She did not neglect Amun. His image glowed in every room, and before each image lay food and wine and flowers. Incense burned day and night before him, filling all the palace with misting gray smoke and the odor of myrrh.
She kept her architects, artists, stonemasons, and engineers busy. The avenue she had planned to run from the pylon of her temple to the river was laid, wide and smooth and solid. She ordered it to be lined with sphinxes, the holy lion bodies of the Sun-God, but the impassive faces that watched the worshipers going to and fro were all her own, beautiful and regal and aloof, framed in the flowing manes and topped with the tiny rounded ears of a lion. Pools and gardens were dug around the temple, and soon birds settled there. Butterflies, moths, and humming bees delighted in her flowers, but on her frequent trips across the river she felt that something was missing, that Amun was not altogether pleased with his Daughter's efforts to make his place of adoration more lovely than any other monument in Egypt. He had not yet told her why, and she waited contentedly, sure that she would know before long.
Tahuti made more gates for her. One she set on the western bank, at the arid and somehow desolate entrance to the Necropolis. Another, a vast plate of copper that had been consecrated and named the Terror of Amun, she erected in the temple at Karnak. All along the Nile the ravages the Hyksos had left were being lovingly restored under her direction. She had the pleasure of revisiting the pretty temple to Hathor at Cusae, walking through new gates into an outer court full of trees and paved paths and on into the sanctuary, where the smiling, gentle Goddess's priests once more lifted the censers. Hathor herself greeted her, repainted and restored to her rightful place before the white pillars of her sanctuary.
Puamra designed a new temple for her in Upper Egypt, this one to Pakht. He preened himself quietly when it was said that this building equaled the beauty of her beloved valley monument. On its walls she told the world of all she had done to build up that which was fallen in Egypt.
She began her biography on the long, sun-splashed walls of the terraces in the valley. The painters labored day after day under Senmut's watchful eye to record her miraculous conception, her royal birth, her crowning as Heiress with her father, and the mighty deeds of her life.
Senmut also spent much time in the rock-cut sanctuary, where his own artists painstakingly applied their brushes, setting down for all time his titles and his rise in the counsels of power. Senmut was not blinded by his success. He had quietly instructed the plasterers to inscribe his name under the layers of white plaster that preceded the paint, so that if ill times befell and his King lost the race that he felt convinced had only just begun, still the gods would know him. He stood watching in quiet satisfaction as it was done.
All over Egypt and far out in the desert Hatshepsut left monument after monument, stone piled upon stone. Everywhere her subjects looked, they saw her royal, dreaming likeness, reminding them that Pharaoh would never die; and the world marveled and worshiped her, the Son of the Sun.
In the painted, perfumed palace, in the towering temple, and in the fields, villages, and cities, Hatshepsut worked her will. With Hapuseneb as High Priest in the temple she had cunningly knitted together religion and government, sure now of no opposition from either.
Five years after her coronation Hapuseneb gave up his Vizierate to devote himself full time to his duties in Thebes. He still had not married. Many of Hatshepsut's women desired him, and many had made fools of themselves, coming up against his implacable, smiling gray eyes to be crushed in defeat. He treated them all with the same polite friendliness, but his many-pillared house, with its broad avenues sweeping to the river, remained empty of wives. Concubines he had, and some five or six children, but more often than not they never saw him. He moved quietly from temple to palace, and if he did go home, it was to recover, to sleep and to read.
In the same year that Hapuseneb resigned, User-amun's father died, and User-amun at last became Vizier of the South. He sobered quickly under the avalanche of work his father had been too ailing to do, but he had not lost his cheeky wit or his way with women. He was a terror and a delight in the palace, and Hatshepsut loved him.
One cold dawn Hatshepsut was brought the news that Mutnefert was dead. She was overwhelmed with surprise. She had forgotten the fat, lonely old woman who had never recovered from the death of her son and who had remained in her three rooms for the rest of her life. Mutnefert had never ceased to mourn Thothmes. Her tears and wailings had upset her harassed tiring-women for weeks, but slowly the loud cries of grief had given way to a silent, listless indifference to all save the memories of Thothmes and the prayers to the dead. She all but ceased to eat. Her
jewels lay unworn and unwanted in their boxes, her rooms were no longer full of chatter and gossip, and no one visited her but Neferura, who came occasionally to sit quietly beside her couch and listen to the tales of long ago, when her father had been a prince and her mother a child. Mutnefert had always mistrusted Aset and had upbraided her son many times for bringing such a one into the palace. She had expressed no desire to see her grandson, but she had loved Neferura as well as she could love anyone in the twilight of her life, and for her the silences between them were full of comfort.
Neferura did not cry when her mother told her of Mutnefert's death. She just nodded. **My grandmother had died inside long before she died outside—because of my royal father,'' she soberly remarked to Hatshep-sut. ''Now she is happy, having her heart quietened by his presence. I will not mourn for her. She would be angry if I did.''
So Mutnefert was laid in the splendid tomb prepared for her long ago by her husband, Thothmes the First, and Hatshepsut attended the funeral, still surprised that Mutnefert had lived on under the same roof as herself for so long and yet had been forgotten.
In the sixth year of Hatshepsut's reign, robbers were caught trying to break into her father's tomb. She was beside herself with anger. She sat in the Courts of Justice, white and fuming, while they were interrogated. Her thoughts flew to Benya, the only survivor of the excavation of the valley where her mother and her father and her brother lay. She sent for him and for Senmut, but she spoke to them privately, in her chambers.
''Six unhappy men are even now awaiting the executioner," she told them shortly. "They insist that none but they are involved in the desecration of the God my father, but how can I be sure?" She cast a dark look at Benya, pale and strained between his two guards, but his eyes met her steadily. He had grown into a handsome man and a mighty engineer, and she was the first to admit that there was none finer in Egypt. She turned to Senmut. "Many years have passed since my father saved your friend from death. How have his fortunes been since then?"
Senmut answered her angrily, aware that she was frightened and at a loss, but disappointed in her lack of trust. "Majesty, in all the years that have passed, Benya has been silent on this matter. If it were not so, then the God Thothmes would have been disturbed a long time ago. As for his fortunes, you had better ask him himself."
"I asked you. Do you give an impudent answer to your King?" But she was already sorry that she had summoned them, and she shook her head, mystified. "Benya's mouth is the only one still able to utter the words that
would have sent these men scavenging Kke jackals. What else must I think?"
Benya had not lost his wits, and he answered her quietly. ''What of those who followed the God to his tomb, Majesty? What of the women and the priests and all the others? Do you think that I would stoop to rob from the God who spared my life?''
''Oh, very well!" she snapped, waving her hands impatiently. "I did not think it was really you, Benya, and I am sorry that I had you arrested. Release him!"
The guards let him go and went out. He rubbed his wrists.
Senmut spoke. "Majesty, I advise you to move the body of your father and all his belongings. Put him somewhere safer."
Benya's face lit in a grin. "I will find him a true and proper tomb," he offered, his eyes sparkling. "Leave it to me.
" She gaped at him, astounded at his temerity, but after a moment they all laughed.
"The matter is serious, all the same," she warned. "Since you love to work so much, Benya, you may indeed see to it. I think that you should look to the cliffs behind my temple. There is much movement there, even at night, and none will dare to venture into a tomb that lies within earshot of my priests."
"A good idea. Majesty," Benya approved.
"And since you have presented yourself so precociously before me today," she went on, an imp of mischief in her face, "I have yet another task for you. I no longer wish to lie in the tomb Hapuseneb built for me. Tunnel from my shrine in the temple, Benya, far back behind my image and into the rock. There I shall lie close to those who worship me. I shall erect a likeness of my father to place in the shrine beside Amun's and my own. Thus can the people pray to all of us, for surely there is no mightier God than Amun and no greater Pharaoh than Thothmes and no more beautiful or able Incarnation of the God than I myself."
So Benya sweated once more in the valley that seemed to him to be consuming the better part of his life. He hewed the new tombs and soon the three statues stood side by side, their influence reaching far beyond their shrine, dwarfing all who stood before them.
The royal children thrived like healthy weeds. Thothmes became a priest, still serving every day in the temple, but all who looked on him doubted that he would remain there much longer. He was as stocky and strong as a young sycamore and already spent his afternoons in the barracks or watching the drills and exercises from the edge of the parade ground, his fists clenching and unclenching with frustration.
His mother was wisely biding her time. As she matured, Aset ceased to angle openly for her son's preferment; but her sly whispers, her sneaking innuendoes, her hints that young Thothmes would make as fine a Pharaoh as his grandfather had been fed softly into the ears of those who surrounded the young Prince. Though they shrugged, the seed brought forth a fruit that began, slowly and silently, to swell.
Hatshepsut dismissed all rumors of Aset's poisonous intrigues with a laugh. She was so firmly entrenched as Pharaoh that she believed herself to be at last immune, astride government and temple and holding on easily with knee and voice and whip. But Senmut, whose business as her Steward took him into many dark corners, was apprehensive, and Nehesi was more forthright.
''Majesty," he told her one day as they walked together from the audience hall to lunch on the grass by the verge of her lake, ''it is time to take another look at young Thothmes."
"Another look?" she teased him, her red kilt swinging as her stride matched his own. "Why another? I see him everywhere: in the temple, eating everything in sight at my dinners, and kicking the dust and watching me as I take out my chariot. What else is there to see?" She laughed, and he saw the sunlight catch the gold embossing on her helmet as her head turned.
"He is growing," he replied tersely. "He tires of the everlasting chants of his fellows and the darkness of the sanctuary. He is restless, turning his eye to the soldiers who march in the sun."
"Pah! He is only twelve. You have been inactive for too long, Nehesi. Shall I make war so that you may fight again?"
"I know what I see," he replied stubbornly. "May I oflFer you my opinion, Most Divine One?"
She stopped suddenly in the middle of the path and turned to him in exasperation, her lips pursed. "If you must, and I see that you must."
"Already in the palace there springs a new generation of young ones: Thothmes and his friends Yamu-nedjeh, Menkheperrasonb, Min-mose, May, Nakht, and the others. Their blood is fresh and hot, and they have little to do but fidget in school and race around the grounds. Put Thothmes into the army. Noble One, and perhaps a few of his companions. Have him begin as a retainer, and work him hard. Do not leave him idle."
She searched his black face, surprised to see it full of expression. She often thought that his features lent themselves to sculpture as no others because of their supreme indifference, but now his eyes pleaded with her, and his hard lips were twisted. "Is this what you would do?"
His eyes slid away from her. **No."
'Then why give me advice you yourself would not follow? What would you do with my fiery little nephew-son?''
He moved abruptly. **Do not ask me, Majesty."
"But I must know! Tell me, Nehesi. Are you not my bodyguard and the Keeper of my Door?"
''Remember then, Holy One, that you asked," he said desperately. "If I were you, I would take steps to see that the Prince could nevermore be a thorn in my side, and I would send his mother right out of Egypt."
Her face gradually relaxed into an expression of watchful concentration, and her eyes probed him, sharp as the point of a lance. "Would you?" she said softly. "And do you not think. General, that the possibility has entered my head many times as I watch him spring up tall and fierce as his grandfather, able already though he is but twelve? But tell me, what would the God say of an action such as the one you suggest?"
"He would say that his Daughter has all law and all truth within her body because she is he."
She shook her head. "No, he would not. He would say, 'Where is my son Thothmes, blood of my blood? I see him not, at work or at play.' And he would punish."
"Majesty," Nehesi said, planting his feet squarely on the ground and meeting her black eyes, "you are wrong."
"Nehesi," she answered, challenging him with her gaze, "I am never, ever wrong."
They resumed their walk in silence, but before the week was out Thothmes, together with Nakht, Menkheperrasonb and Yamu-nedjeh, found himself a junior member of the Division of Set. He took to the training eagerly, as if he had been born to be a soldier.
Neferura also grew. She, too, was twelve, a willowy, pale, rather delicate reflection of her burning, vital mother, a good scholar, but a brooder who drifted in and out of the rooms of the palace on silent feet, her arms full of cats or puppies or flowers. Her youth-lock was gone, but somehow she stayed a child, her innocence mixed with an almost cold hauteur that made her difficult to know. All the deep and hidden affections in her, the dark-flowing rivers of love, went to her kingly mother and to the dark lord who was her Nurse. But more and more she wandered to the training ground to stand under her parasol in the heat and the dust, watching young Thothmes shoot the bow and throw the spear, hearing his laughter as he shouted to his friends, and seeing his taut young muscles flex under his tanned skin.
Neferura had no more to do with her sister than she could help.
Meryet-Hatshcpset, at six, was a shrew, a demanding, fit-throwing, common child. She had burst in upon her motlier one day, her face red with jealousy and rage, and accused her of favoring Neferura. Hatshepsut did not deny the charge but had her severely disciplined, and the little girl had gone to bed with her buttocks tingling and her head full of dark and bitter vows of revenge.
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Hatshepsut reached the pinnacle of a glorious maturity and seemed to stay there, radiant in health and vigor and beauty. It was as if in her Godhead she was indeed immortal, drawing all men to her as she had all her life, imbued with every power and mystery of the God Amun himself. Often her servants knew she was approaching long before her Standard-Bearers came into view. The atmosphere around them would subtly change, as if a whiflf of omnipotence went ahead of her; perhaps it was only her perfume, the heavy myrrh, carried on the breeze. More and more she was regarded with a superstitious awe, and the throngs of pilgrims seeking her shrine increased as the months went by.
But within she felt restless. As she lay on her couch during the stifling nights of summer, she thought of Senmut, his presence every day a reminder that here was a man who could satisfy fully the demands of her royal body if she would but say the word. For years she had declined to say it, aware of her position first as Thothmes' Consort and later as Pharaoh, one of a kind, destined to be alone. But she grew weary of her widowhood, and her sleepless nights and fevered dreams told her th
at it was time to put a final trust, once and for all, in the hands of the man she loved above all others.
One hot evening, as the purple streamers of Ra's Barque were pulled, sizzling, to the horizon, she had herself anointed with perfumed oils and arrayed in transparent linen. She sent for him. For this night she had put aside her helmet. After her coronation she had let her hair grow again, although not so long as it had been before, for she still had to keep her head covered at all times, as was the tradition for Pharaoh. It swept against her cheeks and framed her face, startlingly feminine with its pretty, kohl-rimmed eyes and red mouth. She put on a simple white and silver headband whose streamers hung over her bare shoulders. She ordered fruit and wine to be set out, and her best alabaster lamps, the stone ground so finely that the pattern of butterflies' wings could be seen glowing through them, flickered gently around the room. She dismissed Nofret and her slaves so that he should find her alone and unadorned, as he had at their first meeting, and waited, standing by the wind funnel so that she could
feel the summer breeze coming down from the north.
The guard announced him, and she nodded for him to be admitted. As the silver doors closed quietly behind him, he bowed and strode toward her, a spark of surprise flaring in his eyes and as quickly dying away. He wore only a simple white kilt. His head and feet were bare, for he had been preparing to bathe in the river with Ta-kha'et. The oil and sweat glistened on his chest as he bowed again. Nothing of his chaotic thought showed on his face, but he rapidly assessed this new image: the filmy, drifting cloak; the wonderful, shining hair; the slightly languid, slightly provocative droop to the splendid eyes. Times without number he had wished to touch her, brushing by her in the audience chamber, smelling her warmth and her perfume at the feasts, seeing her limbs tense before she flung the throwing-stick. Time after time he had beaten back his blasphemous thoughts as Hapuseneb had advised him to do, so that over the years his face had become closed and a little hard, his gaze piercing, his manner lofty and uninviting to all who did not know the great Erpa-ha well.
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