King and Goddess (29 page)

Neferure raised herself from her couch, stretched
luxuriously, strode across the room and back again. She dropped back on the
couch and struck her hands together. “Oh, I shall be so glad when this is over!
I’m dying to get out and run.”

“You must be hungry, too,” Senenmut said, not too
sympathetically.

“No,” she said. “The maids have all been eating a great deal
of late, while the world knows that I refuse to touch more than a bite of bread
and a small cup of watered wine. But they can’t do my walking for me, or drive
my chariot.”

“Bear in mind,” he said, “that all this began because you
were bored.”

“This isn’t boredom. This is a fierce imp of restlessness. Can
you even imagine what it’s like to lie here day after day, feigning a
half-swoon, while the sun shines outside and my horses languish for lack of
exercise?”

“You will not,” Senenmut said firmly, “ride your chariot to
Abydos. It’s the covered barge for you, and the litter when you come to land.
Maybe the priests will encourage you to strengthen yourself with exertion,
preferably under the sun.”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. Nightwalkers wither under the
sun, everybody knows that. If I’m out all day, from dawn to sunset, and doing
something strenuous to drive the demons away . . .”

“Not outside the temple walls,” Senenmut warned her. “Still,
there are great courts within, and sunlit gardens, and maybe enough to do until
you grow unwieldy. Then you’ll be glad of a soft bed to lie on, and no need to
do anything more strenuous than watch the clouds pass overhead.”

“Not I,” said Neferure. She embraced him, so sudden that he
started. “I did want you to come with me. But Mother said it should be Nehsi.”

“Your mother had the right of it,” Senenmut said, however
unwilling he might be. “You need a better guardian than I.”

“You’ve protected me as well as any man can,” she said. “I
did as my heart bade. If that was folly, it is my folly. You were never at
fault. No, not even for making that one known to me. If it had not been he, it
would have been someone else, some guardsman maybe, with less wisdom and more
inclination to boast.”

“You are much too wise,” Senenmut said.

She shook her head. “That’s not wisdom. That’s days of lying
here with nothing better to do than reflect on my transgressions.”

“What else do you think wisdom is?” The maids were
returning: the sound of quick feet, rustle of gowns, muffled laughter. Senenmut
bent and kissed Neferure’s brow. “May the gods protect you. I’ll come again in
the morning. Maybe we can work a little magic of our own on one of your
sorcerers, so that he finally gets around to insisting that no goddess but Isis
will heal you, and no temple of hers but the one in Abydos.”

She nodded. She was drooping again for her maids’ benefit,
languishing on her couch while they flocked shrilly about her. Senenmut slipped
away unnoticed.

~~~

He had not gone to the queen regent’s bed since this
uproar began. Tonight however as he sought his own bed, one of the shadows by
the wall opened dark cold eyes.

Senenmut jumped like a cat. He came down hunting wildly for
a weapon; but he kept none in this room, not even a knife for cutting bread.

Nehsi the Nubian waited with unruffled patience until
Senenmut recovered some fraction of his wits. In a dark kilt, with his dark
skin, he was all but invisible in the dim light of the lamp. Yet his presence
was a fire-bright thing, now that Senenmut knew of it.

“What in the gods’ name—” Senenmut began.

“She summons you,” Nehsi said. Ever the man of few words,
was Nehsi.

“Now?” Senenmut’s heart was still beating hard, struggling
to leap out of his breast. “It’s ungodly late.”

Nehsi said nothing.

“Someday,” Senenmut said, “she will stop using you for her
errand-boy. Then what will you do?”

“Go on being her chancellor,” Nehsi replied coolly. “Enjoy
the leisure of my evenings. She was mildly urgent tonight; and that was hours
past.”

“I was reviewing accounts with a scribe from the House of
Life,” Senenmut said. His mouth snapped shut. Why he should justify himself to
this man, he did not know. It was that perfect lack of expression, that massive
quiet. It made a man babble to fill the void.

He snatched his mantle against the night chill and the sting
of insects, and turned toward the door. Nehsi followed, seeming at leisure, but
he walked at the bodyguard’s distance.

Habit, Senenmut supposed. It was ingrained in him from
youth; he would never lose it, however high he rose or how lordly he became. So
guarded, like a prince or a prisoner, Senenmut answered his lady’s summons.

~~~

Hatshepsut was in her bedchamber, her face stripped of
paint, her hair combed and braided for sleep. The light linen robe that she
wore was meant to come off when she slept. She did not mean to be alluring,
save that she could not help it. She was always beautiful; she could no more
make herself ugly than Senenmut could transform himself into a handsome man.

He called his thoughts to order. It was never wise to let
them wander while he suffered the queen’s judgment. She loved him; he never
doubted it. But she was queen first and always. She knew no other way to be.

She did not greet him with a smile, nor offer him wine, nor
even invite him to sit. He had to stand alone and growing cold, while she
pondered whatever it was that had moved her to summon him so late.

While he stood there, Nehsi retreated beyond the door. The
sound of its closing was soft and distinct.

Senenmut had never been greatly fond of the Nubian; the man
did not invite friendship. And yet now, in his absence, Senenmut felt oddly
bereft.

Nehsi forbore to judge. That was his strength and his
defense. Hatshepsut could not do otherwise than judge, and judge harshly.

At length she started as if out of a waking dream, and
seemed for the first time to notice that he was there. “What are you standing
about for?” she demanded. “Sit down, for the gods’ sake.”

As irritable as she was, Senenmut was comforted. Better
irritation than royal anger.

He did as she bade, but he did not quite, yet, venture to
speak. She seemed to have slid back into her reverie. Her chin lowered to her
hand; she frowned slightly, gazing into the dark: beyond the lamp’s light.

When she spoke, her voice was almost too soft to hear.

She might have been talking to herself, except that she
addressed him by name. “Ah, Senenmut. Do you wonder sometimes if these children
of ours are truly so feckless, or if we’re simply growing old?”

“You will never be old,” he said, “my lady and my queen.
Your beauty will endure forever.”

Her frown darkened. “I didn’t ask for flattery. Were we ever
as young as that?”

“I don’t think so,” Senenmut said.

“Ah.” She sighed, frowning still. “I should have foreseen
it. For me it was difficult, but easier than this. He was older, and had to
wait for me. And a man may beguile his waiting as he pleases. Whereas a woman . . .”

“You know why that must be,” said Senenmut. “It’s happened
here. Until the gods permit women to choose when they will conceive and when
they will not, no woman can be as free of herself as a man.”

“Truly,” Hatshepsut said with an edge that he had not looked
for. “Unless of course she is barren and a queen. Then she may do as she
pleases. But never as a man may, in the light of the sun. She must creep about
in the dark, and hide, and pretend to be as every woman is.”

“Do you wish you were a man?” he asked her.

“I wish . . .” She looked as if she would
rise, but she chose to remain where she was, fists clenched in her lap. “I wish
that I could be as I was meant to be. I wish— I would rule. I would command,
and ask no man’s leave.”

“And be a man?”

“No,” she said. “Oh, no. Have you noticed? Men have to
struggle to think clearly, particularly when they are young. The sight of a
woman robs them of all intelligence.”

Senenmut felt himself flushing. She had not meant it,
perhaps, but she had drawn him to the life.

“I can think,” she said, “even when my body is on fire. My
heart can see clear. Or not. It chooses. And yet I must bow my head to a
halfwit child, simply because he is male.
I
,
Senenmut. I who was born to rule.”

He was silent. He had heard much of this before, but never
so clear, never so bitter. Never so strong a resentment.

“I have dreamed,” she said. “In the nights when I have worn
my body to a rag with ruling in that child’s name; in the days when the tedium
of royal ritual has lulled my mind to sleep. I have dreamed . . .
such dreams, Senenmut. Such dreams as woman never knew.”

“Nor man either?”

“No one,” she said. “No one but me. Listen, beloved. Hear
what I dreamed.”

His heart leaped at the endearment. He was not forgiven—no,
nothing as easy as that—but she had gone beyond the simplicity of anger.
Perhaps for a while she had even forgotten her daughter’s scandal.

“I dreamed,” she said, “that Amon came to me—yes, Amon-Re
the mighty, whose face is the sun. He came as a man, though the radiance of his
face came near to blinding me. ‘Daughter,’ he said. ‘O my daughter, whom I
love. Be strong; be patient. Only a little while, and your suffering is ended.’”

As swiftly as it had leaped, Senenmut’s heart went still.
“He was not—you are not—if you die, I’ll die, too.”

She stared at him. “What? You foresee my death?”

“No,” he said. “The god. The god said—”

“The god said,” said Hatshepsut, “that I am his daughter,
his beloved. He said nothing of freeing me from this world.”

Senenmut could breathe again, though his breath came hard.
“Is that how it seems to you? Freedom?”

“To a god it is,” Hatshepsut said. “Flesh is heavy; it drags
at the souls. It’s their greatest joy to fly free.”

“But if the god said—”

“The god showed me a thing,” she said. “A wonderful thing. A
marvel. All queens in Thebes are children of Amon. Queen Nefertari is their
foremother: she who lay with the god and conceived her daughter, and her sons,
too, so that Egypt’s king might be the god’s own son. And the god was content,
and favored his children.

“But the world grows old, and the line of Nefertari
stretches long from its source. The god bethought himself of the line’s
continuance, and in so thinking, looked on her who then was queen, and loved
her in his heart. She was beautiful, but all queens are beautiful. She was
proud, as all queens are. But he loved most her swift wit, her intelligence
that yielded to no man’s. He came to her in the night, wearing the guise of the
king her husband. He loved her as a man loves a woman, but his seed in her was
living fire.”

She paused. Her breath came quickly, caught as she went on,
living the dream as if it had just now waked in her. “She knew him then—she knew,
and clung to him as if she would never let him go. She loved him with all her
heart. She called him by name, there in the heat of it, and with his name she
bound him.

“And she conceived,” Hatshepsut said, “and bore a child. And
that child—that child was I. She was my mother, Senenmut. The god came to her,
and he made me. Me, not my brother, not my brother’s son. I am Amon’s child. I
know it. I feel it in my blood.”

Senenmut could think of nothing to say. He should be awed;
he should bow down. But she had always been queen and goddess. Whether the
god’s blood was near or far, in her mother or in her foremother—it did not
matter. To him she was the same.

Yet it mattered greatly to her. She was exalted with it. Her
eyes were shining—glittering, he would almost have said.

“Do you know what this means?” she asked him. “Do you
understand?”

He shook his head. “Should I understand? Should I see
anything but that you are the same—you are still my lady, my queen and my
beloved?”

“But I’m
not
the
same!” she cried. “Think, Senenmut. The god has told me himself. I am his
child, the fruit of his begetting. He intended more for me than that I rule in
a king’s name.”

Oh, she was mad, or obsessed. He should have known; he
should have foreseen. All her resentment, her envy of her brother-husband and
now of her brother’s son, had curdled and soured until she escaped into dreams
of the god.

She read the doubt in his face. Her own grew the fiercer for
it. “You! I thought you loved me. Are you no better than the rest of them? Will
you never be more than a smug and lackwitted man?”

“Lady,” he said, “I can’t help what I am. But this—”

“It is a true dream,” she said. “The god is my witness. I am
not a creature of whims and fancies. I never dream but to the purpose.”

“What purpose is that?” he dared to ask her.

But she was too angry, or had grown belatedly wise. She
would not answer.

On the day that queen Neferure was to begin her pilgrimage
to Abydos, Senenmut went to say goodbye to her. He found her still abed though
the barge was nearly ready to sail. Her face was white and etched with pain.

This was no feigned indisposition, no too-clever avoidance
of a journey that she had no desire to make. Her maids were nearly as white as
she, and nearly as scared.

Senenmut shook the truth out of the one who seemed most
coherent. “The baby is coming,” she said. “Oh, sweet Taweret, it’s too early!”

Senenmut slapped her just as she began to wail, and thrust
her at another of her fellows. “Where are your wits?” he demanded. “Fetch the
queen’s physician. Now.”

The one nearest the door nodded, a jerk of the head, and
bolted. Why she had not done it the moment she knew her lady could not rise,
the gods alone knew. It was as if they were all possessed; as if they had
forgotten everything that could have been useful. Maybe there truly was a
nightwalker haunting these chambers.