Child of the morning

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-

  Hatshepsut was still up when Paere burst in upon her. Nofret lay on her mat at the door, dozing fitfully, but Hatshepsut had begun to walk her floor, her arms folded under her breast, her head down, unable to rest and go to her couch. The little servant came staggering through her private entrance, a Follower of His Majesty behind him. She turned and ran to him, horror-stricken. He was weeping and babbling, shivering. His hands and one cheek and the front of his kilt were smeared with blood. He was trying to speak, waving something in front of him with frantic despair. At a half-strangled word from her the soldier picked up the water jug standing in the corner and threw the contents over Paere's head. He shuddered and gasped, still crying. Suddenly he collapsed onto her chair and began to sob, still clutching the thing in his bloody hands.

  'They have killed him. They have murdered him!" he shouted brokenly.

  She stepped forward, her feet numb, and wrenched the object from his grasp. It was a scroll, sticky with blood. It bore her own seal, opened long ago. As she unrolled it slowly, nervelessly, her other door was flung open, and Duwa-eneneh ran in.

  ''Majesty, Hapuseneb! Nehesi! Both dead! So soon! What shall I—?"

  But she ignored him, staring at Paere with an expression of absolute terror and grief on her face. The scroll was Senmut's own, the very first plan of her temple in the valley that he had submitted to her. Across its neat, lovely lines she had written, "Authorized and approved by myself, for the architect Senmut. Life, Prosperity, and Happiness!''

  In the morning, after a sleepless horror of a night, when she had tried to comfort Paere and speak rationally to Duwa-eneneh, all the while wanting only to walk to the top of the temple and fling herself off, she had Nofret array her in white and silver and put the Double Crown on her head. The ravages of the past hours were impossible to erase, but the woman did her best, laying the rouge heavily along the cheeks and ringing the swollen eyes with the blackest of kohl. Hatshepsut took Duwa-eneneh and strode to the audience chamber. She marched to the throne, mounted the steps, and sat upon the smooth, icy gold, her anger and sorrow invisible on her proud face.

  The bodies of Hapuseneb and Nehesi had been quickly taken to the House of the Dead, but no one knew where Senmut lay. His room had

  been sealed by her order until her police could begin an investigation, but as the hours went by and servant after servant came to her with negative answers, she had begun to fear that she would never find him. Knowing Thothmes as she did, she thought that it would not be enough for him to destroy the living flesh. He would rend and separate and bury deep, so that the gods could not find him to welcome him to paradise. She understood very well Thothmes' insane jealousy, his hatred for Senmut as her right hand; but this senseless, demonic spite was beyond her. The fear of him began to grow inside her. Hapuseneb. Nehesi. Senmut. . . . There was no one left to speak and act for her. She was alone.

  She awaited his coming patiently, sitting back on the throne, her arms lying along the lions' backs, her feet together on the ivory footstool that was carved with the likenesses of her dead foes. Duwa-eneneh stood motionless beside her, holding her standard, and the palace began to move into another day.

  He came at last, striding down the long hall, his sandals beating a loud, dominating rhythm. It was all she could do to keep silent and watch him approach, for she saw only his hands wet with the blood of her faithful ones. She read a defiant guilt and a new awakening to power in his eyes. She loathed him—and she feared him.

  She saw Yamu-nefru and Djehuty and Sen-nefer walking behind him. She rose to her feet in disbelief, the unbearable weight of this pain upon pain tearing into her. She sucked in her breath in agony, and the three came on and at last halted, bowing. Thothmes lifted his eyes to hers, and they looked at each other for a long moment. Somewhere a horn blew. A hawk flew past the window. Outside, in the garden, a servant walked, singing. They faced each other in a deadly and vicious silence until Hatshepsut lowered herself slowly onto the throne.

  *Tou kifled them."

  *'Of course I killed them! What else did you expect? Did you think that I would let the months and years go by and do nothing?"

  ''No."

  ''I had no choice. Surely you see that!"

  'There is always choice. You gave the coward's answer."

  "I gave the only answer!" He shouted at her, his voice ringing to the silver ceiling.

  She regarded him impassively, turning her gaze to the three men who stood behind him. "Come forward, Yamu-nefru, Djehuty, Sen-nefer." She said their names slowly and deliberately.

  They left Thothmes and bowed at the foot of the throne. Their faces were bland, expressionless, and their very indifference hurt her intolerably.

  ''Did you have aught to do with these despicable murders?"

  Yamu-nefru put out a hand in shock. "No, Majesty, I swear on your name! We only knew this morning that Senmut and the others were no more!"

  She read his eyes and nodded, satisfied. 'Tou may thank the gods for that. Thothmes or no Thothmes, I would have punished you with my own hands. Do you have anything more to say to me?" She could not believe that they had changed allegiance without a word.

  They exchanged glances, and Yamu-nefru spoke again, his bronze bracelets clinking as he gestured. ''We have loved you. Flower of Egypt, and we have served you with our own blood. We have fought beside you and governed honestly in your sight and in the sight of the God. But now the Crown Prince puts forth his claim, and under the law we cannot ignore it. We do not move through fear."

  ''I know that."

  ''We move in the belief that Thothmes is indeed the Hawk-in-the-Nest, true inheritor of the Double Crown."

  "By what law?"

  "By the law that states that Pharaoh shall be male."

  She passed a hand over eyes burning with weariness and waved them aside. "All right! All right! I understand your reasoning and your strange, cunning honesty. I have loved you, too. And now you may go. Or do you wish to stay and see your Pharaoh lose her crown?"

  Thothmes nodded, and they turned and strode away.

  When their footsteps could no longer be heard, Thothmes said, "They wish to avoid bloodshed. That is all. Their thoughts are hidden from me as well."

  "You think nothing of bloodshed!"

  He walked closer, and Duwa-eneneh stiflFened. "I have not come to rake up dead ashes. Yesterday is over, and tomorrow is mine. Come down from the throne."

  "No."

  "Come down, Hatshepsu, or I will call my soldiers and have you thrown down!"

  She wanted to scream at him, "Do it then! Do it!" But it was a senseless defiance, a silly little gesture. With a shrug she walked slowly down the steps, cold fury in her eyes. "There! The throne is yours!"

  "Take off the crown."

  For a moment her will faltered, and she paled.

  As he looked into the big black eyes Thothmes saw a pleading, a terrible defeat that suddenly tore at him, filling him with sympathy. He saw a

  death in those eyes, a wrenching, awesome falling apart. He almost put out his arms, but a flash of obstinacy reached him, and all sympathy fled.

  'Take it off!''

  *Tou will have to come and get it yourself. Put the knife away, Duwa-eneneh. There has been enough killing."

  The Chief Herald miserably sheathed his knife and looked away. Thothmes stepped to her and in one easy movement lifted the heavy crown from her head. Her hair fell around her face, freed from its bonds. Suddenly she was Hatshepsut again, a woman, a Queen. He turned as she laughed, the old mocking note infuriating him.

  ''Well, well! We have a new Pharaoh! But what about your legitimization, Thothmes? Meryet is panting to take you to the temple and become Queen."

  "I do not want Meryet," he said harshly. "I want you."

  She was stunned. "Me? You want me as your Queen?"

  "Of course. Meryet will be useless as a consort, but you could rule actively with me. We would be invincible, you and I."

  "Do you mean to stand t
here with the blood of my dearest flesh still warm on your hands, and offer me marriage?" It was too much, and she sank to the steps. "I suppose that when I die, you can then marry Meryet and go on securely ruling Egypt. Oh, you are deep, Thothmes, deep and unscrupulous!"

  "Not so!" he answered roughly. "I do not need you, for as you say, I have Meryet. But I want you."

  "Why?" she said. "In the God's name, why? I am nearing forty, and you are only just reaching for your majority. A pretty match, Thothmes!"

  "Well, what am I going to do with you?" he snapped in exasperation. "I cannot leave you to wander wherever you please, stirring up trouble!"

  "That, Pharaoh, Living Forever," she said, smiling faintly, "is your problem." She jerked her head at Duwa-eneneh and went out of the audience chamber to her own silent, empty rooms, leaving Thothmes standing there, frowning angrily, with the crown in his hands.

  She needed desperately to rest, but she found she could not. Every time she lay down and her body became still, her mind began to churn with ghastly pictures: Senmut lying in his own blood, Hapuseneb dead under the moon, Nehesi on the damp paving stones of the avenue with a knife through his throat, his eyes staring into nothing. She finally left her bedchamber, and taking Nofret with her, she went to Meryet's apartments. There was no doubt about the new atmosphere in the palace. As she walked quickly down the passages, between the pillars of her halls, and around corners, the soldiers and slaves and nobles bowed to her with the

  same reverence, but their eyes were inquisitive and scared. All around her she heard their whispers. Little knots of people gathered outside the ministers' doors, talking rapidly and excitedly. She sensed rather than saw the milling confusion of minor officials who ran here and there, uncertain whom to approach with their questions, standing nonplussed with sheafs of papers in their hands or wandering aimlessly from room to room. On the way she had to pass Senmut's office. She glanced in as she walked by. The doors were open, and his table lay empty of scrolls. His big chair was drawn up to it as if at any moment he might walk toward it, arms full of papers, calling to his scribe. She quickly averted her head and strode on.

  Meryet was standing on a reed mat, her arms held out, as Hatshepsut walked through her door. A slave was winding a dripping piece of linen around her and under her shoulders. Water pooled on the floor and spattered Hatshepsut as she approached, the words of greeting dying on her lips.

  ''Meryet, what on earth are you doing?"

  Meryet-Hatshepset looked at her mother with guarded, surly eyes. '*I am being fitted for a new sheath. If the linen is wound around me wet, it then shrinks to my figure as it dries. In the end it is most becoming. It is the latest fashion.''

  'The latest. . . . Do you know what has been happening in the palace? Do you know about me?"

  Meryet's slave fastened the sopping linen under the Princess's arm with a large bronze pin. Meryet stepped carefully oflF the mat, holding out her feet so that the girl could slip on her sandals. "Of course I know, and I am sorry, mother, but it is all your own fault. If you had bowed to Thothmes a long time ago, then none of it would have happened. You have only yourself to blame."

  Hatshepsut looked into the hard, sullen eyes of her daughter. She was speechless. She turned on her heel and walked out the door. Meryet called after her, asking her what she had wanted, but Hatshepsut stalked on. When she reached the branching of the passage, she stopped and whirled around. Meryet was standing outside her door, looking after her. Hatshepsut shouted back, "You are worthy of Thothmes, and he of you! I wish you joy of one another!" Before Meryet could answer, she was running into the garden, running anywhere, her tears blinding her and making her stumble over the grass.

  Thothmes decreed the customary seventy days of mourning for Hapuseneb and Nehesi. Day after day their bodies lay under the hands of the sem-priests who wound the stiff limbs with bandages and prepared

  them for their last journey. But of Senmut, Thothmes dehberately did not speak. ''He deserves no mourning," he told her contemptuously, ''and no burial. He was a traitor." She had to grieve on her own, lying before the image of Amun in her own lonely room, saying the prayers for him without priests or acolytes to hold the incense and make the responses. She hurt now without respite, the pain growing within her until she was one long, howling, unbearable ache. She refused to walk in the funeral processions, showing her disgust by her absence, but she stood on the roof and watched them form, the blue mourning garments of the harem women shining in the early sun and the golden sledges glinting by the water, bearing away all that was left of her life. She whispered prayers to them as the barges were poled across the river, but she cried no more. There were no more tears to be shed. All that remained was a great, endless tiredness and an impossible loneliness that filled the vast halls of her palace with echoes from the past.

  Two days later Thothmes and Meryet went to the temple, and the crown was officially placed on Thothmes' head. Meryet received the little Cobra Coronet, gloating and smiling, triumphant. That night the feasting went on until the small hours, the ebb and flow of the merrymaking wafting to Hatshepsut as she lay on her couch, Nofret beside the door. She could not sleep. She had not gone to the temple, either. Thothmes had threatened and wheedled and finally shouted, but she just looked at him silently and shook her head.

  "Will you at least help me with the problems of government?" he had begged.

  At last she had shrugged and turned away. "If you like," she had said indifferently. "Certainly Meryet will be no use, and it will give me something to do." She wanted to fill the days with something, but after two months Thothmes told her that he could manage without her, and she retired to her apartments with the same glacial calm.

  It hurt her to give up the leadership of the Braves of the King to Thothmes. He had finally demanded the Commander's silver armbands, sending her own second-in-command to fetch them. His petty probing in the wound of her defeat made her angry, thus taking some of the sting away as she handed the bands to the uncomfortable, unsmiling soldier. She embraced him, thanking him for his service, and sent him away.

  Thothmes had appointed Menkheperrasonb, his architect. High Priest of Amun. She could never get used to seeing him in the leopard skin, waiting before the Cod's sanctuary when she went to make her devotions. She had to steel herself to meet his gaze day after day, and more than once, walking to the temple in a mood of abstracted brooding, she had

  expected to smile into Hapuseneb's face, and the presence of Menkheper-rasonb shocking her.

  It was only one of many, many changes. One day she called for Duwa-eneneh, waiting with a message for her new Steward, but it was Yamu-nedjeh who entered her room and made his bow.

  '*! sent for my Chief Herald, not you," she said sharply. ''Where is Duwa-eneneh?"

  Yamu-nedjeh did not smile. 'The noble Duwa-eneneh has been called to his estates in the south," he said, his face carefully composed. "Pharaoh has appointed me Chief Herald in his absence."

  Hatshepsut looked sadly at the tall young man with the thick, straight eyebrows and square shoulders. She could not answer. It was no use to fight, to scream, to demand the immediate recall of Duwa-eneneh. She knew that he would never come back. She sent Yamu-nedjeh away, and Nofret carried the message instead.

  As the weeks went by and each new day brought fresh and wrenching proofs that her total lordship was over, she channeled her gusts of energy into furious physical exercise. She hunted with a ruthlessness that was new to her, killing every day. Killing mindlessly in the wilds beyond the palace walls and bringing back carts laden with the carcasses of animals and birds, quarry that she turned from at the end of the day without a backward look. She spent hour upon hour with her bow and arrows—draw and loose, draw and loose, target after target being taken down, cratered with jagged holes. Though she rose in the mornings with stiff muscles and an aching shoulder, the frustration and fury did not leave her, as she dimly hoped they would.

  Menkh rode with her, held her quiver, ran wi
th the dogs after her stricken prey. He seemed not to have changed. He chattered ceaselessly, laughing and capering before her as he had done all his life. He ignored the ever-present soldiers that Thothmes had set to guard them both, who trudged after them wherever they went. But when she met his eyes, Hatshepsut saw the bleeding of a quiet wound as deep as her own, a flow of pain he was unable to staunch. In all the loud babble of his nonsense she noted no reference to past or future, as if he were holding off not only herself but also all the years behind him. His only defense was the brilliant gloss of the courtier's wit coupled with his own zest, a defense that must fall at last and let in the hard glare of reality.

  Thothmes had noted their daily forays, as he noted everything. He weighed, pondered, and finally moved, dissolving their crazed partnership with brutal speed.

  Menkh met her under the trees by the barracks, dressed not for hunting but for travel. His pack rested at his feet, and a cloak was over his arm. When she came up to him, he bowed; but as he straightened, she saw a tormented face. Overnight, the lines of laughter around his eyes had become cruel reminders of encroaching age. She glanced at the soldiers behind him and turned swiftly to look again into his eyes.

  He did not wait for her to greet him. *'My humblest apologies. Divine One, but I cannot hunt with you today—or tomorrow either. I am to go away."

  'Tou?*' she said, shocked.

  His face worked for a moment, grief and anger and something else, alien and frightening, fighting for control of him. 'Tharaoh has need of a charioteer to augment a new squadron he has formed. He is building another garrison within the borders of Nubia, and I am to go there." He smiled at last, bitterly. **It is a long, long way."

  ''How far?" She was almost speechless. How could Thothmes, even with his vast suspicions and dark speculations, ever imagine Menkh capable of fomenting plots with her when his sunny soul, like User-amun's, lay open for the world to see?