King and Goddess (35 page)

She came in procession, attended by all the priesthoods, by
the royal guard, by the soldiery of the Two Kingdoms, and by the whole massed
rank of the court, lords and ladies, their children, their servants, all who
attended upon them. The song of trumpets preceded them, and priests chanting
the names and titles of the king. She had named herself Maatkare, the Truth of
Re—an irony, thought Senenmut, if one ever doubted the rightness of what she
did. Therefore she was Maatkare Hatshepsut.

As many as marched in that procession, one would have
thought there would be no one to line the processional way from the palace to
the temple of Min where every king went to perform sacrifice and to receive the
crowns; but all of Egypt seemed to have gathered in Thebes to see this woman
crowned king.

It was Min who sanctified her, and not Amon her father,
because Min blessed every king with life and fertility, and through him the land
of Egypt. Min’s priests met her, bearing the image of the god and leading his
great white bull; and behind the god came the crowns and the crook and the
flail, all that would be given to her in token of her office. A place was made
for them between palace and temple, a high dais to which they all went up,
priests and king and the king’s closest attendants.

Of whom Senenmut was not one. He stood below with the rest
of the court, unregarded and surely forgotten. She rose above him, a small
figure but very erect, and seeming somehow to tower over them all.

The god was in her. Even he could see it. Her face was as
splendid as the sun. She was beautiful beyond bearing.

She bowed before the god as even a king must do. When she
stood straight again, one of the priests let fly four geese to the four corners
of heaven, bearing word to all men and gods that a king ruled in the Two Lands.
And as they flew, Min’s own high priest blessed and consecrated the crowns.

Her servant, the dark man, Nehsi the Nubian, slipped off the
wig that she wore. Senenmut’s breath escaped in a sigh. She had shorn all her
beautiful hair, the better to wear the crowns. She looked no less purely a
woman for it.

The crowns, White nested within Red, came down slowly in the
priest’s hands. He was one of those priests who performed every act as a matter
of mighty moment; who had never known the meaning of haste, nor seen the virtue
in sparing suspense. It seemed an endless while before the crowns touched her
brow. She held her head high, steady, though she must have been trembling
within.

Or perhaps she was not. She was no mortal man, to live in
fear of gods or men. The god was in her, possessing her. Her eyes were full of
him.

The crowns came to rest in supernatural stillness. No one
spoke; not one man moved. The only sound was the murmur of wind in the canopy
over her head, and the honking of the geese that flew still to west and north
and east and south, and the vast soft sigh that was the breath of thousands of
people, released at once as she stood up under the two tall crowns.

She took the crook and the flail then, with the priest
speaking words that no one heard: for a roar had gone up, sudden and immense,
rocking the earth underfoot and thundering to the sky.

My sweet daughter, my chosen one, King of Upper and Lower
Egypt, Maatkare Hatshepsut.

That was carved in every stone of the Two Lands in the
circle that was the king’s own, the cartouche as it was called, bearer and
emblem of his name—or hers. It was as Senenmut had predicted: the scribes were
beside themselves, and the artists and limners too, fitting the needs and uses
of their art to the prodigy of a king who was a woman.

Some carved or painted her as a woman, but wearing the false
beard and the Two Crowns. Others surrendered to tradition and gave her a man’s
body but her own face. And in the annals and accountings of the House of Life,
she was the lord, she who rules in the Two Lands, her majesty the king.

~~~

The feast of her coronation went on for seven days without
ceasing in the palace and in the city and throughout the Two Kingdoms.
Hapuseneb did not after all go bankrupt providing wine for it: she considered
it sufficient that he should endow the court with the finest vintage for the
banquet on her coronation day. He forbore to object. She was wealthier far than
he: the whole treasure of Egypt was hers, to do with as she would.

Senenmut attended as few of the festivities as he could
properly do. He had duties, some of which did not vanish simply because a king
had been crowned and set upon the throne. He escaped into them.

On the night of the seventh day, when he had retreated to
his house and barred the door, and contemplated departure to his villa in the
morning—and no matter that its lands were still no more than a few sodden fields
and a vast expanse of muddy river—he sat late awake while the lamp burned down.
Sleep held no allure, nor had for nights out of count. Sometimes he succumbed
to it; he was mortal, he could not help it. But most nights he sat till dawn,
reading if he could, or simply watching the shadows dance upon the wall.

He was doing precisely that, taking a kind of dim pleasure
in it, when someone scratched at the door. He thought at first that it was one
of the aunts’ cats. The creatures made free of the house, and objected
strenuously if anyone barred a door to them.

But this was too large to be a cat, and scratching too high.
Man-high. He ignored it for a while, but it persisted. At length, with a sigh
that was half a groan, he unfolded himself stiffly from his chair and went to
unbar the door.

The snap of rebuke died before it passed his tongue. His
mind did not want to know this person at all, but his eyes saw too clearly,
even in the dim lamplight.

“You should not be here,” he heard himself say—stupidly
enough, even in the circumstances.

Hatshepsut slipped past him in a fragrance of myrrh. She was
gowned in simple linen, with a mantle over it against the night, and a plain
wig. No guardian shadow followed her. She seemed to be utterly alone.

She had never been in this house before, and yet she moved
as if she knew it, taking the chair opposite the one he favored, propping her
sandaled feet on a footstool, regarding him bright-eyed as he stood gaping in
his own doorway.

“Well?” she said. “Aren’t you going to offer me wine?”

He did not move. “You should never have come here. Are you
really alone? How did you escape? What do you think you are—”

“Hush,” she said. And he obeyed her, as all of Egypt did,
because she quite simply did not expect him to do otherwise. “Not,” she went
on, “that I’m precisely thirsty for wine. I’ve been swimming in it for a solid
week, till I’m near dying for a jar of plain barley beer. Or even water.”

Water he had. He fetched it for her in a plain and ordinary
cup. No gold or chalcedony here, where he could be most purely himself. She
drank gratefully and accepted a second cupful, at which she sipped, watching
him the while. He stood flatfooted, his wits at a standstill, as empty of
coherent thought as the water-jar in his hand.

“So,” she said after a while, as if he had spoken. “You
don’t hate me after all.”

“I never hated you,” he said.

“I’d hardly have known it,” she said, “for all the love I’ve
had from you since the river rose in flood.”

“Since you named yourself king,” he said, yet without
bitterness. It was the simple truth.

“You won’t forgive me for that, will you?”

“Do you think I should?”

“I think,” she said, “that my coming here is worth a
moment’s respect.”

“You have it,” he said. “Now go back where you came from,
before the scandal overwhelms us both.”

“A king,” she said, “may love where she pleases.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again. When he spoke, it was
with the same reckless insouciance that had possessed him since she entered
this chamber. “If it is true that you may take any lover who suits your fancy,
then why have you come here? I’m nothing to look at. I’m not particularly
young. I’m not even willing to accept that you are king.”

“Did I say that a king can be reasonable in whom she loves?”

“You should be,” he said.

“I do not choose to be.” She rose, set aside her cup, and
came into his arms. They were not there to receive her, but she made do. She
was warm and supple, familiar, beloved.

He stood stiff. She laid her head on his rigid breast. “Why
do you resist me? Why you alone in all of Egypt?”

“I’m not the only one,” he said through set teeth. “When the
rest of the people come to their senses, they’ll rise up and destroy you.”

“Not while I live,” she said with perfect confidence. “The
god has promised me.”

“But how long will you live?” Senenmut demanded. “How long
before someone succeeds in killing you?”

“No one will kill me,” she said. Her head moved on his
breast. Her lips were soft, circling his heart with kisses. “Beloved,” she
said. “Oh, how I’ve missed you!”

Not more than he had missed her. His arms rose to complete
the embrace. He still could not speak.

She spoke for him. “We should never have quarreled. It was
so cold in the night, so lonely. No one else is as warm in my arms as you. No
one else—”

“Has there been anyone else?”

He had thought he spoke calmly, but she drew back, tilting
her head till she could look into his face. “I am not required to answer that,”
she said.

He twisted out of her grasp, thrust past her. She caught at
him. She was strong, stronger than he had expected; and he had thought he knew
her strength. She held him fast. “No,” she said. “No, there has been no one.
You know that. You know me.”

“Do I?”

She shook him. “Look at me! Am I any different? Have I
changed at all?”

“Your hair,” he said. “Shorn for the wearing of the crowns.
Your name, that you have altered. Your rank and power in the Two Kingdoms.”

“I am still myself,” she said, shaping each word as if in
bronze. “I am still the one whom you love.”

“No,” he said.

She slapped him. He reeled, more startled than hurt. She had
never struck him. Their quarrels were always wars of words, not of blow and
furious blow.

While he gaped and staggered, she hissed at him. “Stubborn.
Muleheaded. Obstinate.
Man
.” But
having slapped him, she kissed him where her hand had struck, caressing him,
nearly weeping. “This is nothing but jealousy. You think I’ll have no time for
you. You think I’ll choose someone younger, prettier, more charmingly stupid.”

“I think that I will lose you,” he said. “That you will die
for this intolerable presumption.”

“Not before you,” she said. “I promise you.”

“How will you do that? Poison me first when you feel the
dagger sinking into your back?”

“Stop that,” she said. She pulled him with her through the
chamber and into the one beyond. How had she known his bed was there, unless a
god guided her?

Where else would it be? There was only the outer door and
the one that led to this room.

She thrust him down upon the bed and sat on him. Her weight
was not inconsiderable. Nor was the force of her temper. “I honor your
honesty,” she said, “but I weary of your stubbornness. Stop struggling so, and
love me.”

“How can a mere mortal love a king?”

“As he always has,” she said. “As he always will.”

There was no fighting her. The harder he struggled, the more
determined she was. She was as blind obstinate in that as in taking the Two
Crowns, and as perfectly convinced that she was entitled to it.

While she was queen and queen regent, he had been worthy of
her. Now that she was king . . .

“You only pursue me because I fight,” he said, twisting in
vain against the weight of her on his chest. “If I stop, you’ll grow bored.
You’ll wander away. You’ll find yourself someone who worships you without
restraint.”

“I only ever wanted you,” she said. “Even when you weren’t
fighting.”

That was manifestly true, but he did not want to hear it.
“I’ll go on resisting you. I can’t help myself. I’m too blind to the god, too
deaf to his words. I only see that you do a thing no woman should do, and that
you’ll die for it.”

“All men die,” she said. “You love me too much. That’s the
heart of your resistance. Let me live as I may. Only love me. Let the gods fret
over the rest.”

“I can’t,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’ve always done
my own fretting. I’ll go on doing it.”

“Then I order you to stop.”

“How like a king,” he said.

“Do you hate me for it?”

“No,” he said. “No, never. Only . . .”

“Only?”

“I wish you hadn’t done it.”

“I could do no other,” she said.

“Even the lie? The story about your father, how he named you
king after him?”

“It is no lie,” she said. “He did say it. He called me king
and goddess.”

“But his son, your husband, wore the crowns. And you allowed
it.”

“Because I was afraid. Because I was a child, even as that
other king is now. I couldn’t be what he wanted me to be. I had to grow to a
woman; I had to gather courage. Years, it took, until the god himself forced me
to open my eyes to it.”

Senenmut shook his head. Even pinned beneath her weight,
captive to her will, he could not accept what she had said. It was a kind of
pride. And fear, yes. Fear for her; for what she might grow into, and that she
might die in the doing of it, for this enormity that she committed upon the
face of Egypt.

It was true. He loved her too much. He wanted her to be as
she had been, regent to the king, safe in the place that her sex allotted her;
not raised to this terrible eminence.

Such eminence, dropping beside him on his own bed, in his
own house, where it was never safe for her to be. She kissed him till he
gasped, attacked him with such passion that he had no will left to resist.