The Crook and Flail (2 page)

“Finally, one night after a festival when everybody was sleepy from eating too much, the boy, who had eaten sparingly and was alert, found a secret route out of the temple.  He wrapped up his few belongings in his blanket and slung it onto his back.  He walked right out into the fields and headed for Waset, where he thought he might work his way onto a barge crew and sail downriver, far from the Temple of Amun. 

“It was just after the season of emergence, when the flood waters retreat.  He decided to travel closer to the river, where the land was flat and clear, the going easier.  But he did not know that a herd of deby had moved into the area.  He heard a great bellow in the darkness and suddenly he was running for his life from a very cross river horse.  He was forced to drop his bundle, which the deby trampled into the mud, and in turn forced to climb a very thin and scraggly tree – and there the creature kept him until sunrise.

“After the beast gave up and returned to the river, the boy was obliged to walk back to the Temple of Amun and confess what had happened.  The other apprentices had a good laugh over it, and the priests gave him all the most disgusting chores for a month.

“But he learned that we are all given our burdens to bear, and the gods put us right where they want us to be.  For although he never included priesthood in his dreams of the future, the priesthood eventually led him to honored service to the throne – as tutor to the king's daughter.”

She laughed.  “I knew the tale was about you.”

“Clever as always, Great Lady.  Yes, I was the boy who passed a night treed by a deby.  In those days I would have given anything to shirk my duty.  Now, though, I am blessed by all the gods to be where I am.  I am glad I turned my whole heart to the task I was given.”

“But what was it you dreamed of, Senenmut?  What tempted you away from Amun?  Why did you want to sail downriver?”

He shook his head.  His face was all cool colors in the sycamore shadow, pale violet and blue, solemn.  “Great Lady, I find it useless to speak of what might have been.”

“All the same, I would know.”

“<="+0">“font>Please.  I do not delight in talking of what will never come to pass.  And I take great pride in my service to you.  I would not change my life now.”

He would; Hatshepsut could see that plainly.  He said what his station compelled him to say, and any nobleman might have accepted Senenmut at his word, so cool and quick was his speech.  But the girl knew her tutor as well as he knew her.  Some part of Senenmut still longed for that far-off dream.  She slipped the scarab bracelet from her wrist and pressed it into his hand.  “A gift for you, if you will only tell me what you once dreamed of.”

Senenmut chuckled, tried to push the bracelet back.  “Great Lady, do you think you must bribe me?  It is not for the king's daughter to bribe any man, but especially not her most devoted servant.”

“It is my favorite bracelet, and I make it a gift to you because it pleases me to do so.  I
command
you to tell me what you dreamed of because I am the king's daughter.  And because you are my most devoted servant, you will not disobey me.”

Senenmut hung his head as if in chastisement, but he smiled broadly.  “No, I never will disobey, Great Lady; do not fear that.  Very well.  I dreamed of becoming an architect.  A great one, too – I wanted to create the most beautiful buildings in all the world.”

“A far cry from tutoring a Pharaoh's daughter.”

“Or from tending Amun’s shrine, counting up the god's tallies of gold and grain and cattle.  Ah, my life is different from what I had hoped for, but the gods have blessed me all the same.  I am not unhappy.  I have found peace and pride in accepting the burden the gods wish me to bear.  And you will find pride, too, as Great Royal Wife.”

“How much happier would you be if you had taken up the burden you wished for yourself?”

Senenmut turned Hatshepsut’s bracelet over in his hands.  It caught and reflected the glow of sunset.  The inlaid scarabs shimmered.  At length he said, “I will confess that the beauty of architecture still does sing to me.  Palaces, temples, monuments to the gods – they all touch my spirit in ways that other men seem not to feel.  I find a particular joy in the strength of walls, the elegance of pillars, and when I stand in their shadows, admiration for the men who can create such works fills my heart to bursting.  But the gods have set my path.  I am not unhappy.”

She led him back to the pillared porch at her garden door.  “My mother and aunt are coming to the House of Women this evening for a feast,” she said.  “I must prepare.”

Senenmut raised his palms to her, a precise, correct bow. 

“Make sure the history scrolls are ready in my chamber.  I will begin accepting my burden when the sun rises.  It will not take a deby to drive me toward the gods’ will, I promise you.”

He smiled at her words, his face as long and n="s long anwise as ever, and barely touched by sadness.  When he turned away, she saw how carefully he tucked her gift into the edge of his kilt, how his elegant hand lingered on the hoop of gold, which might, she thought, still hold the heat of her skin. 

CHAPTER TWO

Supper was laid out on clusters of tables in the vast communal garden of the House of Women.  The summer evening was welcoming, soft, stirred gently by a breeze from the river.  The air smelled of moving water, of spice and warmth, of honey-sweet blossoms just closing before the advance of the mild valley night.  The tail end of the day’s light graded to dense green shadows among the flower beds. 

Servants, sturdily attractive in their simple white frocks, carried jars of wine from the kitchens or stood near the tables waving flies away from platters with fans of pliant feathers on long, slender stems.  Hatshepsut stood in the grass watching the servants scurry through the garden under burdens of roasted meat, great sloshing tureens of steaming soups, armfuls of fine light bread.  Among so much plain white linen she longed for her own boy's kilt, but such an informality would be an insult to her mother the regent.  Instead she had selected from her great standing chest a loose-woven crimson gown.  It displayed through its light fabric the shape of her developing breasts, the breadth of her hips.  It would please Ahmose, she thought, to see how her daughter progressed toward womanhood, even if her blood still refused to flow.  Sitre-In had hauled a wide, flat box from some niche or other and produced from it an intricate collar of shocking blue faience bars joined with links of gold.  “Very fashionable just now, I hear,” Sitre-In had said as she hefted the collar to Hatshepsut's shoulders.  It had taken two women to hold it in place and fasten the links at her nape.  The collar immediately brought a nagging ache to her neck and shoulders, but her women cooed so over its bright color and elegant lines that she was determined to endure it for the night.  Perhaps Ahmose would be pleased by this, too – by seeing Hatshepsut pay a care for what was popular among the women of Waset's royal court. 

A ripple of soft laughter drifted from the pillars of the harem house – controlled, light, feminine laughter, not too loud, dainty hands held over delicate mouths.  The former Pharaoh’s harem emerged from the darkened House of Women like bright boats from a river mist.  They moved in a muted rustle of linen of every color, every weave, the sheer open weave that displayed the charms of the female body, the tight, liquid weave that flowed and rippled like water in moonlight.  Here and there faience collars  as bright as Hatshepsut's own gleamed in the final traces of evening light.  Dark wigs swung with beaded, banded braids.  The women’s voices, petal-soft, rose with the gleaming, languid drifts of winged insects to float, lulling and hazy, above the grass. 

The women parted, fanning out into the gentle evening in twos and threes.  At the heart of the harem, the two queens of Egypt walked arm in arm.

Ahmose, the shorter and thinner of the two, looked straightp ws llaughees ahead as she stepped onto the grass.  She was still smiling lightly at whatever jest had set the harem women to laughing, but her black eyes were far distant, serene.  Her fine, small feet, shining in silver-threaded sandals, rippled the pleats of her immaculate white gown.  Dozens of malachite bracelets ringed her arms; a collar of shining green leaves lay across her narrow shoulders.  The gold cobra of the Great Royal Wife circled her head, reared above her brow, as aloof and poised as the regent herself. 

Mutnofret, second wife of the departed Pharaoh, was startling in the force of her beauty.  Even Hatshepsut, young as she was, sensed the strength of her aunt’s appeal, saw how brightly Mutnofret outshone her younger sister.  The second wife had borne four sons, though only Thutmose still lived.  The soft roundness of her belly pressed against the pleats of her blue gown; her breasts lay heavy on her chest; yet her beauty was not diminished.  These frank reminders of fertility only ripened her allure.  Her face was angled, cat-like, her wide eyes set at an intriguing cant, her broad mouth curved into a slow, confident smile. The easy grace of her movements, the way her elbow crooked lightly around Ahmose’s hand, made Hatshepsut flush with admiration.  Mutnofret was not one hair lesser a queen than Ahmose, whatever her official rank might suggest. Both women flashed in the retiring sunlight, gold and electrum lighting each elegant finger of each careful hand.  Their belts and wig ornaments sparkled with fine polished stones.  There was nothing to choose between them.  It was only official decree that gave Ahmose higher standing than Mutnofret.  Even attending a mere garden feast, the second wife was as formidable as the first.

Hatshepsut stepped forward to greet them.  She bowed, palms out, properly demure.

“Well,” Ahmose said, her voice carrying a precise measure of amusement.  “I half expected to see you in a kilt, Hatet.  Last time your aunt and I held a feast at the House of Women, you were bare-chested and dressed like a boy.  I am pleased that you are a lady this evening.”

“A pity no one can get her to wear her hair like a lady,” Mutnofret said.  “Shaving it all off like some filthy market boy.  Imagine.”

“Yes, Aunt Mutnofret.”  Hatshepsut could think of nothing acceptable to add.  She shuffled her feet in the grass, eyes downcast.

“Thutmose,” Mutnofret called over her shoulder.  “Come greet your sister.”

Hatshepsut bit her lips together to fight off a groan.  She had hoped her half-brother would not attend the supper party, but should have known that hope was futile.  Thutmose went wherever Mutnofret went, trailing behind his mother with arrogance rolling from him the way body odor trailed gardeners on a hot day, a miasma of self-satisfaction.  He had been allowed to go on living in the royal palace even though he was more than old enough to move to the House of Women for his schooling, as was proper for any prince.  This privilege made him smugger by the day, plumping his opinion of his own royal person as a goose grows fat in its pen.

Prince Thutmose edged from the shadow of a pillar.  He was dressed in a formal white kilt, an imitation of a grown man’s fine pleated garrespleated gment.  It fell not to his knees but all the way to the ground, and he kicked carelessly at the hem as he walked.  

Mutnofret reached out as her son drew near, laid her hand protectively on his shoulder and pulled him close to her side.  “Greet your sister properly.”

Thutmose gave off a petulant sigh.  Mutnofret’s hand tightened on his shoulder; he squirmed, then said flatly, “Hello, Hatshepsut.  You look well.”

She pursed her lips, glanced at Ahmose; the regent’s brows furrowed in warning, and Hatshepsut said quickly, “And you, brother.  I am pleased to see you.  Won’t you sit with me at the feast?  I would…” she glanced at her mother again, who nodded almost imperceptibly, “I would be honored by your company.”  The words burned her throat, but Ahmose raised her chin in mute approval.

The royal children had their own small table beneath the spreading boughs of a sycamore, set apart from the gossiping women.  The tree was alive with mobile, whispering leaves, fresh and green.  As the sun sank lower and the garden darkened in shades of violet, bats snicked through the boughs overhead.  Servants poured oil into the bowls of bronze lamps, set the wicks ablaze.  Pools of lamplight spread between tables; moths spun in pale whirlwinds about the flames, sizzled now and then when one drew too near and perished. 

Hatshepsut sat across the table from Thutmose – a small mercy, that she was not forced any nearer.  He slouched in his seat.  A surly arrogance colored his every gesture.  She did her best to ignore him, gazing up at the bats and the sycamore leaves.  Servants ladled rich spicy gravy into bowls, cut fine and tender portions from roasted joints of meat.  Hatshepsut pretended Thutmose did not exist, concentrating on her supper in contented silence.  When the servants brought bowls of honeyed milk and fruit, Thutmose spoke at last.  “Aren’t you going to entertain me?  If you’re to be my wife some day, you’d better be more interesting than you are tonight.”

Hatshepsut’s bare scalp prickled.  “This feast is for the entertainment of the harem women, not for
your
highness.  With no Pharaoh on the throne, my mother must be sure the women of the king's house feel their expectations of luxury are well met; otherwise political alliances may be lost.” 

Thutmose snorted.  “Did you memorize that speech, O Great Orator?  You talk like a wooden doll.”