King and Goddess (36 page)

She had always had more ardor than he. Tonight she burned so
hot that he caught fire himself, flared up like a torch, forgot everything,
even fear, in the white heat of her.

When he had cooled again, when they lay together, wound in
one another, he hugged her to him so tightly that she gasped. “I could never
lose you,” he said. “Never, not though I die for it.”

“You never will,” she said.

“Why?”

The question, asked bare, made her lift her head to stare at
him.

He asked it again. “Why? Why did you choose me?”

“Because,” she said, “you were always arguing with me. And
making sense.”

“Other people argue with you. Nehsi, Hapuseneb, Ahmose the
General—”

“Not as you do, as you always have. Because you love me, but
you will never be blind to my failings.”

“It’s never stopped you.”

“No,” she said, “but it makes me think.”

“You should have thought before you did what you’ve done.”

“I did,” she said. “Long and long.”

“And then you did it.”

“Because I had to.”

There was a silence.

Senenmut filled it, in the end, because he had to. “I love
you beyond measure. You are more beautiful than anything that is. I believe
that the god is in you, that he begot you. But—”

“But?” she asked when he did not go on.

“But I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t.”

“Promise.”

“On my name as king.”

“Maatkare,” he said. “Hatshepsut. Chosen of Amon, beloved,
king and goddess.”

“Just so,” said the king.

Nehsi the Nubian was more amused than not to watch Egypt
contend with the spectacle of a king who was a woman. And not only Egypt,
either. Most of the embassies that came soon after her coronation did not know
where to look or whom to approach. Sent, many of them, to address a queen
regent on behalf of a child king, they found themselves facing a king
enthroned.

They were in no more comfort than her scribes, struggling to
address her by the titles that were proper, but most were only made to fit a
man. None went so far as to refuse to address her. Curiosity drove them, or a
kind of sickened fascination. But they all went away in awe of her.

If she had been a man, Nehsi thought, there would never have
been any of this nonsense. People would agree that she was as strong a king as
her father was, as firm of will, as intent on the prosperity of the Two Lands.

And they did prosper. After the Inundation that had been so
wonderfully great, there was a harvest so rich that it fed the whole of the Two
Kingdoms for that year and much of the next. And when the floods came round
again, they were not so high, but still glorious, still a wonder to the priests
and the people. They proved it, people said. The gods blessed the king’s
accession, and sanctified her reign.

She had taught them to love her. She did what kings seldom
thought to do: she spoke to them, admitted them to her audiences, sent them
forth in awe of her, loving her, calling her beautiful.

It was marvelous how she did it. She never sacrificed her
dignity, never forgot that she was king and goddess; and yet she looked on them
with unfeigned warmth.

Courtiers muttered that she had always been overfond of
commoners. With them she was much less amiable. She was their king. They would
obey her or pay such penalty as she deemed just.

It was tribute to the strength of her will that she put none
to death, nor had the need to do such a thing. The god spoke in her. Even they,
proud fools that they were, could see that.

She had a great heart, and strength beyond the lot of mortal
woman. Nehsi, who had known her since she was a small imperious princess,
delight of her father’s eye, knew no great surprise that she wore so well the
crowns of the Two Lands. Her late and feckless husband had never done so well,
nor did the young Thutmose seem likely to exceed his father. Certainly he
seemed inclined to bow to the will of the elder king, nor did he dare oppose
her.

Not that anyone had ever succeeded in thwarting Hatshepsut.
What she wanted, she got. Now that she had the greatest prize of all, she
wielded it with both grace and competence. Nehsi was proud of her.

She had made him her chancellor, which meant in essence that
whatever she needed done, he did it. Unlike Senenmut who heaped up titles as a
dung-beetle rolls together his ball of odorous treasure, Nehsi satisfied
himself with the one. Hapuseneb stood higher than either of them, vizier of the
Two Lands, chief minister and high priest of Amon, hereditary prince and count,
Treasurer of the King of Lower Egypt, Overseer of All Works of the King—but
those were only the tithe of Senenmut’s titles, and none, in Nehsi’s mind,
meant as much as Nehsi’s proud and lonely one.

Nehsi, so lightly titled, could move more freely than they,
and with more ease through the intricacies of government in Egypt. He was
pleased with it, content to watch others bury themselves beneath the weight of
princely offices. Most of them in any case were obliged by rank or necessity to
bow to him, to seek his counsel, to petition him for audience with the king.

He was a great prince. He had never thought to be such a
thing; had expected to be content with a captaincy in the queen’s guard, or if
he was particularly fortunate, to become commander of the royal bodyguard. But
Hatshepsut had insisted on raising him above the rank of simple guardsman,
setting him in the rank and office of a prince, making him the steward of her
affairs.

He had a house now, a prince’s mansion, and the flock of
servants that was required to keep it in order; estates and incomes scattered
hither and yon; and a treasure-house that would not have shamed a king in
Nubia. All through his king’s bestowing, in recompense for his service.

There was always a woman in his bed, but never a wife.
Somehow he had never seemed to come round to it. It was not for lack of
interested women—ladies, too, and some of quite high rank, noble daughters or
widows who sighed after his body and coveted his wealth. That he was reckoned
beautiful he knew, though he was no longer quite as young as he had been. He
had no lack of willing bed-companions, nor slept alone save as he chose.

But he had never taken a wife. He was beginning to think
that he never would. If it was sons he wanted, he had a half-dozen, and
daughters too, running wild in his house in the city. There was never any doubt
as to who their father was: they were all larger than children in Egypt,
blunter-featured, and richly dark of skin and hair and eye. One baffled and
dimwitted Egyptian husband might have been hard put to explain his wife’s night-colored
baby, but she had feigned an illness and smuggled the infant into Nehsi’s house
when it was born. That was his daughter Tama, the image of him even at the
tender age of three, and wilder than all the rest together.

She had committed some infraction that had her nurse in
hysterics, something to do with one of the dogs and the kitchen cat and a vat
of beer. Nehsi had been called to serve as judge and executioner. Just as he
was about to administer the rod, the porter brought word that a king’s
messenger waited without.

Nehsi was not unduly put out to be diverted from the task of
whipping his obstreperous offspring. He tucked her under his arm, ignored her
yowling, which in any event had muted to a half-hearted whimper, and went to
see who it was.

~~~

A messenger, indeed. He would flog the porter later for
being a purblind idiot. The king herself sat in his reception room, with
Senenmut standing like a guardsman behind her.

Nehsi suppressed a raise of the brow at that. The scribe had
grown no prettier with age; his thin and weedy body had grown soft about the
middle, even with the time he reputedly spent among the horses that he loved.

At least the house-servants had had the intelligence to set
the king in the best chair and offer her refreshment. It was not the first time
she had come to his house, nor the first time, either, that she had played her
own messenger. It was an eccentricity she cultivated. No one ever knew when the
king might appear herself with this message or that. It kept her courtiers
nicely off balance, and won her more than a few battles thereby.

Nehsi was wise to her, though his servants were
distressingly slow to understand what she was doing. He greeted her with
composure, upended his now silent and big-eyed offspring, and sat with her in his
lap.

Hatshepsut smiled at them both. “She looks more like you
every day,” she said.

Tama wriggled in her father’s grip. He considered for a
moment, then let her go. As he had expected, she went straight to the king and
clambered into the royal lap, curled up with her finger in her mouth, and
proceeded to go peacefully to sleep.

Hatshepsut regarded Nehsi over that small round head with
its tightly curling sidelock. He regarded her in turn, refusing to be
flattered, though he knew that she, like every other woman in Egypt, found him
very good to look at.

Her lips twitched. “No wonder the palace servants and most
of the court walk in terror of you. You have the most appalling stone-hard
stare. Do you study it in front of a mirror?”

He held the stare for a while longer. Then he grinned at
her. “Of course I do. What brings you here, my lady? Anything interesting?”

She tilted her head. “That may be,” she said. “I’ve had in
mind a thing or two, as always. Myrrh, for example. Do you remember the
myrrh-trees that that protege of Lord Ranefer’s brought him?”

“Indeed,” said Nehsi. “As I recall, you have half a dozen in
your spice garden.”

“Then you must remember what he said of them, that they came
from the land of Punt.”

Nehsi nodded. And waited.

She was accustomed to his silences. She went on easily, with
a glance at her scribe, and such warmth in it that Nehsi wondered if either of
them still believed that their liaison was a secret. No one ever spoke of it,
but everyone knew. It was not permitted to be a scandal. She was king, after
all. Kings could choose whom they favored, even in their beds.

“I had been thinking,” she said, almost as if to Senenmut,
“that I might send an expedition to this fabled country. Everyone seems to have
heard of it, and its spices are famous, but few have ever been there.”

Senenmut was frowning. He looked angry. Nehsi suspected why;
and in a moment knew surely. “Would you lead such an expedition?” the king
asked.

“In a moment,” Nehsi answered promptly. And so he would.
Living in Thebes, ranging the Two Lands in the course of his duties,
nonetheless he never quite lost the desire to see another country. His own
Nubia he knew, having been there more than once. But to go farther, even as far
as Punt—“In less than a moment, lady. When would you like me to leave?”

She laughed. Her scribe did not. He had wanted this, then.
Was he weary of her? Bored with his myriad of titles? Greedy for yet another?
Ambassador to Punt would be a new one, and unusual.

Nehsi did not see great profit in asking. The king, who
seemed oblivious to her lover’s sulkiness, said to Nehsi, “You may want to
delay a little, if only to gather together your expedition. It’s a long road,
and little known, except among the spice-merchants. You’ll need ships to sail
there, and weapons for defense against raiders at sea and on the shore, and—”

“—gifts for the rulers of that country, and bribes for those
lords and robbers whom we meet along the way, and a courtier or two, and
guides, and—”

“—servants, soldiers, scribes.” Hatshepsut loved to play the
game of finishing one another’s thought. She also loved to win it, to end with
a flourish. This once, he let her. “And interpreters, of course. We mustn’t
forget those.” She paused, sighed. “Oh, I wish I could go with you!”

“You could, you know,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. If the king comes, however small
the army she brings with her, it’s no longer an embassy; it’s an invasion. I
don’t want to conquer Punt. I want to trade with it. Exchange gifts and
courtesies. Grow rich exchanging Egyptian gold for boatloads of myrrh.”

“But if you conquer it,” he said, “it’s all yours for the
taking.”

“Conquest is expensive,” said Hatshepsut. “Trade is much
simpler. Then if the people who trade with us are intrigued enough by what we
offer, they’ll ask to see more of us. They’ll study us. Imitate us. And in the
end, perhaps, become us—ask to be made a part of our greater kingdom.”

“That is . . . interesting,” Nehsi said.

“Ridiculous, you mean,” said Senenmut, more waspish even
than usual. “It’s not a thought most people could have. Gods think like this,
you know. It’s men who have to ramp about with weapons, conquering people who
then devote their lives to begging for gold and grain and guards against their
enemies.”

“I meant,” said Nehsi, “that it’s a most unusual and
intriguing way to think. Slower, too, than war; but as her majesty says, much
less expensive.”

“Do you accuse her majesty of stinginess?”

“Certainly not,” Nehsi said calmly. “I find her a very
practical and exemplary image of a king.”

Senenmut regarded him narrow-eyed, but he had a face that
none could read unless he wished it. Which, at the moment, he did not.

The king’s scribe, that man of innumerable titles, gave way
with poor enough grace. He would not forgive anyone who won this prize.

Nehsi could not have said that he cared overmuch. He was
going adventuring—he, who had dreamed of such things when he was young, and
yearned for them through all his years of being the king’s good and faithful
servant.

The expedition into Punt was a mighty undertaking. Nehsi
saw it begun in time so brief that those who were not mute with the shock of it
were screaming in protest.