The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (54 page)

“Help! For the love of Amun, someone help!” Hatshepsut raced to Neferubity, tripping into the mud at her side. Her sister was curled up like a newborn babe, her right leg bent at a painful angle and the jagged white edge of bone poking out of the maimed flesh. Neferubity gave a tortured cry when Hatshepsut touched her ribs.

“Everything’s going to be all right.” Hatshepsut wiped the mud from her sister’s eyes and took her hand, alarmed by the slackness of her grip. Neferubity’s wig was askew and coated with brown slime, her eyes screwed tight against the pain. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but only gurgled, a froth of red blood streaming down the mud on her cheeks to feed the earth below.

“Help is coming,” Hatshepsut said, clutching Neferubity’s hand as if to keep her sister’s
ka
from flying away. Blood poured from her leg, pools of red like broken wings in the mud. The crushed papyrus reeds trembled and the foul stench of death returned. Anubis circled her sister now—Hatshepsut could almost make out his yellow eyes among the reeds. “You have to hold on.”

Neferubity’s chest heaved and her lungs rattled, the blood seeming to seep out of her body from all directions even as she gasped for breath. Her nails dug into Hatshepsut’s palm for a fleeting moment, as if
she might cling to this life. But Anubis was too strong; he had her sister tight in his jaws and refused to release such a prize as the Pharaoh’s eldest daughter.

Neferubity blinked but her eyes were unfocused, her voice less than a whisper. “I’ll watch you from the Field of Reeds, Hatshepsut.” More blood trickled from her lips. “Make me proud.”

Hatshepsut shook her head, the braids of her wig slapping her cheeks. “Don’t say that. You’ll be here watching me ruin everything I touch.”

“Neferubity?” Their mother’s voice trembled, barely penetrating Hatshepsut’s mind.

The nobility had arrived, their wide eyes ringed with kohl and mouths slack with shock. Ahmose rushed past the courtiers and stumbled into the mud next to Hatshepsut. “Neferubity!”

But it was too late. Neferubity looked beyond Hatshepsut, her blank eyes already staring at Ma’at’s scales in the afterworld. Their mother gave a mangled sob, drawing the body of her eldest daughter to her chest and silently rocking back and forth as tears streamed down her face. The courtiers on the shore wailed, the women clawing at their hair and breasts in the traditional display of mourning.

Hatshepsut stood and stumbled away, watching the whisper of her sister’s
ka
depart her body. She stared at Neferubity’s footsteps in the mud, evidence that she had been alive only moments ago, the imprint of her own body where Neferubity had shoved her from the hippo’s path.

Anubis had claimed the wrong sister.