Nine White Horses (24 page)

“But—” said Lugalbanda, knowing even as he said it that he
could not win this battle.

“There are no buts,” Inanna said. “I’ve won this city by
marriage and by conquest. I dare not leave it to the next man who may be minded
to seize it. It is mine—and its charioteers will serve me, because their god
has bound them to it.”

Lugalbanda let the rest of his protests sink into silence.
She was not to be moved. She would stay and be queen, and teach these people to
honor their bargains. The god would go, because he had promised.

“There will be a great emptiness in Uruk,” said Lugalbanda, “now
that you are gone from it.”

“You’ve lost a goddess,” she said, “but gained a god. It
seems a fair exchange.”

So it was, he supposed, if one regarded it with a cold eye.
But his heart knew otherwise.

He bowed low before her, and kept the rest of his grief to
himself. Winter was gone; the passes were open. He could bring the god of chariots
over the mountains to Uruk. Then when the Martu came again, they would find a
new weapon, and new strength among the soft folk of the city.

When he straightened, she had already forgotten him. Her
eyes were on the god of chariots, and his on her, and such a light between them
that Lugalbanda raised his hand to shield his face.

“I will be in Uruk,” the god said, “for as long as I am
needed. But when that need is past, look for me.”

“You would come back?” she asked him. “You would suffer
again the shadows of trees, and mountains that close in the sky?”

“Trees are not so ill,” he said, “in the heat of summer, and
mountains are the favored abode of gods.”

“There are no mountains in Uruk,” she said.

“Just so,” said the god of chariots. He bowed before her as
Lugalbanda had, but with markedly more grace. “Fare you well, my lady of the
high places.”

“And you, my lord,” she said. “May the light of heaven shine
upon your road.”

He mounted his horse. The caravan was ranked and waiting,
with a score of chariots before and behind. The new queen of Aratta was far
more generous than the king had been: she was sending a rich gift to her
brother, a strong force for the defense of Uruk.

She remained in the field, alone in the crowd of her
servants, until the caravan was far away. Lugalbanda, walking last of all,
looked back just before the road bent round a hill. She was still there,
crowned with gold, bright as a flame amid the new green grass.

He took that memory away with him, held close in his heart.
Long after he had left the city behind, as the mountains rose to meet the sky,
he remembered her beauty and her bravery and her sacrifice. She would have her
reward when the Martu were driven away: when the god of chariots came back to
her. He would rule beside her in Aratta, and forge bronze for her, and defend
her with chariots.

It was right and proper that it should be so. Even
Lugalbanda, who loved her without hope of return, could admit it. A goddess
should mate with a god. So the world was made. So it would always be.

Return to Table of Contents

Far in the east of the Field of Flowers, in the country west
of the horizon, in the land of the blessed dead, the King’s Architect Senenmut
paused by a stream so that his mare might drink.

She was only a little mare, not even thirteen hands high,
delicately graceful like a gazelle, with a sweet dark eye and a soft gait. She
had drawn his chariot while he lived. Now that they both were dead, she was his
companion and his friend. She had guided him in his journey from the tomb and
stood beside him in the courts of judgment. Her heart weighed with his against
the feather of Justice had swayed the balance and gained him entry to the
fields of peace.

While she drank her fill from the stream that wound among
the lotus blossoms, he rested against her, arm over her back. Although she was
dead, she felt like a living thing, warm and breathing. She ate, she drank, as
he did, as did all the souls in this realm beyond the horizon.

Even the sun came here, the boat of Ra sailing from the dusk
of the living world to be the dawn of this one. His light paled the stars that
did not fade, and brought splendor to the dry land, and set the beasts of the
dark to flight—terrible beasts, demons, devourers of souls. They flocked the
borders of the Field of Flowers, moaning and gibbering, dragging the tattered
rags of less fortunate souls. But they never passed into the Field. The blessed,
once judged and found worthy, were free of them.

Day was passing in the land of the dead, just as night
passed in the Two Lands of Egypt. Senenmut’s mare raised her head, shedding
water from her muzzle. Shouts rang faint through the shimmering air: the
boatmen readying the bark of Ra for its journey. The god’s radiance moved
slowly among the flowers, touching now one, now another, with molten
brilliance.

A throng of souls walked with him, kings and queens among
the dead, or high noblemen and loyal servants who had won their way to this
place. It was a long way and perilous, and its paths open only to those who knew
the words, the magic of true names.

Such magic in old days had been given only to kings and to
kings’ children. Now kings bestowed it on lesser mortals—bringing in a pack of
commoners and low rabble, to the disgust of the most ancient. But the gods,
even golden Ra, offered no objection.

Senenmut, born a commoner, son of a scribe and a simple lady
of the household, had grown to suspect that the gods were considerably less inclined
to snobbery than the gods’ children. Perhaps the gods were even amused. Was Ra
smiling above the throng of heads in their lofty double crowns? So much
royalty, perhaps, might seem common to divinity; the god might find it
refreshing to look on a head that had never worn a crown, nor ever wished to.

One figure sat a little apart, watching, saying nothing. The
high cone of the White Crown, the lower squared helmet of the Red Crown in
which it nested, were laid aside. The crook, the flail lay beside them. The
false beard was nowhere that Senenmut could see.

He approached without servility, with the mare walking at
his shoulder. Her ears were pricked; she was looking for the bit of sweet that
this of all pharaohs always had for her.

This pharaoh smiled at him, a smile unmarred in sweetness by
the death that was still so new, the courts of judgment just lately passed, the
scars of ordeal still faintly evident in the shadowed eyes. He knelt because it
was his pleasure, and took the slender hands in his, and smiled himself. “O my
king,” he said.

“Senenmut,” said his king. The name throbbed like a drum, as
all names did here, where names were the greatest of powers. The king started a
little: it was still new, that magic, and still strange. Magic in the mortal
world was a much lesser thing, muted and blunted by the power of living earth.

Senenmut spoke with care, knowing what power he invoked,
what strength he imparted. “Maatkare,” he said. “Hatshepsut.”

The king’s hands clenched in his. He was braced for that.
One gave a name as a great gift, for it brought life and continued existence to
the soul—and to one as new as this, an increase of strength.

“There, love,” he said, soothing. “There. It gets easier,
the longer one goes on.”

“I do hope so,” said Hatshepsut. That was closer to the
voice he knew, briskly practical, with the crisp edge of one accustomed from
childhood to command. One who, born a woman, meant to be a queen, claimed the
right and title of a king—because a woman, even a queen, must defer to a king,
and a king defers only to the gods.

“And,” she said, since his thoughts were as clear here as if
they had been spoken, “no one else could do it as well as I.” She rose. She was
a small woman, but she stood very straight and walked with a firm stride, not
mincing like a silly female. She kept a hand in his.

They watched the Sun-god embark on his boat. The boatmen
cast off from the strand onto the river of light. The oars swung to the beat of
the drum.

A sigh escaped the flock of kings left standing on the bank.
None, however he strained, whatever magic he invoked to sharpen his eyes, could
see past the god’s brilliance to the lands of the living.

As the god passed, his light faded. The stars came out one
by one, white and motionless in a sky blacker than any mortal night. The beasts
of the darkness, rousing, began to howl and gibber.

Hatshepsut stood bravely still, but her hand gripped
Senenmut’s to the point of pain. He tugged gently. She did not move. “It’s
morning there,” she said. “The bread is baking. Can you smell it? Can you
remember?”

Senenmut nodded. The memory could pierce like pain, if he
let it. They did not bake bread here. Bread appeared when one was hungry, and
beer, and whatever else one desired. Or servants brought it, silent images
without life or volition. The simple homely acts of grinding the flour, mixing
the dough, baking the bread, had no place among the royal dead. Kings did not
do such things, nor did many of them seem to care how it was done, as long as
they ate when they were hungry, and drank when they were thirsty.

Hatshepsut would forget. They all did. The shadow of life
that was here would be enough. The magic of the Otherworld would engross her,
the gods’ presence console her. She would become one with the blessed dead,
even those who looked at her askance for what she had done: named herself king,
and in the naming become the thing.

Once more he urged her to come away. This time she yielded,
walking with him to the palace that he had built for her of magic and bright
will. The greatest joy of his death had been the moment when, after the
jackal-god had guided her into the Field of Flowers, she had seen who waited
for her, and what he had done to bid her welcome. Her face had lit like a lamp
in the gloom of the Otherworld. The shadow of sorrow had vanished, the veil of
forgetfulness fallen. She had been his Hatshepsut as she was in life, vivid,
joyous, splendid.

Her servants now were waiting, her noblemen who had gone
before her. They sat to the feast with which they held each night at bay, in
music and in dancing, and in prayers to the gods who were more clearly present
here than ever in mortal Egypt. Here she was content. Here she could forget
that she was dead.

Senenmut remembered, and never forgot. But Senenmut had no
care for life or death, only for her presence. Death had been grim punishment
while she still lived. Now she had come to him; now he was whole.

o0o

The dead sleep when it pleases them. As the living dream
of the Otherworld, so do the dead dream of mortal things. Often they find
themselves in their own tombs, winged and human-headed
ba
-spirits fluttering in the dusty stillness, or mute motionless
bodies lying stiff and emptied in stone sarcophagi. But sometimes, if they have
great will or great power, they wander the world in spirit shape, and watch
what passes there.

Senenmut, lying beside his king in the bed that they shared
in death as they had in life, dreamed that he stood beside that bed with its
head and feet like a lion’s and its coverlet of soft scarlet wool. The figure
in it in his dream was small as Hatshepsut was, slender yet sturdy, with the
oval face and the arched nose and the wide-set eyes. But it was not his king
whom he loved, though for a fact it was a king: none other would dare lie in
the king’s bed.

“Thutmose,” whispered Senenmut’s spirit. The queen’s
stepson, the king now that she was dead, stirred and woke and looked about. His
dark eyes glittered, but only a little with fear. He was brave, was Thutmose,
like the lion he so loved to hunt.

He saw nothing, although Senenmut stood close enough to
touch. He sighed faintly and shrugged. After a moment he rose.

It was dawn beyond the walls of the palace. Bread was baking:
its fragrance wound through the shuttered windows and made Senenmut want, all
but irresistibly, to weep.

Thutmose yawned and stretched. He was not the supple boy
that he had been while Senenmut was alive, but he was a slender, compact man,
well honed in the hunt and in exercises among his soldiers.

Brat of the armies
,
Hatshepsut had called him, half in scorn. Hatshepsut had had little patience
with him. They were remarkably alike in looks, in temper, in quickness of wit—but
he was young and male and inclined to fight his way out of difficulties.
Hatshepsut preferred the subtler way, the woman’s way: words and wheedling and,
in extremity, threats.

She had always won their arguments. Thutmose was too easily
driven to speechlessness, and thence into violence; violence that he had never
gone so far as to turn against the king. Even though he knew, everyone knew,
that had Hatshepsut not stood in his way, he would have been king, sole and absolute.
The gods had chosen Hatshepsut. Thutmose was the gods’ child and their servant.
He yielded to their will.

Now he was king. He ruled well, Senenmut perceived, watching
him as he performed the rites and offices of the day. He had learned to
negotiate, or to choose advisors who had mastered the art. He was not resolving
every quarrel with a sword or a bow.

Hatshepsut would be pleased that her stepson had turned out
so well. She had never faulted him for being what he was, nor hated him for all
their quarrels. “He’s sensible,” she had said often enough. “He knows which of
us is best fit to rule.” She had reckoned herself fortunate in her successor.

A shriek tumbled Senenmut out of his dream and into waking
death. He was on his feet, looking about wildly for the demon that must have
pierced the veils and the ban and fallen on the servants.

No demon prowled and gibbered in Hatshepsut’s palace. The
scream was Hatshepsut’s. She writhed on the bed, twisting in torment. He sprang
to clasp her in his arms. Nightmare, he thought. Memory of the ordeal through
which she had earned her place among the blessed.