The Bull of Min (The She-King) Page 6

  Hatshepsut’s eyelids fluttered in feigned shock. “What appalling language.”

  “And as for babies….” Batiret caught Meryet’s eye, made a pinching motion with her fingers. Meryet covered her mouth with her hand. She had heard enough of the servants’ gossip to know it was the sign they made at apothecaries’ stalls in the marketplace, the silent request for the sticky acacia-gum suppositories that would stop a baby from growing.

  “You have no idea how to behave yourself in the presence of royalty,” Hatshepsut said, her mouth twisting wryly.

  “The Good God would not have me any other way.”

  “It is good to laugh. You know, I haven’t done it in ages.”

  “So I have noticed,” Meryet said.

  A clap sounded from the periphery of the garden, near the door that led into Hatshepsut’s bed chamber.

  “Come,” the Pharaoh called.

  One of her ladies approached, a young, inexperienced thing with the wide-set eyes and flat nose of the southern houses: the daughter of some minor noble working her family’s way into the Pharaoh’s good graces. The girl bowed awkwardly and held out a scroll. It was tied with a red thread, its knot sealed with a hard bead of wax. “A messenger arrived, Mighty Horus…Great Lady. He said this scroll was to be delivered into the hands of the Good God Menkheperre.”

  “The Good God Menkheperre is out drilling his soldiers,” Hatshepsut said. There was a distinct note of annoyance in her voice. Meryet knew it must needle her, that Thutmose had become the one to whom stewards and ambassadors turned, to whom messages were delivered. And yet what else was Egypt to do? The country could not sink with her into grief. Life went on. Soldiers required drilling. Messages needed delivering.

  Hatshepsut held out her hand. “Under the circumstances, I believe Maatkare may read the scroll. She is more than qualified.”

  Hatshepsut crushed the knob of wax between her fingers and waved the girl away. The scroll unrolled in her hands with a dry rustle. Her eyes passed over the contents, then narrowed. Her mouth pinched into an angry purse. She read the words again.

  “Mistress?” Batiret said, her voice tense with worry.

  “Kadesh.” Hatshepsut spat the word.

  “Ah,” Meryet breathed. “I might have known. Another scroll about Kadesh.”

  “Another? How many have there been?”

  Meryet and the fan-bearer shared a pained, helpless glance.

  “Well?”

  “Many,” she finally admitted. “Thutmose has been working on…”

  “Indeed! And I’ve been told nothing.”

  “As grieved as you’ve been, he thought it best to handle it himself.”

  Hatshepsut lapsed into a sulky silence. Amunhotep crawled to her lap, and she wrapped her arms around him. But her eyes remained distant and dark. “How long has this been going on?”

  Meryet was uncertain whether Hatshepsut referred to the threat in Kadesh or her own disassociation. Either way, the answer was the same. “Months, Mighty Horus.” She bowed in a semblance of apology, though the gods knew Meryet was not to blame.

  “Then it is time something was done.” Hatshepsut’s voice snapped with command. Her eyes glimmered like dark points of fire on a high hill, alive with a keen glint that Meryet had missed for far too long.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE SMALL ESTATE STOOD ON the bluffs above a long-dry ravine, an hour south of Waset by boat. A dusty footpath wended through a scrubby orchard of olives and apricots, rising sharply up the flank of a yellow bluff to the small but well-appointed home at its pinnacle. The roof of the estate was barely visible, peeking over the pale, new-quarried stone that had been used to increase the height of its outer wall. A guard moved along the line of the wall, tiny with distance, as black against the clear, bright blue of the mid-day sky as an ant against fresh-scrubbed tile.

  Thutmose paused in the shade of the largest olive tree. It leaned across the footpath, exhausted by age. Only a few shriveled fruits clung to the tips of its gnarled branches. Most of this orchard was long past its fertile years; the estate was no longer producing, no longer particularly valuable to any noble house. Thutmose had procured it easily and quietly, working through a diffuse network of stewards and loyal nobles. It would be difficult for anyone to trace the property to the throne. Not that anyone was likely to come nosing around such a place. Still, a man could never be too cautious. He watched the guard on the estate’s wall creep toward the southernmost corner, pause, turn east, and disappear from view.

  “How many guards are on the house?”

  The soldier Djedkare answered with his usual attentive pluck. “Twenty, Horus. The barracks we built lies just beyond the house. You can’t see it from here, but of course it is ready for your inspection, should you desire it. The men take it in shifts. There are never fewer than six men at watch on the walls or the gate, and twenty on site at all times. Occasionally more, when we receive supplies, or when the weekly shifts change.”

  Djedkare was not many years older than Thutmose, but already showed impressive aptitude. The man was bright, thoughtful, serious about his work. More importantly, he had spent his years of soldiering at foreign outposts, far from Waset and its royal family, yet his own family was known to be deeply loyal to Thutmose and Hatshepsut. The same was true of all the men who served here: strangers to Waset, but proven in loyalty.

  They started toward the house on the bluff. Thutmose kept his eyes on his own sandals as he made his way up the lane, allowing Djedkare to lead the way. The man spoke all the while in his efficient, controlled clip.

  “Lady Satiah has seemed entirely content, Lord. She has shown no interest at all in leaving. She is polite and pleasant whenever we have need to speak to her, and yet she is as modest as any man could wish. Keeps herself hidden from the eyes of men. Unless she has need of something her few servants can’t fetch for her. We’re so out of the way here, and the estate is so old that we have no unexpected visitors. No one comes poking about. I must say, it is the easiest guard duty I’ve ever done.”

  “I am glad to hear it – glad to hear you find the lady so agreeable.”

  Djedkare nodded. “If I am impertinent, I apologize humbly, Lord – but she seems the very best sort of woman, the kind even a king would be lucky to have.”

  Thutmose tried to stifle a laugh. It fought its way out as the merest exhalation, a soft snort of wry amusement.

  “I hope I do not overstep, Mighty Horus.”

  “No, Djedkare; it’s quite all right. Lady Satiah is the kind of treasure a man must guard very closely.”

  “Indeed.”

  The man would not press his comments further. Thutmose understood him well enough to know that much. Djedkare, like all the men who minded the estate, thought Satiah to be exactly what Thutmose had made her seem: a woman of interest to the Pharaoh, prized and respected, more than a concubine for the harem, but not yet officially a wife. He had allowed the men to speculate, as far as propriety would allow, that the Great Royal Wife struggled with the idea of Thutmose marrying another woman – not just adding another pretty and well-connected girl to his harem, but joining with another woman before the eyes of the gods, conferring upon her real status.

  Thus, the guardsmen believed Lady Satiah was housed here, a pampered pet of the Pharaoh, until the gods saw fit to soften Meryet’s heart.

  None of these men would recognize Satiah for who she truly was. None would have had any significant chance to see her in her former life, when she had been Neferure the God’s Wife, his original consort. They knew only what he told them, and believed the rumors they concocted over their nightly beer.

  The gods keep it so.

  The climb to the top of the bluff was hot and dusty. Thutmose ducked gratefully into the shade of the gateway and called for something to drink. Djedkare fetched a skin of wine; Thutmose drank deeply, not only to soothe his dry throat, but to still the anxious tremor in his hands. When he was ready, he told the men to open the gate.<
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  One great cedar door, twice the height of a man, swung wide to admit him. Beyond the rebuilt wall, a small garden unfolded in the sun. It was newly planted, revived from the abandonment that had left the courtyard sere and unfriendly before Lady Satiah had moved in. But here, at least, she had done good and honest work. The flower beds were weeded, tilled, filled in with black soil from the orchard below – it must have been carted up by the guardsmen, one of the tasks Satiah had no doubt requested of them. A few pale green starts grew in the beds; some of them had been carefully staked and tied. Thutmose saw where cracked paving stones on the garden path had been repaired with plaster, and saw, too, the bright white of new plaster sealing the old dark tracks of leaks in the wall of a raised pond. It sparkled with water – that, too, must have been carted up the path by the guards, for this high atop the bluffs no well could reach deep enough to tap a reserve of ground water. Satiah had gone to great lengths to beautify her little prison. It was a humble and lonely place, but thanks to her touch, it was at least prettier than the tiny cell at the Temple of Min where Thutmose had found her.

  He was about to send Djedkare ahead to announce him when Satiah herself appeared, framed in the deep rosy stone of a doorless archway. She was as tiny and light-boned as a bird, stark and dramatic in plain white linen against the violet of interior shadow. Thutmose halted on the garden path. She stared at him a moment, then went back inside without word or gesture.

  “Wait for me here,” he told Djedkare.

  Thutmose blinked his eyes rapidly, striving to adjust his vision to the cool dimness of the house. The chill was refreshing. Small niches in the walls held statues of various gods, but nothing else adorned the walls – no tapestries, no murals. The perfume of sacred incense hung heavy in the air, undercut with the smoky char of burnt meat. A sudden gust from the orchard moaned in the windcatcher high above his head. Satiah perched silent and self-possessed on a rustic wicker couch, waiting for him to speak with her hands folded in her lap.

  “You have made the garden quite lovely,” he said awkwardly.

  “It will be lovelier with time. Everything I planted is still new.”

  “May I sit?”

  “This is your home, not mine.”

  Thutmose found a wooden stool against one wall. He positioned it across from her wicker couch, reluctant to come any nearer.

  “I admit it is a prettier prison than the last one you kept me in,” she said.

  “I had no choice but to keep you there.”

  “So you think.”

  “How did you get out, anyhow?”

  Satiah answered at once, in a voice so lacking in coyness or irony that he knew she believed it to be true, and knew he would get no clearer response. “The gods removed me.”

  “Yes, well. I wanted to be certain you are relatively comfortable here – you and the boy. Is there anything he needs?”

  “His name is Amenemhat.”

  Thutmose said nothing. He held her black gaze steadily. When she looked away, it was with a light toss of her head, the beads in her braids chiming together like tiny sesheshet in a dark temple.

  “Amenemhat,” she said again, “and now that you have an heir, it is time you restored me to my position.”

  “Your position?”

  “Great Royal Wife.”

  “Neferure,” he said, but she hissed at him like a nurse quieting a difficult child. Thutmose bit his tongue. It would not do to allow the servants or the guards to hear that name. Inwardly, he cursed himself for a fool. You cannot allow her to rile your anger. “Satiah,” he said calmly, “you know you are not my Great Royal Wife any longer. You never will be again.”

  He disliked the way she arched her brows at him, the cold consideration in her eyes, the stillness in her small, fine mouth.

  “You won’t be,” he said, “not even if you should find some way to do to Meryet what you did to Senenmut.”

  “Meryet. Yes, I heard all about that one while working in the temples. Don’t fear, Thutmose. I have no reason to do that to your precious Meryet. Hathor is satisfied with her drink of blood, and for all I know, she will remain so.”

  “For all you know?”

  Satiah gazed at him placidly, her pretty, delicate face open and serene. “All I know is much more than all you know, Mighty Horus. Affairs of state are one thing; a king’s duties at the temple are one thing. True communion with the gods – true union – is quite another.” She leaned forward slightly. The reed wicker creaked, a sound that raised a chill on his arms and sent a sick thrill up his back. “I know you still see it in me, Thutmose.”

  “See what?”

  “My power.”

  “Your power,” he scoffed.

  “You see me and you remember. The bull – my power.”

  “You never tamed the bull, Satiah. You were then and are still now nothing but a girl – a mortal girl.”

  “Speak those words all you please. You know you do not believe them. I am your wife – your Great Royal Wife. The gods made it so, and even a Pharaoh cannot undo it.”

  “I already undid it. I repudiate you.”

  She waved a hand, taking in the estate, the garden glowing in the bright sun through the archway, with one quick, bird-like gesture. “Then why all this? Why this lovely prison if you repudiate me, if I am nothing to you? Why so close to Waset? Why so close to your bed?”

  “I keep you close so I can know where you are at all times. So there will be no knives stealing out of the shadows in my palace.”

  “Why don’t you kill me?” She said it not in despair or hysteria, but in bland curiosity.

  It struck him suddenly that although she may change her name and deny her heritage, she was still – would always be – the daughter of Hatshepsut. The daughter of the woman who took the throne, who led men in battle, who secured the treasures of Punt. She was the daughter of the one the soldiers called seshep – the daughter of the woman who pulled down a god. Satiah might dress in the plain linens of a priestess and toil placidly in her garden, but the calculation and cunning of a Pharaoh were hers by blood.

  “Is it because of Amenemhat? Is that why you suffer me to live?” she said.

  Thutmose rolled his eyes. “No. I cannot prove the boy isn’t mine, and the circumstances of his birth are not his fault. I will not punish him – will even give him a proper upbringing in the palace, if that is your wish. But I will never look upon him as my son. It is not for his sake that I allow you to live. Don’t think to use your son as your shield.”

  Thutmose rose from the stool. He tugged his kilt straight, felt the reassurance of the dagger concealed in the intricate pleats of his sash. Without another word, he turned for the doorway.

  “I know,” Satiah called after him. Her voice was musical, light, confident as a king’s. “It’s the Bull of Min you remember, Thutmose. You remember, and you fear.”

  He made his way through the garden without a word to the guards. They rushed to open the outer gate for him, and he was halfway through the orchard, Djedkare in silent tow, before he realized he had drawn the dagger from his sash. He cursed, thrust it back into the hidden sheath, but his fingers did not want to unclench from its cold, reassuring hilt.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HATSHEPSUT BENT OVER THE MAP. Her finger traced a line Thutmose had marked across the northwestern border with a stump of charcoal. She squinted; the brown of her bare lids showed through brilliant malachite eye paint in patches, evidence that she had rubbed carelessly at tired eyes. Thutmose gestured for a lamp. Hesyre fetched it at once, set it near the lady Pharaoh, and withdrew with a bow.

  “I am not an ancient,” Hatshepsut muttered without looking up. “I don’t need to be surrounded by lamps just to find my way to the privy.”

  “It’s my own eyes that feel the strain.”

  “Nonsense. You are hardly more than a child, Thutmose.”

  “I am a king as much as you,” he said playfully.

  The warmth he felt at the reviv
al of Hatshepsut’s ka was, he often thought, the only thing keeping him from descending entirely into madness. The strain of planning the campaign into Kadesh made him feel as addled as a toothless grandfather. At least he had the benefit now of Hatshepsut’s assistance. It was a relief to pass some portion of the burden onto her strong shoulders. Knowing Egypt stood to lose that crucial corridor between the northern border and the fortress of Ugarit had roused her heart and ka from its long slumber.

  “We must not lose Retjenu,” she had declared, storming into his chamber one morning in her man’s kilt, the Nemes crown flying back from her round face like the wings of a stooping falcon. “Treat with them, trick them, crush them – I don’t care how it’s done, but the trade routes must remain open, and indisputably ours.”

  They had begun that very day, closeting themselves in Thutmose’s apartments with their maps and messengers’ scrolls, with the reports of hired eyes they had both worked so hard to sprinkle unseen amidst the Retjenu populace. And they had kept at their labors, while the flood waters receded into the breast of the river, withdrawing once more into the vein of life that sustained the Two Lands – their lands, Thutmose’s and Hatshepsut’s. By the time the crops in the fields stood ankle-high, Hatshepsut was confident of their plan, her faith as solid as granite.

  Thutmose still harbored doubts.

  Now she looked up from the map, her finger absently pinning Kadesh to the papyrus. She spoke some words to him, but Thutmose never heard. The grayness of her complexion took him aback, and he stared at the darkness ringing her eyes, the weary set of her mouth, in dull surprise. It was not the first time her appearance had caught him off guard. Since Senenmut’s death, the signs of some vague but undeniable illness had stolen over her features, and the illness seemed to make its mark more firmly known each day. She had grown plump with her own inactivity, and yet there was a haunting, alien frailty about her now, a quality which Thutmose could only call gauntness in spite of her extra flesh. The palace servants kept him well informed, and so he knew she suffered from fits of vomiting and weakness, though she never mentioned these spells to him or to Meryet.