The Double Crown: Secret Writings of the Female Pharaoh (18 page)

She looked at this apparition with amazement and awe, but without fear. Surely, I thought, she was a woman of great courage to confront a being from the spirit world with such aplomb. But then I saw that the being had changed once more. It had taken on the form, the very substance, of my late father the Pharaoh, may he live for ever. He was an avatar of Amen, but yet it was his true familiar self, and it was in his own body that he approached his wife the Queen. She smiled at His Majesty. His penis was erect before her. She was filled with joy at the sight of his beauty.

I watched as he reached out to her, put aside the delicate robe, covered her with his strong body and placed his seed in her. He gave his heart to her. His love passed into her limbs. The palace was flooded with the God’s fragrance. It did not seem lewd to me to be observing this. It was … it was like a sacrament, a ritual, a consecration, to which I was an awe-struck witness.

I knew that he had impregnated her then because he told her so, just before he rose from the couch and took his leave, once more losing his solid human form and dissolving before my watching eyes into a shimmer of golden light.
“You are now with child,”
said his voice, seeming to resound in the space where I stood transfixed.
“You will bear a princess, whom you will name Hatshepsut. And she will reign.”
The words reverberated. I was convinced that they were clearly audible to the priests who now walked towards me. “Do you hear?” I demanded, breathless with the wonder of my vision. “And she will reign! And she will reign! Hatshepsut will reign! The God has told me so himself!”

Having been vouchsafed this vision, I knew that I had to make my destiny manifest to all. I would have to make my move and make it decisively. At once it was clear to me what I should do. I would make offerings directly to the gods. This is traditionally the task and prerogative of the Pharaoh, which he delegates to his priests but which no other mortal may carry out. It is the Pharaoh’s sacred duty to satisfy the gods with divine offerings and to bring funerary offerings to the transfigured dead. I was well acquainted with the prescribed steps of the morning ritual, since I had been the God’s Wife of Amen for several years, attending on first my father and then my husband when they as the divine sons of the sun god acted as the link with the spirit world. Now I would carry out these steps in person.

I knew I had to win that confrontation on the Day of the Dead. The officiating priest on that fateful day was Hapuseneb, Chief Priest of Amen and a power in the land. As he came towards me, his white linen tunic emerging from the gloom, I knew that he intended to bar my way. He was attended by four assistant priests, one the lector who would chant the prescribed magic words. The Chief Priest was taller than I by a head, with broad shoulders; the right shoulder bare, the left one draped in a leopard-skin mantle. His skin was a deep shade of copper and, as he had not yet donned his huge ceremonial wig, his bald pate gleamed in the torchlight. Indeed, his entire body was completely hairless, as priests must be to ensure complete cleanliness. His lashless eyes, green and protuberant, put me in mind of a chameleon, that small dragon that moves with such deliberation and changes colour to survive.

“I will break the seal,” I announced, lifting my chin. The seal on the door of the inner shrine that holds the God may only be broken by the Pharaoh or his deputed priest. It is a most secret place, less accessible than that which is in heaven, more secret than the affairs of the Netherworld, more hidden than the inhabitants of the primeval ocean. I dropped my voice. “I am the son of Amen-Ra,” I told him. “I have had a vision. The God himself begat me.”

His smooth face expressed doubt. Had he had eyebrows, he would have raised them.

“I have the backing of the Party of Legitimacy,” I told him. “The nobles do not approve that the child of a concubine should be King when one of the pure blood royal is at hand.” This was entirely true. Also the nobles knew that they might expect grants of land and other favours from my hand if I were the supreme Pharaoh, but nothing would be forthcoming from a young child manipulated by the priests.

Hapuseneb was shrewd and he knew that the nobles, motivated both by greed and a resistance to the immense power of the priesthood, were formidable allies ranged at my back. He shifted slightly, but he did not stand aside.

“The military are also with me,” I went on.

This surprised him. He had underestimated me. “The military?”

At that time, I had not yet the services of Khani, who was in training at Memphis, but I had others who were my eyes and ears, particularly in the South whence came so much gold. I learned the value of timely information early and I have always made sure that it is brought to me.

“There are signs of rebellion in the Land of Kush,” I told him. “They scent a weakness in us. They do not believe that a small child and a queen who is merely a regent can hold the vassal states. That rebellion must be crushed decisively. General Pen-Nekhbet of el-Kab agrees. The Living Horus must smite our enemies.”

Hapuseneb looked thoughtful. He said nothing, but much as he respected the aging general, I could guess that he found it difficult to view me as the Living Horus. I would have to do more to convince him.

“I have been inducted into the mysteries of Osiris,” I reminded him.

He certainly had to know that my late father, may he live, had indeed done this when he was already weak with his final illness, at the time when I served as the God’s Wife of Amen. These are secret matters of great significance and none but the Pharaoh and the Chief Priest may know of them.

“Yes, I do remember that,” he murmured.

“My father the Pharaoh, may he live, expected me to reign,” I insisted. “Otherwise he would not have inducted me.”

Hapuseneb seemed to be wavering. He did not contradict me.

“I have the complete support of the nomarchs, of both the North and the South.”

“Ah, yes. The nomarchs.”

I could see that it was beginning to dawn on Hapuseneb that I had done my preparations with great care and thoroughness. He well knew that each of the nomarchs who ruled the forty-two nomes into which the land was demarcated had been called to my presence over the period since my husband the Pharaoh passed into the Afterlife. Having been offered sufficient inducements, they would support me with enthusiasm.

Hapuseneb shifted from foot to foot. Clearly he was feeling beleaguered.

“Also the Vizier of the North is on my side,” I stated. This was a telling point; there was no love lost between the two viziers. I knew that Hapuseneb heartily disliked the Vizier Dhutmose, an essentially lazy sybarite who yet had enough ambition and greed to ensure that he ruled effectively. I stared intently into Hapuseneb’s narrowed, doubtful eyes. “It could be that the Two Lands would benefit by returning to the former system,” I suggested silkily. “One Vizier for the Two Lands. Possibly the duties of Vizier of the South as well as the Chief Priest of Amen will prove too much for you.”

He flinched, having understood me perfectly. Of course he realised that the matter at hand was crucial. I had him pinned; by forcing this issue in front of the assistant priests at the entrance to the holy of holies, I was giving him no opportunity to prevaricate, to think of alternatives or to work out other moves.

I knew exactly what his considerations were: I had such powerful backing that I would probably gain the throne. If he continued to oppose me now I would henceforth be his implacable enemy, and he would lose power. If he threw in his lot with me, he would be allied closely to the Pharaoh. Better, perhaps, than being the shadowy manipulator of a young boy who had no powerful factions other than the priesthood backing him. Maybe he was also thinking that he would be able to manipulate me. I smiled.

“A vision?” he said. “The son of Amen-Ra?”

“The very seed of his loins,” I affirmed. “The Living Horus.”

He nodded reflectively. Then he stood aside. “Majesty will break the seal,” he told the priests, who had been observing the encounter between us with their mouths hanging open. The lector priest began to chant the ritual words which must be faultlessly recited to be magical. The singing of the chantresses swelled around us. I handed over my basket, strode forwards and broke the clay seal to the innermost shrine which had been put in place by the Chief Priest the previous day.

It was cool, very dark, and smelled musty. While the outer reaches of the temple are open and sunlit, with brightly coloured paintings on the walls, the corridors grow narrower and darker as they lead inward to the shrine where the God lives. I walked forwards and stood before the golden statue of the God in its niche. It seemed to me that its painted eyes regarded me with approbation.

Gently and reverently I took the God from his niche and, using the items passed to me by the assistant priests, I fed the God, robed him, rouged his face and adorned him with royal emblems. Outside the inner sanctum the chantresses rejoiced, their pure voices accompanied by the rhythmic rattle of sistrums and tambourines. The powerful scent of the flaming torches and the heady aroma of incense filled the interior of the shrine, driving out the mustiness.

The rites completed, a feeling of dizziness threatened to overcome me. My recent actions had inducted me into the ranks of the divine, a chain of living gods reaching back into the ancient past, all of whom had served to link the invisible and the visible. Through my life henceforth and through my spiritual strength I would sustain Khemet. It was an awesome task.

I replaced the image, which the God would now certainly inhabit until the following day, in its niche. Then I kneeled down and struck my forehead against the dusty floor, smelling the dry sand. “Great Lord, my Father, make me worthy,” I murmured. “Make we worthy and help me, my Father, to maintain Ma’at. Let me never weaken. Be thou at my side.”

It seemed to me then that I heard the God speak.
“Verily thou art the seed of Amen-Ra,”
I heard the God say,
“which came forth from him.”

I once more sealed the shrine. I left the sanctuary walking backwards while sweeping away my footprints with a palm frond, lest the devils that seek to attack the God follow my tracks into the shrine. Not by my doing would evil overpower the sacred centre of divinity. Hapuseneb accompanied me as I emerged from the dark and narrow canal into the raucous brightness of the outer courtyards, now tightly packed with people who raised a rousing cheer when they saw us. We stood side by side acknowledging their acclaim.

Hapuseneb turned to look me in the eye. “I too applaud the Living Horus,” he said. “May life, stability and dominion reward the Pharaoh Hatshepsut.”

I inclined my head. Joy suffused my being.

“The people will need a sign, though,” he added, softly. “I think it would be appropriate to consult the oracle.”

“Indeed, we should do that,” I agreed. And so King Hatshepsut was born that very morning, at the dawning of the Day of the Dead.

I achieved the throne, but it has not been easy to hold it. Mahu the scribe has brought some information that I find very disquieting. If it is true that Hapuseneb and Thutmose, that one that would be King, are corresponding almost daily, it is not good. I shall have to order that the so-called tax collector be taken prisoner and interrogated and his belongings searched. Yet it must seem that he was set upon by thugs, for if Hapuseneb were to realise that Pharaoh’s hand is behind an attack on his man, there will be trouble – and then the conspirators, if such they are, will have been warned.

Well, I shall confer with the head of my band of secret enforcers. There never used to be a need for such men, but during these past few years I have discovered that I cannot do without them. They report only to me and I keep them faithful by a combination of threats and rewards. After I had had two of their number sent to the quarries lacking not only ears and noses but also their manhood, because I suspected them of reporting to Hapuseneb, the rest soon remembered where their loyalty lay.

The leader of the band is a fairly young man and he appears deceptively meek. He comes to me as a scribe, which he is, but that is not all he is. His name – but perhaps I should not write it, even in my secret scrolls, for there is always the danger that Mahu may be caught with these writings on his person and the head of the enforcers knows things … Let me call him Ibana. Ibana, then, is small and neat, with a shaven head and unexceptional brown eyes, barring that they are never still. He is extremely concerned about cleanliness and I must always ensure that a slave girl brings scented water to him when he arrives and again before he leaves so that he may wash his hands. Yes, I shall call for him and give him instructions to investigate the matter.

Here endeth the ninth scroll.