King and Goddess (26 page)

In peculiar state, behind a servant who carried himself like
a prince, they made their way to Senenmut’s house.

It was the same that he had had since he became Neferure’s
tutor. He could have demanded one higher and prouder and newer, but that he
chose not to do. It was an eccentricity; a simple and unadorned preference for
that small, faded, undistinguished house in sight of the palace. It had been
the queen’s first gift to him, and cherished the more for that.

He had brightened it a little, to be sure. There was a new
garden, a stable much enlarged, the women’s quarters built all anew since
Ahotep took a wife. But the outer wall was the same, and his own chambers, and
the court into which he led his young queen.

She looked about with interest and no perceptible
disappointment. This after all was hardly a laborer’s hut. It had been a noble
mansion in its day. But it was no palace nor had ever been; and its chattering
flock of servants kept no dignity even in their lord’s presence. They judged it
enough to do so everywhere else; here they fell into an ease that would have
appalled the masters of servants in the palace.

It was, like the refusal of chair or chariot, an
eccentricity in which Senenmut took a peculiar pleasure. He was the queen’s
commoner, the nobleman whom she had made from a tradesman’s son. He could
command servants as sternly as any king; and so he did in all his ranks and
offices. But in this house that was his refuge, he chose to be indulgent.

He could afford the luxury. As lenient as he allowed himself
to be, when Hat-Nufer appeared in the courtyard, every one of that unruly
throng snapped to attention. Idle they might be daylong, but in this house they
worked for their bread and barley beer. She drove them as a general drives his
troops, with rough justice and no mercy.

Nor did she spare her son, though he hung well back in the
ranks. “You! Hiding with the fan-bearers again. What use is rank if you don’t
flaunt it?”

“But, Mother,” he said sweetly, “everybody is so vulgar
about it. Don’t you think Ptahotep makes a wonderful personage?”

“That idiot,” said Hat-Nufer. “If you had any self-respect—”

Neferure had labored nobly to conceal her laughter; but at
that she whooped. It was completely unexpected, and completely without
restraint. Hat-Nufer rounded on her, glaring formidably.

She had a keen eye. She knew that face, though no crown
adorned it. She did not flinch, not by the slightest fraction. “Great Mother
Isis! You, too?”

Neferure could not be said to creep from behind the shelter
of her maid. She was proud and she was queen. But she lowered her head a very
little, and said in something close to meekness, “I was bored.”

“Bored?” Hat-Nufer fairly spat the word. “No one is bored
who has anything useful to do.”

“But I don’t,” said Neferure.

Hat-Nufer shook her head. “Oh, you children. Fools, all of
you. Stop gawping and come here.”

Neferure had not been gawping, not that Senenmut could see,
but she did as she was told. No one but Hat-Nufer had ever been able to address
her so, nor would anyone else have dared. She must have found it refreshing.

Senenmut was enjoying himself. The small cold knot in the
center of his stomach had begun to unravel. This was not entirely wise, nor was
it as carefully judged as it might have been. He had acted on impulse. He might
well learn to regret it.

At the moment he did not care. He had been bored, too,
perhaps. So many duties, so many responsibilities. So much that was a burden,
so little that gave him honest pleasure.

Hat-Nufer bore her royal guest away, sweeping Senenmut in
their wake. She had words in plenty for both of them. Neferure listened no more
assiduously than Senenmut did: he saw the sidewise slant of her smile, the
wandering of her glance as she took in the halls and courts through which she
was half-led, half-dragged.

It was worth his mother’s disgust and the possibility of
uproar in the palace to see Neferure returned to herself again. He had rather
hoped the women would go off for women-talk and leave him to rest in peace, but
Hat-Nufer had no intention of sparing him. He found himself in the room he
seldom used, which was meant for the lord of the house when he entertained
noble guests. The chairs were stiff with disuse, but the room was clean and the
wine was good—as it ought to be: it was the royal vintage.

His young queen had never dined in comfort with a few
friends. Either she feasted in court or she ate alone under the eyes of maids
and guards. She did not sneer at the mere six courses or the lack of a wine for
each—there was only the one vintage, and date wine for Iuty, who could not
stomach the nobler grape.

Iuty had appeared in some indignation, prepared to inveigh
loudly against this change in the nightly ritual. Senenmut seldom dined at
home; when he did, he dined alone. Hat-Nufer and her sons and her second son’s
wife gathered in the women’s hall, never in Senenmut’s; and how much more comfortable
that hall was than this, Iuty spared no effort to make clear.

“And my husband and his brother unaccountably late,” she
said, “and now it seems you’ve brought in another child-bride for Senenmut to
refuse to look at—mother-in-law, such lack of consideration is quite beyond
endurance.”

Before anyone else could cure Iuty of her misperception,
Neferure said with demure expression and glinting eyes, “Oh, no, I’m not one of
your noble brother’s brides. I am already married.”

“Are you, then?” Iuty demanded. “Then have you come to offer
him a sister? A cousin? A mother?”

“My mother likes him very well,” said Neferure—wicked,
wicked child. “But I don’t think he’ll marry if he can help it. He’s wise,
maybe. Don’t you think?”

“I think that you have a terribly affected accent,” Iuty
said. “Have you been listening to ladies chatter in the court?”

Senenmut could only watch and listen in shocked fascination.
Hat-Nufer wore an expression of unholy glee. Neferure was enjoying herself much
too much. “They do run on, don’t they? At such length—and with such monstrous
dullness.”

“It’s not as if they had anything better to do,” said Iuty.
She glowered. “Where are those boys?”

Neferure’s delight must be complete. Ahotep strode in just
exactly then, and Amonhotep behind, the former gleaming in the livery of the
king’s guard, the latter managing to look enormously languid and elegant in
nothing more elaborate than a linen kilt.

Ahotep stopped short, so abrupt that his brother collided
with him. Equally abruptly he dropped down in front of Neferure. “Majesty! How
in the world—”

“I was bored,” Neferure said to him as she had to Hat-Nufer.
“This is wonderful. Here, get up. I’m not wearing my crown tonight.”

He got up with alacrity and no little dismay. “Lady, you
can’t—”

“I decide what the queen’s majesty may and may not do,”
Senenmut said mildly, “when she does not choose to decide it for herself. She
was, as she says, bored. I brought her where she might safely be entertained.”

“At my expense!” Iuty was whitely furious. Too furious,
Senenmut noted, to throw herself at the queen’s feet as her husband had—if she
could ever have done such a thing. “You were making sport of me.”

“I am sorry for that,” Neferure said quickly, with honesty
that Senenmut had always loved in her. Perhaps it was his fault. Queens had to
be circumspect; but Neferure had never entirely mastered the art. “It was only . . .
you see, no one ever talks to me like that. I’m always the queen’s majesty. I’m
never the guest who comes unlooked for, and who must have designs on the lord
of the house. It’s rather delightful.”

It was difficult to resist Neferure at her most charmingly
apologetic. Iuty was proof against much, but even she warmed a little.

Ahotep was appalled. Manhood had transformed him from a
lively child into a sternly dutiful soldier in the king’s guard. Whenever
Senenmut had in mind to marvel at the gods’ whims, he remembered the child who
had been and the man who was now. All that was left of that boisterous infant
was a certain inclination toward levity when he was not vexed with royal
follies.

Before Iuty could say anything to provoke the queen further,
Ahotep said, “Lady, you are safe here. But surely—”

“Oh, do let her stay,” Amonhotep said in a tone he must have
studied long: it was half a drawl and half a yawn. “If the palace has sent out
its hounds, we’ll head them off soon enough.”

“No one has followed me,” said Neferure, “or will.” She
lifted her chin as she said it, tilting eyes at him. “Have we been introduced?”

“I doubt it,” Amonhotep said, “majesty. My name is
Amonhotep. These tedious old men are my brothers.”

“All men are tedious,” Neferure said with an air that
invited him to contradict her.

Amonhotep smiled lazily. “Yes, aren’t they? Life is so
dull.”

“No one knows that better than I.” She sighed deeply. “But
still, there are moments . . . have you ever driven a chariot as
fast as the horses will gallop, straight through the city and out into the Red
Land?”

“I have never driven a chariot,” he said. “I leave that to
my brothers.”

“Oh, then you must learn,” she said. “Senenmut, give him
horses. Teach him. He’ll die of boredom else.”

“I have horses,” he said before Senenmut could speak. “I
look after my brother’s estate. We’ve bred one or two that will carry a man.”

“What, on their backs?” Neferure was intrigued. “I’ve heard
of such a thing, but nobody does it.”

“I do,” said Amonhotep.

“But don’t you fall off?”

“One learns not to,” he said.

“Still,” she said. “What possible use is it?”

“Why, think,” he said. “A chariot is a noble thing, but it
requires two horses and a harness and rather a lot of time to get it ready. A
horse that’s to be ridden, now: bridle it, spring onto its back, and off you
go. And you can go where a chariot can’t. I’ve ridden up the crags of the Red
Land, faster than a man can go, and sat my horse on top of the world.”

Well, Senenmut thought. That was the first he had heard of
that. His little brother had secrets. Wonderful ones, from Neferure’s
expression. She seemed to have forgotten that there was anyone else in the room.

Women loved Amonhotep. He was not as handsome as Ahotep, but
his face was pretty enough, and he had a beguiling way about him. He certainly
knew how to capture the young queen’s interest. She had left the chair she had
been sitting in, to take the one nearest him. The others were invisible,
inaudible, forgotten.

Ahotep caught Senenmut’s eye. He was frowning. Senenmut
raised his brows and shrugged. “It seems,” he said, “that boredom loves
company.”

The prisoners of ennui did not hear. They had bent their heads
together, deep in converse. Horses at first, but any number of things as they
went on. Senenmut had not known that Amonhotep could be so very interesting—or
so interested in so many faces of the world. He had always seemed immensely and
hopelessly bored.

Senenmut had to pry his charge loose. Even then he might not
have succeeded, but Ahotep the guardsman took her deftly in hand. He used no
lure but common sense. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “Best you be in your
proper place when they close the gates for the night.”

If Senenmut had said it, she would not have yielded. But
Ahotep had no expectation that she would disregard him. She frowned, dallied,
sulked a little, but in the end she went away with him.

Amonhotep included himself in the party. He did not ask; he
simply followed. Perhaps she would have changed her mind, but his presence
persuaded her to be sensible. Or at least, thought Senenmut, it allowed her to
pretend to sense.

In Amonhotep, Neferure had found a friend. They met in
shared ennui and continued in conjoined fascination.

Senenmut had never known that his brother had such wit or
such an abundance of skills. He had always been the baby, the youngest son, the
one who had no talent for anything in particular.

Perhaps he was no great master of anything, but he was a
fair journeyman in a remarkable number of things.

“It does astonish me,” Senenmut said to Ahotep one evening
when they happened to be in the house together, “that I could know a man from
birth, and never know him at all.”

“Yes,” Ahotep said. “You who have a name for keen
perception—you never have seen very clearly where your kin are concerned.”

Senenmut had been speaking lightly, sipping a new vintage of
wine and expecting nothing but companionship. Ahotep’s severity took him by surprise.
“What, do you have secrets, too?”

“All men have secrets,” his brother said.

Senenmut’s eyes narrowed. His light mood had gone abruptly
dark. “What are you telling me?”

Ahotep did not answer at once. He sipped his wine slowly—he
was not as fond of the thinner, drier vintages as Senenmut was—and appeared to
be engrossed in the pattern of lotus-flowers painted on the wall.

Senenmut did not choose to press him. After a while that
stretched long, he said, “I don’t know that I’m telling you anything. People
are talking about the young queen’s new favorite. The king likes him, too.”

“The king finds him nearly as refreshing as she does,” said
Senenmut. “They do grow weary of the same faces over and over. Courtly faces,
faces that never look directly at them, but bow and turn aside. Our brother
knows how to accord a king proper respect, but without ever seeming
obsequious.”

“He learned that from you.” Ahotep set down his cup
half-finished, stretched and sighed and slid down in his chair, for once like
the child he had been. No one could be more exuberantly tired than Ahotep. “You
haven’t heard what people are saying, have you?”

“People are always saying things,” Senenmut said. “They say
the king is insisting that the kingdom go to war, so that he can see whether
real soldiers fight as well as his wooden ones. They say also that the queen
regent objects firmly to any such notion, and that the young queen cares little
what either of them does.”