The Double Crown: Secret Writings of the Female Pharaoh (28 page)

By the foul breath of Seth, I thought, I have killed him. I have killed the Great Commander of the Egyptian Army. I knelt beside him, panting and shivering with shock. Then he groaned. I sighed deeply. He was alive, after all. I rose to my feet and rearranged my robe, which was crushed but fortunately not torn, and replaced my crown, which had fallen from my head during the struggle. I looked around me. Quickly, I took a glass of wine and spilled some on the tiles. I dipped my fingers in the blood on his forehead and smeared some onto the corner of the table upon which I had placed the vase. Then I picked up the vase and dropped it, deliberately. It shattered into tiny pieces.

I went to the large double doors, opened them and called the guards.

“Majesty?” They hastened towards me.

“Come!” I called. Two stalwart men entered.

“What has happened?” enquired the more senior.

“The Commander has had a fall,” I told them. “He slipped in the wine that the careless slaves spilled, and his head caught the corner of this table, knocking off this vase – here, you see the blood. I managed to get him onto the day-bed. Call the Royal Physician, at once.”

“Yes, Majesty.” They dashed away.

I stood, still shaking a little, looking at the Great Commander, whose face was pale and bloody and who lay sprawled inelegantly with one hand dangling in a puddle of wine. He groaned again, rolling his head from side to side. It suddenly struck me as being very funny: Here was this fabled warrior, whom nobody had been able to fell in battle, almost killed by a woman. With a lamp. I began to giggle. Then it turned to laughter, and the more I laughed, the harder it was to stop. Then it became mixed up with tears of fright.

In the middle of this fit of mine, Thutmose came to and Hapu arrived, accompanied by the guards. The poor man could not decide whom he should attend to first, the Pharaoh or the Commander. He tutted and stuttered and fussed. Finally he stood on tiptoe right in front of me and bellowed into my face:
“Majesty!”
I do not know whence he summoned the courage to do this, but it had the desired effect of startling me into silence.

“Majesty,” he repeated, quietly now, “you have had a shock. I see that the Great Commander has been injured. You should sit down, and I will have a slave bring a calming draught. Now, what …”

I repeated my tale of the slip in a puddle of wine and the knock against the table. Thutmose glowered but did not contradict me. I was not sure just how much he clearly remembered, for I have heard that men who suffer a bad blow to the head can sometimes not recall what went immediately before. But he would not be keen to tell the true tale, if indeed he did remember all.

Hapu knelt down beside the day-bed and gently touched the bruises on Thutmose’s face. He clucked at the cut above his eyebrow. “I shall have to sew this together,” he said. “It is quite deep.” His exploring fingers found the second bruise on the temple, the one that had caused Thutmose to pass out. His eyes narrowed. He glanced at me fleetingly, but made no further comment. No fool he, I thought. “If the Commander is able to walk, perhaps it would be better in my office,” he suggested. “Then this room can be cleaned and ordered, and Her Majesty can rest.”

“Of course I can walk,” growled Thutmose, sitting up. “It is nothing.” Yet he swayed a little when he stood.

“I am so sorry, nephew,” I said. “I hope you may not suffer much pain.”

He grunted and left the room without another word, his hand on Hapu’s shoulder.

If he did not hate me before that episode, he has certainly hated me ever since. Oh, yes, he hates me, the little man. I know that. He maintains the pretence that he does not, but a pretence is what it is. I think it is not just that I rejected him – rejected and then bested him – that rankles; it is the fact that I laughed. And I believe he knows that I broke the beautiful vase on purpose, even though he was out cold when I did it. He has never forgiven me, for taking first his throne, and then his dignity. To this day he bears the scar.

As for myself, I was more shaken than I ever wanted to admit. It was as if some of my strength and resolve had bled away along with the wound I had inflicted on Thutmose. Hapu was concerned about me. The next afternoon he arrived at the time when I usually rest, bearing a large jug. I offered him a seat on a stool next to my day-bed, feeling too lethargic to arise.

He set the jug down on a little table in the shade. “My wife has made some of her special cordial for you, Majesty,” he said. His round face was creased with a worried frown. “She boils it up with herbs. It has restorative qualities. You should drink as much as you are able to stomach, for it is slightly bitter.”

This simple act of kindness was suddenly too much for me. The tears began coursing down my cheeks and I was powerless to stop them. They simply streamed, as if all the old aches of loss and longing had filled up a deep reservoir of tears inside my body, and of a sudden it had reached saturation point and now it was spilling over. I lay back on the cushions and I wept and wept. I wept for Inet, who was too old to comfort me. I wept for my gentle husband and for my little son who had not breathed. I wept for my lovely lost girl child, beloved of the gods. I wept for the wife I would never be, for the lover I might not take, for the lonely road that I must travel. I wept for my father who had been so strong when I was little, and I wept for my wise mother, whose counsel and devotion I sorely needed.

Hapu sat quietly beside me on his stool. He did not remonstrate with me or try to offer comfort. Instead, he simply reached across and took my hand and held it. He knew that it was not allowed to touch the Pharaoh without express permission, but as a physician it must have come naturally to him. I clung to him and sobbed and sobbed.

At length he began to make gentle shushing noises. “There, now,” he said. “There, now.” He offered me a kerchief of soft cotton. Then he arose, a little stiffly, and fetched some of the cordial in a beaker. “Try a sip or two of this,” he said.

I hiccupped and drank. It was indeed slightly bitter, but tangy and refreshing also. I sighed deeply and drank some more. “Thank you,” I murmured.

“Your Majesty has suffered a sad loss, and now a sudden shock … one cannot meet it robustly. Sometimes … sometimes it is necessary to speak about … about anything that may … that may particularly trouble one.”

“Perhaps. But I feel better now. I thank you for your visit, and for your concern.”

He departed, looking relieved.

I would not have told him what had happened between Thutmose and me, although I believed he had guessed. Yet his advice, I thought, was sound. So I told Senenmut the whole tale. He was furious. “And he handled you roughly? He attempted to force you? Why, the … the … He should be punished with extreme severity! How dare he!”

“No, no. Best just to leave it now. He’ll never speak of it, I made him feel a fool. Besides, I don’t know …”

“What, Majesty?”

At last my deepest fear surfaced. “I don’t know how much … to what degree I may have … he may have thought … that I encouraged him.”

There was a long silence. He hunched his shoulders and folded his arms across his chest, looking thunderous.

Tears began to roll down my cheeks. Angrily I brushed them away. “But I did not … It is just … just that he … he has such a … conceit of himself.”

“He does indeed,” said Senenmut grimly. “You say he actually wanted to marry you?”

“Yes. Not entirely impossible, I suppose, with only eight summers between us.”

“Majesty did not consider …”

“Oh, no. Not for a moment. I like him not,” I said, firmly, “I never have. And he would become the primary Pharaoh at once, he would take precedence, he would plunge Khemet into war – oh, no. No. I vowed to devote my life to the Black Land. It is my destiny.”

“Never to take another husband? Not even … perhaps … a commoner? One who could not usurp the throne? There have been Pharaohs who married a commoner.”

I sighed. “Yes. It has been known. But the commoners were wives. A male Pharaoh is secure enough upon the throne to make such a choice. But I have had to struggle to establish the fact of my divinity. Marrying a common man, I fear, would cast great doubt upon my divine nature, and it would reduce my authority. You must understand how that is.”

“Yes, Majesty. Yes, I see.” There was deep sadness in his face. “Indeed, I do understand.”

Here endeth the fifteenth scroll.                      

More secret knowledge that I would rather not have had. Well, I am being punished for my curiosity. I shall have to take a trip to my cousin’s mountain farm immediately, for to possess a document relating how the Great Commander tried to force the Pharaoh … it had better be hidden away as quickly as possible. It reflects extremely badly on a man hero-worshipped by many. Besides, how he would hate the story of her method of self-defence and, worse, her laughter, to become public knowledge!

One wonders, though, whether he might not have justifiably thought … well, it does sound as if … oh, dear. It is so hard to know what women want. I would like to see more of that plump little Syrian partridge who works in the tavern where I meet Ahmose. Her name, I have discovered, is Saria. She has many admirers, though; just when I think I have received her most brilliant smile, she bestows an equally generous beam upon a corpulent merchant with hair in his ears and yellow teeth.

Of course, she is merely a slave and I could simply make an offer to buy her. She would probably be expensive, though, since she is undoubtedly an asset to the tavern keeper, and I do not have many debens of silver or gold put by. And even if I could afford her, I would not want her if she did not like me. I would not force a woman; that would make me no better than … the Great Commander? What am I thinking! No, no. This is mere foolishness. Time to blow out the lamp!

THE SIXTEENTH SCROLL

The reign of Hatshepsut year 10

In the tenth year of my reign I lost my beloved Inet. Somehow I had considered her to be indestructible. For many years she was a daily presence in my life. When I no longer needed a nurse, she became a sort of honorary lady-in-waiting; then my children came and they needed her; despite the illness that had affected her manner of walking, she took care of them. Then the children grew older and she again remained as one of my ladies.

When I was young she was always there, never going away on trips and leaving me behind as my royal parents so often did. With her oft-repeated tales of the gods and how they had favoured me, she made me feel safe and she encouraged me to think of myself as someone special, someone with an exceptional destiny. She never thought that I did not belong on the Double Throne; on the contrary, when I acceded to the throne, it was to her merely the fulfilment of predictions that she had been making since I was a child.

Yet she never quite seemed to have grasped that I was indeed the Pharaoh. Especially as she grew older and somewhat forgetful, I remained her dear child, to be scolded if she saw fit, to be cosseted if I was even a little unwell, to be told to eat, made to rest, comforted when sad, and above all loved. To be held. She knew, in principle, that the Pharaoh’s person was sacred and not to be touched, but she forgot. If she felt it was needed, she would hug me or gently take my hand and stroke it. I never reprimanded her for that.

Of course, at times she irritated me. While it was soothing to be treated like a child when one was ill or very tired, at other times it was inappropriate and made me cross. Also, as her memory for recent matters grew worse, her recollections from the past seemed increasingly important to her, and she would retell her tales over and over, in exactly the same words, until I felt ready to scream. Trying to prevent her from doing this was hopeless. One could say, yes, Inet, I know, you have told me, you told me just a minute ago, but that did not stop her. The words would come relentlessly: “Hathor suckled you, Hapi cradled you, and Apophis spared you for your destiny. Did you know that?”