The Crook and Flail Read online

  The crowd gave off a muffled groan, the sound of an ox moaning under its burden.

  “We fear, Great Lady, that a woman – a girl on the throne would itself be an offense to maat. When maat is disrupted, all manner of evil may fall upon Egypt.”

  Harwa's words were too much like Mutnofret's threat the night before. Hatshepsut could not stop her eyes narrowing. More men found their bravery and shouted at her with the words of the second wife.

  “There is a son! The king left a son as heir!”

  “I saw young Thutmose proclaimed the heir myself, here at the temple!”

  “I will have no king who has not undergone the rites.”

  At this last, Hatshepsut raised a hand for silence. It did not come, and she was obliged to shout back: “What rites? What rites do you demand? Only tell me, and I will give my people what they require.”

  “Circumcision,” a young man replied, boldly raising one fist into the air. His response was immediate and far too determined. Frustration stabbed at her heart; Mutnofret had set this up, no doubt – had put the thought of circumcision into these men's hearts, then set them loose upon the temple. It was a rite any fourteen-year-old prince would be expected to endure, to prove his bravery and strength.&earrcunbsp But Hatshepsut had no manhood to cut! A plot to discredit me, to make me look foolish. Beyond foolish – helpless, inadequate. Female. And in her anger and haste, Hatshepsut had walked obligingly into Mutnofret's snare. What answer could she give to such a demand?

  She stared at the young man, helpless to save face, while he rhythmically waved his fist. Soon the men nearest him took up his chant. The rite! The rite! She did not know the man. He had the shaved, wigless pate of a priest, and though his kilt was unadorned, as befitted a servant of Amun, it was made of especially fine linen. The crowd seemed to esteem him; men thumped him on the back and smiled confidently into his face as his clenched fist led their chanting. When their cries died away, the young man shouted, “We all bled for Egypt, to show our strength and fearlessness, to prove we were worthy men of the Two Lands. We will not have any king who cannot do the same!”

  “The king must bleed,” someone cried. “Bleed as we bled! Or maat will not stand!”

  Hatshepsut shouted over the din. “You speak foolishness. What flesh would you have me cut? I will hear no more of this.”

  Nehesi growled a warning. The crowd surged toward the steps, clamoring. Led by the fine-kilted priest, several men ran up the steps themselves, giving Hatshepsut and her guard a wide berth. They stayed well beyond the reach of Nehesi's sword, but when they reached the temple doorway they linked arms to bar her entry.

  “Move aside,” Nehesi commanded the nearest man, “or I'll cut a door through your guts.”

  Hatshepsut's heart raced. To kill on the steps of the temple – that would offend maat, with certainty. She laid a hand on Nehesi's arm to restrain him, but the fire of battle burned in him. Unaware, he twitched free of her touch as though her hand was a gnat on his skin.

  Quickly, she stepped in front of her guard and faced the men who blocked the way herself. “Stand aside. Do you know better than Amun? If he wills that I take the throne, then I shall, no matter what you say or do. If he wills that my brother should be king, then Amun will surely tell me now. Stand aside, and allow me to commune with my god.”

  The High Priest, quivering and pale, moved to her side. He addressed the brash young priest with a dry whisper of a voice. “The king's daughter speaks with great wisdom, Nebseny. There is no harm in consulting the god. If she is not meant for the throne, then Amun shall make his truth known to us all. Let the girl pass.”

  “Never,” a rough voice shouted from the courtyard. “Stand your ground, Nebseny!”

  Hatshepsut did not dare look behind her. She could feel Mutnofret's little fire fanning itself into a conflagration at her back. These men were like horses racing with bits in their teeth, wild, unthinking, headlong. And she had thrown herself into their path.

  “There must be a circumcision!”

  “No king who does not bleed!”

  “As we bled, ah, for Egypt!”

  “Amun's eyes,” Hatshepsut spat, and the High Priest gulped at her curse. She snatched a dagger from Nehesi's belt; he grunted in surprise.

  A brazier stood beside the blocked temple doorway, crackling as it consumed nuggets of myrrh, raising a column of blue smoke to the sky. As she approached it with the dagger held before her, the men nearest the brazier drew back, pressing into their companions' sides, but still they did not give way. Hatshepsut thrust the dagger into the flame. The smoke made her eyes burn, and she blinked, furious, unwilling to let the crowd see tears in her eyes. A hollow clatter of hooves rang in the forecourt; she looked up in time to see Senenmut fling himself from a chariot while the two old priests of Annu struggled to take hold of the loose reins.

  Hatshepsut spun to face the crowd, the knife blackened and smoking in her hand. The Amun priests drew back, retreated down the steps; the crowd at last fell silent.

  “Princess,” Nehesi said, low and warning.

  Hatshepsut fumbled one-handed at the knot of her kilt. It dropped at last. She stood before them unclothed, sunlight shimmering on the sweat of excitement that dampened her skin. A wordless shout came from somewhere in the distance; the courtyard and its crowd were unaccountably receding, drawing out to the end of a dark tunnel so that she stood isolated and powerful, the only living thing to feel Re's glorious light, alone in the world as Atum was alone on his hill at the birth of all things. Senenmut, murmured a voice in her heart, and she saw with her distant eyes the tutor pushing his way through the crowd, fighting to reach her, his mouth shouting her name, though she did not hear his voice.

  Hatshepsut lowered the knife, drew it slowly across the crux of her thighs. She felt a stinging cold that in her far-off state did not register as pain, but as a surge of power coursing along her limbs, making her tremble with the force of her own might, with Amun's might. And then a wash of heat down her legs as the blood flowed to pool beneath her feet.

  “Gods' mercy,” a voice whispered, or shouted – Hatshepsut's ears were full of the sound of the river, a frantic rushing. She could not say who had spoken.

  A gentle hand pried the knife from her fingers. Senenmut was there with her – Senenmut, drawing her awareness to a great pain lancing upward from her loins, tracing a path of fire through her belly; to the astonished faces of the nobles, the pale silence of the priests.

  “Give me your hands,” he said quietly. His voice carried deep into the heart of the transfixed crowd, though it had never been a powerful voice. “I am the one who comes to be among you. I am the blood that falls from the root of Re, who cuts his own flesh to bring forth the ancestral gods. I am Re, the sun; I am Hu, the word of poweingnbsp; r; I am Sia, the all-knowing. We who are one follow Atum, the father-sun, in the course of every day.”

  No one spoke. No one moved. Hatshepsut's eyes widened with the pain; her nostrils flared, but she she did not cry out.

  Messuway and Nakht mounted the steps to stand beside her. Their priestly robes were disheveled. “Here before you stands the heir to the Horus Throne, Hatshepsut, daughter of the king.” Messuway waved his arm toward her, his flesh loose and swinging. She quivered, bracing herself against the burning in her groin, refusing to show her pain on her face.

  “As it was proclaimed before us in Annu,” Nakht intoned, “so be it here. Amun himself has sired her. Let no man doubt the god.”

  At the foot of the steps, a handful of the Amun priests knelt, palms toward her. And a scattering of nobles, too, sank to their knees in the courtyard. Nebseny half-crouched, seemingly torn between supplication and disgust. Many who had been clamoring moments before, priests and nobles alike, now hastened away, fleeing from the blood, the strangeness, the disorder.

  Nehesi shouted after those who fled. “Who among you held the knife in his own hand when he was cut? And she did not cry out – not once!”

  �
�Let them go,” Senenmut said. “Let them carry the story back to Waset. Let them leave now. It is better that they don't see.”

  Don't see what? Hatshepsut tried to say, but her head was light and silly, and when she opened her mouth to speak only a pained gasp emerged. Her knees had gone unaccountably weak. She swayed.

  In an instant Nehesi's arms were there, lifting her as gently as a nurse lifts a babe, for all their great strength and hardness.

  She heard Senenmut shout for his chariot.

  Hatshepsut closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When she roused, she was lying in her own soft bed in the House of Women. Sitre-In, facing away from where Hatshepsut lay beneath a wool blanket, drifted between the cosmetics box on its ebony table and the great painted chest full of gowns and kilts. Hatshepsut watched her nurse move through a hazy blur and blinked to clear the film from her eyes. Somewhere – outside – the garden – she heard Tem's voice, rising into the range of Hatshepsut's hearing and falling away again, distant as a thin red haze on the horizon. “On the very steps of the temple...the whole crowd...then that tutor of hers quoted the holy texts....”

  That tutor. She looked around for Senenmut, but he was not there.

  The blanket was too hot. She raised one leg to kick it away, and hissed in paiifynbsomewh

  Sitre-In turned at the sound. “Oh!”

  “Get it off. Hot.”

  “There, there.” Sitre-In peeled the blanket back.

  Cool air fell across her naked skin like a blessing from Mut. She looked down to the cut across her bare hillock. Someone had stitched it up with horses' hairs; a thick translucent paste, sharp-scented, covered the length of the wound.

  “That great hulk of a guard carried you all the way back in his arms while your tutor drove the horses like a demon wind. You fainted clean away from loss of blood. Or from pain; the physicians aren't sure which.” She paused a moment, fussed with a length of linen in her hands. “I feared for you.”

  “I'm all right, Mawat.” She moved again, slowly. So long as she was careful the pain was not too great.

  “You will have a scar,” Sitre-In said, mournful. “And right there, too...oh, Hatshepsut!”

  “Good. It will remind my people that I bled for Egypt, just like any prince.” She tried to lever herself but fell back, weak as a newborn. Her arms shook; her bones had lost all their solidity.

  “You just lie there and rest. The physicians said you will get better with the proper spells and with the right foods, but you are still much too pale. It will take time.”

  “I haven't got time. Mutnofret raised fifty nobles and Amun knows how many priests. With every hour that passes she may be adding more to her tally.” A terrible thought occurred to her. “How long have I been here? Not days. Oh, tell me it has not been days!”

  “No, no. Look at the sun, you foolish girl. It has been only hours. But you are not going anywhere,” Sitre-In added quickly. “You must rest. I won't have you endangering yourself again.”

  The door to her apartment swung wide. Through it Hatshepsut could see her door guard bowing low; two harem ladies, chattering as they passed, halted mid-step, bowing likewise.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Did I forget to mention?” Sitre-In said, all airy unconcern. “Your mother is coming to see you. I imagine she is not best pleased.”

  Hatshepsut could do nothing but lie still and naked as Ahmose swung into her room, angry and swift like water from a burst dam. Hatshepsut thought for a moment Ahmose might storm right over the bed, trampling her as she passed, but the regent halted at her bedside. Ahmose spared a glance at the stitched wound across Hatshepsut's loins. “I hope your little drama was worth a disfiguring scar. You've qunbsher as sheite possibly ruined more than just your body. Tales go fast as gazelles through a city. Half of Waset thinks you are mad. Well? Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

  “The other half of Waset thinks I am a god.”

  “Oh, Set take you! You played right into Mutnofret's hands. I may have convinced a council of nobles, with the help of your priests, that your father wanted only you as his heir. Now they will all have heard that you are impulsive, and that you like to play with knives!”

  “And that I am fearless, and confident, and willing to make any sacrifice for my people.”

  Ahmose's voice fell to a dangerous, slow growl. “If you weren't so weak from loss of blood, I would slap you until your face swelled.”

  “They would not let me stand before Amun to receive his blessing, nor even to commune with him, to ask him whether I ought to take the throne. They demanded a circumcision.”

  “And so you sliced your body? What did that prove?”

  “That I won't be denied just because I am female. That Mutnofret cannot stop me. She only put the idea of circumcision into their heads because it would force me to confront, before the court and the priests - before the gods! - the fact that I haven't got a couple of figs hanging between my legs. Well, they saw what I have, all right. They saw me make the cut with my own hand. Tales go fast as gazelles? Then you've heard already that I did not cry out, did not fall before them. Mutnofret tried to make me less than a prince. I made myself more.”

  Ahmose's mouth tightened, but she said nothing. Then her chest and shoulders lurched. Hatshepsut blinked, wondering if some fit had fallen over her mother, wondering whether Ahmose would strike her, until at last she realized that the regent was choking back reluctant laughter. “Figs,” Ahmose muttered.

  “Well, what do we do now?” Hatshepsut pushing herself up again, noting with fierce pleasure that this time she was not so weak as before. Sitre-In scurried forward to prop a cushion behind her back.

  “We give you one day to regain your strength. One day only. On the morrow we meet with a council of priests and nobles, and we convince them to see sense. We do it the right way.”

  Hatshepsut nodded. “I will be ready.”

  “If you go against my word a second time, Hatshepsut, I cannot save you. You are not the Pharaoh yet. You would do well to remember. Sitre-In, send to the kitchens for ox-blood broth and bread with honey. This daughter of mine must have all her strength restored to her, the gods help us all.”

  Hatshepsut scowled. She hated the taste of ox-blood broth.

  Ahmose swept for the door, but halted on the threshold. She turned back to regard Hatshepsut, unspeaking for a on

  CHAPTER TEN

  They met once more in the small audience chamber. For all its beauty, its god-painted pillars crowned with lotuses, its sweet scent of incense and northern wine, Hatshepsut had come to regard the hall as a place of torment. When she had arrived at the palace that morning, Ahmose had already seemed tired, harried, worn around the edges, and Hatshepsut, recognizing the strain of futility on her mother's face, had quailed inside, dreading the meeting to come. But even knowing that Ahmose was less than confident, Hatshepsut was not prepared for the blunt force of Mutnofret's presence. The second wife was a terror of surety, moving and speaking with a cool, powerful grace. She had brought seven priests of Amun to stand against Hatshepsut's two old men, and eight nobles as well, unafraid to show their opposition to the regent in the plain light of day. That did not bode well, Hatshepsut knew. When men as small as mere nobles saw no danger in standing against Egypt's crowned ruler, the likelihood of a victory was meager at best.

  The room was set with two rows of tables, running the length of the chamber with a space between where servants moved, pouring wine and refreshing bowls of olives and dates, visibly cringing at the tension vibrating through the room. Ahmose sat stiffly on one side, gazing across the narrow gap as though peering over a great abyss. Her face was pale with the knowledge of the struggle to come. She had managed to bring only two priests of Amun from the local temple to support Hatshepsut's claim, and three nobles. Their seven looked a paltry, ragged handful against Mutnofret's fifteen.

  Hatshepsut drank very little wine, though the warmth of it would have soothe
d the pain from her wound. I must keep my mind sharp. Now and then she moved in her seat, and her sutures stung beneath her kilt – the boy's kilt that, for once, Ahmose had specifically instructed her to wear. “We will use everything in our power to make them see you as a prince.”

  Nebseny was there, he of the fine kilt and the chanting voice, seated thin and elegant on Mutnofret's side of the room. He toyed with his golden wine cup, rolling it between his hands as he spoke. “Far be it from me to nay-say our departed king Thutmose. Surely the Pharaoh had his reasons for taking the princess to Annu. And with all respect to our good priests of that city, you understand, all respect – but when has Egypt ever seated a woman upon the king's throne?”

  “Netikerty,” one of Ahmose's nobles volleyed back.

  “Bah!” Nebseny gave the man a scornful laugh. “A legend, seven hundred years gone. There was no King Netikerty; talk sense.”

  “Sobeknefru, then.”

  “She nt>t sizignwas never king, but a lone queen, and pressed into rule at that, with Egypt in despair. And she brought the Two Lands to ultimate disaster! No one called her Pharaoh, but in any case, there – Sobeknefru is your answer. A woman ruling Egypt alone, in the place rightfully belonging to a man, leads to naught but ruin.”

  “They called her Pharaoh; indeed they did.”

  Nebseny rolled his eyes. “So say you.”

  “And it was not she who brought Egypt to disaster, but the Heqa-Khasewet invaders.”

  “And,” Nebseny said, amused and condescending, “it was Sobeknefru who failed to stop their invasion. Why are we even discussing this? The very idea is not only absurd, but dangerous.”

  “You must understand,” said another of Mutnofret's nobles, “it's for maat we fear. There is no doubt that the young princess is brave and fierce. I wish my own sons had as strong a will as the Great Lady's. But to set her over us as king? This disrupts order. This is not maat. If maat goes from the world, what follows? I think we are better off not discovering the answer to that question, eh?”