The Sekhmet Bed (33 page)

What the voice said made no difference. It was not here, anyhow. Not really. It touched her mind with a feather’s touch. It was the pay-no-heed glance of an idle, passing thought.

The bed was here. The bed was real. The odors of water and bread were real.

She opened her eyes, though she did not feel wakeful. She did not feel tired, either; there was no point in keeping them shut.

The room – if it was a room; she saw no walls – was a dark, penetrating red. This was not Mut’s red, the bright crimson of carnelian stone. It was a low, sweet, mysterious color. The red of wine, the red of the moon’s blood. There was no light here, yet she saw. Her arms and legs lay easy on the wine-dark bed linens, soft angles, bent flax stems waiting to be spun. The bed’s footboard, red like the rest, reared up to dominate her sight. It was carved as if by the hand of Ptah with the perfect image of nine striding boys, their arms interlinked. Ahmose stared at the boys, wondering. She raised herself up onto her elbows. The carved boys smiled as if they knew she looked upon them, and they were glad her eyes saw them at last.

She has slept for hours, Mighty Horus. Forgive me. I brought her back from Ipet-Isut as soon as I could.
That voice. She knew it, too. A woman’s voice, an earthy comfort like goat’s milk, like fresh figs. But the woman wasn’t here, either. No one was really here but Ahmose and the nine striding boys.

There is nothing to forgive. I’m the one who should be asking forgiveness. Gods forgive me, they hand me a throne and an empire, and I can’t even keep two women from tearing each other apart.

“
Ahmose. God-chosen. Come to me, my daughter.”

This voice, now. This was real. High, female, a mild night-music. Drumming among the reeds. Dancing in the fields. She swung her legs over the bed’s side and stood on moon-blood nothingness. It held her. She walked.

“
Come to me. I will give you a gift tonight. I will put a gift inside you.”

Ahmose went toward the voice. The voice came toward her. They met in the dark never-there. The goddess stood before her. Heket, the lady of frogs, clad in green, holding her fine towering staff, smiling. Heket took her hand. The goddess’s skin was smooth and cool. It was damp like leaves in the morning.

“
A gift for you, a gift for Egypt, a gift inside you,” Heket sang,
a-thrum-thrum-thrum
, “a gift for the river.”

They walked through veils of red. Breath of myrrh.

Can they ever forgive me?
Faint, far, buzzing man’s voice, of no consequence. It didn’t matter at all, at all.

Lord Horus. Do you mean the gods? Or your wives?

The man did not answer.

Heket led her forward, and forward, and forward still. She did not look back, but she knew the very fine bed was no more. Another veil parted. A glowing back to her, the creak of a wheel, the musky scent of a drover’s herd. The broad back turned. He looked up at her with golden eyes shining beneath an arm’s-breadth span of twisted horn.

She bowed to the ram-god, the shaper of spirits, hand to heart. “Khnum.”

“
Show the god-chosen what you spin on your wheel, on your wheel,” Heket sang.

Khnum stood aside. The wheel at his feet spun once, twice, thrice, slowed.

She was praying at the Temple of Amun, Lord Horus. She prayed for nearly twelve hours without taking food or water. The priests finally let me in to see her. They would admit no one else. I begged her to come home, but she wouldn’t speak to me. I don’t think she saw me or heard me at all, Lord. She was desperate, I think. She exhausted herself. The physicians said she’ll recover, that she just needs rest, but I fear for her. I’ve never seen her like this. I never saw her pray that way before.

What did she pray for, Twosre?
That distant voice sounded tired, hunted.

An amendment to her wrongs, my king. She prayed for salvation.

The wheel stilled. Ahmose blinked at what it held. A golden boy-child, shimmering, perfect in form, freshly shaped by Khnum’s hands. The ram-god nodded: his work was good. A bright, strong boy. A prince’s ka.

“
So you see him, Egypt’s gift,” Heket said, and took her hand again. In an instant Khnum and the boy’s ka were gone. In their place there appeared another bed, greater than the one she’d left. Its legs were a lioness’s paws with claws unsheathed. The footboard bore the head of Sekhmet, she of the stern eye and the bloody hand. This bed was a place of power. Heket waved and its bare slats were covered with cushions and linens, all as silver-bright as beaten moonlight. The frog-goddess gestured to the bed, and Ahmose, obedient, fearless, eager, climbed onto it and lay waiting.

She has forgiveness from me, by all the gods
, the man’s voice said, far from this red and silver place.
I’ve wronged her. She was barely more than a child when she came to me. I should have protected her better. Let me go to her. If she’s not awake, so be it. I just want to sit with her. I just want to see that she’s all right, the poor thing.

Veils upon veils parted. A tall, blue shadow rippled within the red. Its misty parts came together. The shape of a man. No, not a man, for this being was too perfect, too fine and strong, to be a man. Two great golden plumes rose from his crown. His face was maat.

“
My lord Amun,” Ahmose breathed.

He raised a hand to her face. The ankh was there, between his fingers. The breath of life. It – he – was too perfect to look on. She closed her eyes, and inhaled.

Breath of myrrh. Wind from the river.

A spark came to life inside her.

***

The room was black striped with silver, not red. And there was a floor. There, walls, painted and solid. Plain – oh, how plain, after the beauty of the veils! Hinges muttered. She turned her eyes toward the noise. A black form, backlit by brazier light. The light was coming from her anteroom and this poor place was her bed chamber in Waset. Yes, of course. Waset. She lay on a bed that was not the Sekhmet bed of her dreams, but an earthly bed, the Great Royal Wife’s bed, so plain after the glory of Heket’s gift.

She could bear to look on the man who came through the door, and so it was not her consort, not Amun the god. She raised herself up on one tired elbow to look at him over the curving bluff of her hip.

Thutmose stared down at her. A shaft of light from her pillared wall fell over half his face, split it with precise symmetry so his right eye was lost in blackness, his left, bloodshot and surrounded by smudged kohl, lit with the moon’s divine brilliance. His look was kind, and forgiving, and asking of forgiveness.

Ahmose reached out a hand. He took it. Wordless, she pulled him down onto the bed.

THIRTY-FOUR

It wasn’t easy to resume life in the palace. Ahmose had grown so accustomed to Tut’s absence that having him here again was a melancholy sort of delight. Ahmose heard nothing of Ineni. Perhaps it was better that way. She wondered often what had become of him, where he was, what his clever mind was up to. She never mentioned his name, not even to Twosre, though she often dreamed up ways to send him a message or a reward. Surely he had earned something – gold, an estate. Ahmose owed him a treasure. His gentle ways had erased Ahmose’s fear of the bed. She had lain with Tut many times since the night Twosre brought her back from Ipet-Isut so exhausted she couldn’t stand. She’d lain with him and found joy in it, and pleasure, too. She’d lain with him and conceived a prince, though she’d needed only one time – the first time – for that. She was certain the child who stirred in her belly had sparked to life on that still, silver-black evening when she had dwelt in the presence of the gods. And she was certain it was not Thutmose’s child. Or, not
only
his.

With their husband returned, Ahmose and Mutnofret had built a shaky truce between them. For weeks after the beating, the second queen avoided Ahmose carefully, not even speaking of the Great Royal Wife as far as Ahmose could tell. Not a word, not a whisper. Mutnofret was behaving herself. Whether being caught out in treachery did the trick, or whether it was the physical punishment, Ahmose could not guess, and did not want to know. The memory of the harm she had caused her sister, the blood on Mutnofret’s face, her brittle laughter, was an arrow through Ahmose’s heart. For many days, she wondered whether Mutnofret’s ka had been broken, whether she had beaten it out with her sapling. Then Ahmose saw the second queen in their shared courtyard, and though Mutnofret would not look Ahmose in the eye, she still held her head high and proud, a queen to her center. So she was not broken. Only chastened. Ahmose slept easier at night, knowing Mutnofret’s ka was safe.

The babies in the two queens’ bellies grew in tandem. Ahmose heard no more whispers about infidelity, but still it comforted her to know that any who looked at the pair of them on their thrones saw two women with the Pharaoh’s children, growing larger together, growing riper together. It gave her a sense of security on her throne, and a oneness with her sister she had never felt before.

But there were changes Ahmose could not bring herself to accept entirely. Thutmose was dutiful and kind, but his failure to protect his wives from each other weighed on him, and he was not the same man who had left to fight the Hyksos. He was more pensive now, spending long hours alone in his chamber or riding through the hills without Ahmose, with only his guards for company. He visited the harem more often than either queen’s bed, where he must surely find a sense of peace he could never again feel in either of his wives’ arms. Ahmose did not grudge him this. She loved her friends in the harem, and was glad that they should have some of the Pharaoh’s attention. She knew they would be kind to her distant husband, would do their best to lift the shadow from his heart. Tut needed his comfort, too, in the wake of the trauma that had almost torn his family apart.

Ahmose’s former life – her childhood, the days of leisure with Thutmose, her time as God’s Wife – all these were gone. They could never come again. She would have wept daily for the loss, but she had the prince. She loved him with a love so fierce it frightened her. How was it possible to love a thing so? How was it possible to
be
a thing so? For Ahmose was her son, and the prince was Ahmose. They were body and ka. One could never have existed without the other. The Ahmose who had lived before the prince was conceived hadn’t really lived at all. There was no life before him. There was no love before him, not even the love she felt for her husband. It was like ashes on the wind, compared to the way her heart swelled whenever she felt the prince move inside her.

When he kicked or turned, she would lay her hand against him and wonder what he would be. Would he be fierce or thoughtful, playful or serious? Would be be as strong as a bull, like his father? How could she love him so, when she had never seen him? And when she did see him at last, how could she bare the doubling, the tripling of this tearing, singing adoration?

And she would see him, she knew. She would see his face. Death in childbed held no more fear. It had vanished in the red room. It had burned away on the Sekhmet bed. It was not that she was certain of surviving. She was still small; she would always be a small woman. No, life after birth was not a surety for Ahmose. But to see her son, at least once – to see him take his breath and scream his challenge to the waiting world…this she knew she would be granted. The prince was her gift from the gods. She would be allowed to look on their gift at least once. She would be allowed to feel that great cloudburst of love at least once. She knew it in her ka. She knew it with the kind of certainty only the god-chosen possess.

And if the gods had forgiven her for her sins, she would be allowed to see her boy grow into a man.

“
What will you name him?” Tut asked one cool evening as they drifted on the lake barge, picking at their awkward, uncomfortable supper, trying to rekindle a flame between them.

Ahmose cast her mind back like a net, back into the time before she had lived. The net brought back all things good and sweet. Spinning, the feel of the fibers twisting in her fingers, the spindle dropping and rising, the distaff against her shoulder. Aiya, golden, freckled, smiling tremulously with one hand on her big belly. Yes. It was a good name.

“
Hatshepsu,” she said, and cradled the prince in her hands as he turned like a falcon on the wind.