The Crook and Flail (13 page)

“Your poor hand must be so tired.”

He scowled at her as the actors took up their places and posed, waiting for their cue to begin.  “Maybe I will save all the pleasure for the harem women, and you can sleep alone in your bed.”

“How I will envy the harem.”

Thutmose lapsed into resentful silence as the romance began.  The crowd clapped hands and pounded tables; Hatshepsut grinned at her husband.  It was the first genuine smile that had come to the bride's face the whole day through.

***

Senenmut sat together with Hatshepsut's personal servants in a place of great honor, a large round table not far from the royal dais.  The women of the Great Royal Wife's chamber were full of wine and gossiped unashamedly – even Sitre-In, to Senenmut's surprise.  He stole many furtive glances over Nehesi's shoulder up to the throne where his young lady was ensconced.  Her posture was stiff; her cheeks were pale and resolutely unsmiling.

That she had planned to put herself forward as Pharaoh had been a surprise to Senenmut, but did not strike him as far-fetched.  She was as intelligent a person as the throne could ever wish for, observant and astute, mindful of duty and of justice.  She took to command as naturally as a bird takes to its wings or a child takes to laughter.  She could be faulted in only one thing, and that beyond any mortal control: the true son of Thutmose the First had been placed into the wrong sort of body.  What purpose had the gods in this?  He watched young Thutmose smirking down the vast length of the great hall, gazing upon the hundreds gathered to honor him without a trace of comprehension or gratitude.  Many times before had Senenmut despaired at the gods' designs, but never so intensely as now.

Some man called for a romance, and within moments the actors were ushered in, taking up their place unfortunately near to Senenmut's table.  They acted out a rather foolish love story while a singer with somewhat too shrill a voice recited the tale.  The girl fainted away from love-sickness when the boy touched her hand.  Senenmut seized the tall flagon at the center of their table.  The wine inside was cool; beads of water had gathered along the pretty, ornate lines scored along the flagon's belly.  He filled his cup to the brim, then topped off Nehesi's as well.

The young acrobat had re-entered the feast – the one who had thrown herself from the height of the pyramid.  Admirers had draped garlands of flowers about her neck and shoulders; there were so many that she was wreathed nearly to her chin. 

Sitre-In sent a serving man scurrying after the girl, and when she approached the table, the nurse proffered a fine bracelet of gold and turquoise.  “A gift from the Great Royal Wife, to honor your performance.”

The acrobat took it between her delicate, slender hands.  She had wiped the gold dust from her body, but traces of it remained in the lines of her knuckles and the edges of her henna-darkened nails.  “The Great Lady is too kind.  To perform before her eyes is the only reward I need.”  Buo kрy, but t she slid the cuff onto her arm and admired it against her skin.  When her eyes flicked up from the bracelet, she caught Senenmut's eyes.  “Hello,” she said, sinking to kneel beside his ebony seat. 

Senenmut flushed at the suggestiveness of her posture.  He nodded a brusque greeting.  Nehesi snorted into his wine cup.

“I am called Naparaye.”  The scent of her flower garlands overwhelmed his senses.  Her slender body moved with an unconscious, liquid grace; her eyes were wide and dark, alight with promise.

“This is Senenmut, he of few words,” Nehesi volunteered.  “Once the tutor to the Great Royal Wife.”

“Ah, a man of learning.  Perhaps you could teach me.”

Chuckling at his own discomfort, Senenmut turned his face away so the woman would not see his face flame red.  He chanced to look up at Hatshepsut's throne.  The Great Royal Wife was gazing down upon him.  When she saw the color of his cheeks, his sheepish unease, she tilted her chin haughtily, turned to Thutmose with some tight-lipped comment.  But in the flicking away of her dark stare he saw, too, the briefest flash of a desperate pain, ka-deep.  All at once Senenmut was pierced by a cold stab of guilt.  And something else, too.  A terrible longing – for what, he knew not.  For the way his life had been, perhaps; for the routine of their walks in Hatshepsut's garden, their discussions, the questions she knew were cheek, the answers he hoped were wise.

His silence had gone on too long.  Naparaye was on her feet again, a movement faster than the flicker of a water strider's legs.  She turned up her fine, straight nose and looked pointedly away from Senenmut, out into the great crowd of servants dodging between tables, of nobles' backs bent over conversation, ladies' shoulders swaying in merriment.

“Come, now,” Nehesi laughed.  “Don't be put off by my shy friend.  You can see how he blushes – he is a maiden priest!  Have mercy on the poor lad.”

Senenmut gasped, mortified.  He had, in fact, lain with several women, though he was not about to divulge the specifics of his private life to one such as Nehesi.

“If you need a lesson, beautiful Naparaye, there is much a soldier can teach you that a priest cannot.”

Naparaye shot Nehesi a challenging glance.

“How to nock an arrow, for one.  And how to peg a tent.”  He roared with appreciation for his own wit.

To Senenmut's surprise, Naparaye smiled.  She brushed past Senenmut; he was beneath her notice now, less than a servant.  She plucked a flower from one of her garlands and tucked it behind Nehesi's ear, then leaned close to whisper.  When she had drifted away again, Senenmut raised one eyebrow, a silent query. 

“She is staying,” Nehesi said, “with her troupe at the blue rest house at the high end of the fishermen's avenue.  Though I do not suggest you go knocking on her chamber door tonight.  She will be entertaisugрying,ning a guest.”  He stuffed bread into his mouth, grinning as he chewed.

Senenmut drowned his humiliation in wine, and schooled himself to keep his eyes off the dais.  The suffering he had caught in Hatshepsut's eye was burned already onto his heart.  He did not need to witness her sorrow again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They walked together far into the dry red valley, Hatshepsut and Senenmut, trailed by Nehesi and a contingent of guards bearing skins of beer, sacks of food, and swords – always swords, for Hatshepsut had never lost the caution Ahmose had raised her with.  The evening was pleasantly warm, and the going was kind to their feet.  Several days had passed since the wedding feast – days, ah, and nights, too, during which Thutmose had left Hatshepsut blessedly alone in her extravagant new apartments.  She had spent those days absorbed in her rule, more often than not sitting the throne of the Great Royal Wife with the king's seat empty beside her.  Thutmose frequently failed to return to his audiences from the mid-day meal, or sometimes begged off entirely, preferring to drive his chariot in the hills beyond Waset while Hatshepsut saw to the governing of Egypt alone.  Nights she spent in an agony of loss, pacing in the dark through the private garden of the Great Royal Wife, its paths new and strange to her, a bewildering dream-world redolent with the scent of unfamiliar flowers and air salty as tears. 

She had tormented herself with questions, and railed in her heart against the gods.  She would be a woman in truth one day soon, and would be of an age to take Senenmut as her lover.  He was no longer her tutor; when the moon finally touched her loins she would be no longer a child, and her love for Senenmut would be as maat as it ever could be.  But if she were to fall pregnant – ah, the gods would surely curse her for a sinner.  For she would not allow Thutmose into her bed – of that she was certain – and any child she might bear could never be his.  No – for the sake of maat, she would remain lonely, without a lover, without even a son to dote upon – with only her serving women and her pale night flowers for company.  She had sacrificed her own ambitions and her mother's reputation as a prophetess, all for the sake of order.  If she disrupted maat again, what was all this terrible sacrifice for?  She had chosen her path, and Senenmut must not walk it with her.

They trekked deep into the ancient valley, to the place where the cliffs soared, red and glowing, into a brilliant sky.  Against the cliff face the old temple of Mentuhotep crouched, the shoulders of its pyramid sagging above ruined porticoes and the crumbling slope of its ramp.  The disuse of the place overwhelmed her with a sense of poignancy, sharp and sweet.  She could think of no better place to cut Senenmut free.

A broken line of myrrh trunks, long-dead, stretched across the valley to the base of Mentuhotep's tomb.  She paused and gazed down the remnant of the once-great avenue, imagining a time when it must have bustled with life, when priests came and went, when women sang the memory of the departed king, when the trees themselves dripped with beads of precious incense, sweet and soothing.  Now there were only the pale bones of trees, a home for the vultures.  She made her way to one and calle; N T0d her guards.

They laid a blanket out for her, and food.  She took Senenmut by the hand – how little she had touched him, and how she would miss the warmth of his skin, that rare, precious treasure.  Together they sat beneath the myrrh tree, in its latticed shadow, to eat.

“You quoted the Book of the Dead for me,” she said, toying with a cone of soft white cheese wrapped in thick papyrus.  “On the steps of the temple, that day when I stood against Mutnofret's men.  You spoke of Re, and Sia and Hu.”  She watched as he swallowed hard, washing down bread and cold duck with a mouthful of beer.

“I saw that day what you intended to do.  The moment I drove into the temple's courtyard I realized you would proclaim yourself Pharaoh.  And it seemed the gods whispered in my heart that it was maat, that you should take the throne.  I know you better than most.  I wanted them to see, too, what you are.”

“What am I to you, Senenmut?”

He stared at her with red-rimmed eyes.  She would have taken his face in her hands and kissed him then, as she had kissed him before but longer, pouring her ka into his mouth as the gods had poured the ankh into his body and made him live for her – for her!  But her guards were looking on, so she busied herself instead with the cheese.

“You standing there, the knife in your hands, facing down all those who spoke against you.  Just a slip of a girl, but braver than any soldier I've ever known, and fiercer than a jackal.  In that moment I wanted to protect you, not only from the men who would take away what is yours, but from the knife, too – from what you would do to yourself.  And I saw, too, that I could not.  I am only a man, and you are the child of the god.”

She lowered her face, accepting his words.  But the words heated and agitated her heart with a ferocity she did not understand, and could not name. 
That is what I am to him.  Half-god.  Not even a woman.  Untouchable. 

They sat in silence.  A wind moved through the myrrh tree; its bleached, dry twigs clattered faintly, a small sound like holy rattles in a far-off temple.

“I doubt myself when you are near me, Senenmut.”

He looked up, startled and wounded. 

She smiled to relieve the sting of her words.  “You were right to rebuff my affections, but you shook my certainty by turning away from me.”

“I...I am sorry, Great Lady.”

“There is no need to be sorry.  You were right to do it.  But I feel shaken and doubtful even now.  You take something crucial from me, just by being near.  I am the Great Royal Wife now, and soon I will go to the Temple of Amun to begin my duties as God's Wife.  I cannot doubt myself.  I can have no weakness.”

He exhaled sharply, a sound very much like a sob.  “Great Ladysizg ne, do not...do not send me away.  I know your mother has retreated to her own estates and has left you alone....”

“I have her stewards,” Hatshepsut said, waving his concerns away with a languid turn of her wrist.

“A steward is not a regent.  Nor is he a mother.  You need people around you who are devoted to you, who will support you...”

“I have my women, and Nehesi.”

“Please, Great Lady, do not do this.  I can help you.”

It chilled her skin, to speak to him as if he were nothing to her.  “You will help me best by being far from my side.”  She gestured for Nehesi; the man blotted out the sun as he stood above her, passed to her hands the wool sack he carried.  When her guard had withdrawn again to a respectful distance, Hatshepsut gave the bag to Senenmut.  “It is not so bad as you think.  Open the sack.”

He did.  Inside were two scrolls.  The first was the deed to a house just north of Waset, a scenic farm high on a promontory overlooking the bend in the river.  Its fields produced wine grapes and barley; Senenmut would live off the substantial wealth of his new estate for the rest of his life.  The second scroll was addressed to the masters of the House of Imhotep, far to the north in the city of Ankh-Tawy.  It was a guarantee of his expenses at the grandest school of architecture in all of Egypt.

“Great Lady,” Senenmut said, his voice rough.  “I cannot accept this.  It is too much.”

“It is nothing, compared to the love I have for you.”  She marveled at the lightness of her own voice.  “There is more.”

His hand went deep into the bottom of the bag.  When his fingers found her final gift, she saw how he faltered, his mouth growing tight and pale as though he endured a terrible blow.  He drew out her side-lock, tied with a red length of thread so it would not unravel.