone of the temple, in their unadorned simplicity, needed no addition to their powerful, gentle lines to make them more beautiful. She sighed, a gusty sound of satisfaction. She had had a golden likeness of Amun made to sit beside her own image in the center sanctuary, and she signaled for the litter bearing the God to go before her. The priests approached with their heavy burden. Young Thothmes had been chosen to walk beside Amun, bearing the incense. They started off again, Hatshepsut's eyes on the child's stocky brown legs beneath the little kilt. Slowly they reached the first ramp, where they stopped to pray. They flowed onto the second ramp, and the prayers were repeated, Menena's deep, musical voice carrying to those in the rear of the cavalcade and echoing from the sun-drenched cliffs. Hatshepsut entered the dimness of her shrine in a sober frame of mind, remembering how she and her brother had planned to enjoy this day together. Even now he watched through the magic eyes of his coffin, and she wondered what he was thinking of the most beautiful construction Egypt had ever seen.

  Amun was settled on the raised throne that awaited him beside the gigantic, gold-plated statue of herself, its eyes seeming to pierce even the farthest corners of the temple. Young Thothmes placed the incense crucible in the tall copper stand made ready for it while another acolyte did the same on the opposite side of the shrine. Then all who had been admitted to the holy of holies lay on the new silver floor, making their obeisance to the two gods who dominated their lives. Menena strode through the prostrate bodies to stand beside Amun, and the rites of dedication began. The priests clustered in the sun on the roof of the first terrace, listening to the chants and the rattle of sistrums and menyts and charging their own incense burners. Below them, standing silently about the first ramp, the members of the court craned their necks to watch the smoke rising straight, spiraling to the cliff top in that sheltered place.

  When it was all over, and Hatshepsut had walked in ceremony through every inch of her living dream, she knelt before Amun once more, saying her final prayers with a feeling that all was not yet finished. The Sun had changed his position, his long, silken fingers probing the floor of the sanctuary and exploring the inner pillars, reaching for the two statues. Those standing behind Hatshepsut saw her as never before, her golden head, her gold-powdered skin, her gold-decked, outstretched arms shimmering, haloed in fire. A silence fell. Thothmes bowed to Amun and recharged the incense. Menena gathered up his staff, and the nobles began to shuffle, thinking of the meal that was to follow, their throats dry from singing. But Hatshepsut continued to adore and to wait, knowing urgently that something must happen. As she sank to the ground for the last time, a pure, ringing voice issued from the lips of the idol, and the company froze.

  ''Rise and depart. Beloved King of Egypt," it said.

  In the stunned quiet Hatshepsut's head jerked back. The memories, ambitions, frustrations, and dreams of afl the years behind her flew to a point and exploded in a loud cry of triumph. She rose and wheeled about, her arms above her head. *'He has spoken!" she shouted, every nerve taut with victory. Below, in the courtyards, the people heard the commotion and turned anxious eyes on one another. ''I proclaim myself Pharaoh!"

  ''She cannot!" Yamu-nefru muttered sharply to his friend as they stood in the shadows, jolted from his usual cool languor.

  Suddenly the nobles began to applaud. A ripple of claps ran around the sanctuary and turned into a river of sound. They were on their feet, cheering, cafling for her. She pushed her way through them, Nehesi and Senmut beside her, her arms still extended and her face radiant. They burst into the open, and the acclamation became a roar as those outside took it up and surged toward her. The temple became a seething mass of white-clad bodies.

  "I proclaim myself Pharaoh!" she shouted again.

  The vibrant words echoed and reechoed, multiplied a hundred times as the crowds took it up. "Pharaoh! Pharaoh! Pharaoh!" they screamed.

  Neferura watched with wondering eyes as her mother was lifted onto the litter that had so lately held the God and raised high over the upturned faces. Aset and Thothmes stood to one side; she was stunned and undone. They were swept forward by the press of excited bodies and found themselves behind the litter, surrounded by Followers of His Majesty. The tumult swefled around them as Hatshepsut was carried back to the river. She tore the little Cobra from her head, holding it high; then in one swift movement she leaned down and thrust it into Neferura's reaching hands.

  She sat upright, smiling, and they took her aboard the Royal Barge and back to the palace, to a new beginning.

  As she stood alone in the darkness on her balcony on the eve of her crowning, she thought. The years of work and worry and waiting have borne fruit. At last I am what my father intended me to be. There is no one in the whole of Egypt who can oppose me. Thothmes is gone. Aset and Menena have lost the race. My destiny is fulfilled. I am stronger than ever, more beautiful and more powerful than ever, the first woman worthy to be Pharaoh. She thought of Neferura, fast asleep on her little couch, the Cobra Coronet still held tightly in her hands, and of young Thothmes, his dreams of the crown now eclipsed by her brilliant presence, her unequaled strength, and her total control. Tonight none had reality but she and her God. They communed, there in the night, both looking back to the happenings that had brought forth this day. She was not tired. There were still deep, untapped wells of strength in her, waiting until her crowning to be unleashed. She felt as immortal as the stars that shone on her and the land that dreamed under her. She remained on her balcony for most of the night, sipping cold wine, watching the guards patrol her gardens, seeing an occasional, swift-moving dot of light as some priest hurried to the temple to perform his duties. When the night began to thin, she went to her couch, lying with eyes open, gazing at her blue and silver, star-spattered ceiling, her mind busy with all that she would do.

  The barber came in the morning, carrying his sharp knives. She sat motionless while her lovely black tresses were cut, falling around her chair like a soft carpet. As Nofret carefully gathered each lock, she gazed at herself in the mirror. The man sharpened his razor and began to shave her head. He was silent and skillful and did not draw blood. She watched her face change under his hands. With a scalp now clean she looked sexless, the strong bones of her face standing out, the eyes seeming even larger and more luminous, the mouth more haughty, less able to smile. When barber had gone, Nofret lifted to her head the leather helmet that she would wear until the Double Crown took its place. Its wings sat on her shoulders, and its rim cut across her forehead, bringing a new severity and simplicity to her face. Nofret fastened the royal Eye of Horus around her neck; it hung heavily, hiding her breasts. Her guard opened the door and admitted Senmut, again arrayed in princely garb. He had Nefe
rura by the hand. She was dressed richly, in gold and lapis lazuli. She had placed the Cobra on her shaved head, but her youth-lock hung awkwardly under it and set it at a jaunty angle. As she and Senmut prostrated themselves, it wobbled dangerously.

  Smiling, Hatshepsut told them to rise. ''No, dear one," she said gently

  to Neferura. *Tou are not yet a Queen. I hope one day to make you a King, but even so, you cannot wear the Cobra yet."

  ''But can I keep it in my rooms and look at it sometimes?" the child asked as she removed the coronet.

  ''If you promise not to take it outside or let Meryet play with it. Well, priest, are we ready?"

  Senmut looked at the tall, glowing youth before him, at the male helmet and the Horus Eye and the royal rings. He bowed deeply. "We are. Your standards are without, and the flags fly high. The route is lined with people."

  "And my chariot?"

  He smiled. "In the courtyard, Majesty, and Menkh is impatient."

  "He is always impatient! Then we will go."

  Outside the sun was hot. She sprang up behind Menkh, straddling her legs and holding onto the chariot's golden sides as the cheering began. He twirled his whip, and the horses began to trot. But they did not move quickly, for Hatshepsut had decided to ride through the city so that all could see her. The glittering procession slowly wended its way up and down the streets. Children threw flowers, and their parents kissed the paving stones before the God who seemed to have shed the softness of her womanhood and stood as tall and as lean as a young male.

  In the temple, when the time came, she herself removed the helmet and held out her hands for the crown, taking it from the gods who offered it. Senmut had a moment of shock at the sight of her naked head. Somehow it served to bring home to him for the first time the fact that she was indeed sexless and ageless within herself. As she slowly settled the smooth red and white Double Crown on her head and took the Flail and the golden Crook from Menena's hands, the fiery Uraeus, the cobra and the vulture of kingship, reared suddenly anew above features that were indomitably, distinctly the features of a Pharaoh. The heavy jeweled robe was draped about her.