The Crook and Flail (28 page)

She cringed as Tabiry took two of her pawns.  “You play a vicious game, Lady Tabiry.  Do you ever challenge the Pharaoh to senet?”

“He hasn't much heart for senet, Great Lady.”  Tabiry's voice was rich and musical, reverberating in her lovely throat like two harp strings chiming together.

“We play other games with the ki>

“Does the Pharaoh always bring the six of you when he travels?”

“Usually,” Tabiry said.  “We have the heart for it – for living in tents, for being uprooted.  Not all the women of the harem could be satisfied with such a life.”

Rekhetre rolled onto her back, stretched her thin arms above her head.  “And we get along well with each other.”

“The Pharaoh is lucky in you; I can see that.”  She studied the senet board, making as if she were musing over her next move.  But her thoughts were all for the confinement of this tent.  She must not spend the night here, lovely and welcoming as it may be.  “Do you suppose he will visit us tonight?”

The women seemed to hold their breath as she skipped her pawn across the board.  At last Tabiry cleared her throat.  “I do not think so, Great Lady.  No doubt he will be tired from his ride in the hills.”

Surely the gods themselves could not conceive of a chariot ride taxing enough to keep a fourteen-year-old king from enjoying six women at once.  Hatshepsut did not need to hear the real reason.  Tabiry was too tactful by half to speak it aloud. 
The king does not love you.  He would rather stay far away.

So she must contrive her own way into his bed.  Very well.  Thutmose may have no stomach for the senet board, but Hatshepsut was rather a keen player.  She claimed two of Tabiry's pawns herself and waited for the woman's next move, smiling.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Hatshepsut let herself into Thutmose's tent while the last red glow of the evening still lingered on the western horizon.  The Pharaoh was just finishing to tie on a fresh kilt; the old one, dulled with the dust of the surrounding hills, lay draped over one of the carved chests at the foot of his bed.

“How was your ride, husband?”

He looked up sharply at the sound of her voice, but when he saw her, standing in the light of an oil lamp, his mouth relaxed from its habitual scowl.  She stood wrapped in Tabiry's delicate gown, a fall of open blue linen as light as eastern silk, through which her breasts and navel showed plainly.  The harem women had adorned her with their gems, singing love songs as they slid golden cuffs onto her arms, rings onto each finger, a stylish wig of long, thin braids onto her head.  They had painted her face and scented her body with an air of happy conspiracy, whispering advice on how best to please the Pharaoh.  It had been easy to secure their complicity once she had admitted to them how she suffered in her loneliness, how her heart longed day and nigh st

One of them, Keminub, much given to dreamy sighs and fits of wistfulness, had tears in her wide, earnest eyes by the time Hatshepsut finished confiding her tragic tale.  “He will be unable to resist you, Great Lady.” Keminub had fastened the necklace at Hatshepsut's throat and stood back to appraise her virginal beauty.  “Go to him; you will see.  You will fall into his arms and be a maiden no more!”

Thutmose stared at her, and did not answer.  Neither did he smile to see her, dressed as beautifully as any of his six pets.  But he did not frown, and she took that for a small victory.  She came toward him, walking slowly to make her hips sway, as Tabiry had shown her.  “Your ride – it was good, I trust?”

“Er – yes.  The general is a good man, very wise and brave.  We talked...we talked of the garrison's capabilities, and its needs.  We shall need to find fifty more men at least before the general is satisfied, but I still say the Kushites are no real danger here.”  He stared at her breasts as he spoke.

“You said you would see me for supper, and here I am.”

“My servants will be along with the food shortly.”  He looked thoughtful, considering her hips, her thighs through the sheer blue mist of her dress.  “Why are you dressed that way?  I have never seen you wear the like before.”

“I wanted to make your evening pleasant; that is all.  Shouldn't a wife do these things for her husband?”

Thutmose raised his eyes to her own, squinting warily as if he might discern her true purpose in her face. 

“Look, Thutmose.  You and I have been at odds since we were children.  But we are not children anymore; we are the Pharaoh and the Great Royal Wife.  We have a land to rule together.”  She reached out, made herself touch his arm, run her fingers down the soft skin on the inside until his shoulders tensed.  “It is time we set our quarrels aside.  Don't you agree?”

He waited, considering her words.  “You do look nicer than usual.  The color suits you.  And when you paint your face like that, it's softer and more appealing.”

She forced a smile.  “Thank you.”

“I have never noticed your body before, but it's...” he lifted his hands, made a rapid gesture, empty palms fluttering as thought he juggled words, searching for the right one.  “...It's womanly.”

“I am a maiden,” she said, unable to keep a touch of irony from her voice, “beautiful and blooming.”

The voice of one of Thutmose's guards carried into the tent.  A moment later the doorway opened.  A line of servants entered beut aring the Pharaoh's supper.  On their heels came Hatshepsut's contribution to the night's pleasures: the musicians Thutmose had brought from Waset, carrying their harps and drums, bowing to the royal couple as they passed, and behind them, Thutmose's six pets.  Tabiry gave Hatshepsut a knowing, smoky-eyed smile.  She took up her place near the musicians, and as the meal began she danced.

She lacked Iset's natural, pristine grace, but Tabiry's dancing held a coarse sensuality that Hatshepsut found alluring.  The music seemed to twist around her body, to interweave with the brush of her thighs, the sway of her breasts.  Her arms lifted, open, inviting, gleaming with gold; her glistening lips were parted as if she must catch her breath.  She moved from one pool of lamplight to another, her dark skin sparkling and dimming, and as she crossed the pavilion, turning and rocking, Thutmose's eyes followed where she went.  Hatshepsut filled his cup with wine.

When Tabiry's dance was done, Rekhetre and Keminub took her place, executing an intricate performance in which they spun a colorful veil between them, passed it hand to hand, linking arms so that it became impossible to follow, in the blur of the fabric, which woman held it at any given moment.  As they whipped the veil about their bodies, stepping this way and that, they often drew so close together that their buttocks or breasts touched.  Each time, Thutmose leaned toward them eagerly.   

As the women took their turns entertaining the Pharaoh, Hatshepsut encouraged his arousal with a hand laid on his arm, her thigh pressed against his, her fingers trailing for a moment along the back of his neck.  And she kept his wine cup in his hand.  He warmed to her caresses; she stroked him more the more he drank, and withheld her hand when he ceased his drinking to eat or to make some snide remark about Hatshepsut's own inadequacy as a dancer.  She paid no mind to his returning belligerence.  It was a sign of his intoxication.  She let her hand creep to the hem of his kilt, pushed it back to stroke along the length of his thigh.  It could hardly be simpler to train a hound to hunt.

Thutmose raised his cup in salute to pale-eyed Itaweret, who had just finished singing; he giggled when the wine sloshed onto the tabletop.  Tabiry leaned close to Hatshepsut.  She whispered, “Too much wine, Great Lady, and he'll drop his spear and find himself unable to pick it up again.”

The sight of Tabiry leaning into Hatshepsut's ear sparked a sly flame in Thutmose's eye.  He gestured to Rekhetre and Itaweret.  They seemed to know exactly what the Pharaoh desired; they hurried into a pool of lamplight and immediately began to kiss, twining their arms about one another, their hips and breasts pressing together in a show of urgency that made Hatshepsut's eyebrows raise in spite of herself.  She watched with near as much avidity as the Pharaoh as Rekhetre pulled Itaweret to the pavilion floor and pressed her mouth between the other woman's thighs.  Itaweret's hips rose from the floor; her back arched and she cried out, a song of pleasure so intense that Hatshepsut caught her breath.  The sudden throb of her pulse pounded in her own loins.  The other women joined, one by one, until the pavilion floor was a tangle of smooth limbs, of backs curving with the tension of desire.  The scent of the women's bodies filled the tent, a warm spice that eclipsed the deep, lulling odor of myrrh and the tang of spilled wine.  Thutmose looked down on the show and laughed, the triumph of command on his face.  Hatshepsut could set' ee, in his glinting, wine-glazed eyes, that more than the show itself, it was his power that inflamed him – his unquestioned ability to demand this performance from the women, the certainty that they would give him anything he pleased – and all because of the crown he wore.

She stood and removed his hand from the wine cup.  Thutmose looked up at her, his face still slightly rounded by youth, reddened by wine.  His expression clouded for a moment with boyish uncertainty.  Then he seemed to recall himself, his crown, his power.  He lurched to his feet.  His kilt could not conceal his eagerness.

“I knew you'd come around,” he said, the words indistinct.  “Grew up thinking you were a boy, sister, but now you will see what a real man can do!”

“No doubt I will.”  She pulled him toward his bed.

“Ready, aren't you?  Finally ready for me to make you a woman?”

Hatshepsut snapped her fingers; Tabiry looked up from the floor, looked up from between Keminub's breasts.  At Hatshepsut's gesture she shook the women apart, led them toward the Pharaoh's bed. 

Hatshepsut let Thutmose fall onto his linens.  She stood back, watching with some amusement as the women gathered around him, bending to their task.  Keminub was the last to approach the bed, and Hatshepsut seized her by the arm, making a show of sudden innocent terror.

“Oh, Keminub!  I cannot do it.  My poor heart – I am only a wilting girl inside.  I saw his manhood through his kilt.  He will wound me; I'll never stop bleeding!”

“No, no, sister,” Keminub said.  “You sailed all the way from Waset for this moment.  It doesn't hurt – believe me.”

“I'll be braver if I can watch first.  You do it first, and later, when he is roused again, I will do what you do.”

Keminub glanced at Thutmose, doubtful.  He clasped Rekhetre to him, his mouth wet and insistent on her breast.  “I do not know whether he will rouse again.  He's had so much wine...”

“He will.  I will see to it.  You must go first, I beg you!  It is all so new to me; I don't know what to do.  Oh, please!”

The women surrounded the bed now, embracing one another, stooping to kiss the Pharaoh where he lay.  “Where is my sister?” came Thutmose's voice from among the tangle of their bodies.  She could see nothing of him but two feet and part of an arm; now and then his arm raised as he cupped a breast or pinched this woman or that, eliciting a squeal.  “She wants me.  She wants me to show her what a man can do!  Bring my sister!”

“What a man can do...do you hear?”  Hatshepsut clasped trembling hands at her throat.  “I must learn first, Keminub, or I'll be wounded!  I am the Great Royal Wife, and I command you.  You must!”

“Very well, Great Lady.  I will do as you command.”

Keminub pushed past the fray.  Hatshepsut watched as her head and shoulders rose above the other women.  Thutmose's visible feet jerked and quivered; his shouts for Hatshepsut were cut off at once.  Keminub bounced two, three times, and Thutmose grunted, sighed.  The women stopped their work and stood back.  Tabiry looked around at Hatshepsut, her eyes wide and questioning.  But Hatshepsut nodded her approval, and Keminub slid from the bed.  She wiped between her legs with a corner of the Pharaoh's bed-sheet.  Sprawled on the bed, Thutmose drifted into sleep.

“Leave us,” Hatshepsut said.

When they had gone, bowing and murmuring, she undressed and climbed carefully into bed beside her husband.  He grumbled and rolled, taking most of the sheets with him.  Hatshepsut jerked them from his grasp and settled in, suddenly exhausted. 

The sounds of the encampment woke them at daybreak: the voices of Thutmose's guards talking low as they paced the perimeter of his tent, the strike of flint and bronze to start the cook fires.  At the eastern edge of the camp a horse whinnied, and from inside the fortress walls three more answered, distant and thin.

Thutmose stirred, sat up, and pressed hands to his temples.  “Gods,” he moaned.

“Good morning, husband.”

He gasped, glared down at her.  His eyes were red-rimmed.

“Last night,” she said, “the Pharaoh showed me what a man can do.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Hatshepsut entered the harem tent when the sun had just begun to climb free of the eastern hills.  Dressed once more in her simple traveling frock, she held Tabiry's blue gown carefully.  Wrapped in its folds were the jewels and wig she had worn the night before.

“I came to say my farewell,” she told the women.  “And to thank you – especially you, Keminub.  Thanks to your example, I am a virgin no more, and my heart is full, knowing that my husband loves me well.”