Sovereign of Stars (28 page)

Tears coursed down her cheeks; her nose ran, but she
did not wipe the mess away. Thutmose found a square of linen in the
box beside his couch and went to her, offered it, but she continued
pacing as if she did not see him.

“Amun, why can you not love me as Hathor loves me?
Don't you see how it pains me, that you spurn me so? Oh, what have
I done to deserve your scorn? How am I unclean?”

She fell to her knees, wailing. Thutmose gathered
her in his arms and rocked her, his heart pounding wildly in his
chest.

“There, sister. There. Amun doesn't hate you. You
are his wife – my wife. You are the most blessed of ladies in the
Two Lands.”

“I am not,” she insisted, her tears hot and wet on
his shoulder. “Amun wants nothing of me. And I can never be with
the goddess who loves me.”

“I'll send you to serve Hathor permanently, if it
will make you happy.”

She pushed him away. “You cannot. Don't you see?
Mother is right, though it's bitter on my tongue to say it. I am
needed here, in Waset, at Amun's temple, to perform all the rites
of my offices. It is maat, and without maat, Egypt will die. Oh,
unhappy me! I am cursed to misery forever!”

Thutmose took her hands, coaxed her to her feet. “I
don't like to see you so distraught.”

She took the square of linen from his hands, wiped
her face clean. “It is my duty as Great Royal Wife to lie with
you,” she said calmly, “and I will do it. I am nothing if not
dutiful.”

“I can see that you are,” Thutmose said dryly. “We
do need to get an heir, Neferure. It's of the utmost importance,
now that I have removed you from your heirship and made you my
wife. Without an heir, the throne is in danger.”

She nodded, took a step toward the couch. He stayed
her with a hand on her arm.

“The way you looked at me…earlier, when we stopped.
I may not be a god, Neferure. I may have only the body of a man.
But I am still a Pharaoh.”

He had meant it lightly, but she did not smile.
“Ahmose is god-chosen, and she lay with a god. I am destined for
the same. You may be a Pharaoh, but a Pharaoh is not a god until he
is dead and resurrected. Now you are only a man, made of mortal
flesh. I deserve no lesser a consort than a god.”

Thutmose's heart chilled.
What kind of a woman
disdains even the love of a Pharaoh?

And at last he knew where his dread of Neferure came
from. Now he understood the fear he’d felt when she tamed the bull.
There was something dangerous in the way she understood herself –
in her very will. Something inhabited her heart that did not dwell
within normal women, nor within men. Not even Pharaohs thought so
highly of themselves. At least, Thutmose did not. There was danger
in such self-assurance. He could not quite grasp the danger – could
not discern its exact shape, or know its boundaries. He only knew
it was danger.

Thutmose let his hand fall from her arm. He made his
way to his door, summoned his guard, and asked the man to send for
Hesyre and Takhat. When the wet-nurse arrived, she looked
expectantly at her charge, but at the sight of Neferure's
tear-stained face and still-clothed body, Takhat's face fell into a
deep, worried frown.

“The Great Royal Wife is too tired for company
tonight,” Thutmose said. “Take her back to her Hathor shrine and
let her pray before she sleeps.”

When they had gone, Hesyre turned to Thutmose,
dry-washing his hands. “Lord...”

“I'll have that wine, Hesyre. Bring it to me in my
garden. I need fresh air.”

He walked the paths alone until Hesyre found him and
pressed a large cup of deep, blood-red wine into his hands.
Thutmose drank of it, nearly gagging on its bitter potency. It was
a strong vintage. But he drank it all, and as it settled into his
blood, he moved from the protective shelter of hedges and
broad-leafed trees into the open glare of starlight. His head
swimming with the wine, he tilted his face up, staring undaunted
into the night sky, until his wig slid from his scalp and landed
with a thump in the grass.

“I am the Pharaoh,” he said to the stars, emboldened
by the wine. “One day I will be as much a god as you.”

Hathor did not answer. Her stars shone down
indifferently, white and cold.

“She has duties to Amun, duties to the throne.
Release her; I command it.”

Still the goddess made no reply. Abashed, Thutmose
retrieved his wig from the grass. He crept back into his chambers
and fell into his bed, pulled the linens up to cover his face. He
did not want to see the patches of starlight that played across the
bars of his wind-catcher. He did not want the starlight to see
him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Woman-king.”

Hatshepsut blinked in the smoky dimness of the
queen’s great house. The door-cloth swung closed, falling into
place with a sound like linen dropping on a stone floor. The
arching walls reached above her, around her, a net drawing
tight.

Ati lay in all her vast, arrogant glory on a pile of
cushions, leaning her impressive bulk on one deeply dimpled elbow.
Her thighs and hips spread around her, shining with the remnants of
some fine, spicy-scented oil in the light of a great brazier which
burned on a pad of red wool in the center of the floor. A girl with
a regal bearing nearly as great as Ati’s own bent over the brazier,
tossed a handful of resin on the glowing coals, and a cloud of
incense smoke billowed about her face, dissipated in the shadows
hanging in the peak of the roof. The girl was clad in the same
brilliant yellow skirt that Ati wore, her forehead similarly
adorned with the simple yellow band. And though she was young, her
body was beginning to show the same fatness of which Ati was so
proud, the thighs heavy and thick, the hips wide and pocked here
and there with dimples. Hatshepsut guessed the girl to be the
Queen’s daughter.

“Sit with us, King of Egypt.”

Ati’s voice was as deep and lustrous as long-worked
wood, resonant with a low, rich tone that was almost masculine. The
barest hint of amusement was in it, too, and Hatshepsut raised her
chin imperiously. She was a visitor in Punt, but she was still a
king, still the son of the very god who called this strange land
his home. She made her way across the split and bound logs of the
floor, uncomfortably aware that empty space yawned below, a drop
the length of three tall men from the platform to the hard ground
outside. Perhaps because it supported the great weight of Queen
Ati, the floor seemed to quiver lightly with her step, seemed to
bounce faintly – a feeling not unlike walking across the deck of a
ship in its moorings.

Bita-Bita and Kani trailed her, and, when they saw
that Hatshepsut was seated comfortably on her own cushions, the two
girls prostrated themselves before Queen Ati and her royal daughter
in the Puntite fashion, full length along the floor with hands
reaching. Ati acknowledged them; the girls retreated behind
Hatshepsut; she could feel them there in the shadows, tense in
their attentiveness.

At a signal, Ati’s daughter approached with a grace
that was incongruous to her large form, offering a bowl of palm
wine. Hatshepsut took it with a nod of thanks, surprised that a
royal daughter was expected to play the role of servant. The wine
was pungent and faintly bitter, with a curiously green aftertaste
that made Hatshepsut long for the coolness and kind perfumes of her
palace gardens.

“You have been avoiding me,” Ati said.

Her directness took Hatshepsut aback. “Certainly
not,” she replied after a moment. “There is much to be done, and I
have been regrettably delayed by my work.”

Ati’s red-painted lips pursed in wry amusement. “As
you wish. Abaty, bring the meat.”

The daughter produced, from its unseen resting place
in the shadows, a platter laden with raw meat on skewers.
Hatshepsut was not fond of uncooked meats, and she worried that she
would be made to choke the meal down for the sake of Puntite
propriety. But Ati took a skewer delicately between her fingers and
laid it directly on the coals and resins burning in the brazier.
Hatshepsut did the same; the hut filled with the enticing odor of
charred meat.

“You traveled long to reach us,” Ati said, turning
her skewer, not deigning to look at Hatshepsut’s face. As fat fell
from the meat, flames licked up, and the queen’s face leaped out of
the dimness with startling brilliance, the deep blue lines tattooed
around her mouth as dark as plow lines in silt.

“The riches of Punt are famed all over the world,”
Hatshepsut said. “My god greatly desires them, and I serve my god
faithfully and well.”

They pulled their meal from the coals. The meat
carried the rich, somewhat floral taste of the incense – a flavor
that was not unpleasant on Hatshepsut’s tongue. Ati considered
Hatshepsut as she nibbled at her meat. At last she said, “The god
desires my riches, or you desire them?”

Hatshepsut smiled a small, acquiescent smile, bowed
her head slightly, and made no reply. Her skill with the Puntite
tongue was not nearly strong enough to rejoin, and in any case, she
would not make excuses for her motives. Hadn’t the throne been
given to her? Hadn’t she every right to maintain her hold on it,
using any means at her disposal? She would not stammer and
apologize before this arrogant river-horse of a woman.

“I, too, am a loyal servant of the gods,
she-king.”

Ati added something else in the same amused tone –
something Hatshepsut could not quite catch. She called quietly over
her shoulder, “Bita-Bita.”

“The Queen says,” Bita-Bita supplied, her voice
scarcely louder than a whisper, “that the gods of Punt are not so
different from the gods of Egypt.”

“Gods all want the same,” Ati went on. “Power, and
acknowledgment of that power. Worship. Obedience from their
servants. And all people are servants to the gods, would you not
agree, King?”

“I do agree.”

The Queen’s daughter offered more courses, bearing
her trays of fruits and breads and sweet cakes with silent dignity
while Ati and Hatshepsut (often with Bita-Bita’s aid) talked of
small, incidental things. The differences in the seasons, and how
Punt and Egypt marked the change of months. The music each enjoyed;
a comparison of musical instruments and the skills of singers. The
habits of their men, who seemed to have more similarities, in their
need to swagger and boast, than differences. Hatshepsut relaxed
into the conversation, and Ati, too, seemed to drop her cold
formality, warming to Hatshepsut’s company. The Queen even laughed
now and then, a loud peal like temple bells, trailing to a
crackling wheeze deep in the woman’s chest.

The coals in the brazier burned low, dimming the
glimmer on Ati’s well-oiled skin. Her face sank into half-shadow.
The silent daughter knelt at Hatshepsut’s side, bearing one final
tray. A single bowl sat in the center of it, filled to the rim with
some dark liquid. Hatshepsut lifted it carefully.

“What is it?”

“A message from the gods.”

Hatshepsut said nothing, watching Ati carefully
across the rim of the bowl, raised halfway to her lips. The queen
stared back with that familiar, hungry intensity on her dark
features.

“What message?” Hatshepsut said at last.

“Would you hear it, truly? Or would you disregard
it, yet again?”

“I don’t understand.”

Ati sat up, reached across the brazier with both
hands. The light played across her flesh, moving in golden ripples
like a school of shy fish. Hatshepsut placed the bowl in Ati’s
palms. A bit of the liquid escaped the rim, spilled over Ati’s
knuckles. It fell viscous and red into the coals, and Hatshepsut
choked on the familiar smell of blood.

Amun’s eyes – I nearly drank it!

Ati turned her face down to gaze at the bowl, blew
on its surface, watched the ripples with pinched and furrowed
brows. She tilted the dish this way and that, until the blood
rolled around the rim, coming close to spilling over, and Abaty,
the silent daughter, suddenly raised her voice in a loud chant. The
sound made Hatshepsut gasp. Although she understood none of the
words, their forceful cadence beat under her skin like a hot pulse.
As the chant rose to a climax, Ati gave the bowl one final tilt,
and blood splashed over her hands, falling into the brazier,
splashing onto the floor. Kani and Bita-Bita moaned softly in
terror.

Ati raised one blood-covered hand stiffly. Her
daughter fell silent. For many long, trembling heartbeats, the only
sound was Hatshepsut’s own ragged breath in her ears, and the
crackling of the coals in the brazier.

Then Ati spoke. “Even here, we know of the Mistress
of Stars, the goddess who wears many faces.”

“Hathor?”

“She has many names – all names known to women.
Lover and virgin, mother and crone, queen and warrior. Dancer,
singer, hunter, maker.”

Hatshepsut clutched her own hands, determined to
show no fear. But she remembered how Hathor had pulled at her years
ago during that dark night, the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, the
cliffs echoing with the cries of her people, the night shimmering
with torchlight.

“You have spurned her,” Ati said. “And she is not
pleased.”

“I never spurned her. I have restored her temples,
raised her up. I have increased her priesthood with the best girls
in Egypt.”

“And yet you have withheld what was promised, the
tribute she demanded.”

“The goddess cannot have Neferure. She is my heir,
my hold on the throne.”

“So flat a refusal. The she-king is indeed an
arrogant one, so puffed with her own power she would naysay even a
goddess.”

Hatshepsut bit her tongue, fought back a bitter
laugh. To be called arrogant by this great hummock of a woman…!
Puffed, indeed.

Ati rumbled out a few more words, and Hatshepsut,
distracted by the offense, shook her head, turning to Bita-Bita,
who sat quivering with tears standing in her eyes.