Child of the morning

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-

  On a cold, still night in the middle of winter, the month of Choiak, Neferura came to Hatshepsut's bedchamber. She stood before her mother, her face white and drawn with pain. Hatshepsut awoke with a start to see the shadowy, swaying form above her.

  Seeing that her mother was awake Neferura collapsed onto the couch and began to cry. *'I have a pain, mother, a terrible pain, here." She rubbed the right side of her abdomen. ''I cannot sleep."

  Hatshepsut sent Nofret running for the physician and got up, tucking Neferura under her own covers. The girl moaned and writhed, sweat breaking out on her forehead, clammy to Hatshepsut's touch. She ordered the lamps lit and the brazier stoked. She looked at the water clock. It was only three hours since she herself had retired. Nofret returned with the physician, and while he examined Neferura, Hatshepsut had Nofret dress her. She sat in the little chair beside the couch, and Neferura groped frantically for her hand, drawing up her knees as the pain probed her. The physician straightened and drew the covers back over the thin body.

  Hatshepsut snapped, ''Well?"

  He shook his head. ''She is very swollen about the groin, and the flesh is hot to the touch."

  "What will you do?"

  "I can give her a tincture of arsenic and poppy to take away the pain, but little more."

  "Magic?"

  '*A spell might work. I have seen this before, often. Sometimes the swelling goes down, but it comes back."

  *'Is poison at work?"

  *'No poison administered from without will cause a local swelling such as Her Highness's. You may set your mind at rest on that. Majesty."

  She nodded, but she did not believe him. ''Give her the drug, then. Nofret, send Duwa-eneneh to fetch the magicians. I want Hapuseneb here at once."

  Nofret hurried out, and the physician measured the dosage, carefully giving it to Neferura from his tiny alabaster cup. The girl swallowed it with eflFort, in tiny sips, and fell back onto the pillow, closing her eyes. Hatshepsut hoped that she would sleep, but she did not. When Hapuseneb and the magicians came, bowing, Neferura still tossed from side to side, whimpering. They were shocked.

  Hatshepsut rose. "Her body is in disorder," she said. "She has a swollen groin and much pain. Prepare an incantation to rid her of this devil." While they consulted together, she had a chair brought for Hapuseneb.

  He sat beside Hatshepsut, looking at Neferura as she moaned softly. "Is this Thothmes' work?" he asked her quietly.

  "I do not think so. The physician says not. Why would Thothmes destroy his ready tool? Neferura still means the Horus Throne to him."

  The magicians came forward and stood about the bed, filling the room with their dreary music. Hatshepsut listened hopelessly, her mind wandering to Thothmes' death. Hapuseneb was motionless, his gray eyes fixed steadily on the Princess. Neferura soon lost consciousness as the drugs took their effect, but her sleep was uneasy. She babbled and cried, always moving on the golden couch. The hand still grasping Hatshepsut's was hot and dry, the forehead damp and cold under the physician's wary touch.

  Someone bowed, and Hatshepsut looked up, startled, to see Thothmes straightening before her. He was still in his sleeping kilt, and his shaved head was bare, making his eyes darker than ever and his protruding teeth and high cheekbones more emphatically her father's.

  "Is she very ill?" he asked.

  She murmured helplessly, "I do not know."

  "May I stay?"

  She looked into his face but saw only the polite expression of a question. She waved for another chair to be brought. He sat and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging.

  The droning went on and on, a monotonous lullaby. From time to time the physician gently withdrew the covers and felt the swollen skin. The night wore on, and Neferura seemed to quieten.

  When dawn came, she opened her eyes and smiled at them faintly. 'Thothmes?'' she whispered, her face lighting.

  He knelt by the couch, stroking the hair from her face. *'It is I, little one. Be at peace. I will not leave you."

  **I feel a bit better now. The pain has gone."

  The physician went to her immediately. When he rose, his face was grave. 'The swelling has gone suddenly," he said. Hatshepsut ordered the magicians to cease. In the welcome silence they could all hear Neferura's short, rapid breaths, and Hapuseneb caught the physician's eye. The man shook his head imperceptibly, and Hapuseneb looked back at Neferura. She was smiling up into Thothmes' face. She placed her hands in his, and his fingers curled tightly around them.

  *'Am I very ill? Perhaps if I frighten mother, she will let us marry," Neferura whispered.

  She turned her head to smile at Hatshepsut, but Hatshepsut saw something in those unfocused, drug-filled eyes, a flickering shadow of the Judgment Hall. As she rose with a cry and bent over her daughter, Neferura gave a little hiccup, just once, and sighed. She was dead. The eyes glazed rapidly; the smile became a lifeless grimace.

  Thothmes gently withdrew his hands and stood up. No one moved or spoke. Sunshine crept across the floor, and the embers in the brazier died, but the people were frozen, stunned at the swiftness of the Princess's passing. At length Thothmes bowed and went out without a word.

  Hatshepsut turned to Hapuseneb, her hands stretched forth, pleading. ''She is dead. Dead!" she said unbelievingly.

  He took the cold hands and warmed them between his own. 'These things happen. Majesty," he told her quietly. "Only the gods know why."

  She continued to stare at him, her eyes looking through him. "All of them gone. All of them!" She turned back to the couch and knelt, gathering the limp figure into her arms. "Come home, Senmut," she whispered into the damp hair that lay tangled on the pillow. "I have need of you now."

  Hapuseneb left her cradling the body, rocking it softly to and fro. He went to the House of the Dead to summon the sem-priests. He could do nothing more.

  Hatshepsut moved through the days of mourning woodenly, coldly, and Thothmes left her alone. All her hopes for a new line of female Kings had been pinned on Neferura, and with her death she felt another golden pin driven deep into the beautiful, huge quartz sarcophagus in which she felt she herself would lie before long. It seemed to her that the God had

  deserted her and that all the years behind her were full of struggles and deaths and defeat after defeat. She forgot the golden times: Senmut and her coronation and her close and loving relationship with a God who had given her her heart's desire. She saw only Aniun, faithless Father, cruel depriver. She went to Karnak and strode up and down before him, reminding him of all the prayers he had not answered, but he did not speak to her as he often had done in the past. She went across the river to Osiris-Neferu-khebit, but here, too, there was no comfort. Neferu was dumb, smiling sadly at her with a pitying, uncomprehending stare. Hat-shepsut went back to the palace to wait for the burial, knowing that she had been abandoned by gods and men.

  The whole court attended the funeral. Ineni and Tahuti, Menkh, User-amun, Amun-hotpe, Puamra, Hapuseneb, even Anen, the Royal Scribe—men tired and dispirited, worn with the years of an awesome responsibility. She paced before them, her head down and her eyes on the small coffin, feeling as hollow and lifeless as her daughter's body. Thothmes walked beside her, swinging along silently. Somehow there was comfort in his easy vitality, the freshness in his springing knees. She felt the absence of Senmut and Nehesi like the sharp cut of a lance, needing them desperately as she at last entered the dark passageways of the tomb and stood while Neferura was lowered into her other coffins. At the other funerals—her father's, her mother's, Thothmes', her sister's—she had felt the pain of separation and sensed the sorrow of the furniture and belongings piled around. But Neferura's lovely things spoke to her of her own failures, the wasted years spent in fighting. For what? For a moment of deluded might? She stood by Hapuseneb and looked about her. There was Neferura's first doll, there her child's kilts piled neatly in her little tiring box, there her silver crowns, there her pretty blue sandals; even her pets l
ay with her in the dark.

  And here am I, Hatshepsut thought grimly, still holding on, though I am so tired, so weary of myself and of Thothmes and everyone else. Am I, Son of the Sun, true likeness and Incarnation of Amun, never to die?

  She left the priests to utter the final curses on any who tried in later years to force a way into the tomb and the workmen to begin the sealing of the stone doors as she went slowly back to the palace. She passed the mouth of her valley without so much as a glance, knowing that on this day the solemn, sphinx-lined avenue would be sleeping in the sun, empty of worshipers. She got into the royal skiff and sat with her head lowered, wondering for the first time in her life what she would do with the rest of the day, and the day after that, and the one after that.

  A year had gone by since the five laden ships had left the Theban wharf.

  but that awesome, happy occasion already seemed to belong to an era long gone, a time of hopes and expectations in the midst of turmoil. That morning seemed to shine out like the last friendly glow of dwindling firelight on a cold desert night.

  Before she had climbed the water steps, she saw that Thothmes and Meryet had already disembarked and were walking away through the trees. Hatshepsut paused for a moment to watch them glide away, their heads together, deep in conversation. So that was the way the wind blew. Of course.

  She went to her couch and sent for Ipuky, and for the rest of the afternoon she lay with an arm across her face and her eyes closed, listening to all the old songs, the songs of conquest and laughter, the songs that belonged to other, less complicated ages, the clear, melancholy voice of the blind man filling her room like mellow water music and mingling with her own loud thoughts.

  Two days after the funeral, Yamu-nefru, Sen-nefer, and Djehuty took their chariots, their tents, and their servants and went hunting lions in the desert. They journeyed for three days, sighting two beasts and bringing down another, returning each night to their camp under the shadow of the Theban cliffs to sit around the fire, their tents behind them, watching the spectacular sunsets. None were at ease. Though they had been friends since the days of their youth in the palace schoolroom, though they had fought and feasted together, a blanket of inhibitions seemed to smother them, separating one from the other.

  It was only on their last night out that Yamu-nefru sent the servants to their own tent and poured their wine himself, balancing the jug carefully and studiously in his long, manicured fingers, avoiding their eyes. He sat cross-legged on his cloak, shifting his seat in the sand underneath. He cleared his throat delicately. *'We have not had a merry hunting," he remarked to no one in particular. ''Could it be that we have had more on our minds than just lions?"

  *'Say rather that we have had only one lion in our thoughts," Sen-nefer grunted. **I think that the time has come to speak frankly."

  The others nodded, Yamu-nefru sipping his wine and watching them cautiously over the rim of his jeweled cup.

  Djehuty spoke softly, his eyes on the orange sky. 'The lion struggles fiercely in the trap, seeking knives with which to cut himself free. His bonds weaken. Soon he will burst forth of his own accord. Woe to those who did not assist him!"

  "We do not fear his anger," Sen-nefer remarked. "It is not that that

  we must consider, but where our duty lies. We can no longer serve two masters in honesty, and honesty, my friends, can no longer be made to serve us."

  ''Have done with evasions!" Yamu-nefru snapped. ''I at least will now speak plainly. Pharaoh's dreams have come to nought with the death of the Princess Neferura. For many years she has governed Egypt with a firm hand and a steady eye, but now she is bucking a clamorous successor. Thothmes maintains his right to the throne from the day his father died. Is he in the right?"

  ''According to law, yes," Djehuty replied. "We all know that. But we have served Hatshepsu for a long time. We have fought beside her and ruled our holdings under her, and she has treated us with all kindness and reward. She has been immensely successful as Pharaoh. Her peace has brought a precious security to Egypt, and if we leave her, we bring that peace to an end."

  "It is coming to an end in any case," Sen-nefer said brusquely. "Thothmes means to take the throne soon, with or without her permission. If without, then you may be sure that blood will follow. If we support her still, we prolong the fight, for we have many soldiers under us, as has Thothmes. But if we go to Thothmes and oflFer him our help, she will be weakened, and her war swift. Her defeat will be almost painless."

  "Painless for Thothmes!" Yamu-nefru retorted. "She will see any revolt as open treason. It is reasonable, for there is no doubt that she is indeed the God. I do not think that she will fight. All her life she has been bent on protecting her countrymen. If she thinks that Thothmes intends to fight and rend Egypt apart at the seams, she will give in rather than shed Egyptian blood."

  "True," Djehuty nodded. "And in that case Thothmes will be Pharaoh before long. I am for him. He is able and strong and will make a good Hawk-in-the-Nest. Hatshepsu is losing ground. As she retreats, her power lessens, and Egypt suflFers. Rather than see a government in confusion, I will put myself and my troops at Thothmes' disposal."

  They drank for a moment in silence, considering Djehuty's words.

  Sen-nefer spoke gloomily. "I go with you, but I am loathe to do it. She is a woman of great courage and resource. It will be a cruel blow to her to see us desert."

  "It will be no desertion!" Yamu-nefru reminded him. "We serve Egypt, and Thothmes will soon be Egypt. It is very easy to discuss these things far from her presence, but can we stand before her in the audience chamber and repeat them?"

  "Is there any need? Can we not go to Thothmes and then withdraw from court for a while?"

  Sen-nefer was clearly distressed.

  Yamu-nefru said disdainfully, **We are not cowards. If we throw in our lot with Thothmes, she must know it from our own lips, or I will not agree to go."

  The sun had set, and above them the sky was turning slowly from flame to the palest of blues, the changing color revealing a round, clear moon and the silver dot of the evening star.

  Djehuty turned his head slowly, scanning the vast horizon. He looked Yamu-nefru full in the face. ''We all love her, the Daughter of the God," he said, ''but it is time for a new Horus, a male Horus, and a new administration. It does not have to be tomorrow. Indeed, it is too soon, for Senmut and Nehesi will bring her a new glory from Punt, and Thothmes will have to wait yet again for the people's acclaim. I say hold back, but with minds made up."

  Yamu-nefru carefully set his cup in the sand and fastidiously dusted off his fingers. "It all depends on whether or not Senmut brings home the fleet," he said quietly. "He may. Or he may not."

  Sen-nefer disagreed. "In either case she is finished," he said brutally.

  They gazed uncomfortably into the fire as the sky darkened to a rich royal blue and the desert stars appeared suddenly, flaming, hanging above them like Hatshepsut's wise, all-seeing eyes.

  Senmut and Nehesi also sat in the sand, but before them the ocean rolled, a dark, heaving waste bordered as far as their eyes could see with lines of gray foam that dwindled and reformed as the waves broke. Behind them the jungle massed, a thick, humid tangle of fecundity, pierced by the tiny glimmers of Parihu's lights. The voices of their sailors and Parihu's subjects carried to them through the damp, hot air.

  Nehesi sighed. "It is indeed a marvelous land, this Ta-Neter," he said, "but it is time to go home."

  Senmut leaned back until the quivering palm fronds hid the sky. "Past time," he said. "This damp heat drains all life from me, and I feel as if I were about to sprout vines. How good it will be to smell the dry winds of the desert once more."

  "The One will be pleased. She will be very pleased," Nehesi said.

  They sat in a companionable silence, their thoughts full of the gracious halls and sweet gardens of Thebes and of the woman who waited for them patiently, leaning over the parapet of her balcony and staring with tired eyes into th
e southern sky.

  In the spring Hatshepsut's desert police brought her word of more unrest in Rethennu. She reluctantly called a council of war, her heart not

  in it this time. Pen-Nekheb had died, and somehow the old spirit of cohesive force was missing from the men who faced her in the audience chamber.

  But it was Thothmes who dominated the table, standing before them in his yellow helmet, his shoulders back, and his eyes flashing. One foot was propped up on a chair. ''Rethennu holds Gaza," he said, ''and Gaza is a mighty city and moreover a seaport. Give me leave. Princes of Egypt, to capture Gaza and thus not only put down these ever unsatisfied heathen but also acquire for us an outlet on the Great Sea."

  ''It is I who give or deny leave!" Hatshepsut warned him obstinately. "Speak to me, Thothmes, not to my advisers. Rethennu is ours and has been for many long hentis. Why should we do more than teach them a little lesson?"

  Thothmes' eyes saw far into a future that she could not glimpse. "Because Gaza is the gateway to other countries, to other allies and conquests and riches. Though we in truth hold Rethennu, we do not hold it firmly enough. It is time to fill Gaza with Egyptian artisans, Egyptian traders, Egyptian vessels."

  "But why? Why risk the army to take a city that can be fortified and held against us when we need only remind it to whom it owes tribute? We could do that with a small punitive force."

  He looked down at her, incredulous.

  The ministers were silent, even Menkh, who always had something to say, all knowing that their opinion here did not matter in the least and that they were seeing one more family squabble.

  "Why? Because Gaza is a good testing ground."

  "For what?"

  "For me. For the army, which grows weary of feigned battle and long marches to nowhere. For Egypt, a chance to spring from Gaza and expand her borders."