Sovereign of Stars (19 page)

The soldiers backed her horses into their traces,
fastened their harness, brought the reins up to the Pharaoh's
hands. She took them up with a confidence she should not by rights
have possessed, having been nowhere near a chariot team for years.
She laughed at the way the sap stuck the rein to her palm.

“Come,” she shouted. “There are lions in the hills,
and my spear is impatient!”

She hissed, and her horses sprang away, galloping
across the avenue of seshep and out into the barren gold of the
valley. Senenmut gestured for his own chariot, but no matter how he
drove his team, he could not catch his king. She thundered before
him, her short kilt flying in the wind of her passage, her laughter
coming to him now and then, faint and sparse, like the memory of
myrrh sap in his nostrils.

“Djeser-djeseru,” he called after her, and urged his
horses to run faster.

PART THREE

THE GOD'S
LAND

1467
B.C.E.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Hatshepsut allowed Thutmose to dismiss the evening's
final courtier. The boy performed the gesture smoothly, pointing
out across the great audience hall; the massive gilded double doors
swung open at his indication as quickly as if the movement of his
hand had physically thrown them wide, and not the scrambling of the
attentive door guards. The courtier, one Penhat, a merchant of
great wealth and greater complaints, was quick to bow his gratitude
to the two Pharaohs and make his exit. When he receded across the
length of the hall, his fast-moving sandals slapping against their
own reflections in the floor of well-polished malachite slabs,
Hatshepsut permitted herself a small smile. Thutmose had handled
Penhat well, deflecting the man's customary gripes with an
unyielding yet gracious confidence.

He is not a boy any longer,
Hatshepsut
reminded herself, eying him, seeing as if for the first time the
strength of his jaw, the height of his brow, the stern angle of his
nose. His sudden maturity always startled her anew, no matter how
many times she saw him in a day. Somehow, in an eyeblink, the
softness of those fat baby limbs had turned to muscle, just
beginning to find its definition through near-constant work with
spear and chariot and bow. The protruding belly she had tickled and
kissed so many times until he giggled had changed to the lean,
straight body of a soldier. Even his smell had altered itself from
the sweetness of childhood, a scent like honey and cut grass, to
the sharp, acrid stink of a man's sweat. She had employed several
servants whose sole purpose it was to urge the young Pharaoh into
his bath between drilling with the soldiers and courtly duties. She
had admonished them to keep the king's armpits well perfumed.

All my years are gone,
she thought, staring
at Thutmose's new manly bearing with a morose pang. Then she chided
herself for a fool.

“Your servant missed a patch shaving,” she told him,
and tapped her own jaw near her ear to show where.

Thutmose blushed. “I did it myself. I told them to
leave off; I wanted to try it.”

“No matter. It takes practice, or so I have
heard.”

“Are you ready for supper? I am famished. I'll
dismiss the whole lot of stewards and guards if it be your will. Or
you can dismiss them,” he said, his brow pinching in the way it had
when he was just a small thing, his peculiar means of looking both
certain and uncertain at once. “I don't wish to take all the work
for myself.”

Hatshepsut turned to the Steward of Audiences,
opened her mouth to speak the closing of the court. But the doors
at the far end of the hall opened again, their twin scarab carvings
winking in the bright lamp light as they swung to face one another.
Hatshepsut and Thutmose held one another's eye, the boy quizzical,
she with pursed lips and a growing sense of irritation.

It was Senenmut who entered; even with the distance
of the great hall separating them, Hatshepsut recognized him. She
would have picked out his posture, his quiet stance and his
deliberate gait from a crowd of a hundred men. But he did not make
his way to the foot of the throne, as supplicants did. He moved a
few paces into the hall, then stepped to one side and called out in
a clear voice, “The lady Opet of the King's House.”

The breath caught in Hatshepsut's throat.

Opet wore a flowing gown of pale red linen, an open
weave that clung to her skin. Her upper arms were bound in gold and
silver torques, her throat adorned with the large, shining body and
spread wings of a turquoise scarab in flight. A somewhat
old-fashioned wig of long, braided locks framed her shoulders and
face, which was demurely downcast. As she drew nearer the foot of
the throne, her steps grew hesitant and her face blanched beneath
its artful paints.

Opet bowed very low and presented her palms to the
Pharaohs. Hatshepsut, sensing already what was to come, peevishly
let the woman hold the position until she saw Opet's back begin to
tremble. Then she scolded herself once more.

“Lady Opet, rise.”

Opet did so, straightening and clasping her hands at
her waist, though her eyes remained on the floor.

“What brings you to court?”

“I have...I have come to petition the Good Gods for
release from the harem.” At last her eyes lifted, met Hatshepsut's
own. They were full of apology and fear…and pleading.

“Does it not please you to live as a king's woman?”
Hatshepsut struggled to keep bitterness from her voice.
Senenmut
told you this day would come. You have expected it.
But not
from Opet – not from her own half-sister, with whom she had so
often walked arm-in-arm through the harem gardens at night.

“It has pleased me for a long while, Majesty. But I
have seen more than thirty-five years, and I have no children.”

She spread her hands before her body, as if to
emphasize the point. Through the loose linen of Opet's gown,
Hatshepsut noted the girlish firmness of her breasts, the tightness
of her belly. It was a body that had never known motherhood, and
yet a body that was still surely capable of bearing...for a few
more years. Sympathy for her sister overtook Hatshepsut's
bitterness. Opet had always been kind, a friend and ally. She would
not deny a child to such a loyal servant of the throne, even had
she the strength of will to do so.

She glanced at Thutmose. The young king was subtle
and observant enough to grasp that there was more at stake here
than the simple petition it seemed. He leaned forward slightly in
his seat, his mouth firm and pale, as he took in the scene. And yet
Thutmose could know nothing of the closeness between Hatshepsut and
Opet, could know nothing of the stinging in her heart. Far more
important than her stinging heart, she suspected her co-regent
grasped little of the political implications, bright as he was. His
blindness was not his fault. It was an artifact of age. A boy whose
primary preoccupations were his bow and his team of horses would
have had little reason to turn his thoughts to what it could mean
for a lesser daughter of a long-dead Pharaoh to conceive a son with
some tjati or some general.

Hatshepsut wondered whether she might convince
Thutmose privately to sire a child on Opet. Straight away she
dismissed the idea. He was a fifteen-year-old boy – a young man in
truth, and by the gods,
young
was the meat of it. Beautiful
though Opet may be, she was more than twice Thutmose's own age. He
was not likely to turn his attentions to her – not over a bit of
politicking he could scarcely grasp.

There was nothing for it. Opet must be granted her
release, to go forth and breed with some scheming noble. Hatshepsut
could not countenance keeping any woman confined against her will,
but particularly not Opet. She of all women deserved to know that
peculiar, painful joy of watching a sweet baby grow into a man like
Thutmose.

She rose from her throne abruptly, made her way down
the steps to take Opet's hands in her own.

“Sister, I wish you happiness, and a house full of
children. Is there some man already?”

“No, Great Lady,” Opet said, her eyes flooding with
tears of gratitude. “I thought to set myself up in a small house
with a staff of a few servants, and to enter Waset society with the
next festival. I may be able to find a suitable husband before it
is too late for me. The kings I have served have been good to me; I
have some small store of my own things – jewelry, fine linens, some
furniture. I can sell them and buy a little home of my own in the
city.”

The news that no ambitious man had yet attached
himself to Opet gave Hatshepsut some small measure of relief.
“Senenmut will see to you; he will give you enough goods and silver
and gold to establish yourself well.”

To Hatshepsut's surprise, Thutmose also descended
from the dais, and took Opet's hand in his own. “Lady, I regret
that we had no opportunity to become well acquainted. But the
throne makes its demands on me, and I have less time than I wish
for my women.”

“Thank you, Majesties.”

“Senenmut, see her out, and arrange a gift suiting
her years of service.”

**

“Well,” Hatshepsut said, lifting her cup of wine
toward the Great Steward, raising one black-painted brow in a
half-resigned, half-angry arch. “You spoke the words, and like a
slighted god's curse, they have come to be.”

Thutmose exchanged a rueful glance with Senenmut.
The young Pharaoh liked his step-mother's steward. Senenmut was
thoughtful and sensible, quick with a solution to near any problem,
and deeply loyal to Neferure, whom Thutmose thought of often. The
steward was a good sort, as Nehesi would say.

Senenmut drew in a deep, long breath before he
replied. “It's not as though you failed to see this coming
yourself, Great Lady.”

Hatshepsut grunted in disgust, set her cup rather
heavily on the table. “I know. I
know
. And yet what else
could I have done with Opet, but let her go?”

The supper Thutmose had been so eager for lay barely
touched on his co-Pharaoh's table. When the great hall's doors had
closed behind Lady Opet's retreating back, Hatshepsut had all but
dragged Thutmose to her apartments for a rather rushed and sober
meal. He could sense the tension crackling in the air about
Hatshepsut's body, and by the time their food and Senenmut arrived,
both Pharaohs had gone off their appetites. Stewed greens went cold
and rumpled in their onion sauce; fish roasted in their scales
stared up, their flesh still untasted, from their beds of spiced
lentils. Somebody – Thutmose was not sure who – had torn a leg off
the well-browned goose, then let it fall back onto the platter
uneaten.

“You could have done nothing, Great Lady, and that
is the gods' own truth. Unless you would have her killed.”

“Of course not.”

“Then it does you no good to brood over the thing.
It has happened. Opet will not be the last to leave the harem.
Rather than fret over it, best to plan now how you will cope.”

“I know how. I have been planning it for more than a
year. And yet….” Her voice grew small and quiet. Such gravity was
so unlike Hatshepsut; it made Thutmose feel quite uneasy. He picked
at the goose leg while she spoke, glad for the distraction. “With
the flood's failure last year, how much more disruption can I face?
How much time do I have? Will there be enough time, to get there
and back before my enemies can move?”

Thutmose blinked several times.
Get where? What
enemies?

“You recovered from the bad flood well enough.”

“Only just. It was touch and go.”

“Your building projects were a wise move in dealing
with the flood. A public display of piety went far in reassuring
the people that you still have the favor of the gods. And when we
return from Punt laden with treasure, with myrrh trees to restore
Amun’s full glory, none will find doubt in his heart. Not even your
enemies.”

Punt.
Thutmose knew the name well. The land
was far-off, across the waterless heat of the Red Land to the east,
and further still. Some said it required ships to get there – ships
worthy of waters far rougher than the Iteru in full flood. It was
reputed to be the original home of Amun, his favored land where the
myrrh trees he loved grew in profusion, where magic fell from the
sky as rain. Some said Punt was naught but a myth, but Thutmose had
read scrolls written by men who had been there, who had seen its
strange people, its unique animals, its wealth of exotic
treasures.

“The only question that remains, I think,” said
Hatshepsut, “is how much longer I can retain the women still in my
harem. Oh, the daughters and sisters of merchants, or architects,
or various high priests can leave at any time. I shall not worry
over their departure. It's my cousins and half-sisters I must keep,
at least until our plans are final. At least until we return.”

“They will become pawns on the nobles' senet board,”
the Great Steward said. The words were an agreement with
Hatshepsut, but as he spoke he looked levelly at Thutmose.
Do
you understand what is going on here?
his eyes said.
Do you
grasp the danger? Do you see our need?

And at once, Hatshepsut's dilemma struck Thutmose
with full force.
This is about the succession. It is about an
heir –
my
heir.

Ah, he understood the complexity of the problem now.
This was not about Hatshepsut's half-sister yearning for a child.
It was about the blood Lady Opet carried within her – the same
blood Thutmose himself carried: the blood of Thutmose the First.
How many other relations dwelt in the harem, ready to bear children
– impatient to bear children? Poised to leave, to lend their royal
blood to some other great house, to pave a way – witting or no – to
Thutmose's throne?