Child of the morning

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Child of the morning Page 52

by Gedge, Pauline, 1945-


  was tapping on the door and it was time to dress.

  It had been a long time since she had worn kilts. Merire looked at her dumbly as she pushed the soft sheath aside and ordered her to find one of her old garments. They were piled in a chest behind the door, neatly folded, just as Nofret had left them. Hatshepsut pulled one out while Merire stood, still gaping, and wrapped it on. It fitted as perfectly as if she had taken it off the day before, and she clasped a jeweled belt around her waist and put on a yellow helmet. Merire found her electrum collar with the flowers of amethyst and jasper and fastened it around her neck. While she pulled on white leather boots, she told Merire to find Per-hor and have him harness her chariot.

  Merire went out, but before she went to the stables, she visited Thothmes' Chief Steward. Hatshepsut never drove her chariot in the morning, and Pharaoh would want to know. The man sent her away again and had his scribe take down a message for Thothmes.

  He was sitting in his tent on the outskirts of Thebes, his generals around him and his army spreading over the plain. As he read it, he was strangely still. **She knows," he muttered.

  'Tour pardon. Majesty?" Nakht said.

  But Thothmes shook his head and ordered more wine. It would not be long now, and he must wait. In the morning they could march. In the morning. . . .

  The racing circuit lay shimmering in the sun, a blinding dazzle of hot earth. Per-hor was waiting for her, standing in the golden chariot while the horses pranced and shuffled to and fro. When he saw her coming, he jumped down and handed her the reins.

  She smiled and greeted him as she stepped up, drawing on her gauntlets. ''Stand behind me today, Per-hor," she called. He sprang up obediently behind her. "We will not go round and round," she said, gathering up the slack. "Today we will go out onto the desert for a while."

  The horses snorted and began to trot. Per-hor kept his balance easily, the breeze freshening in his face. "Pharaoh will not like that. Majesty," he shouted in her ear.

  She turned briefly and grinned at him, flicking the horses with her whip. "Pharaoh can rot!" she called back, her words caught away by the wind. They thundered down the river road and presently veered east, careening under the cliffs and out to the flat land beyond.

  All morning she slashed at the horses, galloping mile upon mile through sand that stung their faces and silted in their nostrils and mouths. The wind grew fiery with the full blaze of the midday sun, burning the sweat

  from them and drying their skins. Per-hor gripped the sides of the chariot and hung on grimly, marveling at her sudden burst of strength, for in the brief three years he had known her, she had always been so calm, almost cold, a slow-moving, quiet enigma. Up and down they fled, scoring the desert, driving finally in their own red, choking dust. When he was wondering desperately whether, perhaps, he should seize the reins and end this madness, she wheeled savagely and started for the cleft in the rocks and the safety of the river. He closed his eyes and breathed a prayer of relief. The horses staggered to the barracks and stood, sweating and dejected. He got down stifily, holding out a hand to assist her, but she stood still for a moment, her gaze slowly traveling from the low stone buildings to the grove of trees by the training ground and on to the edge of the river. When she at last put her hand on his and jumped to the ground, he saw that she had been crying, the tears running down her cheeks, making rivulets in the sand that caked her face.

  ''Wash and change your clothes, Per-hor," she ordered him. ''And then report to me in my chambers at once." He bowed, and she left him, walking wearily through the gates and along the avenue to her door. He wondered what was on her mind, for she seldom asked for him before sunset.

  Her apartment was deserted and silent, cool in the midafternoon furnace that beat upon its thick walls. Without calling for Merire she took off the helmet, the kilt, and the gritty jewels, tossing them carelessly onto the couch. She went to her bathing room and washed herself in cold water, then walked back to her bedchamber with the water still dripping pleasantly from her brown body. She opened all her chests and with the utmost concentration selected other clothes: the blue kilt tissued in gold that had been made for the occasion of Neferura's Purification, a belt of gold and silver links, plain gold bracelets, golden sandals, a small coronet of gold with the plumes of Amun rising from the back, and a wide collar of gold, a single sheet studded with turquoises. She went to her shrine and said her prayers quietly, eyes squeezed shut, deliberately thinking of nothing more than the presence of her Father.

  She rose at last and called for Merire, sitting before her copper mirror and waiting while the girl assembled her pots and jars. "Paint my face carefully," she said. "Use the blue eye color, and sprinkle it with a little gold dust, and be sure to make the outline of the kohl smooth to my temples." Merire's touch was light, and Hatshepsut watched impassively as the cool paint glided onto her skin.

  If only my body had changed. If only my face had become lined and pouched. If only the blood did not still sing through my veins like water.

  laughing and bubbling over clean stones. If only—yes, if only. . . .

  As Merire took up the comb and ran it through the heavy black hair, Hatshepsut picked up the coronet and set it on her brow, taking one last long look at the dull, gleaming reflection of her matchless face. She put down the mirror with a snap. ''It is enough,'' she said. ''Go and tell the Chief Steward that I am ready."

  Merire hesitated. "Majesty, I do not understand."

  "No, but he will. Go quickly, for I am impatient." The servant bobbed and went out.

  Hatshepsut left her cosmetic table and walked through the room out onto the sunlit brilliance of the balcony. She heard Per-hor enter quietly behind her, and she called to him, "Bring me a chair."

  When he had brought it, she sat in the bright afternoon, looking out over the gardens and trees to the river and the copper-colored hills beyond. "Ra is westering," she said.

  He nodded and did not reply, leaning over the balustrade, his taut young face a careful blank. They stayed thus, in a deep and companionable silence: he, wondering when she would tell him why he had been summoned; she, sucking up the gay, sun-dappled glory of the scene below her, letting go the cords of living one by one and feeling her grasp slacken as the pieces slipped away and went snaking into the past.

  When the Chief Steward knocked on the door of the room far behind them and came padding out onto the balcony, silver tray in his hands, she looked up at him in awe, as if she had never seen him before. "Your afternoon wine," he said, bowing and setting the tray on the gray stone beside her chair.

  Per-hor suddenly sprang to life, striding across the balcony with a cry. "But you take no wine before the evening meal. Majesty. I know it!" he said urgently, his eyes darting from the silver goblet to the Chief Steward's expressionless face. And, as he looked into Hatshepsut's smiling eyes, he understood.

  "I do today, Per-hor," she said evenly. "Steward, you may go."

  "I am sorry. Majesty," he said uncomfortably, "but I have orders from the One himself not to leave your side."

  Per-hor straightened angrily and advanced on the man, but Hatshepsut nodded briefly, as if she had expected no other answer. "Thothmes still fears that even yet I might wriggle out from under him and somehow bring him to ruin," she laughed. "Poor Thothmes! Poor, poor, insecure Thothmes! But I beg you. Steward, to withdraw and wait without, in the passage. I will not jump over the balcony and run away. If you like, you may send a Follower of His Majesty to sit with me, for I had rather go

  forth in the company of an honest bodyguard than with one of my nephew-son's minions!"

  The Steward whitened. 'That will not be necessary, Majesty," he said stiffly. He turned on his heel and strode out the door, closing it and locking it behind him.

  Per-hor knelt before her, and she took his hands in her own. ''Do not drink it. Majesty!" he begged her. "Wait. The tides of fortune may yet change!"

  She shook her head sadly, bending to kiss his dark head. "They
run too swiftly for any more change," she said. "Many, many times they have flowed for me, bearing me on waves of triumph, but not again. They heave for Thothmes and wifl not carry me on their bosom anymore. Now get up and fetch me my lute."

  He did as he was told, going and getting it, cradling it in his arms, and handing it to her gently.

  She stroked the tight strings pensively. "Do you remember the song he would sing to me when we sat together on the grass and watched the waters of the lake ripple, and the birds swooped here and there over our heads, crying their song with him?" He shook his head mutely, and she smiled. "Of course you do not remember. How could you?" Her fingers found the chords, and she began to sing softly, her eyes on the far distance where the sun was sinking.

  Seven days from yesterday I have not seen my beloved,

  And sickness has crept over me.

  And I am become heavy in my limbs

  And am unmindful of my own body.

  If the master physicians come to me,

  My heart has no comfort of their remedies,

  And the magicians, no resource is in them.

  My malady is not diagnosed.

  Better for me is my beloved than any remedies,

  More important is she for me than the entire compendium of medicine.

  My salutation is when she enters from without.

  When I see her, then am I well;

  Opens she her eyes, my limbs are young again;

  Speaks she and I am strong;

  And when I embrace her . . . when I embrace her. . . .

  Her voice faltered and broke. She could not finish the song. She lay down the lute and reached for the goblet, staring into its red depths. Per-hor was motionless, sitting at her feet with his arms clasped tightly about his

  knees, his face turned away. She drank steadily, tasting the sweet coolness and the hint of something else, something bitter. She set the goblet back on the silver tray with a little sigh. ''Hold my hand, Per-hor," she said, ''and do not let it go."

  Convulsively he reached for her, grasping her fingers tightly.

  She leaned back in the chair. "My blessing be upon you, son of Egypt," she whispered. "Senmut, Senmut, are you there? Are you waiting?"

  Per-hor felt the lean hand quiver, but his grip did not loosen. He heard her murmur once more, wearily. He sat there for a long time while Ra dropped slowly to the black rim of the cliffs, the light on the balcony flooding red and streaming behind him to engulf her bedchamber. When the evening wind sprang up, lifting the hair from his forehead and stirring the golden hem of her kilt so that it brushed his arm, he tried to rise, but his muscles would not obey him. He sat on, her cold hand pressed to his face and the last shreds of her Father's shining garment lighting the jewels on her feet.

  (continued from front flap)

  treason or instill in the envious heart of her half-brother and future consort sufficient hatred to have her put to death.

  Sensuously beautiful, astonishingly evocative, Child of the Mornin g is the story of one of history's most remarkable women: Hatshepsut.

  Pauline Gedge is thirty-one. She lives in a tiny rural community on the prairies of western Canada. She began writing at the age of nine and came upon the story of Egypt's only woman pharaoh when she was eleven. Both proved to be life-long interests.

  Jacket illustration by Leo and Diane Dillon

  The Dial Press

  1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

  New York. New York 10017

  Printed in the U.S.A.

 

 

 


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