King and Goddess (16 page)

His brothers would marry when their time came. Ahotep was a
handsome imp, and Amonhotep too—they favored their father for looks. Even the
greediest girlchild might find herself charmed by their smooth profiles and
their big dark eyes.

They would do well enough. He would go on as he had begun,
unbound to any common woman. He did not need the thing that all the young men
did, and the young women, too: sweaty, panting, noisy thing, good for nothing
but getting children. And what that did to a woman, he had too clearly seen. He
had held Hatshepsut in his arms while she delivered herself of a daughter; he
had seen how she almost died in failing to deliver a son.

He would not do that to any woman. He would remain as he
was, solitary and content, trusted servant of a queen.

Hat-Nufer did not surrender easily, nor admit that her
cause was hopeless. But Senenmut was at least her equal for stubbornness, and
he had an advantage: he could escape into the palace, even remain there in a
guest-chamber if he were minded. If he had reason to suspect that his mother
had invited another eligible young woman to meet her son, he arranged to be
elsewhere until the danger was past.

Days spun into years. The procession of prospective wives
seemed to be growing younger. Some looked but little older than Neferure.

She weaned herself with a show of self-will that vividly
recalled her mother. Likewise she insisted, at the noble age of four years,
that Senenmut—and only Senenmut—teach her to read. “I want to know what the
birds and the people mean,” she said in her sweet lisping voice. “And the bits
of people. Hands and arms and legs and—”

Senenmut reined her in before she galloped away on her spate
of words. He had a scrap of worn papyrus for her, and an ink-block and a pen.
He sat her down, there in her chamber while her nurse snored in a corner, and
set the pen in her fist, and guided it to draw the glyph that he had learned
first, before all others.

“This is the feather of Maat,” he said, “the feather of
justice, that balances the heart of the dead man when he goes to judgment.”

Neferure knew of death and judgment. She was young but she
was well taught, as a princess should be—and most of all one who would be
queen. She gripped the pen as he had taught her, striving not to clutch it too
tightly, and drew a wobbling image of the glyph. She inspected it and frowned.
“Another one!” she said imperiously.

“First learn this one,” he said, “and make it perfect. Then
I’ll give you another.”

“This is too slow,” she said. “Here, read to me. Show me the
words when you read them.”

“First,” he said sweetly but firmly, “draw me a perfect
feather.”

She set her tongue between her teeth, held the pen exactly
as he had shown her, and carefully, painstakingly, drew a feather that was
almost straight, almost perfect.

“Again,” he said.

And again; until she had it, or near enough for one so
young. Another child might have given up, but she would not. And when she had
done it, she said, “Read to me. Show me.”

Senenmut bowed. “As your highness wishes.”

~~~

The queen had grown, it seemed, nigh as much as her
daughter. She was a woman now, her girlhood left behind, her prettiness
transmuted into beauty. She had borne no child after the son whom she had
miscarried. The physicians whispered that the fever had burned too deep, and
charred the seeds that would have sprouted and bloomed into her children.

They whispered only. It was as much as a man’s life was
worth to confess his fears that the queen was barren. She would have him killed
if her husband did not; and if her husband knew, and despaired of an heir, then
she too would suffer, and sorely.

She had not gone to the king’s bed in a year and more. Fool
that Senenmut was, he kept a reckoning—for his heart’s ease, he told himself;
for if she conceived again, then surely she would cling to him as she had
before. He did not know whether he contemplated it in hope or terror. She
offered no intimacy of the body, not even the touch of a hand; she preserved a
royal distance.

He dreamed of her. In his dreams she was sweeter by far than
she was in life, a willing and tender lover, and in their loving no shame or
fear. There was no king to stand in their way, no kingdoms to rock with the
scandal. Only the two of them in a river of reeds, rocking gently on a
river-swell, borne up in a golden boat. Flocks of water-birds swirled above
them. River-horses roared in the thickets. They lay body to body in joyful
abandon.

He had come to welcome this dream, to seek his bed
willingly, plunging into sleep with a prayer that tonight, again, he would lie
with his lady whom he loved. The gods could not fault him, surely, while his
waking conduct was beyond reproach. Perhaps they suffered a part of her to come
to him, her
ka
-spirit wandering afar
in the night, coming to his arms.

Dreams. In the fierce light of day they shrank to the
shadows they were. He attended the queen, he stood guardian to the princess; he
performed the duties that he had been given—more of those, and more onerous,
the longer he dwelt in her service. She was merciless with those whom she
trusted, but never more so than she was with herself.

~~~

She was not always in Thebes. Her husband had turned from
war to royal hunts and processionals to lighten the burdens of his office.
Hunts and processions were costly, but not, she took care to observe, as costly
as war. She was expected to accompany him; she in her turn expected her
servants to follow.

Senenmut had been born and raised in Thebes, in the great
city of the Upper Kingdom. In those days he saw for the first time the rest of
Egypt, from the borders of Nubia to the green and humid marshes of the Delta.
They were all dimmed by the light of her presence.

The king had his own household and attendants. Among them as
always was the concubine called Isis. Lovely as she had been in her girlhood,
now that she had grown to a woman she was breathtaking. Wherever she walked she
was trailed by an army of men, all moist eyes and panting tongues like dogs.

None of them ventured to touch her. Few were bold enough to
approach her. They simply followed her, helpless as moths in pursuit of a
flame.

She still had no conversation. The innocence of her youthful
beauty had given way to the splendor of the court lady, a perfection of paint
and dress and hair that ladies of the court struggled to imitate. But her mind
was no quicker than it had ever been, nor was she any more witty or learned.

~~~

On a night of moonlit chill during the dry season of
Egypt, when the river was shrunk to its winter banks and the fields were green
with the harvest, the king had taken it into his head to camp under the stars.
On the morrow he would hunt lions in the desert beyond Memphis. Tonight he
feasted on the river’s bounty, drinking deep of the wine that had been a gift
to him from the governor of the Lower Kingdom.

It was a great occasion, a night of rejoicing. Isis his
concubine had conceived a child. The king was certain that it was a son.

“And how does he know?” his queen demanded in the privacy of
her tent, from beside the welcome warmth of a brazier. She had left the feast
early as she always did, though later than usual. She could not possibly let
the king see what was so bitterly clear to Senenmut: that the news had struck
her to the heart.

“He is not a virile man,” she said. “Of all the women who have
given him comfort, none has produced a child. Now that this simpering idiot
swells below the girdle, he trumpets to the world that she must be carrying his
son.”

“It’s said,” said Nehsi, “that he has no children because a
certain great lady has taken care to make sure of it.”

She fixed him with a black and glittering stare. “How?
Poison? Incantations?” She shook her head so fiercely that the beads in her wig
clicked together. “If I had done any such thing, you can be certain that this
child would never have lived long enough to make its presence known.”

“I’m sure,” the Nubian said. Voice and face were bland as
always.

He was no longer a guardsman except by his free choice. She
had made him her chamberlain, the master of her palace. Senenmut might have
been jealous, except that he was the chief of her scribes, the tutor and
guardian of her daughter, overseer of her affairs. They were great princes,
Senenmut and Nehsi, the commoner and the foreigner.

Nehsi was given leave to sit in the queen’s presence, if she
were private and inclined to indulge him. He draped his long panther-body over
a gilded frippery of a chair, balancing with insouciant grace. “So,” he said.
“Why did you let her get with child?”

“I didn’t—” She broke off. “Oh,” she said. “
Oh
! May your manly member be infested
with boils! I did not
let
that
simpleton do anything. She did it all of herself. Who’s to know that she didn’t
find an obliging soldier or guardsman to assist her?”

“Why, did you?”

He had driven her beyond anger. Senenmut, watching, struggling
not to be amused, suffered the full force of her glare. “You! Do you think the
same?”

“Of course not,” he said in perfect honesty. “I think the
king had a shaft or two in his quiver. She was clever enough to catch it. It’s
not entirely her fault, after all. If you had so much as crooked a finger, he
would have been in your bed and glad of it.”

“Or at least,” said Nehsi, “not too terribly disgruntled at
the prospect.” He swung his foot idly, regarding her under lowered lids. “It
could still be arranged. An accident to the little mother. His majesty seeking
solace in your arms.”

“But no son,” she said. “No child of my body.” She met both
their stares. “What, you didn’t think I knew? Who could hide it from me? It’s
as obvious as a solid year in that man’s bed, and nothing to show for it but
the shudder when I think of doing it again. I won’t, even to pretend. The gods
have emptied my womb.”

“Therefore,” Nehsi said, “you allowed them to fill the
concubine’s.”

“The gods do as they will,” said the queen.

~~~

Nehsi went out soon after. He had duties, to assure that
the queen was well guarded and protected against the spirits of the night.

Senenmut should have gone with the Nubian. But he was
comfortable in the brazier’s warmth, cross-legged on a cushion, and she had not
dismissed him.

He started slightly. They were alone. They had never been
so, never that he could remember. There were always others with them. Maids.
Attendants. Guards.

Now there were only the two of them, and the tent striped in
gold and blue like the nemes-headdress that the king might wear, and the sounds
of the camp gone soft and dim as the night came down. The brazier glowed. A
tree of lamps cast light across a richness of carpets. She sat atop a heap of
them, cross-legged as he was, but untrained to it.

She rose and stretched, arching her back, yawning like a
cat. Her gown was thin, ill suited to the chill of the outer air, but ample for
the tent’s warmth. The mantle that she had worn over it was abandoned on the
carpets. She took off her wig and shook out the crushed plaits of her hair.

“I always wonder,” Senenmut heard himself say, “why custom
constrains us to the sweaty weight of a wig. For me it keeps off the sun. But
you . . . your hair is beautiful. It’s a pity it must be
hidden.”

She unbound the plaits, running her fingers through them,
waking them to the life that was in them. Her hair, freed, fanned on her
shoulders. She might have been oblivious to him, but his heart knew better. She
knew well that he was there.

Beyond that, he dared not think. Nor dared he think of what
she was doing. He had served her with perfect propriety since he was little
more than a child. His heart had grown accustomed to the constraints of that
propriety. The dreams had come more often as he grew older, and every night of
late, but he had never ventured to believe that they were prophecy.

She was not enamored of him. How could she be? He was a
commoner, no more divine than the earth underfoot, no beauty of face, no grace
of body, nothing to recommend him but the quickness of his wits.

Even that had deserted him. She sank down on the carpets and
beckoned. “Come here,” she said.

A wise man would have retreated rapidly, babbling an excuse.
Senenmut was clever but he had never been wise. He obeyed her.

When he was within her reach, she caught his hands and
pulled him down. Kneeling, he was taller than she, awkward and fumbling,
blushing like the untried boy he was.

He could have been no more appealing than the king at his
worst, but she did not recoil from him. Her eyes searched his face. Beautiful
eyes, long and dark. He felt as transparent to them as water, as insubstantial
as air.

“I dreamed,” she said, “that you—and I—”

“The river? The reeds?” He had not willed to speak, but his
tongue was living a life of its own, apart from any wit or wisdom.

“The river,” she said, nodding. “The reeds. The golden
boat.”

His heart had begun to beat hard. “We can’t be dreaming—the
same—”

“If the gods wish it,” she said, “we can.”

“But why?” he cried. “What am I, that you should even look
at me?”

She blinked. “I don’t know,” she said, direct as a child.
“Ever since I saw you standing in my chamber, furious that you had been sent to
serve a mere queen, with a curl in your lip and a glitter in your eye—I’ve been
helpless to resist you. You have no beauty and no sweetness of temper,
certainly no grace, and only a hard-won elegance, but you make my body sing.”

“The gods are mocking us,” he said. “I am as far below you
as a beetle in a dungheap.”

“And is it not the dung-beetle that rolls the sun across the
sky? Ra-Harakhte, my beloved.”