King and Goddess (4 page)

The Nubian bowed gravely.

“And will he be needing his belongings?” she asked. “Will we
be bidding farewell to the eldest and best of our sons?”

Senenmut opened his mouth, but the Nubian spoke before him.
“Not yet,” he said, “lady. The queen requires a master of writing and reading,
but not for every hour of every day. When she has no need of him, he may do and
go as he pleases.”

“And,” said Hat-Nufer, still much too sweetly but with a
return of her wonted canniness, “will there be any . . .
consideration in return? A man must eat, after all, and buy clothing and
ornaments suitable to his station.”

“It will be seen to,” said the Nubian.

“Ah, but one does wonder,” she said, “how much a queen
values the man who teaches her the arts of the scribe. If we might have some
inkling . . .”

Dear gods, she was haggling, and in that cloying tone, too.
For the first time Senenmut saw an expression in the Nubian’s eyes. It must be
amusement. It could not be admiration. “The wages of a royal scribe are not
insignificant,” he said. “You may expect that your son will receive the same.
Bread and beer for every day, a brace of fat geese on festivals, clothing as
needed and as required by his duties, and a wig of his choosing; and in
addition, if he does well, such ornaments and emoluments as the queen deems
appropriate.”

“And, I expect, all necessities of his art,” said Hat-Nufer
with notable lack of shame. “Inks, brushes, pens, a new palette as befits a
royal scribe. And papyrus, of course, and such books as he requires for his
instruction.”

“Of course,” said the Nubian blandly. “You may expect that
your son will be well rewarded for his service.”

Neither clearly had any thought of consulting Senenmut as to
whether he wished to be nursemaid to the queen. His mother could only see the
rank and the title. She did not know the child, spoiled as she was and
imperious, as likely to cast Senenmut off as to demand his service.

If he had not refused her, she surely would not have wanted
him. But since he had, she had to take vengeance by sending her servitor,
guardsman, bedmate, whatever he was, and disarming his mother, and trapping him
much too neatly for his comfort.

He had no choice but to follow the Nubian. It never occurred
to anyone to feed him. He was too sulky to demand at least a bite of bread.
Hungry, seething, he went back to the palace that he had approached with such
joy the day before.

Nehsi the Nubian did not see what his lady saw in the boy
from the Temple of Amon. His resistance was naught but puppy-snarling. At heart
he was no more high-minded than his mother, and not much less venal, either.

He pondered that as he stood guard over his lady in her
lesser garden. She had gone there ostensibly to take the air as a queen might
do, actually to be by herself except for the inevitable and inescapable guard,

He, who had been standing about in livery since he grew tall
enough to overtop any but the tallest Egyptian, had ample leisure to consider
the queen’s latest acquisition.

“You are jealous,” Hatshepsut said, reading him as easily as
she had since she was a small princess and he a callow young guardsman. “You
think I might grow too fond of him.”

“I think,” said Nehsi, “that he is a low and vulgar creature
with lofty ambitions.”

“And that he’s not pretty enough for me?”

Nehsi showed her his teeth. “Pretty is as pretty does. And
isn’t he a fine one, with that crooked beak of his?”

“And you with yours spread half across your face, you can
quibble?” She tossed her head in its wig of many beaded braids. “You’re too
vain of yourself, that’s the trouble with you. Is it going well with the twins?
Are they asking you yet to choose which of them you favor more?”

Nehsi had always been glad of skin too dark to show a blush.
The queen’s two maids, twins and as like as two eggs in the same nest, were
each a delicious handful, but together they were another kind of handful
entirely. For a fact they were wearing him out; but he would never tell the
queen that.

She grinned at him, no heed of dignity here where there was
only Nehsi to see. “As bad as that, then? Oh, poor Nehsi! And now you’re
fretting about the scribe with the crooked nose. I know what he is. He’s also
quite intelligent when he troubles to be. Seti-Nakht speaks well of him—and
Seti-Nakht has never suffered a fool in his life.”

“All boys are fools,” said Nehsi.

“When did you stop being a boy yourself?” she demanded.
“Years aren’t inches, my dear, no matter what people may let you think.”

“I’m older than you,” he said, “and older than that puppy,
too, I’ll wager.”

“He’s not an ill teacher,” Hatshepsut mused. She wandered
over to the fishpond and sat on its rim, watching the dart of bright bodies
from sunlight into shadow.

There was a water-lotus blooming just within reach. She
craned far out to pluck it, so far that he reached to catch her, but she came
back with the blossom before she fell. She buried her nose in it, drinking the
sweet scent. “He doesn’t like teaching,” she said. “That’s obvious. But when he
forgets how insulted he is, he does it middling well.”

“He has no patience,” Nehsi said, “and no understanding of
those who are slower of wit than he is.”

“Oh,” she said, “but I’m quick. Very quick. He even admitted
it.”

“He could hardly deny the truth,” Nehsi said.

“Of course not,” she said. She darted a glance at him, with
one of her sudden shifts of mood. “My husband wants me in his bed tonight.
Should I go, do you think? Or should I put him off again?”

Not a shift of mood, then. A shift to the thing that was
more truly troubling her.

Nehsi was careful in his reply. “You know you have to do it
in the end. Whether now or later.”

“That’s what he told his messenger to say,” she said. “I was
to be reminded that I may have been married to him when I was too young a child
to do what wives do with husbands, but now I’m a woman. It’s time I did my duty
as queen.”

“He wants a son,” Nehsi said.

“Surely,” said Hatshepsut with a curl of the lip, “and
doesn’t every man? Isn’t there time enough and more? I’ve just begun my
courses.”

Nehsi could find it in himself to pity her, a little. She
was very young, yes, and no man had ever touched her or come to her bed.

She saw the pity. It made her angry, as he had expected that
it would. “I’m not afraid, Nehsi. Don’t you dare think I’m afraid. I just
don’t—his hands are clammy. And he sweats.”

“He is the living god,” Nehsi said.

“He is a sweaty, panting lout without the least grain of
delicacy.” She was shaking, and she seemed unable to stop, but her voice was
less difficult to control. “Whenever he tries to kiss me, he slobbers all over
my face. All the women he’s had, and all the women he’s said to have had, and
hasn’t a one of them ever taught him to do it properly?”

“Some things a man has to learn for himself,” said Nehsi.

“Not this one,” she said. “He needs a schoolmaster. If a
cocky boy can teach me to write, why can’t some obliging soul teach my husband
how to bed a woman?”

“One doesn’t do that with Horus on earth,” Nehsi said dryly.
“It’s not even wise to offer.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” Her eyes glittered. “I’ll send him a
teacher. Someone pretty. Someone skilled and willing, but not too clever.”

He nearly groaned aloud. She was a clever child—but by no
means clever enough. “Lady,” he said. “How wise is that? If you send a woman to
him, and he falls to her charms as he can’t help but do, he might forget you
altogether. What then if he gets a son on her while you remain barren? You’d
never lose your rank, but you’d lose power and standing. And a concubine’s son
would be the next king of Egypt.”

She heard him. He saw it in her eyes. But she did not hear
him clearly enough. “I’ll have to trust in the gods. And by the greatest of
them, old friend, I do not want to go to my husband’s bed for the first time
only to be pawed over like a trull in the market.”

Nehsi swallowed a sigh. She had a look he knew all too well.
She would do what she would do, and no one had any hope of stopping her.

“You,” she said, “will hunt down a suitable woman for the
king. Let her be young, but not so young as to lack experience in the arts of
the bedchamber. Let her be beautiful—that goes without saying. And above all
let her be sweet and biddable, and see to it that she is loyal to me.”

It was never the habit of queens to set simple tasks for
their servants. Nehsi bowed to the ground. He did not pause to see how she
responded to that pointed abasement.

~~~

On his way out of the garden he roused one of the other
guards, a good enough man for an Egyptian, and set him on watch over the
queen’s solitude. He was not entirely sure how to go about his task, but he
knew at least where to begin.

The twins were busy with the queen’s wardrobe, washing her
gowns of state and spreading them in the sun on the roof of her palace.

Most people could not tell them apart. They affected the
same waist-long plaited hair and the same blue beads on a string about the
hips, and they were identically pretty, with round ripe faces and laughing
black eyes. But Nehsi knew that Mutnefer was a very little the taller, and
Nutnefer was a very little the more ample of breast. He could aggravate them
terribly by knowing which was which when they tried, wickedly, to deceive him.

They greeted him with matched and brilliant smiles. He paid
obligatory tribute: a kiss for each, and a quick slap at the hand that strayed
under his kilt. “Not now,” he said. “I’m on the queen’s errand.”

“Can’t it wait?” Mutnefer abandoned her washbasket with
visible relief. Her sister was already pressed to Nehsi’s side, stroking him
above the kilt since he barred the way below.

“You know the queen can never wait,” he said from between
them.

“What does she want?” asked Nutnefer as her fingers walked
themselves down to his kilt’s fastening. He caught them; she giggled. “Aside
from that, of course.”

“The queen doesn’t know what it is, to want it,” Mutnefer
said. “Poor thing, she’s scared to death. Some idiot told her it hurts the
first time; now she doesn’t want it at all.”

“I don’t think she’s a coward,” said Nutnefer. “Wary, more
like. She never rushes into anything.”

“Some things one should rush into,” Mutnefer said.

Nehsi, listening and fending off determined hands, enjoyed a
moment’s pleasurable contemplation of a twofold gift to the king. He discarded
it with regret. These two were pretty and charming and delightful in bed, and
their likeness to one another was a rarity, but the king liked a less
substantial armful of woman. A willowy girl would allure him best; and one of
exceptional beauty. Which the twins were not. Pretty, that was all, and lively.
No more.

“Listen to me,” he said over their chatter. “You can help me
if you will. I need a woman—”

“And here we are!” they cried, attacking him with delight.

He got a grip on each and set her firmly aside. “Stop that
and listen. The queen has taken it into her head to do a thing, and she’s
harnessed me with the doing of it.”

It was slow going, with a great deal of foolery, but in the
end he got it all out. The twins were less incredulous than he had been.

“That’s like her,” Nutnefer said. “Careful. Silly, and no
mistake. But it can’t be either of us, no.”

“Not that we’d mind at all, teaching the king manners,” said
Mutnefer, “but we’ve tried already. He’ll not take lessoning from us.”

They were both almost sober for a moment, with the hint of a
frown.

“It’s not that he’s exactly clumsy,” Nutnefer said. “He
never commits rape, nothing as bad as that. But she has the right of it. He’s
awkward. And he sweats.”

“Nothing like you,” said Mutnefer, but she had stopped
trying to drive him wild with wanting her. She was pondering. “Sister, do you
think . . .”

“No,” said Nutnefer promptly. “But maybe . . .”

“No, not that one, either. And as for . . .”

Nehsi was used to these cryptic conversations. The twins had
a magic of sorts: each always seemed to know what the other was thinking. They
spoke aloud out of a native courtesy, but broke off in midsentence, since there
was so clearly no need to go on. It could drive a listener to distraction.

Nehsi set himself to be patient. Nothing they ever did could
match the queen in one of her moods.

As he had expected, after a while they looked at one another
and nodded. Then they seemed to remember that he was there, and more to the
point, that he had to hear words in order to understand them. Mutnefer said,
“There are one or two who might do, and who would be willing. Three, even.
Maybe. Four?”

“Enough to choose from,” Nutnefer said. “Come, we’ll look
for them. But you have to promise something.”

Nehsi raised a brow.

“You can’t have any of them,” said Mutnefer. “Even the ones
who don’t go to the king.”

“That’s hard,” Nehsi said.

“Promise,” said Nutnefer.

He heaved a sigh. “I could simply do my own searching.”

“Yes, and there are hundreds of women in the palace, and
dozens are pretty enough at least to be considered. How long will it take you
to examine them all?” Mutnefer demanded.

“He might enjoy it,” Nutnefer said, “till the queen ran out
of patience and came looking for him.”

“Indeed,” said Mutnefer. She ran a light hand across his
shoulders. “I should so hate to see this beautiful panther-hide ruined with
whip-scars.”

He shook off her hand. “Enough, enough! I yield. I promise.
As long as I enjoy the delights of your companionship, I won’t cast my eye on
one of the king’s women.” They considered that, narrow-eyed. Nutnefer looked
ready to argue, but Mutnefer said, “It will do. Come, let’s to the hunt.”