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

  When the servants withdrew again, Meryet leaned in to slice a portion of the goose. “It’s Kadesh, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that, now?”

  “Kadesh. It’s why you’re so distracted.” She laid the meat in his bowl, ladled a thick red sauce over the pale flesh. She did not look up at him.

  “Yes,” he admitted with a sigh. “Amun’s eyes, Meryet, the scrolls keep coming, and it gets worse all the time.”

  “It can’t be as bad as you think.”

  “It may be worse than I think.”

  “Read a scroll to me. Let me hear it for myself.” She sounded practical, business-like as she chose the plumpest stewed fruits for Thutmose’s bowl.

  She was so unflappable, this Great Royal Wife who was hardly more than a girl. Not for the first time, Thutmose wondered what good deed he had ever done, that the gods had seen fit to reward him with Meryet. She was thoughtful, confident, wiser than a priestess and stronger than a desert lioness – in her ka, if not in her rather slender body. An improvement over my previous wife, and no mistake, he thought as he rummaged through the basket of scrolls beside his couch.

  “This one is from one of my agents in Damas: ‘My sources in Kadesh tell me that King Niqmad has been in close contact with Huzziya, King of Hatti. They have seen Hittite soldiers drilling with Kadeshi soldiers, and more Hittite troops arrive every day. Multiple men have confirmed this.’” Thutmose laid that scroll aside. “Here’s another from Damas: ‘Word from the city of Tadmor is that recruiters came to speak to the young men of the area. They flew both Hittite and Kadeshi banners.’ One from Katna: ‘King Huzziya of Hatti paid triple the usual price for strong horses. He said they were to be taken to Kadesh.’ From Ugarit: ‘A large contingent of troops from Ebla and Alep were noted moving south toward Kadesh, under the banners of King Huzziya of Hatti along with the banners of their own city-states.’” Thutmose tossed the scrolls aside in disgust.

  Meryet sat very still, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her fine, red-painted mouth pressed into a tight line.

  “So?” said Thutmose.

  “Kadesh, Tadmor, Ebla, Alep – all Retjenu city-states, and all of them under the influence of Hatti.”

  “Yes.”

  Her mouth twisted as she chewed her own cheek in thought. “I suppose Damas’s city-king is allied with Huzziya of Hatti, too.”

  “If he’s not now, he soon will be.”

  “Your grandfather’s fortress at Ugarit…”

  “Is Egypt’s only real stronghold in Retjenu. Kadesh and Damas are the only major cities between Egypt and Ugarit. If Huzziya thinks to cut Ugarit off from Egypt, the way to do it is to ally with Kadesh and Damas.”

  “If Egypt is cut off from Ugarit, much trade will be lost.”

  “I know,” he said. “It would be too great a blow. It would set the Two Lands back to where we stood in the days of King Ahmose.”

  “Or back further still. To the days when the Heqa-Khasewet ruled.”

  “Never. I won’t allow it to come to that.”

  “And yet that is precisely what Huzziya and this Niqmad of Kadesh are planning: a gradual takeover. And an invasion of the northern sepats, once they’ve gathered enough city-states to make an attempt on Egypt’s borders. You see that, surely.”

  “Of course.”

  Meryet clenched her fists against the fine, soft linen of her gown. “Hatshepsut saved Retjenu from starvation. And here they are, plotting with the Hittites. Are their memories so short?”

  Thutmose waved a hand as if shooing away flies. “The Retjenu live in tents – most of them, those who aren’t in the cities. Their men lie with ewes; they tile their floors with sheep shit. They can hardly be called civilized. Surely you don’t expect men like the Retjenu to remember that the Pharaoh saved them from famine. Not when Huzziya comes waving his banners and talking of bringing Egypt to its knees. No doubt he’s promised Retjenu a tribute of Egyptian grain if they’ll help put him on the Horus Throne.”

  “Hatti is very powerful, Thutmose. I know this; I grew up in the north. Hatti was never far from anyone’s thoughts in my father’s house.”

  “Until these reports came in, I thought Huzziya was content with our alliance.”

  “Hittites are never content with anything. They have always been Egypt’s most dangerous enemy, even when they’ve played at honoring an alliance.”

  “If they get a toehold in Kadesh…”

  “They’ll cut you off from your forces in Ugarit. Not for long; not permanently. But it will give them enough time to swarm over our northeastern border and take Lower Egypt, or at least damage it.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

  “You should sail for the north, Thutmose. Take two-thirds of your troops and move them to Lower Egypt.”

  “I can send them, but…”

  “You must go yourself. The gods know I don’t want you so far from my side – you know that. But your men need to see you at their head, and more than that, Hatti and Retjenu must know that a young, strong, male king is at their border. They will not respect anything else. I know the way their thoughts run.”

  “And that’s the trouble. Hatshepsut. She’s still out of sorts. I’ve hardly seen her in weeks. She avoids her throne, avoids ruling. How can I leave Egypt in her hands, when she is so broken?”

  “You still feel guilt.”

  “I will always feel guilt.”

  Meryet laid her hand on his thigh, then lifted his arm and tucked herself beneath it. He felt her warmth against his skin. The perfumed strands of her wig brushed his chest, filling his senses with her heady, womanly scent. “You cannot shoulder this guilt forever, Thutmose.”

  “It is my guilt, and I can shoulder it forever. I will. I wronged her, and now she suffers.”

  “Trust the Horus Throne to me. Let Hatshepsut mourn, and allow me to command from the throne in your place while you’re gone. You know I’ll do the job well.”

  “I know.”

  “And you know I’m right, that you must go north.”

  He sighed heavily. “I just can’t leave her, Meryet. I fear for her. She’s…she’s the only mother I’ve ever known. It pains me to see her so broken.”

  “You cannot mend her, Thutmose. Not by staying here. You can’t mend her, but you can prevent Egypt from shattering.”

  He pulled her closer, pressing her against his flesh as if he might, by sheer force of will, make their two bodies into one, the way a potter makes a single strong vessel from two slabs of clay. Perhaps then her strength would be his. But he said nothing, gave no promise, made no commitments.

  Meryet pulled away from him. Reluctantly, he loosened his grip.

  “Listen, Pharaoh of Egypt.” She trailed one finger playfully across his lower lip. “You have been working too hard. You need time away from Waset.”

  “There’s no time to take.”

  “I don’t suggest you go off on a hunt. A pilgrimage – that’s what you need. Get away from your throne for a few days. Get away from Ipet-Isut, too. Go and commune with the gods in peace. Ask them what you must do. They will answer.”

  “A pilgrimage.” He weighed the thought in his heart.

  “Visit temples. I don’t care whether you sail north or south. The gods are the same wherever you go. Spend some time in smaller towns, in more pleasant settings than Waset. Take a few men with you, and go clear your heart of all these doubts and fears. I will tend the throne while you’re gone, and perhaps you will see that I’m capable of ruling in your absence – and Hatshepsut’s absence.”

  Thutmose nodded. “If it was just for a short time, perhaps….”

  “It’s a good plan.”

  He almost nodded his consent, but a sudden memory returned to him, the vision sharp and obscenely colorful in his heart’s eye. He recalled Neferure standing in her little palace with the knife in her hand, the fan-bearer’s blood running from the tip of the blade, as brilliantly red as a sunset. He did not believe N
eferure was dead. She was out there somewhere, haunting the Two Lands like an ill spirit, and she was quite capable of doing to Meryet what she had done to Senenmut.

  “I’ll take a pilgrimage,” Thutmose said, “on one condition. Take Hatshepsut’s guardsman into your own service for as long as I am gone.”

  “Nehesi?” Meryet tilted her head in bewilderment. “Why?”

  “If I can’t be at your side, I want him there.”

  Meryet shrugged. “Very well. I will take him for my own guard, if Hatshepsut will let him go.”

  “She will. She’ll do it for you. She’ll do it if I tell…if I suggest it.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Meryet said. She rose smoothly from the couch. “Supper’s gone cold, but it doesn’t matter. I’m hungry for something else now.” She took his hand and led him to his own bed chamber. When she closed the door and smiled up at him, her eyes dark as smoke and intense as stars, Thutmose found he was wakeful enough to do more than undress her, after all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THUTMOSE ALLOWED THE REINS TO slide through his hands. His pair of horses, black as deep water, lowered their heads gratefully as they relaxed into a walk. Their backs dished with each step, an easy, fluid motion. White patches of frothy sweat dried on their withers and flanks, but their breathing was calm now, and they paced slowly, confidently, back toward Abedju. Behind him, a few more chariots trailed across the hills, dry in the late Shemu heat. His men had gathered up the gazelle and hares they had shot at the desert’s edge. Tonight they would open casks of wine and feast in the house of the noble who was honored to host the king.

  Meryet had been wise, as ever, to suggest the pilgrimage. Thutmose had sailed from Waset a week before, landing at each city north along the Iteru. He spent contemplative hours alone in the dim hearts of every temple he found. A certain undeniable peace came from long, quiet prayer, from burning earnest and humble offerings. These rural offerings were a far cry from those he made at the great cosmopolitan complex of Ipet-Isut. Beyond Waset’s bustling reach, the small-town gods required not sacrificial bulls, but scraps of meat; not casks of well-aged wine poured like a red river along well-washed paving stones, but cups of sweet milk laid out at the gods’ feet. Here, worship was less spectacular by far, yet the thin streams of smoke that rose from his offering bowls buoyed his hopes and cleared his heart of doubt as no ceremonial pomp ever could.

  Beside him in the chariot, his favorite scribe Tjaneni raised a hand to shield his eyes against the sun’s glare. The heat of the day beat upon Thutmose’s skin, soaked into his shoulders and forearms. The strength of Re’s light was an encouragement.

  “A good hunt, Mighty Horus,” Tjaneni said. “Your aim is enough to make Set envious.”

  “You are no slouch with the bow yourself, Tjaneni.”

  The scribe shrugged. “I come from a long line of hunters. It’s in our blood.”

  “Then you won’t mind coming along with me to Kadesh. You can fire your bow at traitors instead of gazelle.”

  Tjaneni raised one thick eyebrow. “So you are going to Kadesh, then?”

  “I don’t see that I have a choice.” In spite of his words, he said them with confidence. His week of prayer had soothed his ka with peace. He felt steady as a deep-hulled barque, the kind that cuts through Iteru waves like a hot knife through beeswax.

  “Well,” Tjaneni said lightly, “Kadeshis can’t leap as high or run as fast as gazelle. They must be easier targets.”

  Thutmose chuckled. “If I wait too long, it will be impossible to stop their treachery with Hatti. Better to cull the gazelle herd now, before the disease spreads.”

  “I eagerly await the hunt, Majesty.”

  They rolled through the outskirts of Abedju, Thutmose raising his hand now and then to acknowledge the rekhet shouts of acclaim. The dirt lanes between small huts gave way to larger roads, hard-packed and rutted by generations of wheels. Two-story mudbrick houses rose on either side, their roofs crowned by bright cloth sunshades where the wives of merchants and craftsmen did their spinning and weaving, weathering the worst of the summer heat where a cool wind might lift sweat from a sun-darkened brow. The road wended past a covered well. Women clustered about the stone cistern, gossiping as they hauled buckets hand over hand. As Thutmose passed, a few let go their ropes to bow; the buckets splashing back into the cool depths raised a scent of mineral dampness on the air.

  Beyond a bend in the road, the pylons of a temple gate rose above a colorful canopy of sunshades that rippled like river water in the rising evening breeze.

  “Whose temple is that, Tjaneni?”

  Tjaneni squinted. “Min’s, I believe, Horus.”

  “I haven’t visited it yet, have I?”

  “Not Min’s – not here in Abedju.”

  Thutmose sent his men and the day’s game on to the fine estate of the noble who hosted them. “I owe Min a visit,” he said. “When I catch up with you I expect to smell that gazelle roasting, eh?”

  In the forecourt, Thutmose maneuvered his chariot through a crowd of bowing priests. Two rows of raised water gardens lined the avenue to the temple’s steps. Lotuses bloomed in the turquoise pools, vivid purple, wreathing the air with their intoxicating perfume. Clouds of gnats spun above the sweet flowers, and now and then a bird dived among the insects with a soft rush of feathers. Thutmose felt the deep peace of divinity beckon, drawing him toward the heart of the god’s great sanctuary, where Min’s blessing and reassurance would be added to those already gifted to his heart by so many other generous and benevolent gods.

  He left Tjaneni holding the reins and walked alone up the pale sandstone steps into the temple. The coolness of indoor shade closed abruptly over his head. He inhaled deeply the sharp-sweet odor of ages of burnt resin. Two priestesses bowed at his elbow, young women near his own age. They were dressed simply in the white tunic and yellow sash of their god and office. The pretty modesty of their appearance seemed just another of Abedju’s rustic delights. One priestess furnished him with an ornate bronze bowl for his offerings. The other plucked a few red coals from a nearby brazier with her blackened tongs. Thutmose carried his bowl carefully toward the double doors of Min’s private chamber. The heat of it soaked through the thick wool pad that protected his hands. His palms tingled.

  He never knew what caused him to glance to his right in that moment just before a priest opened the door to the god’s sanctuary. Some small movement, a brush of bright white linen against the temple’s inner shadow. He saw a girl moving rapidly from one doorway to another, face turned down to the floor. She was dressed in the simple tunic and yellow sash of a Min priestess. Young, pretty, small of stature and thin as a copper needle, she moved with a curious, graceful fluidity that was somehow laced with inborn arrogance.

  Thutmose froze. He stared at the place where the girl had vanished into the black mouth of a doorway. His heart climbed high in his chest, beating wildly, a tight pain in his throat.

  “Great Lord? Is aught amiss?” One of the priestesses was at his side. He turned to her without answer and deposited the bronze bowl with its wool pad in her startled hands. Then he hurried down the hallway after the girl.

  Shadows rose up around him as he drew further from the brazier-lit antechamber. The sudden arches of black doorways yawned in darkened walls. Niches like staring eyes appeared and seemed to blink as he passed, closing over the dully glimmering statues of Min that waited in each with silent expectation.

  Thutmose reached the door he thought the girl had entered, pushed his way inside. The chamber was unlit, and far too black to make out any detail. He took a tentative step forward, blundered into some heavy bulk, a stack of chests filled with offerings. A storeroom. He would find nothing in here without a light.

  He withdrew into the hallway. The two priestesses stood there, eyes wide with self-conscious worry. One still held his offering bowl; the glow of its coals inside cast a sinister red light on her breasts and face, inverting her features an darkening
the sockets of her eyes.

  “Mighty Horus,” said the other priestess, panic edging her voice, “please allow us to serve you. What do you require?”

  Thutmose peered into the storeroom. The glow of the offering dish was not enough to light even an arm’s length of the room. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. And yet he had been sure.

  “Nothing,” he managed. “Nothing, good ladies. I thought…but never mind. Please, show me into Min’s sanctuary.”

  As he knelt before the god, slipping bits of dried meat from the traveling pouch at his belt and dropping them onto the red embers, a terrible cold settled into Thutmose’s heart. He might be mistaken. He prayed that he was. And yet he had recognized Neferure in that brief instant as she crossed the hall. Thutmose was certain it had been she.

  When his offerings to Min were gone, the smoke of his fire dispersing into the haze of incense clouding the chamber, Thutmose crept from the temple and back to his chariot. The peace he had found in his week of contemplation and prayer seemed to rock and quiver, like a fragile egg rolling round the edge of its nest, teetering above sharp rocks far below.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THUTMOSE WOKE WELL BEFORE DAWN. In truth, he was unsure whether he had slept at all. The night had passed in fitful cycles of restless dozing and uncomfortable half-dreams, wherein he saw, wide awake and with his ka fully housed in his body, Neferure materialize out of the night-time gloom of his host’s estate. She would walk toward him while he lay paralyzed on the sleeping couch, raise a dagger over her expressionless face, and vanish the moment he managed to blink his eyes or draw a ragged breath. It had been a terrible night. Thutmose was not sorry to leave it behind.

  Leaving his men behind was another matter. He had not chosen his guards for their sluggish senses. He tied on a plain hunting kilt and slid one of his soldiers’ unremarkable wigs from beneath a pile of linen, but even that slight rustle brought all the men to wakefulness. He was the Pharaoh, but they were men dedicated to their duty, and their duty was to keep the Pharaoh safe. He could not convince them to stay put while he ventured out into the pre-dawn grayness of Abedju alone – could not convince them short of threatening to strike off their heads for disobedience. Thutmose could never make such a threat. He’d be compelled to follow through with it, and he would not condemn good men for having the audacity to do their work and do it well. And so in the end he agreed to take three men with him: Tjaneni for his sharp eyes, and the brothers Bek and Eje, each as large and powerful as old Nehesi. They dressed plainly, concealed weapons in the belts of their kilts, and set off on foot through the still-sleeping lanes.