King and Goddess (50 page)

They could not have that. The gods had not willed it. He
could only try to strengthen her with his presence, invite her to speak to him
when they were granted a few moments alone together, reach as he could across
the barrier of time and rank and sorrow. She was never there for the touch of
his hand. She had shut herself away.

He had done everything that he could do, short of picking
her up and shaking her as if she had been one of his children. He contemplated
that, knowing what it would cost him if he roused her anger, but almost beyond
caring. Almost. His wife’s face, the thought of his children, the youngest
still nursing at his mother’s breast, restrained him.

Time and the gods must heal her. Nehsi would do what he
could, but if that was not enough, then it was in the gods’ hands.

Thutmose the king had grown from silent and subdued youth
into a warlike manhood. He was as much among the soldiers as ever, training
with them, marching when they passed in review, sitting in the councils of the
generals.

And yet he had never been to war, never raised sword or
spear on the field of battle. Maatkare Hatshepsut did not wage war. She waged
peace. She ruled through embassies, through trading ventures, through the force
of her name in any land that offered fealty to Egypt.

“And it is not enough,” he said to the gathering of
generals, on the day that happened to be his birthday. He was four and twenty,
a man grown by any reckoning, but something about him was still young and oddly
unformed. He had been late to grow into everything else; why not the solidity
of manhood?

Nehsi happened to be among the generals that day. He had
heard rumors that dismayed him, tales of unrest in Asia. The king would send
another embassy, he supposed, or demand a greater levy of tribute, thereby
occupying the restive peoples and quelling their impulse toward rebellion. The
generals, as one might expect, proposed another solution altogether. And
Thutmose was foremost among them.

“The center of the unrest,” he said, “is Kadesh. Its king,
it’s said, musters three hundred princes under his banner. He has ambitions,
and those are lofty. To conquer Asia; to drive Egypt back within its borders.
Perhaps he would even rule us as the foreign kings did.”

A growl ran round the circle. No one had ever forgotten or
forgiven the invasion of Egypt by kings from Asia, who ruled for a hundred
years, until King Ahmose rose up and destroyed them.

Thutmose, Nehsi took note, suffered no hesitation of speech
in front of these men, nor any lack of either quickness or intensity. He paced the
room in which they kept council, a room appropriately warlike, painted with scenes
of the first Thutmose’s battles. He reminded Nehsi of a panther crouched to
spring or a cobra coiled to strike: pure power tightly leashed, held just at
the point of bursting free.

This was a dangerous man, Nehsi thought. The swift
brilliance that Nehsi saw in him here was never uncovered before the elder
king; nor had Egypt seen it. Only these men, these lords and generals, who
lived for war.

They were his. There could be no doubt of it. Whatever they
might have said to one another, in Thutmose’s presence they were silent,
waiting upon his pleasure.

He halted just before he struck the far wall, and spun on
his heel. The figure of his grandfather reared up behind him, lofty in his
chariot, smiting his enemies. “It has been thirty years,” he said, “since a
king of Egypt waged war in Asia. My father ventured a campaign or two, a
skirmish, but nothing of moment. Not since my grandfather’s day has a king made
his presence felt outside of the Two Lands.”

They nodded, some gravely, some with passion that came close
to anger. Nehsi held still. Thutmose fixed eyes on him, eyes that glittered as
if with fever. “You’ll go back to her, won’t you? You’ll tell her I spoke
sedition here.”

“That depends,” Nehsi said, “majesty. Is this sedition?”

“How can it be? I am king.” Thutmose lifted his head at
that, arrogance that verged on self-mockery. “She will never agree to a campaign.”

“Have you asked her?” Nehsi inquired.

Thutmose stiffened. “What use is that?”

“Much,” said Nehsi, “if she agrees with you.”

“But she never will.”

“Do you know that? Do you know it for certain?”

Thutmose drew breath as if to prolong the argument, but shook
his head instead and said, “I’ll ask her, then. I’ll wager you a good bronze
blade that she forbids us to lay hand to weapon.”

“I’ll take that wager,” Nehsi said.

~~~

Hatshepsut laughed in her nephew’s face. “What, a war? Do
you know nothing else to do or say or think? Listen to you! Armies this,
soldiers that. Asia is quiet, has been quiet for thirty years. If it shows any
sign of restlessness, I’ll send my messengers, and all its rebellious princes
will fall groveling at my feet.”

Thutmose, quenched and stammering as always in front of her,
nevertheless discovered in the depths of anger a new and unlooked-for courage.
It stripped the mask from his face, showed her the vivid and hating creature
within. “They mock at us. They laugh, and call us fools, weaklings, cowards and
slaves. Send men, strong men, to show them what Egypt is. Prove to them that
our strength has not failed because we bow to a king who is a woman.”

She could have seen then what in truth he was; but temper
blinded her, and decades of contempt. “Are you asking me if you can lead an
army into Asia? Do you think I’d let you go so far away or wield so great a
power? I’ll not have you drain the Two Kingdoms of their young men and empty
their treasuries, simply so that you can play at soldiers.”

“It is not play!” His voice had risen. It was light, without
great depth or force; so raised, it was distressingly shrill. “Can you not
understand? Peace succeeds only against enemies who also want peace. These
enemies want war. And they will get it, regardless of the cost to themselves or
to Egypt.”

“I see nothing of the sort,” Hatshepsut said, flat and
final. “Don’t you have duties in the temple? Go, perform them. Leave the tedium
of kingship to those better suited to endure it.”

Nehsi, watching, bit his tongue. Thutmose raised his
clenched fists as if he would strike her. She looked him levelly in the face.
He spun on his heel, mute with fury, and fled.

In the ringing silence after his departure, Hatshepsut said
mildly, “I shall have to find something else for that boy to do. But not, as
Amon be my witness, a war.”

“It might not be an ill thing,” Nehsi ventured, “to let him
lead an army somewhere reasonably harmless. Give him strong generals,
unshakably loyal to you; surround him with guards who will protect him from
himself as from his enemies; and if he takes the bit in his teeth even then,
you well might consider allowing him to take the forefront of a battle. The
gods willing, an enemy’s arrow may find him.”

“No,” she said in revulsion so strong that he flinched.
“Never say such a thing. Never, ever. Child and fool and simpleton he may be,
but he is king of Egypt. No mortal man may slay a king.”

“Are you a mortal man?”

In that instant, Nehsi saw hatred in her eyes. It was brief;
it passed; but its memory lingered like a scar in his soul. “Even I,” she said
with terrible softness, “will not kill a king, or arrange to have him killed.”

Nehsi bowed low and low, even to the pavement at her feet.
“Lady,” he said. “Great king.”

Once she would have raised him and told him to stop his
nonsense. Now she said above his head, cold and remote, “Leave me.”

He raised himself to his knees. Her face above him was as
cold as her voice, and as unyielding. There was nothing in it of the woman who
had been his friend, his dear lady, his king whom he loved.

Still he tried once more to break through the wall of her
obstinacy. “Lady, please. Listen to me. That was a backward child, but he has
grown into a man; and he hates you.”

“He is afraid of me,” she said, “and with good reason. Did I
not dismiss you?”

“Lady,” Nehsi said, bowing low again. He had no choice then.
He backed away from her as her servants did, making a sacrifice of his pride.

And she said no word, offered no forgiveness. She was his
king; he was her minister, and he had presumed too far at last. He was no
longer welcome in her presence.

~~~

Hatshepsut had, perhaps, erred. She had sent Thutmose back
to the temple in which he was a minor priest, one of many who offered incense
before the god. In so doing she had set him in mind of a thing, a dangerous
thing, and one that should not have been possible.

Nor would it have been if Hapuseneb had not fallen ill. It
was a convenient illness but not, Nehsi ventured to believe, caused by anything
other than age and weariness and the gods’ will. One forgot that the priest was
not a young man; he was so lively by nature, so quick with his wit. But he was
old, and age had caught him at last.

“Do you know,” he said to Nehsi from his sickbed, “Senenmut
has been dead half a dozen years; and I was years older than he to begin with.
I miss him, old friend. I miss him sorely.”

“So do I,” said Nehsi. “He might have been able to make our
king see sense.”

“If he could see it himself,” Hapuseneb said with a snort.
His sickness was of the lingering kind, a blueness to the lips, an inability to
stand up without falling over; it neither clouded his mind nor greatly
interfered with his capacity for conversation. He was short of breath, to be
sure, and needed to rest between bouts of chatter; but he pressed on
regardless. If his servant-priests ventured to remonstrate, he drove them off.

He paused for breath, his lips so blue that Nehsi was
alarmed; but he would not let anyone hasten to his aid. “Yes, Senenmut might
have been some good in this affair—though he was never able to make her see the
truth about that boy, either. Do you see in him what I see? He’s locked in a
cage now, but when he’s set free, he’ll fly as high and fast and far as Horus’
falcon.”

“She’s never seen it,” Nehsi said. “I doubt she ever will.”

“She may have to,” said Hapuseneb. “I need to rest now, and
you have things to do, I’m sure. Come back tonight. There’s a place I’ll have
my lads show you, and a thing that you should hear.”

“What—” Nehsi began.

Hapuseneb waved him into silence. “Tonight. Come back; come
quietly, and come alone. I’ll have a man meet you at the postern. He’ll show
you what you need to see.”

Nehsi sighed irritably, but he assented to the priest’s
game. For game it was, and too much like Hapuseneb, whose predilection for
levity was well and widely known.

One should indulge a dying man. If that too was not a jest.

No; Hapuseneb had a look Nehsi knew too well. Men who had it
did not live long.

~~~

Nehsi returned to the temple near sunset, when the shadows
had grown long and the lamps were being lit in the houses of Thebes. His own
house would be lively at this hour, with the tribe of his sons returning from
their various duties and offices, and his wife and his daughters coming out to
welcome them, and the servants running back and forth, fetching this and that.

He would have given much to be there and not here, dressed
plainly, unattended except for a lone quiet guard who happened to be his son
Seti. He had not been advised to avoid notice, but he knew Hapuseneb. If it had
been wise for him to come in state as a prince of Egypt, the priest would have
said so.

Therefore Nehsi came as a simple man, a petitioner to the temple,
or perhaps a priest coming in late for his season before the god. The one who
let him in was familiar from Hapuseneb’s sickroom, a plump young man with a
bright eye. He might be a cousin or nephew of Hapuseneb: there was a
resemblance.

He did not chatter, which was in his favor. He led Nehsi
quietly and competently through the maze of the temple, avoiding traveled ways,
keeping to the shadows as much as he might. If he thought it peculiar to be
creeping about like a thief in his own place, he did not mention it.

At length he brought Nehsi to a room of no particular
distinction, except in one respect. Hidden in a niche behind the statue of some
half-forgotten king was a door that opened silently, and beyond it a passage
full of whisperings and murmurings. The reason for it came clear when the
priest beckoned Nehsi down and round a corner, and then touched his arm,
bidding him halt.

Nehsi suppressed the hiss of surprise. He had heard of such
places but never seen one. He should have expected to find one here, in the
most powerful temple in Egypt. This was a spyhole, a listening-post that looked
out through cleverly cut and concealed openings into a privy chamber.

He doubted very much that the choice of the chamber was
happenstance. Plots within plots had been the way of Amon’s priesthood for time
out of mind. And there in the chamber sat a gathering of priests, brown shaven
heads, white kilts and mantles. The one who spoke to them was a priest also,
clad as they were, but he carried himself as the king he was.

Thutmose had let the elder king show him the way through his
difficulty. He had gathered what looked to be a fair selection of the more
influential priests. But not Hapuseneb. Not the First Prophet, the high priest.
Even if he could have risen from his bed, Nehsi doubted that he would have been
welcome in this gathering.

“He’ll be dead soon,” Thutmose said, “and a new First
Prophet set up in his place. Then whom will you look to, sirs? A king who for
all her strength has begun to grow old, or a king who is in the full flower of
his youth?”

“That other king may be no longer as young as she was,” one
of the priests observed, “but she is as powerful as she has ever been. What can
you do to oppose her?”