King and Goddess (28 page)

“Always,” he said, “my lady and queen.”

They returned to Thebes in a kind of triumph, with the Two
Lands well secured behind them, and the king’s face known as well as could be
expected. To most he would be no more than a glitter in the distance, the
height of the Two Crowns and the weapons of his guards. The people loved a king
who was young; if he was too young to rule, if others ruled for him, they doted
on him as on a favored child.

Hatshepsut professed herself content. Her night fears faded
with the sunlight. In Thebes she was altogether herself. If anything she was
stronger than she had been before she began that brief and successful progress.

~~~

Neferure was not strengthened by her journey through the
Two Lands. She pined for her lover, Senenmut thought. He had taken steps to
assure that when she returned to Thebes, Amonhotep would have gone up to
Abydos, administering Senenmut’s affairs there.

They had not passed on the way. Amonhotep traveled by land,
Neferure on the river. If either suspected the ruse, Senenmut did not know of
it.

In any event, Neferure was unwell. She had caught a bit of
fever in the marshes of the Delta. It passed, but her malaise lingered. She
withdrew to her chambers, curtailed her duties, hid herself behind a wall of
maids and guards.

“The queen is indisposed,” one of those guards said to
Senenmut as he approached the door.

“I am aware of that,” Senenmut said with studied calm. “I’ll
not keep the queen’s majesty any longer than I must.”

The guard frowned, but he, like all his fellows, knew better
than to gainsay the queen’s tutor. She was grown and a woman now, and had no
need of his presence every day; but Senenmut had been remiss in failing to
attend her since she returned from her journey.

How remiss, he had just now discovered. Rumor had it that
Neferure was not merely indisposed; that she was honestly ill, but would suffer
no physician to examine her, nor permit a priest to invoke the gods in her
name.

He found her just come from the bath, wrapped in soft cloths
like a mantle, with her hair spread wet on her shoulders and a maid combing
sweet unguent into it. She did not look ill. She looked in the splendid peak of
health.

“Senenmut!” she said in surprise and, he hoped, honest
welcome. “I hadn’t expected you. Is something wrong?”

He took his time in replying. He sat in the chair that he
often favored, accepted a cup of what proved to be wine cooled in an earthen
jar and made sweet with spices, sipped till his head had cleared and his heart
stopped thudding.

Nothing that he saw eased his fears. She sat opposite him
and did not touch her own cup, wrapped in her mantle despite the day’s warmth.
Her eyes were vivid and clear—too much so, perhaps. He saw in them a challenge,
though she would never voice it.

At length he said, “I am pleased that, rumors to the
contrary, you are anything but deathly ill.”

She smiled a bright, brittle smile. “Oh, I am well. Quite
well. Just a little indisposed.”

“Ah,” he said. He paused. “A temporary indisposition, I
trust?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Temporary.”

“Of about, perhaps, nine months’ duration?” he inquired.

She started. She caught herself, but not before he saw. Her
cheeks flushed, and then paled. She looked truly indisposed then, nigh as white
as her linen wrappings.

He spoke carefully, as one often did with queens. “Lady, did
you think you could hide it for as long as it’s wont to take? You have, what,
five months left? Four?”

“Four,” she said. It was like her not to deny it once there
was no purpose in it. He saw how she braced, expecting the next and inevitable
question.

Which he had no need to ask. “Such a secret is near
impossible to keep. Servants talk. Rumors fly. And a queen must appear at least
intermittently, and her garments conceal very little. You must envy the queens
of Asia, who live forever in seclusion, and clothe themselves in great wraps
and swathings, and never show more of their bodies than they must.”

He had caught her off balance, but she recovered quickly. “I
envy no one. I have no shame, either.”

“I’m sure,” Senenmut said mildly.

She leaned forward. He could, if he peered, see the gentle
rounding of her middle, the betrayal that would be unmistakable in only a
little while. “You understand,” she said. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t. But
Am—he said—he said you—”

Senenmut shook his head once, sharply, and frowned: a signal
that they had devised long ago, which she did not now mistake. Her eyes flicked
to the maids who stood about, the servants who came and went on errands of the
bath.

Her hands smote together like a whipcrack. “Out!” she cried.
“All of you, out! Out or feel my rod on your backs!”

They scurried to obey. She raised her voice seldom, nor
threatened aught but what she meant to do.

When they were well gone, Senenmut walked the edges of the
room, prodding at the hangings, opening doors swiftly and setting a firm kick
in the backside of the maid he found crouching behind one. Only when all the
doors were clear, with no one on the other side, and all the walls and crannies
empty, would he return to his seat.

Neferure waited like a student facing the master’s rod, too
proud to droop or beg. Her shoulders were set as if against a blow.

“Child,” Senenmut said with all the love in his heart, and
all the grief, and no little exasperation, either. “Oh, child, what are we
going to do?”

Her hand sought her middle. Her chin lifted. “I won’t kill
the baby. Tuyu says I should, and says she knows how. But I won’t.”

“Nor is it safe now,” he said. “Though if you had agreed to
it when you first knew . . .”

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “I won’t. I love this baby. It
lives, Senenmut. It moves; it kicks me.” She grimaced. “Sometimes it hurts.”

“Indeed,” said Senenmut. “Alas for you that your king is
still a child. You could have played out the deception else, brought him to
your bed and borne him an eight-months’ child. It’s too late for that, and too
early for him. The world will know that you warmed your bed with a man who was
not the king.”

Neferure shook her head. Her hair, drying into curls,
swirled in her face. “I’ve been thinking, truly I have. I’ll be ill, ill in
spirit—so ill I need the gods’ help. I’ll go on a pilgrimage. I’ll seek out
temples. I’ll pray to every god who is powerful in Egypt. I’ll make it a new
progress, but only for myself, and in the gods’ name. I can travel the length
of the river, and do it slowly. If I’m wise and the gods love me, I’ll deliver
the baby somewhere round about the City of the Sun, all the way to the Delta.”

“Clever,” Senenmut said. “But have you thought that a woman
with child is rather obvious about it, and many people will see you—the whole
of the Two Lands will know?”

“No, they won’t,” she said with sublime assurance. “I’ll
travel in my litter, hidden from the eyes of men, because my soul-sickness
wishes it and the gods command it. My women will speak for me to the priests
and people. I’ll do my devotions in the inner shrines, pray to each god before
his living face. I’m granted that, because I’m queen.”

“And so you will conceal a commoner’s child from the
knowledge of Egypt.” Senenmut sighed. “And when it’s born? What then? Will you
drown it in the Nile? Feed it to a crocodile?”

She stiffened, furious. “I will not! I will send it away.
Some kind soul will foster it.”

“If it is female, it may, all unknowing, carry the right to
the throne of Egypt.”

“It won’t know,” said Neferure. “I won’t kill it, Senenmut.
If you so much as lay a hand on it, I’ll kill you.”

She was fiercer than he had ever seen her, dangerous as a
lioness protecting her cubs. He trod softly, spoke gently. “I will threaten no
child of yours. But, my dear, your plan is so elaborate; it trusts in so much,
and walks so close to the edge of betrayal.”

“What else can I do?” she demanded. “I can’t wish it away. I
tried that. All it gave me was a headache.”

“Does the father know?”

That at last was a question she had expected: unexpected
now, and sudden. She drew a sharp breath. “No. No, I haven’t told him.”

“That’s probably well,” said Senenmut.

“I think so,” she said, if somewhat uncertainly. “You know
who it is.”

He nodded.

“Then you do understand. You won’t kill him.”

“No,” he said, “though I might break every bone in his
body.”

“Oh, don’t!” she cried. “It was my fault. He would have been
too shy, if I hadn’t pressed him. I had to press hard. Even then he almost
refused me.”

“I almost believe you,” Senenmut said. “And now you pay as
every woman pays, unless the gods have either blessed or cursed her. A
pilgrimage won’t save you, infant.”

“Then what will? I can’t stay here, with all the servants
whispering, and the court catching wind of it.”

“No,” said Senenmut. His thoughts rattled in his mind,
somewhere aft of his liver. None of them served any useful purpose. He had
never been so utterly at a loss before; so perfectly without the solace of wit.

Her mother would have to know. That would not be a pleasant
meeting. His brother, her daughter: well they might argue that they did nothing
that Senenmut and Hatshepsut had not done before them. But Hatshepsut had given
her king a daughter and lost a son, and with him her hope of bearing another,
before she sought comfort in a commoner’s arms.

And yet she must know, and soon. Her wrath would be
terrible; and worse, the later she discovered the truth.

There were no easy choices; no simple evasions. And no
resolution that he could see, not anywhere.

Neferure flung up her hands. “You see? You have no arguments,
and no recourse, either. I’ll have my pilgrimage. The Two Lands will lose me
for a while, and my weak spirit with me. Then I’ll come back all strong and
sure.”

“And succumb again to temptation, because your husband is
too young to give you pleasure?”

“No,” she said, not even in anger. “No, I won’t—I can’t—”

“Oh, you won’t,” Senenmut said grimly, “and if you do, I’ll
make sure it’s not with that particular comforter of lorn wives.”

The queen regent was not merely angry. She was in a fair
rage. And she could indulge the barest fraction of it.

“This will be kept quiet,” she said through clenched teeth.
“And you, O my scribe, will stand surety for it.”

Senenmut bowed low. There was nothing of the lover in her
now, and no remembrance of their nights together. She was queen wholly, and
queen in wrath.

What she said to Neferure he did not know. They spoke alone
together in a chamber bare of listening places, with Nehsi on guard at the
door. They spoke long; and when Neferure came out she was white and shaken, too
shocked for tears.

There would be no pilgrimage. But this far Hatshepsut
granted the wisdom of Neferure’s stratagem: she allowed the queen to announce
that, in sickness of the spirit, she would retreat for a time to the temple of
Isis in Abydos. It was far enough from Thebes to be out of the court’s sphere,
high and holy enough to suit a queen, and well enough guarded that Neferure’s
secret might be safe there. There was no surety; but of this both Hatshepsut
and Senenmut were certain. If Neferure remained in the palace at Thebes, there
would be a magnificent scandal.

Neferure prepared with care. She began to summon priests and
soothsayers, prophets and sorcerers, wisewomen and physicians. All of them
found her lying languid in her bed, well and discreetly covered, professing no
interest in rising to face the sun. They performed their rites and sacrifices,
raised their reeks, even danced around her bed while she lay limp, arm flung
over her eyes to conceal the helpless laughter.

“I grant you,” she said to Senenmut, some three handfuls of
days after she had begun her deception, “they do mean well. But oh, Senenmut!
The potion of ox tongue and crocodile egg and the dung of a maiden heifer born
on the night of the new moon—it was all I could do not to shove it down that
idiot doctor’s throat.”

“It’s well you didn’t,” Senenmut said. They were granted a
rare few moments’ privacy: it was late, the horde of healers and priests had
been dismissed, the maids were preparing their lady’s bath. He kept his voice
low, even so; one never knew who might be listening. “That idiot doctor was
kind enough to offer a highly satisfactory diagnosis. You are, he says, haunted
by nightwalkers. They’re draining your blood and souls. You need greater help
than mortal man can give.”

“Yes,” she said, “and Mother Isis is a great healer and
protector of women. They’ll prescribe a pilgrimage, of course. Gods know
they’ve been long enough about it. I thought no one would ever get to it.”

“That is your punishment for falsehood,” he said severely.
She was laughing at him. He frowned as blackly as he could. “This is no matter
for levity, child.”

“If I don’t laugh,” she said as soberly as he could have
wished, “I’ll break and run screaming. I can’t hide . . . this . . .
much longer.” Nor could she: the swell of the baby under her hand was distinct,
the shape impossible to mistake. Her maids were all bound to silence. Those
whom she did not trust had been sent days since to attend the lesser wives of
the Governor of Nubia, far in the south of Upper Egypt. If they chattered
overmuch there, it would be a sufficient while before word of it came back to
Thebes.

“You will of course depart with all dispatch, once your
physicians prescribe the pilgrimage,” Senenmut said. “And pray Mother Isis you
come safely to Abydos.”

“I shall,” she said. “Mother is sending Nehsi to lead my
escort. No one ever argues with Nehsi, or does anything he objects to.”

Since that was eminently true, Senenmut could not protest
that the task should have been his. He was the queen’s tutor. But he was not an
ebon giant of a Nubian with a voice like a drumbeat and a face that struck
terror in the hearts of his enemies.