Sovereign of Stars (3 page)

“And I will have it. I will not lose another one I
love to a poisoner, nor to a knife in the dark, nor to any vile
scheme invented by some loathsome man who sees me as nothing more
than a girlchild, weak and disposable. I will not lose Neferure,
nor Thutmose, nor my mother, nor a single one of my servants. I
will not lose you, Senenmut. I will have peace.” She raised her
fist again. “And this is how I will have it.”

Senenmut lapsed into uneasy silence. He watched the
anger writhe across her face – anger at her own helplessness, at
the impotence of her sex, the precarious way her very femininity
made her teeter on the seat of her own great power.
If she finds
no outlet for this rage, it will consume her. It will destroy
her.
He would not see her destroyed – and yet going to war may
do just that: destroy her, either in body or in ka.
I can do
nothing to stop her. She is my lady, and my king.

Reluctantly, Senenmut rose to his knees, bowed at
the waist until his forehead touched the deck of her pleasure
barge. It rocked gently in the rising evening breeze.

“Then it will be as you say, Majesty.”

CHAPTER THREE

The war fleet of the Pharaoh put ashore at Behdet,
sending the tjati who ruled the ancient city in the king's name
into a panic, for Hatshepsut had sent no word up the Iteru ahead of
her ship's prow. As she progressed southward to the Kushite front,
word would fly before her – of that she had no doubt. She could not
contrive to moderate the gossip of fishermen and merchants, and so
she must resign herself to an ever-decreasing advantage of
surprise. She could not keep the cities along the Iteru's length
unaware for long, but she hoped she might at least win the race
against rumor to Kush's shores.

Behdet was her first port of call. It lay a day and
a half south by fast ship, and the Pharaoh's fleet was nothing if
not fast. While her sailors worked in groups, securing the lines
that held
Amun Strides from Darkness
to Behdet's worn stone
quay, she gazed down from her ship's rail on the furious bustle of
the waterfront streets. Fruit- and fish-sellers scattered, sending
their children home to fetch their mothers. Seamstresses and
beer-brewers emerged from their shops, staring slack-jawed at the
spectacle of the Waset fleet pulling into their humble harbor, the
ships dropping their bright-colored sails, the oarsmen straining to
hold each craft steady in the current until it, too, might pull to
the quay and land alongside the glimmering brilliance of the king's
own warship.

Beyond the eruption of running feet and frantic
arm-waving in Behdet's nearest streets, the city stretched away
from the riverside, low and dusty, to the center of town where the
walls of the Horus temple stood tall and bright in the mid-day sun.
Hatshepsut raised her palms toward the god's home, and toward the
red stone form of the ancient step pyramid rising from the fields
and orchards well beyond the temple, hazy and indistinct with
distance.

Behdet was small now, but long ago it had been
great: the seat of power of Upper Egypt, when the Two Lands had
been two lands in truth, separate kingdoms at odds with one
another, before the first Pharaoh Narmer had risen to unite them
into the greatest empire the world had ever known.

Her men ran out a plank ramp for her feet. Nehesi
preceded her down the ramp to the quay, and when none dared
approach her hulk of a guardsman, Hatshepsut descended.

The tjati arrived, looking harassed and strained, in
a chariot. “Majesty,” he cried, dropping from its platform to kneel
in the dust. “You honor Behdet. I apologize most humbly; the royal
messengers did not reach me in time, and I had no word of your
coming.”

“I sent no messengers,” she said, struggling to
recall the tjati's name. Surely she knew it; the throne had its
share of dealings with Behdet. “Goodman Khutawy, get up out of the
dust. I wish to see your city's garrison.”

Word scattered ahead of her in the form of boys
running barefoot along Behdet's old, deep-rutted roads. Their
side-locks waved like small black pennants; their loincloths were
stained with the ocher dust of the city. She laughed as they
sprinted like colts, striving to be the first to reach the garrison
with news of the coming of the king. Behdet had no fine litters to
carry her, and so she rode in the tjati's own chariot with Nehesi
for a driver. He drove the horses at a walk and her people thronged
behind her, the sailors shouting their joy, accepting dippers of
beer from the city women, the soldiers chanting their marching
songs. And her women walked among them, dressed in traveling
tunics, simple gowns that were yet brighter and finer than anything
worn in humble Behdet now that old king Narmer was so long in his
tomb.

The day before she sailed from Waset, Hatshepsut had
feasted her harem women. It was the custom whenever a Pharaoh
departed that he should pay respect to his women, who were, after
all, from important and ancient bloodlines themselves, many of them
even gifts of goodwill from the kings of other nations – daughters
of royalty. She had done her duty, bidding her friends farewell,
expecting the matter to end at that. But Tabiry, the leader of her
brother's small traveling harem, had leapt at the chance to take to
the Iteru once more, and Tabiry's usual friends had agreed. “But I
will have no use for women while I am at war,” she had protested,
confused by their eagerness. And Tabiry had said, “You will, Great
Lady. You shall see.” In the end, more women joined up than had
been customary under the rule of Thutmose the Second, and
Hatshepsut had set her stewards to scrambling for an extra ship
that was fast enough to keep up with her war fleet. All told,
fourteen harem women accompanied her to war. They felt a sisterhood
with her, Tabiry had explained; they wanted to see their Pharaoh's
victory with their own eyes, and contribute to her might in
whatever way women could.

Now, as her retinue poured from her ships and made
for the garrison, the women showed their worth. They danced and
sang as they went, clapping their hands, rattling sesheshet high
above their heads, twirling the skirts of their bright-dyed linens.
And soon enough the pretty young daughters of Behdet's nobles broke
from the crowds to follow them, evading the clutching hands of
their mothers and ignoring their fathers' scowls. It must feel
glamorous, Hatshepsut thought, watching the girls of Behdet take up
the song, to do as the fine ladies of Waset did – these princesses
from far-off lands, the pampered pets of the Pharaoh. But it was
not Behdet's daughters who interested her most. For each girl
surely had a handful of suitors, and as the sons of Behdet watched
their pretty young lovers join the Pharaoh's ranks their faces grew
thoughtful.

The barefooted boys who had run before her did their
work well. By the time Hatshepsut reached the garrison, a
collection of long, low buildings ringed by a simple, bare wall,
the soldiery stood at attention in orderly ranks outside the walls,
hide shields buckled to their forearms and each with a hand on the
hilt of his sword. The general showed his palms when Nehesi drew
rein.

“Majesty. An inspection?”

“Of a sort, General.”

“You will find nothing lacking. Behdet is small, but
she breeds good men. Here are the best in all of Egypt.”

She walked through the ranks with the general,
observing the strength of his soldiers' arms, the steadiness of
their stances, while he recited numbers of troops and horses,
described in detail his drills and training. At last she returned
to the head of the ranks and looked up into the general's face. It
was a broad, bluff face, full of honesty and intelligence. She had
no doubt he would obey her. She only wondered whether he would do
so gladly or grudgingly.

“It is good that your men are well prepared. I
commend you.”

The general gave a tight smile, lowered his head
abruptly in acknowledgment of her praise.

“Well-trained men are useful to me now. I will take
nine-tenths of your men with me.”

He glanced at her face in surprise, then away again
in quick deferment. “If I may be so bold as to ask, Majesty –
where?”

“To Kush,” she replied casually.

“Raids so soon? I had not heard.”

“I will not wait for raids, General. For too many
generations have kings sat by waiting for this enemy or that to
rise up and challenge the throne. We have a new Pharaoh now, and
she does not wait for her enemies to strike first.”

The general barked a quick laugh. It reminded her,
with a flash of pain, of her father. He had been a general once,
before the gods had called him to the throne. He had been the
greatest general in all Egypt, and the greatest king, too. She felt
a thrumming power deep inside her, rumbling below her heart, as if
her nine kas shouted in chorus. She felt an undeniable confidence,
looking upon this general and his orderly troops. Rank by rank,
they were hers. She commanded them. She was the daughter of
Thutmose the First; she was the son of Amun himself, and she
commanded them all.

“Make your men ready to sail by this time
tomorrow.”

**

Her servants erected her tents in the fields beyond
Behdet, in the shadow of the red pyramid. It was early in the
season of Peret, the Emergence; the earth was black and deep and
rich, just beginning to sprout with a thready new growth of weeds.
Soon the farmers of Behdet would till the weeds into the soil,
further enriching what the Iteru had already gifted them, and these
fields would fill with barley and emmer, with flax and onions and
the stalks of sweet roots. For now, her soldiers trampled the earth
beneath hundreds of feet, and the field lay flat and dark in the
sinking sun. The unbleached walls of the encampment's tents shone
very bright in the glow of approaching evening, standing as they
did tall and proud against the expanse of black earth.

She left Nehesi at her tent's door while she allowed
the harem women to tend her, washing the dirt and sweat of travel
from her body with soft cloths soaked in basins of cool water,
scraping her dry with curved copper blades. A late golden light
filtered through the smoke-hole at the tent's peaked roof; she sat
in its beam while Keminub shaved the stubble from her head and
massaged her scalp with a bracing oil of mint and juniper that made
her skin prickle. Tabiry had been right. The women were useful
already. They dressed her in a soldier's short white kilt and laid
a marvelous pectoral of vulture's wings across her chest. It was
heavy, but she liked the way it glimmered in the beam of light. She
turned this way and that, gazing down at it, admiring its sparkle,
and slowly she grew aware of a rising din outside, somewhere beyond
the encampment. She glanced up and met Tabiry's eyes. The Medjay
woman arched her brows; she had caught the sound, too. It was
something more than the usual noise of a camp.

Nehesi clapped his hands at the tent door. She went
to him, ducked outside and stood blinking at the distant line of
the river, sparkling in the setting sun. A crowd of men advanced
toward the camp. She could see the stark upward slashes of spears
bristling from the body of the crowd, and here and there the sun
fell upon hilt or blade of bronze; it flashed dull red against the
uniform color of tanned skin and dust-stained kilts. For one
heartbeat she thought perhaps Behdet was attacking. Then she caught
the rise and fall of song and the occasional shout of boys'
laughter.

Nehesi smiled wryly. “It seems your troops increase,
Great Lady.”

“Give me your sword belt, Nehesi.”

He frowned. “I cannot defend you without my blades.
What good will they do either of us on your hips?”

She laughed at Nehesi. “I need no protection from
these men.”

What a curious lightening in her chest. Her heart
seemed to float, buoyed on a raft of confidence. She realized with
growing awe that for the first time since Iset's death she felt
strong and secure. The feeling warmed her deep in her middle, made
her limbs feel pleasantly loose and energetic.

When Nehesi handed her his sword belt with stiff
reluctance, she swung it about her hips and cinched it tight. It
was heavy; it pulled at the knot of her kilt and made her sway a
little as she walked. But she clapped her hands briskly and made
for the pyramid at the edge of her camp, with Nehesi dogging her
heels and her women trailing behind.

The old monument had been raised by some long-dead
Pharaoh or other – Huni, she thought his name was, the second or
third Pharaoh to reign after Narmer. It was not nearly so great as
the mighty tombs of Khufu and his kin, far to the north. She had
seen those massive pyramids once as a child and again as the Great
Royal Wife, observing them in silent reverence from the rails of
ships as the Iteru carried her north. Those were monuments to make
the gods weep. The massive bulk of them, the precision of their
symmetry, made them seem as permanent and enduring as the sun
itself, even from the middle of the river, and she recalled gaping
at them, disbelieving that there had ever been a time when the
pyramids had not stood. Huni's redstone monument was less than a
dwarf by comparison, the height of a few men only. But it would
serve her purpose well enough.

She clambered up the first of its several steps and
stood gazing down on the fields of Behdet. The city's young men
were greeted with cheers by her own soldiers as they came into the
camp. They kept marching through, directly toward her as if her kas
whispered,
Come to me. Come and find your king,
and the men
obeyed.

At last they stood in a ragged assembly at her feet,
staring up at her in the simple white war kilt, a heavy belt laden
with blades slung about her hips, the golden vulture's wings spread
across her heart. She could feel the ancient slope of red stone
rising at her back, drawing their eyes ever upward, across her,
through her, with her into the sky where Amun-Re ruled. They ceased
their songs and jesting; an expectant hush settled over the
camp.