The Sekhmet Bed (23 page)

She turned to leave. She wanted to walk away, to push Mutnofret’s rage and bitterness behind her forever and never look upon it again. But the desperation in Mutnofret’s voice stopped her before she could pass through the bed-chamber door. “And what is my work, now that you’ve taken all I lived for?”

Ahmose looked back at her sister. Mutnofret’s arms and legs trembled faintly, whether from the excitement of the confrontation or from fear of her threats, she could not tell. But still, her sister stood straight and proud, a queen by birth, a queen to her center.

“
Give the Pharaoh an heir,” Ahmose said. “That is the only work you need concern yourself with.”

“A brood mare,” Mutnofret said. Her lips pressed together, twisted. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Ahmose remembered the sight of Mutnofret alone on the queen’s throne, hand raised to an empty, dark hall. “I was raised to be the Great Royal Wife, and you have reduced me to a brood mare.”

Ahmose left her standing there with Tut’s baby in her belly.

“Does
Tut
know you’re in bed with your steward, Ahmose?” Mutnofret’s screech carried through her anteroom. Ahmose kept walking, never once looking round. “Have a care your precious nobles and priests don’t find that out. I wonder where their hearts would lie then?”

***

Ahmose made herself walk slowly across the courtyard. Obviously Sitamun had told what she’d seen in the garden before the Men-Nefer festival. And what else had that vile gossip seen? How often had she been sent to spy on Ahmose? Ineni had been her only comfort, her only joy in the dark days since Tut sailed north. Any gesture, any word between them could be interpreted as romantic. A dagger of guilt twisted in her belly.

Ahmose remembered how she and Mutnofret had vowed to be sisters first, sisters forever, and remembering made her chest tighten. How quickly they’d forgotten their promise. How quickly hate had taken hold of their hearts. There was a rent between them now that a thousand-thousand stitches could never mend. And would it open further? Would the gods drive this wedge between Ahmose and Tut, too? Unthinkable. Impossible. Unbearable. She would give it all up – her privacy, the palace itself – to ensure Tut was still hers. She would move against Mutnofret’s schemes. Decisively. Today.

Back in her apartments, she sent Twosre to find Ineni. She dragged a flat box out of one of the great standing chests that held her gowns. Inside was a swath of linen dyed the perfect crimson of beaded blood. She tied it tightly, and though her hands shook, they did not fail.

The garment was stifling, and so snug it was difficult to walk. But it accentuated every curve of her young body. It turned her into the very image of ripening. The red cloth was knotted beneath her breasts, exposing them. She painted her nipples with oil and coated them with gold dust, so that they shone like sun-discs. Her finest wig went onto her head, and her brilliant alabaster vulture crown atop it. The goddess’s wings, worked in stone so fine and smooth they glowed like a full moon rising, fell to either side of her face. She didn’t need her mirror to know she looked like a vision. She felt it. She felt Mut singing in her heart.

Ineni wasn’t long in coming. Twosre helped him bear in a long box, longer than a man’s height and more than wide enough for a stout man to lie inside. When Ineni straightened from his burden and looked at Ahmose, his eyes lit with a hungry fire. She looked like womanhood itself, she knew.
Perfect.

“What is all this?” Twosre frowned.

“I’m striking a blow against evil today,” Ahmose said. She came toward Ineni and the box, her hips swaying like a bed of reeds in the confines of the red dress. Ineni swallowed hard.

“Great Lady, where are you going?” Twosre’s voice was pitched high with worry.

“To Ipet-Isut. To pay a little visit to the High Priest of Amun. Ineni, do you have the letter?”

He pulled a scroll of papyrus from his belt. “It’s ready. A litter is coming. The bearers will meet us in the courtyard.”

“Make sure Mutnofret is distracted so she doesn’t see me leave. I won’t have her pulling some trick to ruin my plan.”

There was a note of fear in Twosre’s voice. “I don’t understand.” Ahmose turned to her, reached out in reassurance.

“Don’t worry. The gods are with me. They always have been. They have a job for me to do, today and always. Egypt is mine, whatever Mutnofret thinks. The gods gave the land to me, and I will be its steward.”

Ineni lifted away the lid. He held them up, one in each hand: two perfect wings, white as stars on water. There were dozens of feathers on each, strong, long, lightweight. She stretched out her arms.

He showed her how they worked, how her upper and lower arms fitted into the braided-linen loops. His fingers were deft and soft against her skin. She couldn’t bend her arms with the wings on, of course, but that hardly mattered. When she turned about and held the wings wide for Twosre to see, her servant gasped. The white feathers swept out, impossibly light, impossibly beautiful. She was winged in her ka, winged in truth. She could spring up like a bird, it seemed, and fly over the Black Land.

Twosre half-sank into a bow, as if she stood before the goddess made flesh. “You’re Mut,” she said.

“And today, I go to wed Amun.”

TWENTY

It was easier to ride in the litter with the wings off. They were laid carefully beside her on cushions, a barrier between herself and Ineni.

“Mutnofret thinks we’re lovers.” The sun, sliding down the sky, illuminated the litter’s blue curtains and cast Ineni’s face in cool planes. The steward said nothing. “Ineni, as dear as you are to me, we can never be lovers.”

“I know.”

“But you would have it be so, if you could.”

“You wouldn’t?” He sounded defeated.

Ahmose swallowed hard. She made herself say, “In truth, I’ve never considered it. Not because you aren’t a wonderful man. You are. But I love my husband.”

He nodded. “And you’re the queen.”

“Soon to be God’s Wife, too, if all goes well. Oh, what if it doesn’t?”

“It will. It’s a wicked thing we do, though, Ahmose.”

“Is it really? With Thutmose gone, there is no one to check Mutnofret. She’ll drive me from the throne.”

“I know all that. It’s this.” He tapped the scroll against his knee. “It’s a lie. The gods don’t favor liars.”

This was the first misgiving Ineni had expressed. It took Ahmose aback. It was a lie, and a cruel one. Gods willing, Nefertari would never find out about the letter. Ineni – clever, bright Ineni – had done a masterful forgery of the old woman’s shaky hand. He’d studied all the notes she’d sent to Ahmose and practiced for weeks. No one would question it. It signed away the title, though not the wealth. Ahmose would leave her that.

It was wicked, truly, to take what was not hers. But the gods intended the throne for Ahmose. They gave the throne to Ahmose. If this was the only way to keep Mutnofret at bay so Ahmose could do the gods’ work, then she would be forgiven. Ineni, too. Ahmose felt sure of that. But oh, if only luck would be with her. If only Nefertari would go to the next life without ever knowing. She sent up a prayer to Iset to make it so.

Ineni reached across the wings and took Ahmose’s hand. She allowed it. The gods alone knew when they might be together again. It would be a lonely life in the temple, with just Twosre for company. “I’ll miss you, Ineni.”

He made no reply. They rode to Ipet-Isut in silence.

Ahmose stayed curtained in her litter as the sentries questioned her soldiers. Her heart was like a trapped bird, all flutter and beat. She couldn’t look at Ineni, couldn’t look at the wings. She closed her eyes lightly and prayed through the avenues of the temple complex. At last the sensation of lowering. At last the bump of the platform against the ground.

Ineni motioned for her to wait. He got out himself, spoke a few quiet words to someone outside. Then louder: “Inside, I say, and prepare the sanctuaries. I bring Ahmose, the god-chosen. Do as I say, or the Pharaoh will hear your name!” His face peeked back inside, hands clutching the curtain tight about him so no one in the courtyard could see into the litter. “It’s time.”

With difficulty, she pushed herself to her knees and shuffled about until her feet were outside the litter. Then it was a matter of levering her body, constrained by the snug gown, upright. She braced her hands against the canopy’s supports and shoved hard. She teetered on her feet, nearly overbalancing; Ineni’s thin arm was around her waist in a flash, righting her. She smiled at him, laughed nervously. “This dress.”

“It’s enough to make anyone fall over.”

“Get the wings for me, will you?” Whoever had been in the forecourt of the Temple of Amun was gone now. Ineni had sent them packing quick enough. Even the litter-bearers had their backs turned. Ipet-Isut was still and private in the cool blue of early evening. No one could see.

He slid the fine white wings onto her arms. Ahmose held them out. The faintest breeze moved from the west. It tugged at her feathers, pulled her arms insistently. Now she would fly. Above Mutnofret, above the court. She would set herself loose upon this breeze and sweep her will over the land. She was a sacred queen, beloved of the gods. What she did was right. She could do no wrong. She moved toward the temple door with her bright goddess wings outstretched.

The temple’s huge anteroom was empty, though faintly, she could hear the voices of men – servants or priests. They were urgent and forced. Whatever Ineni said to clear the forecourt, it had worked well. She faltered in the emptiness of the anteroom. Ineni was at her back. He ducked under her right wing and strode out into the room.

“Hear me, High Priest of Amun! The consort of your god comes! The God’s Wife approaches!” Ineni’s voice rang like sword on shield. Before the echo of his words faded, the High Priest swept into the room, draped in his leopard skin, a press of lesser men and women at his back. When he saw her standing there, winged, gilded, crowned, he fell to his knees, sank forward until he was lying flat on the floor. The priests behind him did the same. A murmur went up, a sound tight with wonder.

She had to do nothing but stand before them, poised and manifestly female. She caught sight of herself in a great plated mirror on the temple wall: the setting sun streamed in from the doorway behind, casting her form in a halo of light, dust dancing in the air around her wings, each mote a faceted jewel. She glowed. She shone. She was as vivid as the goddess from her dream, walking on a river of light.

“Mut,” the High Priest whispered, choking. He stared up at her from the floor, tears in his eyes.

In the end, they’d hardly needed the forged letter. Ahmose’s appearance, white-winged, backlit by Ra’s holy light, young and vital, had convinced the High Priest. When she fell limp and babbling into Ineni’s arms, the words she spoke brought the regiment of lesser temple servants to her as well.
My consort comes! My partner on the earth, come to heal the river! Maat, maat, maat!

It had not been a part of their plan. When she came to, Ineni was staring into her eyes, shocked.

“I’m all right, Ineni.” He pulled her upright again, steadied her, took the wings from her. Oh, what a bitter thing, to lose them!

“What was that?” he murmured. “What were you talking about?”

“She’s the mouthpiece of the gods.” The High Priest bowed to her, palms out. “Those were Amun’s own words you heard. Not since her grandmother has Egypt seen such a favored woman. The gods are all around her. I can feel it.”

Ineni paled. He looked from Ahmose to the High Priest, uncertain.

Ahmose nodded weakly. “I’ve never had it come on me so strongly before. It was Amun. I can still feel his presence. But I’m all right now.”

The High Priest sent for cold wine and bread. “So you come to bring maat, then? It’s well that you do. For days now when I’ve prayed I’ve seen nothing but chaos in the smoke of my offerings. The gods demand a restoration of the righteous order. The scales are close to tipping. I fear for the army in the North.”