The Bull of Min (6 page)

Thutmose heard again the bellowing of the bull, felt
its thunder shake his bones. Before she could see any tremor of fear in his body, he turned on his heel and left Satiah standing there with her child. But the piercing power of her eyes followed him, taunted him, dogging his heels all the way back through the temple gates to the place where his men stood waiting for their king.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HE FIVE FESTIVAL DAYS OF the New Year had come and gone, and with them came the Inundation. Egypt turned once more into a vast plain of water, running the length of the Iteru’s long northward track, a lush, lazy wetland lying satisfied in the sun between the hills and cliffs of the eastern and western banks. The days grew redolent with the earthy perfumes of the flood. By night, the stars themselves seemed to chant the loud choruses of frogs. Akhet was a season for replenishment, for healing. It was a time to start life anew.

Meryet grunted as she lifted Amunhotep to her hip.
The boy was over a year old now, and though his height was nothing for the nurses to exclaim over, he was growing stocky and strong just like his father. He was a stout little bull, though his temper was sweet as a gazelle’s. Meryet kissed his fat cheeks until he squealed with laughter, held him close to her chest. She was grateful to the gods for this boy – ah, all mothers were grateful for their babes. But Amunhotep seemed imbued with a special kind of magic. As the flood waters rose, gifting their black silt to make Egypt bloom with life once more, Hatshepsut had begun to return tentatively to the world, and all because of this little boy.

“You are a golden treasure,” Meryet whispered to her son.
Nothing but Amunhotep could coax a smile to his grandmother’s face. Nothing but holding the boy, playing with him, watching him toddle about her garden, could cause Hatshepsut to forget her many sorrows, her bitter regrets, and live instead in the moment the gods laid before her.

Meryet made her way through the Pharaoh’s great apartments to the garden behind her bed chamber, trailed by her retinue of women, Amunhotep’s nurse, and, of course, Nehesi.
The grass beneath her sandals was wet and lush, the earth still springy with the last traces of the flood. Hatshepsut waited on a blanket in the sun, a few of Amunhotep’s favorite toys scattered around her. She wore a man’s kilt and a profusion of beaded necklaces, her chest and back bare. The plucky, daring nature of the garb cheered Meryet – it seemed another small sign that some fractional part of the Pharaoh’s old self was returning.

“There is the little king,” Hatshepsut said, smiling up at them, squinting through her kohl in the glare of the sun.

Meryet lowered Amunhotep and herself onto the blanket. The boy at once wiggled from her arms and busied himself with a wooden deby and a wool-stuffed lion. Batiret joined them, dipping cool wine from a jar, passing cups to her mistress and to Meryet.

“He grows so fast,” Hatshepsut said, never taking her eyes from Amunhotep.
“In a blink, he’ll be as big as a horse with a deep voice and hair on his chin.”

She shifted to take one of the cakes Batiret offered, but her outstretched hand arrested in the air.
Hatshepsut’s face paled; Meryet could see from the sudden stillness of the beads on her chest that the Pharaoh held her breath.

The pains again
,
Meryet thought. Hatshepsut often complained of sharp aches in her hip and thigh. Sometimes spells of weakness overtook her, too, and seemed related somehow to the mysterious, transient pain. Meryet wondered whether Hatshepsut’s condition were not due to a lack of movement. Many months had passed since Senenmut’s death. Hatshepsut’s grief had stalled her. She was sedentary; she had grown stout with her own inactivity, though even subdued as she now was, she could not put off the air of regal command that was hers by nature. Even playing gently with Amunhotep, even stilled by her long sorrow, Hatshepsut spoke and moved with authority. When she spoke or moved at all.

“Do you suppose,” Hatshepsut said, recovering herself, toying with Amunhotep’s short side-lock, “you may have another?”

Meryet laughed. “One day, but gods make it not too soon. This one is enough of a handful for me, even with the royal nurses caring for him most of the time.”

Batiret plied her fan on its long
golden pole, swirling the flies away. “The Lady Horus would like an entire nest full of little Horuslings to pamper and spoil.”

Hatshepsut grinned up at her fan-bearer with great affection, showing the charming gap between her teeth.
“And why not? The world could use a few more of these.” She tickled Amunhotep’s foot; he squealed and clutched at his own soft belly in merriment. “The gods know there is precious little to be glad for in this life.”

Meryet felt the smile slip from her face.
No one wanted to rush Hatshepsut through her grief. Young though she was and relatively untouched by tragedy, Meryet still sensed intuitively that sorrow found its own route through the heart, wearing a crooked path, eroding the ka like a stream of water through dark soil until at last it sank away in its own time, and healing flowered in its place. But Hatshepsut’s depression compounded Thutmose’s guilt, and Meryet was left to impel him on his path. It seemed sometimes that she drove him against Hatshepsut’s grief, goading him like a drover does his cattle. And Meryet was weary – Amun, but she was weary.

“Where is Thutmose?” Hatshepsut asked suddenly.

Meryet gave an involuntary jump, startled that the king had chanced so close to her private thoughts.
“Drilling his soldiers. The southern circuit, I believe he told me.”

“It’s a good army,” said Hatshepsut rather dully.
“The new recruits seemed very sturdy.”

Meryet doubted whether Hatshepsut had seen the new recruits.
She nodded in agreement, careful to keep her skepticism well away from her face.

“Maybe we ought to find a sturdy soldier for this one, here.”
Hatshepsut jerked her head toward Batiret. “She should have a baby of her own.”

Having finally
convinced the troublesome flies to try their luck elsewhere, Batiret leaned casually on the shaft of her fan. “My steward Kynebu is sturdy enough for me. The last thing I need in my bed is a soldier, all muscle and no brains, stinking like horse piss.”

Hatshepsut’s eyelids fluttered in feigned shock.
“What appalling language.”

“And as for babies….” Batiret caught Meryet’s eye, made a pinching motion with her fingers.
Meryet covered her mouth with her hand. She had heard enough of the servants’ gossip to know it was the sign they made at apothecaries’ stalls in the marketplace, the silent request for the sticky acacia-gum suppositories that would stop a baby from growing.

“You have no idea how to behave yourself in the presence of royalty,” Hatshepsut said, her mouth twisting wryly.

“The Good God would not have me any other way.”

“It is good to laugh.
You know, I haven’t done it in ages.”

“So I have noticed,” Meryet said.

A clap sounded from the periphery of the garden, near the door that led into Hatshepsut’s bed chamber.

“Come,” the Pharaoh called.

One of her ladies approached, a young, inexperienced thing with the wide-set eyes and flat nose of the southern houses: the daughter of some minor noble working her family’s way into the Pharaoh’s good graces. The girl bowed awkwardly and held out a scroll. It was tied with a red thread, its knot sealed with a hard bead of wax. “A messenger arrived, Mighty Horus…Great Lady. He said this scroll was to be delivered into the hands of the Good God Menkheperre.”

“The Good God Menkheperre is out drilling his soldiers,” Hatshepsut said.
There was a distinct note of annoyance in her voice. Meryet knew it must needle her, that Thutmose had become the one to whom stewards and ambassadors turned, to whom messages were delivered. And yet what else was Egypt to do? The country could not sink with her into grief. Life went on. Soldiers required drilling. Messages needed delivering.

Hatshepsut held out her hand.
“Under the circumstances, I believe
Maatkare
may read the scroll. She is more than qualified.”

Hatshepsut crushed the knob of wax between her fingers and waved the girl away.
The scroll unrolled in her hands with a dry rustle. Her eyes passed over the contents, then narrowed. Her mouth pinched into an angry purse. She read the words again.

“Mistress?” Batiret said, her voice tense with worry.

“Kadesh.” Hatshepsut spat the word.

“Ah,” Meryet breathed.
“I might have known. Another scroll about Kadesh.”

“Another?
How many have there been?”

Meryet and the fan-bearer shared a pained, helpless glance.

“Well?”

“Many,” she finally admitted.
“Thutmose has been working on…”

“Indeed! And I’ve been told nothing.”

“As grieved as you’ve been, he thought it best to handle it himself.”

Hatshepsut lapsed into a sulky silence.
Amunhotep crawled to her lap, and she wrapped her arms around him. But her eyes remained distant and dark. “How long has this been going on?”

Meryet was un
certain whether Hatshepsut referred to the threat in Kadesh or her own disassociation. Either way, the answer was the same. “Months, Mighty Horus.” She bowed in a semblance of apology, though the gods knew Meryet was not to blame.

“Then it is time something was done.”
Hatshepsut’s voice snapped with command. Her eyes glimmered like dark points of fire on a high hill, alive with a keen glint that Meryet had missed for far too long.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HE SMALL ESTATE STOOD ON the bluffs above a long-dry ravine, an hour south of Waset by boat. A dusty footpath wended through a scrubby orchard of olives and apricots, rising sharply up the flank of a yellow bluff to the small but well-appointed home at its pinnacle. The roof of the estate was barely visible, peeking over the pale, new-quarried stone that had been used to increase the height of its outer wall. A guard moved along the line of the wall, tiny with distance, as black against the clear, bright blue of the mid-day sky as an ant against fresh-scrubbed tile.

Thutmose paused in the shade of the largest olive tree.
It leaned across the footpath, exhausted by age. Only a few shriveled fruits clung to the tips of its gnarled branches. Most of this orchard was long past its fertile years; the estate was no longer producing, no longer particularly valuable to any noble house. Thutmose had procured it easily and quietly, working through a diffuse network of stewards and loyal nobles. It would be difficult for anyone to trace the property to the throne. Not that anyone was likely to come nosing around such a place. Still, a man could never be too cautious. He watched the guard on the estate’s wall creep toward the southernmost corner, pause, turn east, and disappear from view.

“How many guards are on the house?”

The soldier Djedkare answered with his usual attentive pluck. “Twenty, Horus. The barracks we built lies just beyond the house. You can’t see it from here, but of course it is ready for your inspection, should you desire it. The men take it in shifts. There are never fewer than six men at watch on the walls or the gate, and twenty on site at all times. Occasionally more, when we receive supplies, or when the weekly shifts change.”

Djedkare was not many years older than Thutmose, but already showed impressive aptitude.
The man was bright, thoughtful, serious about his work. More importantly, he had spent his years of soldiering at foreign outposts, far from Waset and its royal family, yet his own family was known to be deeply loyal to Thutmose and Hatshepsut. The same was true of all the men who served here: strangers to Waset, but proven in loyalty.

They started
toward the house on the bluff. Thutmose kept his eyes on his own sandals as he made his way up the lane, allowing Djedkare to lead the way. The man spoke all the while in his efficient, controlled clip.

“Lady Satiah has seemed entirely content, Lord.
She has shown no interest at all in leaving. She is polite and pleasant whenever we have need to speak to her, and yet she is as modest as any man could wish. Keeps herself hidden from the eyes of men. Unless she has need of something her few servants can’t fetch for her. We’re so out of the way here, and the estate is so old that we have no unexpected visitors. No one comes poking about. I must say, it is the easiest guard duty I’ve ever done.”

“I am glad to hear it – glad
to hear you find the lady so agreeable.”

Djedkare nodded.
“If I am impertinent, I apologize humbly, Lord – but she seems the very best sort of woman, the kind even a king would be lucky to have.”

Thutmose tried to stifle a laugh.
It fought its way out as the merest exhalation, a soft snort of wry amusement.

“I hope I do not overstep, Mighty Horus.”

“No, Djedkare; it’s quite all right. Lady Satiah is the kind of treasure a man must guard very closely.”

“Indeed.”

The man would not press his comments further. Thutmose understood him well enough to know that much. Djedkare, like all the men who minded the estate, thought Satiah to be exactly what Thutmose had made her seem: a woman of interest to the Pharaoh, prized and respected, more than a concubine for the harem, but not yet officially a wife. He had allowed the men to speculate, as far as propriety would allow, that the Great Royal Wife struggled with the idea of Thutmose marrying another woman – not just adding another pretty and well-connected girl to his harem, but joining with another woman before the eyes of the gods, conferring upon her real status.

Thus, t
he guardsmen believed Lady Satiah was housed here, a pampered pet of the Pharaoh, until the gods saw fit to soften Meryet’s heart.

None of these men w
ould recognize Satiah for who she truly was. None would have had any significant chance to see her in her former life, when she had been Neferure the God’s Wife, his original consort. They knew only what he told them, and believed the rumors they concocted over their nightly beer.

The gods keep it so.

The climb to the top of the bluff was hot and dusty. Thutmose ducked gratefully into the shade of the gateway and called for something to drink. Djedkare fetched a skin of wine; Thutmose drank deeply, not only to soothe his dry throat, but to still the anxious tremor in his hands. When he was ready, he told the men to open the gate.

One great cedar door, twice the height of a man, swung wide to admit him.
Beyond the rebuilt wall, a small garden unfolded in the sun. It was newly planted, revived from the abandonment that had left the courtyard sere and unfriendly before Lady Satiah had moved in. But here, at least, she had done good and honest work. The flower beds were weeded, tilled, filled in with black soil from the orchard below – it must have been carted up by the guardsmen, one of the tasks Satiah had no doubt requested of them. A few pale green starts grew in the beds; some of them had been carefully staked and tied. Thutmose saw where cracked paving stones on the garden path had been repaired with plaster, and saw, too, the bright white of new plaster sealing the old dark tracks of leaks in the wall of a raised pond. It sparkled with water – that, too, must have been carted up the path by the guards, for this high atop the bluffs no well could reach deep enough to tap a reserve of ground water. Satiah had gone to great lengths to beautify her little prison. It was a humble and lonely place, but thanks to her touch, it was at least prettier than the tiny cell at the Temple of Min where Thutmose had found her.

He
was about to send Djedkare ahead to announce him when Satiah herself appeared, framed in the deep rosy stone of a doorless archway. She was as tiny and light-boned as a bird, stark and dramatic in plain white linen against the violet of interior shadow. Thutmose halted on the garden path. She stared at him a moment, then went back inside without word or gesture.

“Wait for me here,” he told Djedkare.

Thutmose blinked his eyes rapidly, striving to adjust his vision to the cool dimness of the house. The chill was refreshing. Small niches in the walls held statues of various gods, but nothing else adorned the walls – no tapestries, no murals. The perfume of sacred incense hung heavy in the air, undercut with the smoky char of burnt meat. A sudden gust from the orchard moaned in the windcatcher high above his head. Satiah perched silent and self-possessed on a rustic wicker couch, waiting for him to speak with her hands folded in her lap.

“You have made the garden quite lovely,” he said awkwardly.

“It will be lovelier with time. Everything I planted is still new.”

“May I sit?”

“This is your home, not mine.”

Thutmose found a wooden stool against one wall.
He positioned it across from her wicker couch, reluctant to come any nearer.

“I admit it is a prettier prison than the last one you kept me in,” she said.

“I had no choice but to keep you there.”

“So you think.”

“How did you get out, anyhow?”

Satiah answered at once, in a voice so lacking in coyness or irony that he knew she believed it to be true, and knew he would get no clearer response.
“The gods removed me.”

“Yes, well.
I wanted to be certain you are relatively comfortable here – you and the boy. Is there anything he needs?”

“His name is Amenemhat.”

Thutmose said nothing. He held her black gaze steadily. When she looked away, it was with a light toss of her head, the beads in her braids chiming together like tiny sesheshet in a dark temple.

“Amenemhat,” she said again, “and now that you have an heir, it is time you restored me to my position.”

“Your position?”

“Great Royal Wife.”

“Neferure,” he said, but she hissed at him like a nurse quieting a difficult child. Thutmose bit his tongue. It would not do to allow the servants or the guards to hear that name. Inwardly, he cursed himself for a fool.
You cannot allow her to rile your anger.
“Satiah,” he said calmly, “you know you are not my Great Royal Wife any longer. You never will be again.”

He disliked
the way she arched her brows at him, the cold consideration in her eyes, the stillness in her small, fine mouth.

“You won’t be,” he said, “not even if you should find some way to do to Meryet what you did to Senenmut.”

“Meryet. Yes, I heard all about that one while working in the temples. Don’t fear, Thutmose. I have no reason to do
that
to your precious Meryet. Hathor is satisfied with her drink of blood, and for all I know, she will remain so.”

“For all you know?
”

Satiah gazed at him placidly, her pretty, delicate face open and serene.
“All I know is much more than all you know, Mighty Horus. Affairs of state are one thing; a king’s duties at the temple are one thing. True communion with the gods – true
union
– is quite another.” She leaned forward slightly. The reed wicker creaked, a sound that raised a chill on his arms and sent a sick thrill up his back. “I know you still see it in me, Thutmose.”

“See what?”

“My power.”

“Your power,” he scoffed.

“You see me and you remember. The bull – my power.”

“You never tamed the bull,
Satiah
. You were then and are still now nothing but a girl – a mortal girl.”

“Speak those words all you please.
You know you do not believe them. I am your wife – your Great Royal Wife. The gods made it so, and even a Pharaoh cannot undo it.”

“I already undid it. I repudiate you.”

She waved a hand, taking in the estate, the garden glowing in the bright sun through the archway, with one quick, bird-like gesture. “Then why all this? Why this lovely prison if you repudiate me, if I am nothing to you? Why so close to Waset? Why so close to your bed?”

“I keep you close so I can know where you are at all times.
So there will be no knives stealing out of the shadows in my palace.”

“Why don’t you kill me?”
She said it not in despair or hysteria, but in bland curiosity.

It struck him suddenly that although she may change her name and deny her heritage, she was still – would always be – the daughter of Hatshepsut.
The daughter of the woman who took the throne, who led men in battle, who secured the treasures of Punt. She was the daughter of the one the soldiers called seshep – the daughter of the woman who pulled down a god. Satiah might dress in the plain linens of a priestess and toil placidly in her garden, but the calculation and cunning of a Pharaoh were hers by blood.

“Is it because of Amenemhat?
Is that why you suffer me to live?” she said.

Thutmose rolled his eyes.
“No. I cannot prove the boy isn’t mine, and the circumstances of his birth are not his fault. I will not punish him – will even give him a proper upbringing in the palace, if that is your wish. But I will never look upon him as my son. It is not for his sake that I allow you to live. Don’t think to use your son as your shield.”

Thutmose rose from the stool.
He tugged his kilt straight, felt the reassurance of the dagger concealed in the intricate pleats of his sash. Without another word, he turned for the doorway.

“I know,” Satiah called after him.
Her voice was musical, light, confident as a king’s. “It’s the Bull of Min you remember, Thutmose. You remember, and you fear.”

He made his way through the garden without a word to the guards.
They rushed to open the outer gate for him, and he was halfway through the orchard, Djedkare in silent tow, before he realized he had drawn the dagger from his sash. He cursed, thrust it back into the hidden sheath, but his fingers did not want to unclench from its cold, reassuring hilt.