Sovereign of Stars (20 page)

But
I
am the king,
he wanted to shout,
right there in Hatshepsut's fine chambers, as though the men of
those shadowy great houses might hear him. He clenched his fists,
dismissed the childish urge.

“Oh, Amun,” Hatshepsut sighed. She lifted herself
from her couch, made her way to one soaring, painted wall. Her
footsteps dragged with weariness. “If only I could clear my
thoughts. If only I could
think
. My heart is all a-scatter;
I will not sleep a moment tonight, I promise you.”

She stood for some long time, her back to Thutmose
and the steward, studying the images on her wall. In bright reds
and golden ochers, in lapis-blue, some old king Thutmose could not
identify lifted a bow to a flock of birds in flight. No doubt he
could have brought down a whole brace with a single shaft. Kings in
paintings had no cares at all, and their arrows always flew
true.

“You must move in this,” Senenmut said, “and the
sooner the better. Allow me to announce your expedition to the
court. We need no more preparation; we can have all the supplies we
need within two weeks or less. The season is right for the journey.
If you wait longer, you must wait an entire year before the Red
Land is cool enough once more to traverse.”

Hatshepsut turned. Her face was solemn with thought.
“You are right,” she said. “The time is now.”

“Trust that it will work. Have any of my plans
failed you yet?”

“This was my plan,” she said peevishly, though a
glint of good humor sparkled in her eyes. She sank onto the couch
beside Thutmose, laid one hand gravely on his shoulder. “I will be
gone for many months, Thutmose. It is necessary. The throne will be
yours alone while I am away.”

He nodded, striving to quell the sudden nausea of
excitement and fear that rose in his belly.

“I will leave you with advisors, of course, but you
are old enough now to rule wisely.” She hesitated, then added, “I
trust you.”

“Thank you, Mother.” His voice was hoarse and quiet.
He drank a draft of his beer to wet his throat, not tasting its
pleasant bitterness. “I will rule well.”

He thought of heirs, of successions. There were many
lovely girls in his harem, and he visited them as often as time
allowed, though none, so far as he yet knew, were with child. He
should take one as his chief wife, he knew. A child from the body
of a Great Royal Wife would be most definite in the line of
succession; no man could dare to raise his eyes to the throne if
Thutmose had a wife, and his wife had a boy. He considered the
harem women one by one, pondering which would be the best choice,
whose lineage was purest and closest to the throne.

“I know you will rule well.” Hatshepsut gazed at him
levelly, and he returned his bowl of beer to the table before she
could see the tremor in his hands. “Your word will be command,
Thutmose, and so you must think carefully before you speak. What a
Pharaoh says to his subjects cannot be unsaid.”

Thutmose nodded.

“It is settled, then.” Hatshepsut stood briskly,
stretched with her hands in the small of her back, suddenly as
carefree as a girl. “Make the announcement in the morning,
Senenmut. In two weeks we leave for the god’s land.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The court in all its fulsome splendor turned out on
Waset’s whitestone quay to witness the departure of the king.
Beyond the protective rank of soldiers that were the hallmark of
Hatshepsut’s reign, Ahmose watched the press of the crowd move this
way and that like a school of lazy fish, arms and throats banded in
gold, the hems of bright-dyed gowns and kilts rippling. Women
displayed the latest fashion, the short-cropped, round silhouette
of the Nubian wig, which left necks temptingly bare, shimmering
with dampness in the humidity of the crowed riverside. The ladies
of the great houses waved fans before their faces, leaning to
whisper behind their plumes. Men eyed Hatshepsut’s war ship,
Amun Strides from Darkness
, with a speculative air as it
bobbed against its lines, rocking to the rhythm of the final
lading. When the last man scrambled aboard, a large clay jar of
provisions perched atop his shoulder like one of the chattering pet
birds so popular with the harem girls, Hatshepsut emerged from her
ship’s cabin. Expectant silence spread through the crowd.

The Pharaoh made her way to the ship’s gilded rail.
Since the day of her coronation, Ahmose could recall few occasions
when Hatshepsut had presented herself to such a large crowd in a
man’s clothing. Yet now she was dressed simply and distinctly as a
male, with a plain white kilt falling to her knee and the simple
cloth crown of Nemes flaring about her face like a lapis cobra’s
hood, rippling lightly in the wind. The golden visages of vulture
and cobra reared above her brow, the king’s simplest circlet
decrying her power in frank and forceful terms.

“In the name of the god,” Hatshepsut said, her voice
rich and low, a voice meant to carry to every ear in the crowd, “I
travel to Punt, the legendary place, to bring back gifts for Amun.
Your king Menkheperre shall rule in my absence, wisely and
well.”

Ahmose glanced across the small bare patch of
whitestone to young Thutmose. Menkheperre himself stood with arms
folded across his well-muscled chest, watching his co-king’s
departure with an air of perfect confidence, the two-tiered Double
Crown rising tall upon his head. His poor dead mother’s beauty had
refined the stamp of Thutmose the First, Ahmose’s own departed
husband, but the resemblance was there, for those who had eyes to
see it. The young Pharaoh was not as tall as most men, yet the
breadth of his shoulders promised a burgeoning strength at least as
great as his grandfather’s. His nose had grown out of its childish
snub and was beginning to take on something of his ancestor’s
hawk’s-beak. And the way his jaw set firmly, the way his eyes
remained steady and calm on Hatshepsut, pained Ahmose’s heart with
remembrance.

Hatshepsut spoke on, and the crowd beyond the ring
of soldiers cheered. Neferure, reed-slim and swaying lightly in the
morning heat, twitched at the sudden sound, lifted her eyes from
the paving stones to gaze about her for a moment, her expression
vague, a woman coming out of a dream. Neferure’s quiet obedience in
the face of her mother’s stirred Ahmose’s pity, as it so often did.
The girl had always served loyally, had always been mindful of
maat, and yet she was so sad, so unfulfilled.

I was that way once,
Ahmose mused, lifting
her hand in farewell as the sailors cast off the lines and the
royal musicians raised a triumphant song.
Young and earnest and
confused, wanting to serve maat and never knowing what maat
was.

Amun Strides from Darkness
pulled from the
quay, drifted westward to meet the remainder of Hatshepsut’s
expedition fleet where it held mid-river. Neferure trembled amidst
the cheering, and Thutmose glanced at his sister from the tail of
his kohl-rimmed eye. The look he gave her brimmed with an intensity
that made Ahmose wonder. Was it desire in the young Pharaoh’s gaze,
or…fear? Thutmose offered his arm to Neferure, who took it with
wordless complacency. He steered her across the paving stones to
where Ahmose stood in the mercy of her sunshade.

“Grandmother,” said Thutmose, by way of
greeting.

She was not his grandmother, of course. The young
man did not know his true grandmother; she had been banished to
some lonesome estate when the king was but an infant.
I suppose
I am the closest he has to a grandmother. How Mutnofret would hate
me afresh, if she knew.

She bowed to him. “Majesty.”

“It will be a fine expedition.” Thutmose patted the
back of Neferure’s hand absently, gingerly, as one pets a skittish
cat.

“Ah, I expect it will.”

“Will you…will you come to me at supper time,
Grandmother? I would enjoy your company.”

He wants my counsel.
She saw it at once in
the slight tension around his eyes.
And he is too clever to
admit even the smallest misgiving where his courtiers and soldiers
might hear.

Ahmose turned her head casually, feigning to glance
toward the jar of wine her women poured for the king. But she
raised her eyes past her servants, past the backs of the soldiers,
to the press of the crowd. Here and there a pair of noble’s eyes
made contact with her own, then blinked and slid away again with a
palpable air of nonchalance – and here and there one lady swayed
close to another, her mouth tight-pursed.
Ah, there will be eyes
and ears on you, young Menkheperre. There will be lions waiting to
close for the kill, with your mawat gone from the throne.
At
least, thank the gods, the boy was wise enough to know it.

“I would be honored, Majesty. I shall come to you at
the customary hour.”

“Good.” Thutmose took the offered cup of wine,
drained it in a single long draft while the horns keened their
marching tune and the rattles chimed. When he returned the cup to
Ahmose’s servant with a nod of his head, his hand did not
shake.

**

Ahmose was admitted into the presence of Menkheperre
Thutmose, the Third of His Name, by a strange, wispy fidget of a
man, lanky and wiry with a mouth that was too soft and too wide.
Hesyre was Ahmose’s own age, if not older, but the lines of his
face had more to do with particulars and details, fusses and
primps, than with the cares of governing a kingdom. She raised her
brows at him, assessing as he bowed and stood aside to admit her.
She was amused to note that his brows raised in return, tenting the
loose skin of his eyelids, weighing Ahmose fearlessly in his turn,
and measure for measure.

“Hesyre.” Thutmose’s voice called from the depths of
his apartments. “Is it my grandmother?”

“Ah, Majesty,” Hesyre responded in a voice of
carefully modulated respect. “The Great Lady Ahmose of the house of
Waser Thutmose the First, may he live; the dowager regent.”

Thutmose laughed, a sound full of his youthful
exuberance. “I know who she is.”

“Ah, Majesty.”

Hesyre gestured, and Ahmose fell into step behind
him.

There had never been any dispute that Hatshepsut was
the more senior of the two kings, and so the original Pharaoh’s
apartments – the rooms ready-built for the king by the palace’s
architect – had gone to her. But she had gifted her co-regent the
next-finest rooms since his infancy – a complex that had originally
been built to house high-ranking dignitaries from foreign lands, to
impress them with the splendor and wealth of Egypt. Thutmose’s
chambers lacked for no luxury. Angular arches spaced at regular
intervals near the ceiling held well-placed windcatchers, which
filtered a sweet-smelling breeze from the adjacent garden and
cooled the interior of the apartments. The anteroom was wide and
well-lit by ranks of bronze lamps with electrum reflecting-discs.
The flickering light of the many braziers illuminated a ring of
fine couches, their legs carved of ebony and marble, upholstered in
the priceless silks of the far north, brightly dyed in an array of
colors. The silks could only be obtained through costly trade of
gold and turquoise. That Thutmose owned many lengths of the
precious fabric, and had used it for the express purpose of sitting
upon, spoke of the young man’s subtlety. He was savvy enough to
obtain such goods in quantity, and clever enough to display them in
such a carefree manner. Only a man thoroughly secure in his own
power would upholster his couches in silk.
Of course,
Ahmose
mused,
it may have been Hesyre’s idea.
Beyond the couches, a
brilliant and thorough mural of Egypt evicting the Heqa-Khasewet
from the Two Lands wrapped the antechamber on three of its walls.
Ahmose recalled it from her early days in the palace, when she was
the Great Royal Wife, younger than Thutmose himself. She gazed
about her, allowing her eyes to roam over the scenes of conquest
and victory, wondering that Thutmose hadn’t ordered the murals
painted over with fresher, more modern scenes.

As she stood inspecting the walls, one of several
cedar doors banded in bronze and gold swung wide, and Thutmose
emerged. The scent of fine oils – a masculine perfume of galbanum
and the blood-red resin of Kush – followed him into the
antechamber.

“Grandmother. It is good of you to come to me.”

Ahmose smiled. “You are the Pharaoh. Should any lady
of the court disobey a summons from her king?” Thutmose waved her
to the silk couches, and she sank onto one the color of emeralds,
the deep, rich green of the season of growth, when the Two Lands
came to glorious life and the river banks and fields teemed with
new leaves and the rich scent of foliage. Surreptitiously, she
allowed her hand to smooth across the surface. It was cool beneath
her fingers. Ahmose could never resist the lure of silk.

Thutmose seated himself with an easy confidence and
clapped for his servants. Their supper shortly arrived, but Ahmose
left her bowl empty, waiting for the young Pharaoh to fill her ears
instead. When the meal had been laid out to his satisfaction, he
dismissed his servants and sat listening, his head tilted almost
imperceptibly, until the door to their quarters down the hall
closed with a muffled bump.

“And how can I serve His Majesty?” Ahmose said
softly.

Thutmose narrowed his eyes. “Was it so obvious, that
I need your advice? Already, when Hatshepsut has been gone from the
palace only a few hours?”

“Not as obvious as you fear. I have learned a
certain degree of observation and inference, you see, serving the
throne as long as I have.” She smiled wryly, and he relaxed.

“You know why Hatshepsut undertook this journey to
Punt, I assume.”