The Bull of Min (The She-King) Read online

Thutmose advanced on her. “Where is the boy?”

  She held up a hand imperiously, and without thinking, Thutmose stalled. He cursed himself for capitulating like a subject.

  “Tell me where he is, Satiah, and I’ll spare your life.”

  “Spare my life? You did not come to kill me, Thutmose.”

  “Where?”

  “Amenemhat is not here.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She shrugged.

  “How did you contrive to take him? And at a ceremony, Satiah! I never would have thought you would defile a holy day.”

  “It defiles nothing, for a child to be with his mother. It is you who offends the gods – you who cast me off unjustly and put a false Great Royal Wife in my place.”

  “Unjustly? You murdered Senenmut and crushed your own mother’s heart.”

  Satiah’s eyes narrowed. “My mother,” she said. Her voice, weighted with equal stones of loathing and calculation, sank into the pit of Thutmose’s stomach.

  “It must have been somebody in the temple who took him,” Thutmose growled. “It certainly was not you. You hadn’t the time to return here before I arrived. Tell me who did it, and how it was done.”

  “Or what?” said Satiah lightly. “Or you’ll kill me?”

  “Do not try me. You have long since gone beyond your boundaries, Satiah. You forget that I am the Pharaoh.”

  “Pharaohs do not live forever.”

  Thutmose reached out in the darkness, seized her by the front of her gown. He jerked her to her feet, and light and small as she was, she stumbled in his grip. He pulled her face close to his; the dark daggers of her eyes stabbed into his own. “Tell me where.”

  “The boy is not here,” Satiah said calmly. “Disbelieve me if you must; it will not change the truth.”

  Thutmose released her gown as if it had burned him. She dropped back onto her ungilded throne. He shouted through the courtyard for Djedkare; in moments the soldier arrived, saluting with his palms outstretched.

  “Summon half your men. They are to search every crack and corner of this property. Not even the smallest box is to be left unopened. If anyone comes from the quay – or from any direction – tell me at once.”

  “Ah, Mighty Horus.”

  “Search all you please,” Satiah hissed. “You will not find my son. He is not yours to control. He belongs to the gods, as do I.”

  Thutmose ignored her. He joined in the efforts of his men, kicking open doors to tiny side rooms, upending baskets of dried fruit, tearing clothing from cedar chests.

  He knew he would not find the boy. It was his rage he served. As he ravaged each corner of her home, the fire in his ka was both quenched and fed. He hated himself for his own weakness, his fear of Satiah’s power. He loathed his own inaction against the Retjenu as Hatshepsut lay dying, the months he had spent on campaign as his son grew without him, as his wife ruled without him. Most of all, he despised himself for being human – for having no power to halt the gods’ plots. Even as Pharaoh, he could do nothing to ease Hatshepsut’s suffering. Even as Pharaoh, he could not erase his own past. He knew it was the action of a child, to lash out impotently at objects and take a thrill in their destruction, to feel power over the ruin he made. But Thutmose did not care.

  Satiah sat imperturbable on her dark throne, staring straight ahead as Thutmose and his soldiers turned her neat home to a refuse heap. Her face was an emotionless mask. She did not deign to notice the fury of the king until he stood over her Hathor shrine, staring down at the seven little statues of the goddess arranged around their smoking bowl of myrrh. He eyed the shrine with the current of rage rising beneath his heart.

  “Don’t dare touch it,” Satiah said. Her voice grated harshly in her throat.

  Thutmose dismissed his men from his presence. They made their way briskly past the piles of torn linen, the strewn cushions, the upended wicker couch. When they had gone, he met her hard, dark eyes. The depth of hatred in her stare sent a tremble of loathing through his body. To think that he had once lusted after her, had once hungered for her body as a starving man hungers for bread. A bitter foulness rose on his tongue. He would have spat it out onto her polished floor, had his mouth not been so dry.

  “Don’t presume to tell the Pharaoh what he may and may not touch.”

  “The Pharaoh,” Satiah said, mockery ringing in her high voice. “Should I fear your title? The title of a mere man?”

  Thutmose clenched his jaw and his fists. Her words struck too near the doubts of his own heart. “I do not need to remind you, of all people, of my divinity.”

  “Perhaps you need reminding of my divinity, dear brother. I have been consecrated by my union with the gods. Egypt is mine to give to my son. I cannot fail; the gods will not allow me to fail. Amenemhat will have the throne, as is right for one born of divinity. I will serve the gods beside him. You and yours will be cast aside like the weak, human-bred flotsam you are. It will come to pass. It cannot be halted.”

  “I should kill you for such treasonous speech.”

  “And yet you will not. My son’s inheritance has been promised me by a power far greater than your own. You saw for yourself how the gods’ own servants do the work I set before them, and with glad hearts. They are eager to serve me. Even at Ipet-Isut, the priests know I am divine, and turn their hands to my holy tasks.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I am blessed. Doubly blessed – not only by my union with the gods, but by my birth. You, Mighty Horus, are the son of a dancing girl and a weak boy, for all the royal trappings you wear. I am of the blood of Amun.”

  “Neferure was of the blood of Amun. You are Satiah, as you have insisted before.”

  “There are those who know who I was before – before I was consecrated. There are those who remember.”

  “Like the priest who stole Amenemhat away?”

  She smiled coldly. “And more.”

  If she was prepared to shed her disguise and marshal an army of priests against him, then Satiah’s madness had grown far greater than Thutmose had feared. She had made her living, in those long months after her escape, working her way through temples. And not only the temples of Amun, but of Min, Iset, Sobek, Hapi…her influence, for all Thutmose knew, could be vast. He had made no serious missteps as Pharaoh; his subjects had no reason to rejoice in his deposition. But if the priests of the Two Lands believed her claim stronger than his own – if they believed her claim more divine than his own…. She had already worked sufficient influence on at least one member of the priesthood, had convinced at least one man or woman to risk life and station by abducting Amenemhat from under the Pharaoh’s holy nose, and in the midst of a ceremony, no less. Thutmose realized with a chill that these reins had slid far out of his grasp long ago. He was riding a careening chariot pulled by a mad horse, with no way to stop it or to influence its frantic, wild-eyed path.

  In his desperate rage, in his helplessness, Thutmose did the only thing that made sense. He lifted his foot and placed it against the low tabletop of Satiah’s shrine. Her eyes widened in sudden panic. Thutmose kicked out with all the force of his fury. The seven aspects of Hathor went tumbling across the floor; burning myrrh spilled across the tiles. Satiah shrieked, threw herself to her knees among the smoldering embers. She seized one of the toppled statues and clutched it to her chest, gasping, rocking it as if it was a child she had snatched from the jaws of a crocodile. She turned her blazing eyes on Thutmose, rendered mute by her hatred.

  “You will not win, Neferure. The throne will never be yours, no matter what I must do to keep you in your place.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  MERYET ROSE EXPECTANTLY FROM HER couch when she heard the low, urgent conversation of her servants outside her chamber door. She knew the message they bore before she admitted them: the Pharaoh had returned. Her women bowed low when Nehesi opened the scarab-carved doors of her chambers, and plump Hemetre said breathlessly, “Mighty Horus is in his chambers, Great Lady.
”

  “Take me there.”

  Batiret and Hemetre accompanied her, following the train of her festival gown, a floating gauze of green linen to honor Waser and the New Year. Jewels and gold hung heavily at her throat, her wrists, her ankles. She felt so weighted by ceremony and expectation that it was a wonder she could sweep through the halls of the palace as quickly as she did, with head high and gaze steady. Her heart’s beat was certainly not steady; it fluttered in her chest like a bird dodging the strike of a tree-snake.

  Nehesi clapped to announce her arrival at the Pharaoh’s doors. Even through the barrier of limestone wall and cedar door, she heard the weariness, the bewilderment in Thutmose’s voice. “Come.”

  He sat on one of his lovely couches, elbows on knees, hands dangling useless between his legs. Thutmose stared into the shadow of the niche below his windcatcher, watching the wine jars cooling there with a dull, distant expression.

  “Thutmose.”

  He looked up at her, blinked at her finery as though her brightness and beauty were some incantation that muddied his senses. He still wore the simple kilt and plain wig he had donned when he’d flown to Satiah’s estate.

  “The Feast of the New Year begins in an hour,” she reminded him. “You can’t go looking like this.” Meryet clapped for his body servants, and they came scrambling from their small adjoining chambers. “Make the Pharaoh ready for the feast,” she commanded, her voice far harder and more impatient than she would have liked.

  They dispersed to gather his finery from his chests and dressing tables, and Meryet dropped onto the couch beside him. “What happened, my love?”

  “The boy was not there.”

  Meryet nodded, unsurprised. It had been too much to hope, that it could be so simple, that Satiah would play into Thutmose’s hands with such ease. The woman was mad, it was true – but she was also no fool.

  “Nehesi’s men couldn’t find him in the temple, either,” Meryet admitted. “Nor anywhere in the palace. They are still looking, of course, but…”

  Thutmose shook his head. “It makes no difference. She is already making her bid for the throne.”

  “She can’t!”

  “She revealed her true identity to at least some of the priests in the temple – why else would they have dared to take the boy? No priest would have crossed the Pharaoh for a mere Lady Satiah. But for Neferure, the daughter of Hatshepsut, who was the son of Amun himself….”

  Meryet’s hands felt suddenly cold. “But Thutmose, you have been an ideal king. The priests have no reason to try to depose you.”

  He threw up his hands. “I can think of no reason, but the gods alone know what she’s told them. Clearly, Meryet, someone at the temple is under her influence. And if one man, why not a dozen? If a dozen, why not a hundred, or a thousand? Kings have been pulled down by conspiracies before. Even good kings.”

  Meryet took his hand in her own, hoping to lend him some courage. But her hand shook.

  “By Amun,” Thutmose growled. “I’ve been so preoccupied with the rebellion in Kadesh, and before that, Hatshepsut’s illness. I neglected Satiah; I didn’t watch her closely enough.”

  “How under Re’s light did she manage to communicate with the temple? She never left that estate.”

  “I don’t know. I have turned it over and over in my heart, but I can’t puzzle it out. This is exactly like the first time I had her. She escaped from her cell then, and I never knew out how she did it. She says the gods spirited her away.”

  An uneasy silence fell between them. At last Meryet ventured, “Do you believe it?”

  “No,” he said. “Never. There is some other explanation, for all of it. She is mad, not divine. And I will not allow a madwoman to conspire against me.”

  “That hound has already been loosed,” Meryet said quietly. “Now we must find some way to leash it again.”

  “Lord Horus?” One of Thutmose’s men bustled out of the royal bedchamber, the fine white length of a formal kilt draped across his arms.

  “The feast,” Thutmose muttered, annoyed. “Gods, but there is nothing I feel less like doing now than feasting.”

  “It is expected,” Meryet said apologetically. “I can think of no way out of it. And believe me, I have tried.”

  “I had best get dressed, then,” Thutmose said, rising slowly.

  The clatter of running feet sounded outside the apartment door, and the next moment, Thutmose’s door guard shouted a challenge. Thutmose and Meryet shared a nervous glance. The urgency of a clap carried through the door. Thutmose nodded for his servant Hesyre to see to it.

  “Please, old brother,” said a man’s voice, panting and puffing. “I must see the Pharaoh. It’s of the greatest urgency.”

  “Let him in,” Thutmose said.

  Meryet clutched at her own fingers, her hands working into a painful knot. A man dressed in the blue-and-white striped kilt of a royal guard stumbled into the chamber and fell on his face before the king, stretching his hands along the ground in frantic subjugation.

  Thutmose waved an impatient hand. “Get up, man. What is it?”

  “The Lady Satiah, Mighty Horus. She’s gone.”

  Meryet sprang to her feet, gripped Thutmose’s arm. “Blessed mother Mut,” she whispered, never knowing whether she spoke to Thutmose or to her own panicked ka. “She is coming here. The feast – the court.”

  “How did she get free?” Thutmose shouted.

  “Please, Good God.” The guard cringed on the floor. “Be merciful to your loyal servants. We are investigating – Djedkare is working tirelessly to find out. But we do not yet know.”

  “She is coming here, Thutmose,” Meryet said. “To…to reveal herself before the entire court.”

  “By Set’s red blood, she is not. Let her try.”

  “We’ve been so foolish,” Meryet said close to his ear, her voice pitched low. “We should have killed her long ago.”

  “Nehesi,” Thutmose shouted. “Put every guard you can find in the palace on the feast hall’s doors. The kitchen doors, too. The entire wing is to be patrolled. The Lady Satiah is not to set one foot inside that hall. She is to be apprehended on first sight and brought to me.”

  “As you say, Lord Horus.” Nehesi dodged from the chamber, intent as a falcon on his task.

  Thutmose sent the estate guard back to his post with a message of encouragement for Djedkare and his men. Then he turned to Meryet, took her hands in his own. He kissed her knuckles. “She cannot be in Waset yet. The travel time from the estate – even if she has access to a boat, it would take her an hour or more to get here. Go back to your chambers. I will send Nehesi to you the moment he’s arranged the guard on the hall.”

  “But what shall we do? The feast…”

  “It must go on, as if nothing is amiss. We mustn’t allow her to disrupt the court in any way. Can you be brave, my lioness?” His fingers brushed her cheek. “I know you can. I know you are the true Great Royal Wife, whatever that twisted creature might think.”

  “Amunhotep…”

  “Is safe, and so are you.”

  “Very well,” Meryet said, her voice quavering. “I will be brave.”

  She collected her women outside Thutmose’s door. Hemetre’s round face was flushed, her eyes wide with barely controlled fear. Batiret looked calmer, but her pale face was tinged a sickly green shade around the mouth. She glanced about her continually as they made their way back to Meryet’s chambers, as if she feared what might lurk in the shadows of the pillars.

  For Meryet’s part, never had walking sedately through the palace colonnades and courtyards seemed such an impossible task. Her legs shook; she feared she might collapse with every step. Her heart throbbed painfully in her throat. But the gods were good to her; somehow she managed to breathe, and restrained herself from running. Any of the servants they passed, any foreign dignitary or noble woman fanning herself under the shadow of a vined porch, might be Satiah’s creature. Meryet gave none of them the sa
tisfaction of seeing fear on her face. She was, after all, the Great Royal Wife, whatever schemes the creeping spider Satiah might be weaving.

  Her wing of the palace appeared around the bend of an outer hall cast half in bright light and half in sinister blue-black shade. She found Batiret’s hand and squeezed it. They had made it to their sanctuary unharmed.

  Meryet slipped through her scarab doors with her two women beside her and shoved the doors closed, leaning her back against them in relief, her eyes shut tight against her anxiety. “Oh, gods,” she moaned.

  The rustle of several linen gowns answered her. Meryet’s eyes snapped open. Several women sank into deep bows in her antechamber; in the frantic heartbeats before she recognized them, she thought a small, vengeful army of Satiahs had arrived before her, appearing under the power of the dark gods she served like a mist above the river. Then she pressed her hands hard against her roiling belly, and with relief so vast it nearly dropped her to the tiles of her floor, she knew the women. Meritamun, Khuit, and Henuttawy – women of Thutmose’s harem.

  “Mut preserve me! Ladies, why are you here?”

  They straightened, and Meryet saw the confusion and fear clouding their eyes. Satiah, of course.

  “So she went to the harem,” Meryet mused aloud. “We thought she would appear at the feast, but it’s the House of Women she seeks to control next. Is that the way of it?”

  It made sense, after all. The House of Women was a chest full of living jewels: daughters of Egypt’s finest and most influential families. It was a subtler and more politically astute maneuver than barging into a feast like a gout of leaping flame.

  “Great Lady,” Meritamun stammered. The tall woman was still bent double in a subservient bow. “We beg your forgiveness for coming to you like this. Your women let us in when they understood the urgency of our errand.”

  “It’s all right. Rise, all of you. Tell me.”

  Henuttawy spoke up. Her voice, usually light and musical with the practiced charm of a harem favorite, was strangled and ugly now. “She appeared, Great Lady. We thought her dead. The King’s Daughter – Neferure.”