Sovereign of Stars (7 page)

In truth, for her final two victories Egypt had
barely to lift a single spear, for the people of those cities had
heard already of the woman Pharaoh who pulled Dedwen from his
temple and trampled the god into the dust. Each was quick enough to
surrender whatever goods they could offer as a hasty and desperate
tribute, that their own temples might remain undisturbed. There was
no telling what wrath an offended deity might bring upon his own
people if they allowed him to be so debased.

They presented her with gold and turquoise, and with
incense in great overflowing sacks. They even made to offer a
portion of their grain supplies, but she waved it away and told the
city-kings in their own tongue, “Egypt does not take from the
mouths of children.”

The city-kings of both settlements made pledges of
fealty to the Pharaoh. Hatshepsut knew those pledges would be
broken, but not, she hoped, too soon or so egregiously that she
would be compelled to return in person and mete out a fitting
punishment.

Along the length of the rough quay, soldiers trooped
up planks to the decks of ships. More than half were returning
home. The rest would remain in the south, billeted at her fortress
under Ramose's supervision, until she could send another wave of
men to refresh them. Kush would be sore, she knew. They would come
looking for vengeance soon or late. She wanted the plain on the
Egyptian side of the hills to bristle with ready spears when they
did.

The final man boarded her ship; the oarsmen
skillfully slid the plank onto the deck while men still ashore cast
off the lines. Nehesi appeared at her side, arms crossed over his
broad chest, following her gaze out across the tents and cook fires
of the plain.

“A good campaign,” he said.

“Ah.”

“You seem distracted.”

“I only hope it will be enough.”

“The men you leave behind?”

“That, and what we did here.”

“You pulled a god down –
a god!
Yes, Great
Lady, it will be enough.”

“For how long?”

Nehesi shrugged. “Peace never lasts long. It will be
whatever the gods decree. Weren't you a priestess of sorts once?
You should know these things.”

She scoffed at him. “
Of sorts?
”

The captain shouted for oars. They slid from the
ship's sides, splashed into the water, nudged the hull from the
quay. Hatshepsut watched the quay's stone wall slide smoothly from
her. Then an abrupt movement on the waterfront caught her eye; she
glanced up and checked at the sight of four young boys playing at
the landing. The larger boys carried the smaller upon their
shoulders, and they laughed and called insults to one another as
their riders tossed a leather ball back and forth. The mounts
dodged, hooting, around barrels and bundles of linen and long bare
poles which had until recently held soldiers' tents.

“Nehesi! Whose boys are those?”

“Uh? I do not know, Great Lady.”

“They are so young.”

“Probably discontented apprentices – ran off to join
the army, I'd wager, when you came through their towns.”

“They are far too young for a war camp.” Then a
queasy thought occurred to her. “Oh, gods – they didn't go into
battle, did they?”

He chuckled, laid a hand on her shoulder. “I should
think not, Great Lady. War camps always have their share of
sneak-away boys. Soldiering is a far better life than leading their
fathers' cattle to the river or being beaten by an ill-tempered
trade master. The older men always keep the boys too busy with camp
chores for them to get into much danger.”

“But still, a war camp is no place for children.
Gods, what will their mothers think of me?”

Nehesi roared with laughter. “They will think you
are the king! What else are they to think?”

The boys disappeared into the crowd milling about
the waterfront, taking their ball and their happy shouts with them.
A quiet melancholy welled up in her heart when they vanished.
Nehesi, too, went still and pensive. Did the sight of children
playing make him feel wistful, as well? Or was he only reliving his
exhilaration on the battlefield? Was she painting her own feelings
onto Nehesi's stony wall?

“I want my own children to play that way,” she said,
“to be young and carefree for as long as they can.”

Nehesi turned to look at her, and his eyes were
uncommonly solemn. “They are the children of the Pharaoh. One is a
Pharaoh himself. Is it reasonable, Great Lady, to expect them to
ever be young and carefree? Even as babes, they have their roles to
play.”

The fortress grew smaller by the moment as
Amun
Strides from Darkness
slipped into the swift northward current.
The waterfront was a jumble of men blurred by distance, but
Hatshepsut knew the boys still played somewhere within that
crowd.

“Perhaps not, Nehesi. But I will try all the same –
I will try to make it so.”

Tabiry bowed at Hatshepsut's elbow. “Great Lady,
shall I prepare your meal?”

“Good,” Hatshepsut said.

“Boiled eggs and uncut melons, I presume.” Tabiry
waited, patient expectation on her face.

Hatshepsut took one final look at the shoreline.
Above the scrape of oars running out to meet the river, above the
call and response of the rowing song, she heard a man's voice shout
a single word, joyous and full of triumph, from the quay.
Seshep!

“No, Tabiry. Tell the captain's cook to roast me a
fat fish. And it has been a very long time since I've tasted fresh
bread. Tell him to make me a honey cake, cooked over the brazier's
coals. I want it so hot it burns my fingers and my tongue.”

Tabiry tilted her head, disbelieving.

“Is there any wine?”

“Ah, but only the great jar in the captain's store.
Its seal has already been broken.”

“Bring me a cup. I am thirsty.”

Tabiry turned to do the Pharaoh's bidding with a
bubble of laughter. Ta-Seti fell away behind the stern of
Hatshepsut’s warship. The northern horizon glowed beneath the high
sun. Beneath that sun, in the quiet peace of her palace garden,
Senenmut waited, and her children, too. When the current caught the
ship and pulled it insistently toward Waset, Hatshepsut smiled.

PART TWO

ADORATION OF THE
GOD

1476
B.C.E.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The air was almost cool on the rooftop of Waset's
great palace, high above the stink and closeness of the city. A
fitful breeze moved in from the river, lifting and dropping the
colorful cloth canopies of the sunshades with lazy movements, with
a thrumming, flapping sound like the wing-beats of a great,
careless bird. Ladies in their best finery stood clustered beneath
the canopies – ladies of the noble houses and of the harem – while
men of rank ambled from one group to the next in long formal kilts,
raising their wine cups in praise of the women's beauty. Servants
made their way unobtrusively through the gathering, offering
platters of spiced dates or lettuce-boats filled with minced beef,
bearing jars of cooled beer and wine, and water sweetly scented
with flower petals.

Hatshepsut watched the children, who in turn watched
the long straight line of the eastern canal, stretching their necks
to peer over the low wall of the rooftop. Their feet fidgeted
constantly. Thutmose could not seem to stop himself kicking at the
wall, no matter how many times his nurse scolded him for scuffing
the toes of his golden sandals. And Neferure danced forward and
back between the wall and the royal sunshade as if gripped by some
childish anxiety.

The girl's eyes were large and sober, as serious as
Senenmut's, though it was the only resemblance she bore him. She
had not come to resemble Hatshepsut as she grew, either. Her
features were far finer than her mother's, lacking all of the
Thutmoside harshness and, thank the gods, the familial toothiness.
In fact, Neferure was positively beautiful, even as a small thing,
still wearing the side-lock of childhood. It was something
Hatshepsut never heard said about herself as a young girl – not in
honesty, at any rate. She was glad for her daughter. Neferure would
grow into an enchanting woman.

At the rooftop's far corner, the musicians changed
from a low, sweet, soothing tune to a livelier one, and a few of
the harem women danced. Neferure sucked a forefinger as she watched
the show, as she observed the men watching. Hatshepsut had the
uneasy feeling, as she often did in her daughter's presence, that
the girl understood far more of the adult world than any
seven-year-old child ought. Neferure seemed neither delighted by
the bright dresses and rollicking music nor disgusted by the
somewhat wanton display. She merely watched, intensely observant as
always.

“I see them!”

When the dance had nearly concluded, Thutmose's
squeal of excitement broke Neferure's unsettling concentration, and
she turned to regard her brother with a dark, thoughtful stare.

Senenmut clapped his hands; the gathering drifted
toward the eastern wall, buzzing with excitement.

The usual gray waterside haze of dust and moisture
hung thickly at the point where the canal vanished among the low,
dry hills beyond Waset. But a blocky shape condensed slowly from
that haze, and little Thutmose pointed, quivering with
excitement.

The crowd seemed to hold its breath; Hatshepsut's
heart pounded in her chest.

The massive shape broke free of the haze and
resolved into a clear image of the Pharaoh's twin obelisks moving
ponderously down the canal. The crowd of nobles exhaled as one, a
sigh of awe and admiration.

“...they are laid, you see, on a barge that is near
as wide as the canal itself.”

Hatshepsut allowed herself a tiny smile at the sound
of Senenmut murmuring to four or five nobles. The men nodded and
hummed at his every word.

“The barge is sunk down with rocks for weights, and
the obelisks pushed across the breadth of the canal, side by side,
just so. When the rocks are pulled free, the barge rises, and lifts
the obelisks off the ground.”

“It's a wonder any barge can carry such a
weight!”

“Egypt's engineers are the finest in all the world,”
Senenmut said, as proud as if he himself were an engineer.

“Look, Mawat, look!” Thutmose tugged at Hatshepsut's
hand. Laughing, she followed him to the wall.

“Those are my obelisks,” she told him, lifting him
to her hip so he might see more clearly. “And one day, when you are
grown, you will have obelisks of your own.”

“Oh – see all the men!”

The two massive stones, cut entire from pale quarry
rock, lay prone over their barge, close as lovers in a bed. Each
hung over the stone lip of the canal by several feet on either
side. A deep blue shadow crept along beneath them; the visual
effect of shadow, of ponderous movement, and the great height of
Hatshepsut's viewpoint made the monuments seem to separate from the
dun landscape with a kind of supernatural force, as though they
drifted on the palm of a god's hand and not a mortal barge. Dozens
of men crept in the shadow of the conveyance, holding tight to the
ropes that lashed the spires together, straining to keep the barge
moving straight between the canal's sides. The load was so great it
required at least fifty to each side, perhaps more. A handful of
men rode atop the rough stone itself, scuttling from one side to
the next. Their arms waved like the slender, mobile horns of
beetles, gesturing wildly to the men hauling at the ropes.

It was a sight to make Amun proud. When the barge
reached the confluence with the temple road, the obelisks would be
unloaded and rolled atop fire-hardened logs to Ipet-Isut, where
they would rest on their sides while Hatshepsut's artists
embellished them with scenes of the king’s glory. Then each would
receive a crown of gold, so the light of her strength would reflect
far out onto the Iteru; all who approached Waset would be dazzled
by the greatness of the Pharaoh, and the greatness of Waset's
god.

Neferure stepped to Hatshepsut's side. Her small,
fine hands reached up to pull her frail little body onto its toes.
She peered over the wall, her brow furrowed as if she were trying
to solve one of Senenmut's clever riddles. “Mother, where will the
new obelisks stand?”

Hatshepsut allowed Thutmose to slide back onto his
own feet. He hopped in place, unable to contain his glee.

“They will stand where the blank pylons stood,
outside the Temple of Amun.”

Neferure stared up at her, still gripping the wall
with white-knuckled fingers. “
Stand
.”

Hatshepsut watched her daughter's face, suddenly
reluctant to say any more.

“The blank pylons are still there. They
stand
.”

“Yes,” Hatshepsut said, angrily aware that she
sounded foolish.

“You will tear down the pylons?”

“There is nothing on them.” Thutmose the Second had
never had a chance to carve the pylons with his own great deeds.
Indeed, he had never committed any deeds to speak of; any carvings
he might have made would have been fantasies – lies.

Neferure lowered herself onto her heels, stepped
back to regard her mother in reproachful silence.

Hatshepsut called over her shoulder for Senenmut.
“Take the King's Daughter to the garden. It is shady there; I
believe the sun here on the roof is too much for her.”

“It is not,” Neferure said coolly.

“You will go.”

She turned away from the child, back to the sight of
her monuments making their way down the canal.
I will not let
her strangeness best me. Not today.

“A great accomplishment, Majesty – the finest
monuments Waset has ever seen!” A man in the crowd raised his cup
above his head, saluting Hatshepsut.