The Double Crown: Secret Writings of the Female Pharaoh (9 page)

“Yes.” We were both silent for a bit. “Sit down and talk to me.”

He folded his legs into his scribe’s pose. More silence.

I closed my eyes, picturing the moment of sudden flight that had ended my brother’s life. “A terrible shock,” I said. “A sad loss.”

“Are you?” he asked. His dark eyes were questioning.

“Am I what?”

“Are you sad? Truly?”

“Why should I not be?” I asked indignantly. “I have lost my brother!”

“Then why do you not weep?”

I glared at him.

“It brings you closer to the throne,” he reminded me. “If you would still be Pharaoh.”

I had, truth to tell, been trying not to think this, yet thinking exactly this, and feeling at the same time enormously guilty to be thinking it. But I did not like this scribe looking so clearly into my shameful heart. “How dare you!” I said furiously. “You presume much!”

“You have the full blood royal,” he observed. “It would be natural, to be thinking about the succession. You need not feel shame.”

“I am not ashamed!” I scrambled to my feet.

He tilted his head back, looking at me with eyes like slits. “Then do not be so angry. It suggests guilt.”

He had thrust me into confusion and I liked it not. But I did not know how to depart with dignity.

“They say …” He stopped, tantalisingly.

I took the bait and sat down again. “Well, what do they say?”

“They say that the axle may have been … tampered with. It seems that the chariot had lately come from a complete overhaul. It should have been sturdy.”

A chill ran down my back like a small, cold snake. “Who would have done such a thing?”

“Someone in whose interest it would be for there not to be a strong Pharaoh when the current one passes, may he live for ever.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the priests, perhaps? It would greatly increase their power and influence.”

I nodded. This made sense. I trailed my hand in the cool water. The fish rose, snapping, as if expecting food. I glanced at the scribe. His eyes were calculating, as if he was not sure what to think of me. He could not – surely! – imagine that I had known, had in any way been involved …

“I did not wish my brother harm,” I said. “Truly, I did not. He was years older than me and I did not see much of him before he went to the Kap, but I did not … I would never … I did not wish him harm. You must believe it.”

He nodded and stood up. “I was called to the office of the palace housekeeper,” he said, “but that was before all of this. Yet I should go and see …”

“Of course,” I said, shortly. “Go.” He should wait, I thought crossly, to be dismissed. I was a princess, after all. But to him I was a child.

I looked after the tall figure with the broad shoulders as he walked away. I was affronted that he had looked at me suspiciously. I wanted him to look at me differently. Like … like the priests looked at me when I danced as the God’s Wife. Like that.

With my brother lying dead, I should not have been thinking of such matters. But I have sworn to write the truth, and the truth is that I did think of him so. I did.

Here endeth the fourth scroll.                      

I knew the late great Senenmut, may he live for ever. Indeed, I knew him well, for I often worked with him as one of many junior assistant scribes on the numerous building projects that he directed for Her Majesty as Overseer of the Royal Building Works. I was included in listing different types of building materials because I was a quarry scribe for a time and I know materials, especially marble. I was often present when Her Majesty came to inspect a site or to confer with Senenmut on a particular statue or decoration that she desired.

He was, I think, the only one of her officials who ever dared to oppose her in any matter of considerable importance, but he actually did that on more than one occasion when I was present. Mostly they were in complete accord as to what should be done, but sometimes she had an idea that he did not accept. He would not agree to build anything impracticable, nor would he allow her to make changes that would affect the integrity of the completed work. At times I feared that she would send him to the quarries for impertinence, but in the end he always had his way. And instead of falling from favour, he seemed only ever to rise – at least until shortly before he went to the gods. Something must have happened then, for he came less often to the palace and their behaviour was coldly formal and stiff. Her Majesty began to call on me more often at that time. And then he was gone.

I have my own opinion as to why he got away with so much. I noted how his face blazed with joy when he saw the royal barge approach a building site where he was working on the river bank. She would lean on the side, looking out for him. They would look at each other with such intensity that … well, he might as well have thrown out a grappling hook. I saw how her gaze followed him as he moved about giving orders and checking completed work. There was great admiration in her face, but a sadness also. A kind of yearning look. And then she would compose herself, and shake her head, and attend to the various complaints.

There have always been rumours, of course, that Senenmut was more to her than an official. Others had also noted what I have written of. Those who were jealous of his swift rise and the many titles Her Majesty conferred on him spread such gossip maliciously.

But I do not believe it. No, no, I do not. For one thing, they could never have been alone. There are always many officials and servants and slaves about. For another, he was a commoner. Not only did he not have royal blood, he did not even come from a noble family. How could he aspire to be the lover of one who was a Pharaoh and divine? He, who came from a family of market gardeners, as Hapuseneb used to sneer. No, it was not possible. Besides, his abilities were so outstanding that they were reason enough for his remarkable career. Quite enough.

Senenmut was a legend among the younger scribes, for he was a wonderful example of how a person whose background is quite ordinary may rise to great heights through diligence and royal favour. He grew up, I believe, in the small town of Iuny, and his parents were worthy but dull and far from rich. His schooling he had from an elderly priest who retired to Iuny to grow vegetables. He first came to the attention of the late Pharaoh Thutmose the First, may he live, through the Pharaoh’s architect, the incomparable Ineni, who identified the young Senenmut as a most promising student of architecture. He worked under Ineni’s tutelage for several years and the old man drove him hard.

Being a man of many parts, Senenmut was also an able administrator and furthermore good with children, so Pharaoh Thutmose the Second appointed him to be tutor to little Neferure who was born to Queen Hatshepsut when she was the Great Royal Wife, and also made him steward of the child’s property. Senenmut dearly loved that little girl and she loved him. He would bring her along on a trip to a new building site, but only if he was sure she would be safe. I often saw her sitting on his lap, listening intently to some story that he was telling with much drama, or giggling uproariously because he was tickling her. They were always laughing together. He had a finely developed sense of the ridiculous and could mimic pompous officials and priests with wicked vividness.

I remember how one day he was doing a fine imitation of Hapuseneb for the amusement of the child and several junior scribes, myself included, during a time of rest under some trees at Karnak, where a section was being added to the hypostyle hall on the orders of the Pharaoh. The two men, the scribe and the priest, were similar in some ways, mainly in being very competent, but utterly dissimilar in others, and they never got on well. That day Senenmut had tied a huge bush of some kind to his head to represent Hapuseneb’s imposing ceremonial wig, and was pretending to pray to the gods, while responding in asides to his wife Amenhotep. This lady, as everyone knows, rules the roost at home and the Grand Vizier and Chief Priest of Amen jumps at her commands.

“Blessings and thanksgiving to thee, O my Father, my Lord!”
intoned Senenmut in the high-pitched, slightly nasal tones of Hapuseneb.
“Hear my prayer! The earth waits for thy precious seed!”
Then he added, in an aside to imaginary words from his wife: “No, dear, I have not spoken to the builder. He is still completing the alterations at the palace. Amenhotep, my dove, I am busy.
The earth waits for thy precious seed! Come thou and inseminate it!
No, my dove, I do not want you to live in a hovel. Of course not. I assure you …”

By this time everybody was laughing. The imitation was brilliant.

Senenmut was getting well into the swing of things:
“All people sing thy blessings and praise thy name,”
he prayed, in the very voice of Hapuseneb. “We must be patient, my dove. The pyramids were not built in a day, you know.” He did not notice that a group of priests had emerged from the pylon behind him and were fast approaching our resting place. Nor did he realise that the jeers and cheers around him had suddenly fallen silent. “
O give ear to our pleas!”
he wailed, clutching the bush to his head
. “Be thou generous, be thou …”

At last a loud cough from one of the minor priests attracted his attention
.
Senenmut turned around, to be confronted by Hapuseneb in person.
“ … merciful!”
he said, tailing off. The bald, immaculate priest stood glaring at him with his arms crossed. Sheepishly Senenmut removed the bush and shook some leaves from his thick dark hair. He was as tall as the other, but rangy rather than elegant, and he was covered in dust from the building works. “Sorry,” he said, carelessly. “We were just … fooling around.”

Hapuseneb looked him up and down with a sneer. “And you are the appropriate person,” he said, his high-pitched voice even higher with anger, “to play the fool.”

“At least I do not have a wife who makes a fool of me,” snapped Senenmut.

Hapuseneb blinked twice. “But then you are the Pharaoh’s fool, not so? A flea-bitten base-born buffoon.”

I thought the scribe would strike him for that. He did make a forward movement, but then he restrained himself, with a visible effort. “Better than being a two-faced onion-eyed footlicker.”

At that they almost did come to blows, but two of the priests accompanying Hapuseneb laid restraining hands on his arms. “Vizier, come away,” one of them muttered. “This is unseemly.” With one last glare, the Vizier and Chief Priest turned on his heel and left the scene. Senenmut gave a yelp of laughter and the junior scribes giggled, but not too loudly, for it does not pay to anger such a powerful man.

Her Majesty, I observed, used to pit them against each other. She would often call upon them both to offer suggestions for solving a problem, and they tried to outdo each other with their advice. But in the end it was usually the Pharaoh who cut through to the core of the issue, and it was always she who decided what was to be done. There was never any doubt as to whose hand was at the helm of state.

I pray that her grip may never falter. That she may hold the Black Land safe.

THE FIFTH SCROLL

The reign of Thutmose I year 16

As I sat there at the fish pond trailing my fingers in the water and watching Senenmut walk away, a strange mix of feelings was roiling in my heart, like one of Hapu’s pots in which he boiled up medications. There was sorrow for my brother, so young and strong, so suddenly bereft of breath; there was sadness for my parents who had to weep again for a lost child; there was a measure of fear, for if someone had killed the prince, might they not think also of me, who was the last of Pharaoh Thutmose’s children with the pure blood royal? And there was beneath all these a shiver of excitement … and more than a touch of bitterness. Because I should be next in line for the Double Crown when my royal parents passed into the Afterlife; but since I was a girl, I knew I would be overlooked. I sighed. I should go to talk to Thutmose, my remaining half-brother, I thought. This disaster would change his life, and mine as well.