The Sekhmet Bed (26 page)

“
Be careful,” she whispered. “What if someone hears us?” The garden was not empty. Men and women wandered here and there, laughter rising on the night. From a nearby flower bed, densely planted, came a sigh and a moan. Ahmose’s skin tingled.

“
Why don’t you come for a walk with me?”

“
Are you drunk? Don’t be stupid!”

“
Maybe a little. Drunk. Drunk from looking at you.”

“
Oh, Ineni. You’ve had too much wine. No, don’t come closer…” for he’d taken a step toward her, smiling foolishly.

“
All right, then,” he said, backing off, grinning at her. “I’ll just go over there. Into those myrrh trees. All alone.”

He laughed, walked away, casting looks back over his shoulder at Ahmose. She sat on the lip of the lake and watched him go, her pulse alive in her stomach and cheeks. Ineni disappeared into the myrrh grove. The leaves and branches closed around him, blotting out the bright white blur of his kilt and the brown of his back. For a long time she sat unmoving, the water drying on her shoulders and shift. Far up the path, the forms of a man and woman bent around each other, tangled in an embrace. Ahmose watched the man’s hands travel down his lover’s back, describe the arc of her hips with a graceful sweep. From the flower bed, a woman’s voice cried wordlessly, breathless and urgent.

Ahmose counted a hundred heartbeats, looked cautiously around the garden, and walked calmly toward the myrrh grove.
This is stupid, stupid
, she told herself. Their rides were bad enough, and far too frequent. But at least in the chariot they were alone, out in the hills beyond the fields, and Ahmose was disguised. Stupid, stupid, but the night was in her blood now, and wasn’t she the queen? Wasn’t this palace hers, after all? Stupid, dangerous, but when she pushed through the branches Ineni was waiting for her. His skin was warm. It smelled of the trees.

When Ahmose returned to the feast, flushed and shaking with excitement and guilt, she entered the hall to find Sitamun bending over Mutnofret’s shoulder, whispering. The second queen found Ahmose’s eyes, studied them while her servant spoke into her ear. And she smiled.

TWENTY-FOUR

The day after the Festival of Khonsu was muggy and uncomfortable with flies. It seemed impossible that the flood could be so low, with such a day as today, with the air so wet and dense that every breath tasted of reeds and mud. Ahmose waited on her cairn for the spotted horses and scratched her itching skin through the coarse linen dress. The sky was strangely subdued, hazy, as though gauzy fabric stretched from horizon to horizon.

There was hardly another soul on the road. Between the light traffic and the dampness of the air, there were no distant banners of dust to give travelers away. She saw Ineni first as a dark speck fading out of Waset, detaching itself from the wall of the city, growing, forming itself into tiny horses and shrunken chariot as he drove toward the crossroads. She was on her feet and smiling before she could make out his face.

Ineni pulled the horses to a stop. She ran to the chariot, took his hand with a welling excitement under her heart.

“
Kiss me!”

He frowned, and hesitated. “Ahmose, you know I adore you, but last night was…”

“
I’m your queen! Do as I say and kiss me!” She pulled him to her, pressed her mouth to his, guided his hand to her breast. It was as if her body exerted some strange control over him. His objection melted away. He pinched her nipple through the rough fabric, and it scratched at her, hurting deliciously. She shivered.

“
Let’s get off the road,” he said, and broke away from her to stir the horses into action.

They climbed the dirt path again to their rock on the hill. This was where they came most often to be alone together. The rock was as familiar to her now as her own bed.

She unknotted her dress while Ineni hobbled the horses. The cloth fell away, so she stood in nothing but her sandals and wig. When he straightened from his work, his eyes were on her body for a long, breathless time. Then he came to her, and lifted her up. Her sandaled feet tapped on the rock. She stood over him. He pressed his face against her belly, his fingernails pricking at her spine until she arched her hips backward. Then he hunched, and his breath was against the place between her legs, and she gasped when she felt the fire of his kiss there. She held tight to his shoulders so her shivering legs wouldn’t drop her to the stone.

Something just as hot and wet as Ineni’s mouth fell on her shoulder. Then her arm. Then her back. She opened her eyes. Ineni’s back was speckled with shimmering light. A horse whinnied. The ground began to hiss, and in an instant Ahmose’s body was soaking and chilled.

Ineni looked around, eyes wide, mouth gaping. He ran a few steps toward the horses, which were tossing their heads and lashing their tails, then back to Ahmose, who hopped about on the rock and grabbed for her tangled gown.

“
Get the horses,” she cried over the sound of water pounding earth. She managed to pull the wet dress around herself and worked it into a sloppy knot. Water pelted her from above and below, splashing up off the hard stony ground to cover her hem with mud. She ran to help Ineni manage the beasts.

“
Unhook them from the chariot,” he called.

She’d never hitched a horse before, but she seized one leather line running from harness to chariot and followed it with her hand. It was obvious enough where it hooked. It took her only a moment to pull the strap free.

“
Now the other!”

She dodged around the back of the vehicle. It lurched toward her as the horse backed, screaming, and she nearly slipped in the mud, but righted herself on the wheel. The other horse was free in an instant. Ineni pulled the horses, still linked together by their harnesses, away from the cart, allowing them to kick and dance in a circle around him. He held tight to the long reins. His mouth moved; he must be soothing them, but all she could hear was the roar of the rain.

At last the horses seemed resigned. They stood still, ears pinned, backs hunched against the stinging rain. Ahmose came toward them slowly.

“
I’ve never seen rain before,” she said, teeth chattering.

“
Nor I. I’ve read about it plenty. We’re lucky to be on the highlands. A sudden fall like this can make floods all through the valley. Kills livestock. People, too, if they’re caught in a wash.”

Kills livestock
. With food so scarce, Egypt could ill afford to lose a single goat or calf. She swallowed hard. “What do you think it means?”

Ineni’s eyes were shadowed under the dense grey sky. She could read none of his feelings in his face, but his silence spoke well enough. She looked away, ashamed. This was Horus’ wrath, surely. Horus had seen their wickedness, had disapproved of their defiling the sacred Feast of Khonsu. He had opened up the skies in punishment. Now Egypt would lose precious cattle, and it was Ahmose’s fault.
I’m sorry
, her ka cried out.
I’m sorry, Lord Horus! I will never
…even in her own thoughts the words were bitter. She forced them out, resolute, chastened. “We can’t do this again, Ineni. The gods – they won’t have it. If I’m to be God’s Wife, I must keep myself only for Amun. Amun, and my earthly husband.”

He nodded, patting a horse’s soaking muzzle, not looking at her. “I know.”

“
I would have it otherwise, if I could.”

“
And I.”

“
But it can’t be. We know that now.”

One hand came free of the reins and touched her lightly at the nape of her neck, trailed down the wet cloth clinging to her back, all the way to the back of one thigh. She wanted to sob, to rail against the gods. Instead, she stood still and took Horus’ rebuke. Each of the thousand-thousand drops that stung her skin shamed her. Never again.

***

Ineni drove her all the way back to Ipet-Isut. The rain ceased as suddenly as it had come on, and a cold wind blew the grey sky away to the south. A band of colors arced across the river between Waset and the Holy House. The foreign beauty of it was piercing, shocking.
Every sensation is weightier with my heart broken
. Ahmose kept her hands on the chariot’s rail all the way home.

She didn’t care if the temple guards saw her climb down from the steward’s chariot, soaked through with a face like stone. She marched past them in her cheap wig and smeared makeup, down Ipet-Isut’s avenue, which was stunned and deserted in the wake of the downpour. She kicked her chamber door closed and stripped off the gown for the second time. It hit the floor with a wet smack. She untied her sandals and threw them across the room, heaved her wig at the wall, climbed miserably into her bed before she saw the scroll lying on her bedside table. It stared at her, taunting and ominous. With trembling fingers she picked it up and untied the red cord that bound it.

You have taken my title, and flaunted it before the court. You have betrayed your family. All my children are dead, and I have no more happiness in this world. I am an old woman, with no strength to punish you in this life as you deserve; and if the priests believe you the God’s Wife, there is nothing I can do but this. You take my last shred of joy for yourself, and so I curse you with all the unhappiness of an old woman’s heart.

Ahmose sucked in a ragged breath. Nefertari. Had Mutnofret told her? Or had word simply reached the estate in the southern hills at last? It hardly mattered now. That arrow was loosed, and nothing Ahmose could do would call it back into her quiver.

Cursed with unhappiness. Lady of sorrow. She gave voice to her sadness at last, pulling her blanket over her head and wailing, wailing. How could it go so wrong just as it went so right? Was this Horus, or some darker god who cut at her heart? Was there any difference now? She howled under her blanket until her eyes were swollen and hot. When Twosre came in to sit silently at her side, patting, stroking, she stopped her keening but not her tears.

TWENTY-FIVE

Again the Nile rose, spans shorter than the year before. The harvest was small, the stores near empty, the cattle thin and dull-coated. Men muttered. Women’s eyes were dark. The Black Land reeled on the verge of a plunge into famine.

Nothing that could be salted and eaten was thrown back into the river. Suspicious stews were prepared in Ipet-Isut with stringy white meat or tough chunks of fish, bony fins still attached. The broth was watery and greasy. There was little bread and less milk, and all the fruits were withered or over-ripe. Ahmose ate it all, and gratefully. Her belly was never empty, and she thanked the gods for that blessing. She had no idea whether the same was true of the rekhet. No reports of death by starvation had yet reached her, but that did not mean people weren’t dying. She saved bits of the best fish and meat and porridge from every meal she ate, burning these offerings at every sanctuary in the Holy House by turns. She pleaded with the gods to spare her people, to intervene. But the gods were silent, and Ahmose was guilty and afraid.

There was no feast for Prince Wadjmose’s weaning. The prince marked two years of age quietly, with no public acclaim. It was not fitting for the Pharaoh’s son, but feasts were an ostentation the throne could no longer afford. Even at the palace, meals were smaller, simpler, and less savory. Mutnofret complained daily, but there was nothing to be done. All of Egypt must wait out the lean times and save feasting for future days. Even the Pharaoh’s house must be humble and patient.

“
It’s not fitting that Wadjmose’s weaning should go uncelebrated, though,” Ahmose said to Twosre one dull, dry morning. They were picking scraggly herbs in Ahmose’s palace garden in the hour before court came to session. “He is the first prince. And I’m sure when Tut returns, Wadjmose will be the heir. There should be some sort of acknowledgment. Just not a feast.”

Twosre shrugged. “Of course, of course, but what to do? Any kind of celebration at the palace is always feasted. It wouldn’t make the nobles think highly of the prince if frog stew and watered-down milk were offered them.”

“
Why don’t we have a ceremony at Ipet-Isut? There’ll be no expectation of a feast there, I’d think. A feast wouldn’t be seemly. But it would mark the occasion, at least.”

“
A fine idea. You and the High Priest could hold it in the forecourt of the Amun temple. Quite a big crowd can fit there. No one will miss a feast, if they get the honor of attending a ceremony at the Temple of Amun.”