The Sekhmet Bed (34 page)

***

Ramose was born just as the harvest began, when the sun was hot and the sky was thin. Mutnofret labored from one sunrise to the next, and when her third son was laid at her breast, she sent for Ahmose.

The second queen looked weak, limp, wrung out like an overused towel. She lay on the slope of her bed with her knees bent; Wahibra the physician was crouched between her thighs, plying something there that Ahmose could not see. She drew closer. Mutnofret’s eyes were closed. Her breath was steady. Wahibra’s hand came up, trailing a coarse thread. Something in his fingers shone. A copper needle. Ahmose gasped.

At the sound, Mutnofret opened her eyes and smiled wanly. “Ahmose. My sister.”

“
Are you all right?”

Mutnofret glanced down at Wahibra, who never looked up from his work. “I tore badly, but he says I’ll be all right. The bleeding has slowed.”

“
It must be painful.”

“
The sewing? I can’t feel it. I’ll feel it tomorrow, no doubt.” Her eyes were sleepy, and not just from the birth. The acrid smoke of the pain-dulling herb semsemet hung in the air.

“
Thank you for coming. I wasn’t sure I’d…”

“
I would have been here no matter what, if you’d been in danger. Whatever our past wrongs against each other, I’d have been here.”

“
Thank you.”

“
Your third son. He is a lovely one. He has so much hair.”

Ramose nursed, one wrinkled fist near his mouth. Mutnofret smiled at him. “He’s bigger than the others, too, when they were newborn. No wonder I tore. He’ll have to be my last, I think.”

“
Three sons make a good life’s work.”

“
I’m eager to see your own son. What are you going to call him?”

“
Hatshepsu.”

“
The greatest of the great men
. A good name for a prince. He’ll be the heir, then.” Through the fog of the semsemet smoke, Mutnofret’s voice was defeated.

There was no sense trying to spare her feelings. Ahmose would be square and level with her sister from now on. She’d be square and level with everyone. Mutnofret saw how it had all turned out, anyway. She was resigned. It was better this way. Ahmose said, “Yes.”

“
I wish him well.” Mutnofret’s lips thinned in a little smile. “Send for me after his birth, won’t you?”

“
I will, Mutnofret.”

The second queen settled her head against the padded head-rest and sighed. Wahibra straightened, dabbed at the place between Mutnofret’s legs with a clean towel, and pushed himself off the bed. A midwife came forward from where she crouched on a stool against the wall, struck up an earnest exchange of whispers with the physician. There was nothing more here for Ahmose to say or do. She gazed down at Mutnofret’s slack belly and blood-spotted thighs for a long moment.

Not so long ago, the thought of lying in Mutnforet’s place, torn and vulnerable, would have terrified her. Now, she was almost eager for it. Not for the pain, and not for the labor. But to hold her son to her breast, as Mutnofret held Ramose. That would be a sweet thing.

She walked back to her apartments singing.

THIRTY-FIVE

Ahmose was spinning in her garden when the pains began. It was morning, a clear day with a sky echoing with the cries of shorebirds. She’d had false pains for days. The first time a pain had taken her, sneaking up quietly, pulling at her belly, she’d been so startled she’d dropped her bowl of beer. Twosre called for the midwives, and they examined her for hours. But there was no labor. “False pains,” they’d called it, and warned her it might happen again. That was nearly a week ago. The false pains had come and gone every few hours, gentle pains, just enough to make her wonder whether her child was on his way. But always they subsided again, and Ahmose became increasingly frustrated.

It was several weeks after Ramose’s birth. She’d been marking the days since she’d seen the new prince laid on her sister’s chest. Soon, soon –
sweet Hathor, let it be soon!
– her son would arrive, Egypt’s blessing. The false pains taunted her, dangling a treasure before her and snatching it away again. They were beginning to make her very cross. Being hugely pregnant was uncomfortable enough without the gods toying with her. Ahmose’s feet had been achy for weeks. Her ankles were swollen all the time, no matter how Twosre wrapped them and rubbed them with soothing balms. The prince stuck out before her everywhere she went, preceding her every move, as bold and confident as a king’s son should be. The weight of her belly astonished her. Since the last new moon, even lying in bed made her feel like a brick thrown into water. She spent one sleepless night trying to make herself comfortable, then pushed her headrest away, woke Twosre, and made her bring cushions instead. With silk pillows cradling her head, she lay on her side like a rekhet woman and slept with her knees tucked up against her belly. It was improper, but comfortable. That was all that mattered.

Now, as she idly dropped her spindle in the pleasant shade, her belly tensed. She frowned and kept spinning. Another false pain, she was sure. The spindle was a blur at the end of its pale thread. She caught it deftly. She was about to drop it once more, but the pain intensified. It was sharper and more insistent. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. The spindle waited patiently in her hand. She breathed in and out. The pain was still not gone. It was longer than the others had been, she was sure.

At last it receded. She sighed with relief.
Just another false pain
, she told herself, unwilling to allow a thrill of excitement. She resumed her spinning.

Minutes later, though, the pain was back. This time she set her spindle aside and closed her eyes, taking measured, steady breaths. When the pain receded, she did not retrieve her spinning. She remained still and gathered, waiting, willing herself to stay calm, to keep her hopes at bay.

And again it came. This time it was more forceful than ever before. She opened her eyes and looked down at her belly. It tensed perceptibly, tightening and pulling. She sucked in a deep breath, and was startled when it came back out as a groan. She shut her eyes again and bent the groan to an unsteady hum. She sang a few lines of one of Hathor’s hymns until the pain left her.

Then she pushed herself up from her bench, leaving spindle, distaff, and tangled thread where they lay. She shouted for Twosre.

***

Ahmose had carefully avoided venturing into the corner of her garden where the birthing pavilion stood. It had been set up more than a week ago in preparation for the prince’s arrival, and she did not want to annoy the gods by mooning around its perimeter. Now, with Twosre beside her and the midwives behind, she shuffled around a bend in the path and there, beneath a brilliant sycamore, was her pavilion. Its poles were painted red, and a white canopy covered the cleared ground where Ahmose would bear her child. There was a mattress covered with cushions, and a holed birthing stool, and braziers for sacred, purifying smoke – and for light, should her labor last until dark. The painted fabric walls were rolled up and tied so the air could flow freely. A statue of the goddess Tawaret stood beside the bed, her tongue hanging like her breasts. Ahmose smiled to see the hippopotamus-mother. She would have a friend here. But still, as she passed beneath the canopy, she tingled with fear. The last time she had been inside a birth pavilion, she had watched Aiya die.

No
, her ka said firmly.
It will not happen to me
.

Won’t it
? whispered her heart.
Aiya was young, too
.

I am eighteen years old. I have been a woman for many years. Tawaret is near, and I bear a gift for Egypt. Even if I die, my son will live. How can he be a gift for Egypt, if he is to die
?

She smiled at her women. She smiled at the midwives. The smile only slipped a little when the pains came on her, pulling, pulling, making her grunt with the effort.

They made her lie down and fanned her. They wafted incense over her. They chanted prayers to Bes, the fearsome dwarf god, protector of newborns, beseeching him to drive away the evil spirits that waited to torment the prince as he came from the womb. Ahmose felt the tension in her body rise and recede, rise and recede, like years, like eons of the river’s floods. It was hard work, this lying still and breathing. It became harder when they made her walk. Dimly, she remembered supporting Mutnofret as she paced about her garden. Had her sister ever been so exhausted? Ahmose had never done anything in the world but walk, and groan through the inundations of pain that squeezed her back and her sides.

She talked to Twosre to pass the time, only pausing in her words at the peak of her contractions. They spoke of the child, and of Tut, and of the goings-on at the temple and in the House of Women. Idle talk, optimistic talk; talk to distract her. But when the waters broke and rushed down her legs, she could talk no more. Her whole being was given over to walking, walking, walking, and stopping to lean on any convenient shoulder when her body shook with the pains.

They made her drink often, and helped her squat over a jar to relieve herself. They pushed honeyed beer on her – to keep her strength up, the midwives said – until she never wanted a drop of honey on her tongue again.

She was sipping obediently at a bowl of the cloying drink when a powerful contraction came on her. At once she knew that it was different from the rest. It squeezed her with a ferocity that made her stop and stare about. The faces of the women were unfamiliar blurs, stretches of pink and brown under shapeless black wigs. The garden’s bright light and shade blazed into a mosaic of overwhelming green. Her legs shook violently. She had to sit down. She had to walk….she had to run! All in a heartbeat, she was certain death had come for her at last. Her body would fail. She could go on no longer. She was finished, finished. She dropped the bowl of beer into the grass.

“
Twosre!” she cried. “Aiya! I can’t go on!”

Twosre was at her side now, the familiar features of her face coalescing out of the confusion of the garden. She patted Ahmose’s cheek with a hand that was at once gentle and insistent. “Patience, patience, Lady.”

“
No! I can’t go on!” She didn’t know where to go, what to do. The confusion was more agonizing than the terrible squeezing pain that pushed in all around her. She stumbled forward, then back, darting looks around the garden as if she were a hunted beast searching for cover.

“
The baby comes now,” one of the midwives said, her garlic-sharp breath in Ahmose’s face. “Come, come, to the pavilion.”

“
No!” Ahmose reeled away from the midwife, clutching her belly. She looked at the placid birthing hut, its canopy flapping in the benign afternoon breeze. It was a horrifying thing, this place of death and stink. “No, I can’t do it,” she wailed, and her feet carried her into the pavilion. There wasn’t even another woman guiding her. Her body went, obedient, subservient, though her mind cried out to run.

They sat her on the stool with the hole in its center. Fingers pushed inside her. “To feel the baby’s head,” a voice buzzed. It could have been Twosre’s, or the midwife’s, or the baby’s, or Ahmose’s own. She knew nothing but urgency and fear. A pain ripped at her and she screamed, though her heart said from a cool distance,
It doesn’t hurt. Not really. Curious, that it shouldn’t hur
t
. She screamed anyway, until her voice was raw.

“
He’s coming soon, Great Lady.” The buzz-buzz voices chided her off the stool and onto the bed, and they told her to lie still, to relax, to loosen up, to go limp. She tried to do as she was told. One voice told her to go so still she would sink down into the mattress like going under water. She held her breath and waited for the river to close over her head. It never did. She breathed again, and the pain was easier. Now and then she called out for Mutnofret. The only clear thought in her head was that Mutnofret wanted to know when the prince was born. She would honor her sister’s wish. She called for Nofret again and again.

There was no counting how many times the buzzing women harried her up from the mattress and back onto the accursed stool, and each time they reached beneath her and prodded inside her. Somewhere in the odd, fuzzy space between mattress and stool, her belly had begun to push downward, a deep, confident, powerful thrust that made her bellow like a cow in a field. It wasn’t exactly pain that made her empty her lungs with this inhuman sound. It was the shock of having an animal inside her. There was a beast within her now, a force unknowable that strove down, down, wresting control from Ahmose as easily as a child snatches a blade of grass from the earth. It was terrifying, and it awed her. She was sitting on the stool when the word came into her head:
push
.