Sovereign of Stars (17 page)

It is a terrible thing I do.

The voice whispered now, and was low and rich, laden
with despair. Hatshepsut uncovered her face, peered cautiously at
the king. She did not recognize him, and yet she did. The jaw was
strong, the prominence of the Thutmoside teeth softened by the
influence of some great beauty that refined the king's features,
enriched the familial roughness, turned and smoothed the face like
a clay pot in an artisan's hands. The eyes were closed in grief,
but when they opened, Hatshepsut knew them well. They were Iset's
eyes.

“Little Tut.”

He was a grown man now, wearing all the trappings of
a king, with the mantle of pain and weariness a king must wear,
too. She came toward him, holding her arms wide for the little boy,
the child of her heart and Iset's beloved body. But he was not a
little boy any longer. He did not see her.

It is a terrible thing I do. And yet, can I do any
differently?

Thutmose the Third paused, as if listening to the
counsel of another voice. Hatshepsut strained to hear it, but heard
only silence. At last the king hung his head in defeat.

Hatshepsut, forgive me. She must forgive me. She
must understand.

And he raised a chisel in one hand, a mallet in the
other. They lifted slowly, their weight great in his reluctant
hands, and hung poised in the air before Hatshepsut's eyes. The
sharpness of the chisel flooded her with terror. She cried out to
him, begged him to stop. But he did not hear.

When the mallet fell against the chisel, the crack
of stone split her ears. The pain of nothingness split her
heart.

Hatshepsut fell to her knees, screaming.

**

A sharp crack across her face woke her. She lurched
to her feet, and immediately fell again, her head pounding.

“Oh,” she groaned, clutching her stinging cheek. Her
gut clenched; she levered herself carefully onto hands and knees
and retched again and again. Nothing came up but a thin stream of
saliva, which dangled from her lips until a gentle hand wiped it
away with a soft square of linen.

“There, child. There.”

“Sitre-In.”

The presence of her old nurse was an unspeakable
comfort. The woman knelt on a mat beside Hatshepsut, her lap as
welcoming as it had ever been. Hatshepsut crept to her and sank
onto the mat, her throbbing head on Sitre-In's bony old thighs.
Sitre-In rubbed her fingertips in small circles across Hatshepsut's
forehead, her temples, the back of her neck. Hatshepsut sighed in
relief.

“Batiret sent for me,” the nurse murmured. “That
servant of yours is as wise as a goddess.”

“Where were you? I have not seen you in so many
years, not since you took to your estates.”

“I was down in the valley, of course, celebrating
the Feast.”

Hatshepsut smiled at the thought of Sitre-In getting
riotously drunk and carrying a torch with the other revelers, up
into the tombs cut into the high cliffs. “You were not truly
celebrating.”

“Not all of us celebrate by ducking our heads into a
wine cask,” Sitre-In said drily. “You did not have enough water.
Shame on you.”

“Batiret tried her best.”

“You'll have more water now. And some herbs for your
head.”

“Good.”

Sitre-In rolled Hatshepsut over, onto her own mat. A
few cushions and a sheet of soft linen lay upon the mat, crumpled
by Hatshepsut's dream. The bedding had not been there when she had
fallen asleep; she was sure of it. Batiret had thought of
everything. She pressed her face gratefully into a silk cushion,
moaning. A green light flared and dimmed behind her closed eyelids,
pulsing with the beat of her heart.

“Here, Great Lady. Drink.”

Batiret sank onto the mat beside her. Hatshepsut
lifted onto one elbow to accept the cup of cool water. It tasted of
some woody, sharp herb. She drank it all.

“You slapped me,” she said, rubbing her hot
cheek.

“Not I; it was your nurse. You were screaming, and
we could not wake you.”

Hatshepsut remembered the mallet in Thutmose's hand,
the grief in her grown son's eyes, and shivered. She took several
more cups of the infusion, and when the pounding in her head
receded, she ventured to stand. Her senses were still somewhat
furry from the wine, but she was sobering, and her stomach and head
had settled.

She made her way out onto the highest terrace with
her women following close behind. The night had turned the corner,
as the rekhet said; the warmth of a summer night had passed into
the refreshing chill of the few hours preceding dawn. Many of the
stars had faded. The torches in the valley were mostly
extinguished, the revelers having retreated to tents or tombs to
sleep off their wine. Along the dim length of the canal, the fires
had died to heaps of embers. No more songs rang from the cliffs.
The night murmured with the metallic, nasal call of insects.
Hatshepsut felt the need to shake off the strangeness of the night.
The green fire of her dream still haunted her. She laid a hand on
Sitre-In's shoulder.

“I am going to walk alone. Just below, on the next
terrace. I think the movement and the air will do me good.”

“Let Batiret go with you.”

Hatshepsut shook her head. “Nehesi is down there. He
stayed awake all night, didn't he?”

Reluctantly, Sitre-In nodded.

“I will be well. Nehesi will watch me. I need to be
alone with the god's presence.”

She made her way down the ramp to the terrace. The
line of seshep stood like blue sentinels before her.
My soldiers
called me seshep once.
She did not feel like a lioness tonight.
She turned her back on them and retreated to the portico, drifting
from one pillar to the next, tracing with her fingers the images of
her works and her glories. They all seemed as nothing to her,
naught but paint on stone, as though they had never happened – as
though she herself had never been.

The scuff of running footsteps roused her from her
dark thoughts. She ducked behind a pillar, and as she did so caught
sight of Nehesi across the terrace, his body taking form out of the
shadows of night. He came to alertness, stared with hawk-like
intensity toward the sound of running – and then subsided,
relaxing, his hand leaving the hilt of his blade.

Hatshepsut moved around the pillar until she too
could see the runner. It was Neferure, the hem of her gown dark
with water or mud, its pleats crumpled and ruined. She staggered
into the shadow of the nearest seshep and fell against its plinth,
her body shaking with sobs. She looked the picture of perfect
grief, limp and helpless, her head bowed and arms draped across the
lioness's paws.

Is she that drunk? She should not have had so much
wine. I shall speak to Senenmut about it; he must watch her more
closely.

Hatshepsut pushed herself from the pillar, ready to
approach Neferure, to guide her to Sitre-In for care. But she saw a
figure rise from the far ramp – head, shoulders, the swaying hips
of a woman – to step up onto the terrace. The woman was dressed in
a white gown that glowed faintly in the remnants of starlight.
Silver at her wrists and ankles gleamed now and then as she moved.
As she drew nearer, pacing between the seshep, Hatshepsut could see
the locks of her black wig swaying around her face – a face incised
with the lines of age and cares innumerable.

“Ahmose,” Hatshepsut murmured. She sank back against
her pillar and willed herself to stone-stillness.

When Ahmose reached Neferure, the girl crumpled to
the foot of the plinth, balling herself up like a bit of discarded
cloth. Ahmose sank more gracefully to sit beside her.

“It's not fair, Grandmother!” Neferure wailed into
the darkness. “I hear the Lady calling me, and yet I cannot
answer!”

“You are so full of fire, Neferure. Still it –
control it.”

“I try.”

“Try again. Take a deep breath; stop your crying.
Take this cloth and dry your eyes. There. Now breathe. Allow your
breath to come how it will. If it would be slow, let it be slow. If
it would be harsh, let it be harsh.”

Neferure sat up straight, closed her eyes, and
breathed. Hatshepsut watched her daughter's chest rise and fall
several times, slowly, her small, new-formed breasts stirring
against her gown.

“Let your ka fall open,” Ahmose said, “like the
petals of a flower.”

Neferure remained still and silent for a few more
breaths, then struck her knees with her palms. “It's no
use
!”

“You give up too soon. It is never easy to touch the
gods, child.”

“Why do they not touch me? Why am I barred from
them? I am the Divine Adoratrix! It is given to me to worship them,
to love them! And yet they hold me away. Why? I, who tamed the
white bull!”

“Be sensible. Did you tame the bull in truth, or are
you confusing rumor with reality?”

Neferure lifted her chin, looked sharply away from
Ahmose in that petulant way she had. “Of course I tamed it. You
were not there; you did not see.”

Ahmose shook her head, but subsided.

“Grandmother, there must be some sin in me, some
stain that taints me in the gods' eyes. What else could it be? I
have devoted my service to Amun; I have restored their temples
since I was a small child. I make offerings every day. I live my
life in goodness and maat. I do everything my mother asks of me.”
Neferure buried her face in her hands, and her cry of despair
echoed amongst the pillars. “Oh, what is it in me that turns their
faces away? I only want to adore them. They will not dwell inside
my heart. What about me displeases them so?”

Ahmose did not answer. She lifted her face to stare
into the shadows between the pillars. Her eyes found the place
where Hatshepsut stood, pressed breathless against the stone.

She cannot see me. I stand in blackness.

But Ahmose did see her; Hatshepsut was sure of it.
And the directness of her mother's gaze frightened her more than
had any vision in that terrible dream. More than her brother's
hatred, more than the chisel in Thutmose's hand.

“I do not know,” she heard Ahmose say to the weeping
child.

But she did know. Hatshepsut was sure of it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The mood in the House of Women seemed light enough,
though the night air was dry and smelled of dust when it should
have hung rich with the clean, loamy odors of the flood. In the
third year after Hatshepsut dedicated her great temple to Amun, the
river failed to rise more than a handful of spans. The fields
nearest the banks were covered by no more than a few fingers'
breadth of water, and it was poor in silt. The fields beyond the
roads and causeways, nearer the hills, remained cracked and dry.
There would be no planting and no harvest this year.

Hatshepsut maintained calm throughout the Two Lands
by distributing from her ample stores of grain. In prior years the
gods had been more than generous; often the stores were filled to
capacity and the throne was obliged to ship great surpluses of
emmer and barley to other lands, lest the excess spoil. There was
no threat of famine. Every belly in the Two Lands would remain
full, even should the flood fail for two or three years more.
Senenmut and Hapuseneb did their best to assure the king that such
an occurrence was unlikely.

She strolled the great communal garden of the House
of Women arm in arm with Opet, patting her half-sister's hand as
she listened to the harem gossip, able to lend barely half her
heart to the conversation. Her thoughts strayed again and again to
the river. The Iteru was sluggish and dim, and stank of decay.
Crocodiles and water-horses grew bolder, encroaching on fields and
quays where they never dared go when the currents ran high. Though
she smiled and laughed at Opet's tales, and tossed her head as
though she had not a care in her heart, the implications of the
failed flood consumed her.

There is plenty of wheat and barley,
she told
herself firmly, accepting a bowl of beer from the serving woman who
met them at the lake's shore. The lake was low, too, of course. The
raised retaining wall showed a dark ring even in the moonlight, and
the leaves of lotuses drooped, wan and rotting, across its
surface.

“...and oh, wasn't Djefatsen sore when she saw Iy
wearing that turquoise necklace! I warned her she was too fond of
wagering, and she'd regret it one day! Iy won't part with the
necklace now. Not for ten of Djefatsen's best silver bracelets, or
her malachite earrings. Well, that is what comes of wagering.

“I was not the only one who warned her, either.
Hetepti dragged Djefatsen off to see the God's Wife in her little
palace, and Lady Neferure burned some incense and prayed and gave
Djefatsen a terrible future, but said she could avoid it if she
would give up dicing with the guardsmen. The Holy Lady told her she
would wager away her firstborn child one day, but if she made
offerings to Hathor daily for ten days, the goddess would break her
habit.”

“And has it worked?”

“I do not know, Great Lady. Djefatsen is too afraid
of Hathor to go into the Holy Lady's shrine.”

“Afraid?”

“Ah. Hetepti told me that when the Holy Lady was
praying her eyes rolled back into her head, and she made a terrible
croaking sound like a great frog in the reeds, and Djefatsen
decided the goddess had entered your daughter's body. Hetepti said
Djefatsen was near to weeping, she was so frightened by the sound.
She won't even look at a carving of Hathor now.”

So Neferure was using her status in the harem to
terrify the Pharaoh's women. Hatshepsut clenched her hands into
fists. “Croaking like a frog. It seems Neferure has kept herself
well occupied. How else does she spend her time?”

Opet peered at Hatshepsut from the corner of her
well-painted eye. “Do you not know?”