Sovereign of Stars (34 page)

And so Hatshepsut summoned Thutmose to her chambers
that very night to put the proposition to him directly. For
whatever Kynebu evidently thought, Hatshepsut no longer held the
absolute authority of months gone by. She no longer could
send
Thutmose anywhere the king did not wish to go.

Thutmose stood in her doorway, his broad shoulders
nearly filling it. He had grown so heavily muscled that she could
no longer recall the image of him as a fat, giggling baby, could
barely feel the weight of him sitting on her knee as a little boy,
still naked and wearing his side-lock. He watched her, wordless,
casually attentive for her leave to enter her private rooms, her
invitation to sit and drink her wine. She allowed him to stand a
moment longer, feeling protective of this territory, the senior
king’s apartments, the only place where her rule was still
absolute.

Thutmose cracked the knuckles of one hand. He seemed
content to wait forever, if she should decide to make it so. He was
still a youth, brimming with strength and rage. She was a woman
falling ever faster toward the middle of her life, and after
that….

She jerked her head, her braids swinging across her
shoulders, admitting him. Thutmose stepped inside and nodded a dry
greeting.

“You have heard of the raids in the northeast,” she
said.

“Ah, of course.”

“We have already proven, you and I, that we can keep
this country sailing straight on its keel with one of us on the
throne and the other away.”

Thutmose, lounging against the backrest of
Hatshepsut’s couch, sat suddenly forward, his eyes keen.
Kynebu
had the right of it.

“If you think it wise,” she said carefully, loathing
the deference that prudence forced into her voice, “if you agree, I
suggest that you lead the army against the Heqa-Khasewet, while I
remain here, overseeing the court.”

The air of resentment dissipated from him. He nearly
smiled, and his eyes flashed with eagerness. “It is a good plan,”
he said, his voice low, deep. It had never been high and childlike,
surely – she had never heard him call to her across the garden,
Mawat, I’ve made a palace out of mud, come and see!

“Good,” she said, and her throat constricted
unexpectedly on the word. She opened her mouth to say more, then
closed it. There was nothing more to say.

Thutmose gazed down at the floor a moment, a furrow
appearing between his dark brows. “Neferure...”

“Will be found. I will keep up the search. She is
out there somewhere, and I will bring her back.”

“I only meant,” Thutmose said, stammering a little,
suddenly uncertain. The unexpected waver in his manly façade
clutched at Hatshepsut’s kas, piqued her as a leopard is made keen
by the scent of blood. She watched him with pursed lips and said
nothing, waiting.

“I only meant, what of the marriage – our marriage?
My marriage to Neferure?”

That damned marriage. Had she been a leopard, or the
seshep her soldiers had once thought her to be, Hatshepsut would
have flexed her claws. The boy had undone her work – he and Ahmose
together – removed her heir, loosened Hatshepsut’s grip on her own
throne. Thutmose saw the stark anger on her face. He glowered, and
the return of his petulance only heated her rage all the more.

“Your marriage was no marriage at all,” she spat,
her weeks of resentment over the issue boiling out of her carefully
tended pot all at once, before she could think to stir the heat
away.

“It was. It
is
– we said the words before the
Priests of Amun.”

“She was my heir first – part of my plans. You had
no right to undo what I did, and well do you know it.”

Her arrow struck true. Thutmose blanched; she drove
her point home.

“Now you have endangered us all, Thutmose, and left
me to clean up the mess you made. What a child you can be, for all
your man’s strength.”

With careful dignity, his emotions under cold
control, Thutmose stood, smoothed the folds of his kilt. “It is not
I who have endangered our house. It is not I who conceived a child
in sin, and set her in the temple as God’s Wife to offend Amun –
even set her on the throne as heir.”

Hatshepsut did not reply, but stared at him darkly
until he turned away with the smallest smile of triumph.

“Get out of my sight, boy,” Hatshepsut said, her
words as low as a leopard’s call. “You have a war to win. Do not
come back to Waset without victory.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Senenmut stood on the lower terrace of
Djeser-Djeseru in the blue shadow of a seshep. He watched a white
sail furl as the king’s ship rounded the bend of the canal. The eye
of Horus painted on the sail crumpled, sagged, fell toward the
deck. Dozens of oars ran out from the red hull, their caps flashing
with electrum in the afternoon sunlight, and the great barque
backed against its own momentum, slowing, turning, pointing its
nose toward the quay beside the temple road. Along that road the
myrrh trees they had fetched from Punt were thriving. They
stretched away beneath Senenmut’s vantage, an orderly row, tidy,
well maintained, even and neat as nothing else in this life was.
The ship drew nearer, playing the shadow of its bulk across the
line of trees. Senenmut watched the leaves dancing, darkening as
the king’s barque passed, brightening again in the steady sun. Then
he turned and walked from the terrace, deep into the heart of the
temple he had made for her, so he would not be seen by any of his
lady’s servants.

Inside, he dropped his bag of scrolls and tools –
the disguise he wore, his excuse for coming to this place. He
waited in the appointed location, a private sanctuary not far from
the main door. He struck oil alight in a small brazier. The walls
came to life around him. They were scenes of Hatshepsut in worship,
carrying a shrine before Amun and his holy family, the mother, the
father, the child. His lady wore a placid smile, a look of
contentment Senenmut had not seen on her face for months – not
since Punt – before Punt, in truth. She had been troubled by her
own power for many years.
The poor girl.
He recalled her as
she had been, flushed, sure of herself, grinning her gap-toothed
grin, a woman barely more than a child in her garden, bright beads
around her neck. Where had that Hatshepsut gone? And had this
Hatshepsut – the one of the carvings, striding bold and unafraid –
ever been? Senenmut was sure she had.
She must have
been.

Behind the image of Hatshepsut making her offering,
the straight, perfectly proper figure of Neferure stood, stretching
forth her hands in a display of worship that was all too familiar.
Senenmut ached for his child. He knew – Kynebu had told him – that
there had been no word of her whereabouts.

The distant sound of shouts reached him through the
temple door, an airy drift of voices rising, falling away, no
louder than a gnat’s hum. The sailors were casting on their lines.
His lady would be here soon.

They had made it their habit to meet at
Djeser-Djeseru as often as court would allow. Senenmut stayed well
away from Waset, as Hatshepsut had ordered him, keeping to the fine
estate he had not seen in years. But Djeser-Djeseru was no part of
Waset, and Senenmut had responded eagerly, with pounding heart and
singing ka, to the summons Kynebu brought him the night of the
Feast of the Tail. He had risked much by returning for her Sed
festival. But he could not countenance missing it. It had been
worth the danger to see her renewed, dancing with the black bull,
goading it, running beside it like the dream of a god, strong,
lean, her body brown as the earth, glistening and golden. It had
been worth the risk, to watch her lap the four pillars, sweating,
her face rigid with concentration, the crowd cheering her –
cheering his lady, his king, the sister of his heart. And when
their eyes had met in the flight of her passing, Senenmut’s blood
had burned as hot as it ever had before when he had held her,
feeling the urgency of her movements, tasting the sweat of her
skin.

Each time they met at Djeser-Djeseru it was the
same: the declaration of their passion, each tripping over the
words of the other, the urgency of their kisses, Hatshepsut’s tears
at the necessity of separation, Senenmut’s pain at parting.

Now he heard the familiar tread of her sandals on
the stone ramp, a soft scuff, a whisper like an indrawn breath. His
arms tingled with the desire to hold her. But his heart tightened
with the pain of Neferure’s loss, and he could not go to his lady
eagerly and sweep her up in his arms. He waited for her to come to
him instead.

“Senenmut,” she said when she found him, her voice a
sad melody.

“Great Lady.”

They kissed. The feel of her lips was so familiar.
It was a thing he had always felt – a thing his ka had felt before
his body was even made.

“You are so quiet,” she said. “So melancholy.”

“It’s Neferure. I have heard – there is still no
word of her.”

“I’m sorry.” She took his hand in both of her own,
squeezed him gently. “I worry for her, too.”

“Do you?” he whispered.

Outside the temple a flock of geese passed overhead,
drawn to the bright water of the canal. Their wings beat the air
like horses’ hooves in the sand. Senenmut recalled how Hatshepsut
had climbed into her chariot, there beside the canal that cut the
valley below them, lifted the myrrh branch above her head and
declared victory. He remembered the scent of the sap on her palm.
Is this what their victory came to? Senenmut banished, their only
child disappeared, Hatshepsut a pale, frightened shadow of the king
she had been?

She let his hand fall. “I love Neferure as much as I
love anyone. Or I have tried to love her so. She has not made it
easy for me.”

She is only a girl. She had only ever been a
girl,
he wanted to protest.
You put too much weight upon
her. No girl could bear that much responsibility – no girl but you,
the girl you once were. And even that girl has cracked and faltered
under the strain.

But he did not wish to upset her, to spoil what
little time they had to enjoy one another in the fading afternoon.
So he held his tongue and kissed her again.

Their kisses grew more ardent, and soon the door to
the sanctuary was closed, shutting out the eye of the sun. Their
lamp was the only light. It darkened the grooves that delineated
the gods, outlined Hatshepsut as she had been, fearless and bold.
Senenmut lifted her, amazed his aging body could still hold her up.
He braced her back against the wall. She turned her face away from
him, eyes shut tight with an insistent kind of ecstasy, her cheek
pressed against the carvings. Senenmut closed his eyes, too, so he
could not see the gods watching.

Later they sat catching their breath in a corner,
both their backs against the wall now. She leaned toward him almost
shyly and rested her head on his shoulder like a virgin girl. He
kissed her brow.

“Why do we still do this?” he said. “Why the risk?
The gods – why do we chance their anger?”

Her hand crept round his arm. “Because I love you,
steward.”

“You love Egypt more. You love maat more.”

“Clearly I do not.” There was a hint of laughter in
her voice, the old spirit of arrogant mischief reviving for one
pale flicker, dying away again. Then she said soberly, “It makes no
difference. The gods will do as they will do, and men can influence
them little, if at all.”

“Even Pharaohs?”

Hatshepsut said nothing.

“Don’t you ever fear this? What it might mean for us
in the end – in the afterlife?”

She sat up. “No. Not anymore. Well – sometimes I do.
There are times when I remember Punt, and the blood falling on the
coals.”

Senenmut shook his head, lost, but Hatshepsut
ignored his confusion and spoke on.

“You were right, Senenmut, that night in Punt. In
the field, under the moon – do you remember?”

“I am not like to forget it.”

“You said that my name and my image are everywhere.
I am graven into the very bones of Egypt. Whatever the Field of
Reeds may hold for me, I will still live, here.” She touched the
wall beside her face, let her fingers trace deep into the
score-marks of a carving. “It is the best kind of magic, the
truest, to have one’s name and one’s image carved into stone. Stone
will never fall away – not for millions of years. My kas will dwell
wherever my image stands. And it stands everywhere.”

Yet she still seemed sad, for all her brave words.
Senenmut pulled her hand gently from the wall, kissed her
fingertips.

Hatshesput struggled to her feet, pressing one hand
into her hip, cursing the ache she felt there. “Senenmut – I’ve
only just thought of it.”

“What is it, Lady?”

“Get your bag – the tools.”

He went out into the temple proper to fetch them,
and she spilled out after him, a laugh rising up in her chest, the
sweetest music Senenmut could ask to hear. She snatched the leather
bag eagerly from his hands like a child greedy for sweets, and
reached inside to rummage among the tools. She pulled a chisel and
mallet free of the mess she had made of his papyrus scrolls, and
crouched behind the temple door with the chisel raised.

“Here – what are you doing? You’ll ruin my beautiful
temple!”

Hatshepsut grimaced at the clumsiness of her own
hands, the awkward feel of holding a tool to the vertical wall, so
different, as Senenmut well knew, from holding a reed pen above a
flat sheet of papyrus. “You will have to help me.”

He crouched beside her, put his arms around her body
to guide her wrists with his own hands. “What would you carve?”

“Your name,” she said simply.

Senenmut rocked back on his heels. “Gods, Hatet. I
am not worthy of such a thing. My name in your temple…”