The Crook and Flail (6 page)

Hatshepsut nodded.  “I will do my best.”

“Undoubtedly.”  Her face softened.  “Just as your father always did his best.  You are your father’s daughter.  You even look like him, while Thutmose favors his mother.  Perhaps that, too, will work in your favor.”

“But will I be as good a king as he was?”

“Time will tell.  For now, you will be wise to listen to what I say, and allow me to make the political decisions for you.  Remember that I have been the regent all these years.  The court and the priests trust me, for the most part, and will listen to my counsel.”

There was the faintest whisper of unspoken words in Ahmose’s voice. 
I hope
. 

Hatshepsut’s stomach clenched.  “Yes, Mother.”

“And concentrate on presenting a face of maturity to the court.  If they are to believe you are the one to sit the Horus Throne, they must see you as a woman, not as a child.”

***

Late that afternoon, as Hatshepsut bent over her harp in an attempt to play away her eager tension, Ita admitted a strange man into the chamber, flanked by two of Hatshepsut’s guards.  The man had the uncovered, shaven scalp and the red sash of an apprentice priest of Amun.  He bowed deeply to Hatshepsut, reached into a neat leather pouch hung about his waist, and offered her a thick papyrus scroll.  “From Senenmut, Great Lady,” the priest said.

She dismissed the man with a distracted, wondering wave of the hand.  Her guards hustled him away.  She let her harp drop to the floor, too keen on the scroll even to set it in its stand.  Ita tutted and whisked the instrument away.

Hatshepsut settled onto a stack of bright cushions.  Wrapped around the outside of the scroll was a curl of papyrus, penned in Senenmut’s well-formed and angular hand.

Great Lady,

I have found one last scroll pertaining to the proclamation of your brother.  It was written by the hand of Waser-hat, a priest known for his meticulous attention to detail.  We at the Temple consider Waser-hatr hr Waser-h’s recordings to be among the finest and most useful.  His reputation for accuracy is unsurpassed.

I trust I have pleased you in my duties.

Always your faithful servant,

Senenmut

Breathless, Hatshepsut unrolled the scroll.  It was several sheets thick, and the papyrus had crinkled with age.  She smoothed the pages carefully on the floor in front of her.

It is the first day of the month of Taab, in the season of the emergence.  I, Waser-hat, having been summoned to the Temple of Amun to bear witness to a proclamation of the king, Aah-keper-ka-ra, Thutmose, the Mighty Bull and the Body of Horus, do report faithfully all that came to pass on this day, by my sacred honor as a priest and by my hope for a glorious afterlife.

An hour after dawn on this day, the king gathered his followers into the forecourt of the Temple of Amun of Waset, the greatest city in the Two Lands.  In attendance were Setnakhte, the High Priest; and with him, his priest-attendants, Sikhepre and Meryra…

She skimmed the next pages – endless accounts of all in attendance and their relation to the throne, the priesthood, and to the noble houses.  Dull stuff, of no use to her, but it seemed here at last was the detail she had longed for.  Her heart pounded as she scanned the pages.

The Pharaoh stood before the assemblage in his holy leopard cloak.  Beside him stood the child Thutmose the Second, aged about three years, and the child’s mother, the second wife Mutnofret.  With the voice of a god the king said, so that all might hear:

“Behold, let it be known that I have proclaimed my eldest living son as the heir to Egypt, to take the throne upon my death.  My son is of the blood of the gods.  The throne will be his, may he live!”

Waser-hat went on to detail the feast that followed, every dish and entertainer. 
Meticulous indeed.
She glanced over the latter portion, but could see nothing there to enlighten her.

But she read her father’s proclamation once more, and again, and again, keen-eyed, quivering with excitement.  Pharaoh Thutmose had indeed made a proclamation about the heirship seven years ago.  But if Waser-hat could be trusted – and his obsession with specifics was indeed impressive; exhaustive, tedious, even – then her father had never spoken young Thutmose’s name.  The boy was present, and the party gathered to hear the Pharaoh’s address no doubt believed their king spoke of that same boy.  But if Hatshepsut’s many kas were mostly male, then the gods recognized
her
at the Pharaoh’s eldest son.  The Pharaoh had spoken truthfully before the court.  For the sake of political harmoh htical harny, he had allowed Waset’s priests to believe what they would.  But he had not undone the proclamation at Annu that had named Hatshepsut heir – rather, he had reaffirmed it.  Before the eyes of the gods, his address at Annu stood. 

CHAPTER SIX

Hatshepsut left her bodyguards at the door.  She walked alone into the small audience chamber of Waset's great palace.  The room was small only by comparison with the great hall: a space so vast, so magnificent in its appointments that
great
seemed an insufficient word to describe it.  The small chamber stretched a good seventy paces from end to end.  Its high ceiling was held aloft by a row of pillars along either wall.  Paintings on the pillars depicted, as one walked the length of the room, the history of the land from the time of Hatshepsut's great-grandfather, the Pharaoh Ahmose, who had driven the Heqa-Khasewet from Egyptian soil and restored the Two Lands to the rightful rule of the gods. 

At the far end of the chamber stood a low red-granite dais, not nearly so grand as the one at the head of the great hall.  This one was but a step above the floor, and narrow.  It held a single throne, small but gleaming in the morning light that spilled down from the nearest windcatchers.  She stepped up beside the throne, ran her hands along its back, its cool, gilded arms.  It would be hers soon.  She sank slowly upon the seat, holding her breath.  The feel of the throne beneath her body set her skin tingling.  The tingling increased the longer she sat; soon she was filled with the uncomfortable sensation of being watched from behind.  She turned quickly on the throne, and came face to face with the image of her father.

She had been in the small chamber often, but the painting of Pharaoh Thutmose had never struck her with the import of its presence – not like it did now.  He stood taller than he had in life, a golden-brown, fit young body striding, confident and strong, toward a glorious future.  To either side of the king, Amun and Horus lifted their hands, and from their palms poured great arcing streams of ankhs, so that the Pharaoh was showered in unending life.  Hatshepsut rose from her seat and drew near the image, hugging her body with her thin arms, rocking on her heels.  At least she reached out a tentative finger to touch the painting.  She trailed her hand along her father's arm from shoulder to wrist.  Her fingers lingered on his hand, and she fell into reluctant memory.

***

The guardsmen at her father’s chamber wore drawn faces; their eyes were sunk deep in shadows.  When Hatshepsut and her nurse approached, the guards threw open the chamber doors, each holding up a palm in solemn salute.  She passed them by without a second glance.  The cloying odor of holy incense and the rote, resigned chanting of priests summoned up a dark, sharp memory: the last desperate moments of her baby sister’s life, sweet little Neferubity, lost to a fever.  Just as at Neferubity’s bedside, there was no timbre of urgencyeet si d in these prayers.  The priests and physicians had given up.  Pharaoh Thutmose would not live.

Hatshepsut pulled at the strong grip of her nurse’s hand, could not get free, jerked like a creature in a trap, and stumbled as Sitre-In suddenly let her go.  The nurse whispered her name, a note of warning in her voice.

Hatshepsut flew to her father’s bedside.  She shoved between the royal physicians who flanked the king, and stopped abruptly at the sight of him.  She had been told – Sitre-In had sat her down solemnly to tell her that the king had come home early from his southern campaign.  His chariot had overturned, hurting him badly.  The injuries were serious; he might not live.  The gods may choose to take him to the Field of Reeds at any time.  She had been told, but telling could not prepare her.

When the Pharaoh had left for the land of Kush, he had been a strong man – reaching his twilight years, yes, but still with the strength of a great bull.  He had seemed so mighty and unmovable that day when Hatshepsut and little Thutmose had watched him leave.  She remembered how he'd looked, waving to them from the prow of his great blue-hulled ship,
Falcon's Wing
.  The ship itself had seemed to stare back with its painted eye-of-Horus, watching the royal children with the untouchable confidence that belongs to those who have never known defeat.  She had stood on the wall of the quay and waved until
Falcon's Wing
was out of sight, lost in a white-blue morning haze with the rest of the war fleet.  That had been only a few weeks before.  How could the Pharaoh have returned in such a state?

Thutmose’s face was sunken and dry, as if he already lay beneath the salts that would preserve his body for eternity.  The familiar long, sharp arch of his nose and the prominent jut of his upper teeth were accentuated by his sickly state, rough and pronounced as the first tries of a portrait carver’s chisel.  His chest, once firm and flat with muscle, now caved slightly at its center.  His ribs showed plain.  Arms that had been like a fisherman’s knots were softened by weakness.  And from beneath the cloth that covered his hips, a putrid smell rose to assert itself over the hysterical sweetness of the incense.  A deep black bruise rose from that place, too, staining the Pharaoh’s skin halfway up his side.

“Amun's eyes,” Hatshepsut swore. 

Sitre-In hissed at the impiety.

The king’s lips twitched.  On the other side of his bed, a sudden movement: Ahmose raised her hand in one imperious gesture.  The chanting ceased at once.  The king spoke again.

“Hatet.”

“I am here, Father.”

He lifted a hand, frail-looking, a weak old man’s claw, not the gentle, strong hand she had often held, the hand that had guided hers on the chariot reins and the bow, the hand that held her heart.  She took it all the same and squeezed it with an eight-year-old's heayear-old'strength, so he would know she was truly at his side.

“Gods have mercy,” he whispered.  “My son.”

“Your son is here as well,” said Aunt Mutnofret from her place just behind Ahmose’s shoulder.  Mutnofret’s voice was musical as always, smoky, conspicuously ungrieved.  At the sound of her words, the king waved his free hand as if chasing away a fly, and Mutnofret’s eyes squinted like a cat’s in the sun.  She stooped, picked up her boychild who whined a complaint, and swept from the room.

“The gods have mercy on me.  Hatshepsut.”

She did not know what to say.  It was as if he sought some solace from her in particular, though he was surrounded by the finest priests and physicians in all Egypt.  What could Hatshepsut say of the gods’ mercy?  She was only a child.  But she understood that her father was frightened; or if not exactly frightened, then seeking some comfort that only she could give before he journeyed to the underworld to lay his heart upon Anupu’s scale. 

“They will have mercy on you, Father.  I know it.  Don’t be afraid.  You’ll see Neferubity in the Field of Reeds.”

He gave her a wincing smile.  His eyes streamed with water.  “Neferubity, yes.  She was a good little girl.  A good daughter.  I loved her.  I love all my children, all of them.  I love you, Hatet.  Never doubt that.”

Hatshepsut looked down at the tiled floor, at her toes poking out from her gilded sandals.  There was still dirt under her toenails.  She had been playing in the garden, dressed in a boy’s kilt as was her custom, when her nurse had rushed her inside and dressed her up like a girl to come to the king's bedside.  She had known by Sitre-In’s crimped face and fast, ungentle hands that the visit would not be a good one, but she had not expected this.  Tears fell from her eyes to darken the tiles near her toes.

“I will never doubt it, Father.  I swear.”

“Gods have mercy.”  His voice was a pale breath.

“You were a good king,” she said, desperate to soothe him.  Her mother made a small sound, a sigh or a sob. “Anupu will find your heart light.  You were an obedient king.  You always did what the gods told you.”

Had she said something wrong?  Ahmose shifted, tensed; the Pharaoh’s hand tightened with a sudden, desperate strength.

“Annu,” Thutmose whispered.  “Gods forgive me.  Hatet, forgive me.”