The Sekhmet Bed (37 page)

“
I won’t. You’re right, Ahmose. I must name my heir. But once the choice is made, it’s final, unless…unless the heir should die. I still hope that you might…”

“
I’ll never have a son, Thutmose. I know it. I have my son already. Make your choice soon, and for the gods’ sake, make the right choice.”

Before he could argue, she turned and left the garden. Hatshepsut was very solemn in her arms.

THIRTY-EIGHT

The great communal garden at the House of Women made an ideal neutral ground. Ahmose would often meet Mutnofret there, and together they would walk the paths, chatting about things of little import, taking careful, uneasy stock of one another while Hatshepsut and the other princes played with the harem children among the flower beds. Sometimes they’d join in women’s games in the shade groves, or watch the harem girls practice their dancing and singing. Always the children flickered about them like a flock of brown birds, bobbing and screeching as they played, their sidelocks flying like pennants in the wind.

Here in the garden of their youth, Ahmose could almost love Mutnofret again. She’d allowed herself to hope, on the evening of Ramose’s birth when her sister had spoken through her semsemet haze, that Mutnofret had accepted her place – her children’s place – at last. But although Mutnofret no longer seemed likely to fight with quartz rings and rekhet, there was still a gleam in her eye whenever she looked at Hatshepsut. Ahmose didn’t like it. She could never speak to the second queen as she had to Tut, of Amun’s son, of a princess that was really a prince. Mutnofret would never understand. Tut didn’t understand, come to that. And so, because Ahmose could tell her sister nothing of Hatshepsut’s ka, Mutnofret must still harbor a secret hope for her own children. Ahmose had only a single pawn on the senet board – female – while Mutnofret had three, and all were sons.

Ahmose kept her thoughts to herself, and watched the children play.

She had come to love her nephews well since her pregnancy. The boys looked very much alike, all of them with Mutnofret’s black eyes and wide mouth, but their personalities were as dissimilar as could be.

Wadjmose, the eldest, was serious and proper, with a smile that was grudgingly given but dazzling when it appeared, like the sun through Peret’s fog. He was their general, leading all the children in games of war among the flowers. He would often sit beneath a sycamore to fashion toy bows for the other harem children from branches and twists of flax thread. He was stern as he worked, with a furrow between his brows that was just like Tut’s. He was eight, quick with his tutors, and excited that soon he would enter basic military training: caring for horses, throwing a spear, running, climbing, firing a real bow.

Amunmose, six years old now, was the mischief-maker of the group. When he smiled, the spaces between his teeth hinted that he would grow to have his father’s big, toothy grin. Of all Thutmose’s children, Amunmose was the one who most resembled the Pharaoh. He even had his father’s jackal-bark laugh, and he let it fly frequently, especially after he’d leapt out of the bushes, hands held up like a lion’s claws, to send a band of little girls scattering in all directions, or after he’d tossed a spider into a harem lady’s wig. Neither Mutnofret nor his nurse could rein him in. Both had stopped trying. Ahmose always tried to keep from laughing at the boy’s pranks. She usually failed.

Ramose, at three, was still soft and timid, though Hatshepsut’s influence had brought out some courage in the boy. He followed Hati everywhere, her quiet shadow, getting up to all the same trouble and crying every time they were scolded. With luck, he would mature into a stronger boy and would, perhaps, make a fine husband for Hatshepsut. He was biddable, at least, and always ceded to Hatshepsut’s whims. Though it posed a problem: what would his title be, as the husband of the king?
A puzzle for another day
. Ahmose put it out of her head and went on with her senet game in the shade of the women’s favorite grove.

“
Mother!” A plaintive voice carried across the garden.

Baketamun, bent over the board, looked up in alarm. “Opet, I’m here. Under the trees.”

Baketamun’s girl, willowy and bronze-haired, stumbled around a bed of flowers. She carried a ripped doll in her hands, and her thin, fine face was red with tears. “She’s dead!” Opet waved the doll in the air. Bits of goose down drifted out of the rent in its side to float away through the flowers.

“
Oh, by the gods,” Baketamun said, sighing. “What did you do to your doll? I’ll need to stitch her back up again.”

“
She’s dead! That beastly little girl who dresses like a boy killed her!”

Baketamun glanced at Ahmose. There was a cringing apology in her look. She turned back to her sobbing daughter. “Opet, you must not speak so rudely of the First Princess.”

Ahmose sighed and stood up, brushing her dress clean. “Hatshepsut did this to your doll?”

Opet stared up at Ahmose in horror. “Great Lady, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult the princess.” The girl bowed so low the torn doll brushed the ground.

“
It’s all right, Opet. You don’t have to ask my forgiveness. Hatshepsut must ask yours. And Hathor knows she certainly can be beastly sometimes. Where is she?”

Baketamun laid a gentle hand on her daughter’s back, urging the girl to speak up. Opet took a deep, shaky breath, then pointed toward the big sycamore.

“
I’ll make it right,” Ahmose said. “You wait here.”

She strode off toward the sycamore, but after no more than four or five steps, she faltered. There was a sudden sickness in the air, a heaviness that chilled her. She paused to listen. The children’s voices were farther away than the sycamore. Had Wadjmose led them off in some game? Her skin prickled. Something was not right here – not right with the garden, not right with the day. She looked back to the grove, but if any of the other women felt as she did, none showed it. Baketamun and her friends were bent around Opet and her doll, and Mutnofret, gathered on the other side of the grove with a crowd of harem women, led them in laughter over some bit of gossip. In the close air, the sound of merriment was as discordant as the noise a harp makes when it’s dropped to the ground. Ahmose turned back toward the tree, wondering. She reached out to seek the gods, and found there a bleary, diffused bluster, as if they were hard at work and couldn’t be bothered to speak.

Then, like a voice in a nightmare, her own words to Tut on the night of Hatshepsut’s birth floated up in her mind.
Amun’s will shall be done, whatever either of us may wish.
It had been more than a year since Ahmose had dared mention the heirship, but she knew with a deep, shocking chill the day of reckoning had come.

She ran.

The children were not under the sycamore, though dolls and Wadjmose’s twig-bows were scattered on the ground as if they’d been dropped in a moment of distraction. She swallowed hard and held her breath, listening. A murmur of children’s voices came from beyond a stand of fig trees. She ran toward it, left the path, pushed through the branches.

On the other side of the figs, the garden swept out in a wide arc of grass. The children were clustered on the far side, whispering and staring at a heap of gray-brown that lay on the lawn between them and the fig trees, between them and Ahmose. She stared at the heap, too, and took one hesitant step toward it. It was a hare, she realized. Dead. A rather large hare, with blood coming from holes in its back where some great bird had once held it. The sight filled her with dread.

Movement from the knot of children. Three forms broke from the group. Three little bobbing brown birds in dirty white kilts. Wadjmose, tugging at Ramose’s hand, trying to hold him back. And out in front of them, cocksure, Hatshepsut. She strode toward the dead hare with her fists doubled up at her sides. Ahmose put a hand out, trying to summon up a voice to shout at her daughter, to stop her, though Amun’s will would be done. She remained mute and frozen.

“
Stop, Ramose,” Wadjmose yelled, but the smaller boy bit his brother’s hand, suddenly possessed by his half-sister’s spirit; and when he was free, he ran after Hatshepsut.

The girl glanced back to see her playmate running toward her, and all at once it was a race to see who could reach the dead hare first. Hatshepsut’s knees made her kilt fly up as she pelted across the lawn.

A slithering blue shadow passed over the grass, then two, three, circling, drawing a cold ring around the running children and the still hare. Ahmose looked up. Vultures, kiting on broad wings, silhouetted against the sun. They’d come for the carcass.

In an instant, as one vulture’s shadow passed over Hatshepsut’s body, the girl stumbled and fell, sprawled out her full length several spans from the hare. The knot of children, watching from afar, shrieked and laughed. But Ramose did not fall. He kept running, passed his sister, shouted in triumph as he reached the hare.

Another reached the hare, too, at the same time.

The white bird as it landed was like a swimmer’s legs in deep water. Every movement of the vulture’s body was clearly defined, slowly enacted, precise and dragging. The black-edged wings shouldered up; the white-crusted talons came forward, touched the ground, hop-hop-hop as wings folded back against sleek body. Ramose jerked to a stop above the hare. The vulture’s beak, curved like a blade, opened in a hiss.

The boy hesitated, staring, and the bird hesitated, too, the feathers on its back raising. Then it lunged at him. Its beak pierced his arm above the wrist. Ramose screamed.

Ahmose was at his side in a flash. The vulture loped away across the ground and lumbered into the air.

She scooped Ramose into her arms, held him tight against her chest, while he shrilled his terror into her ear. Wadjmose was beside them now, running in front of the pack of children. “Aunt Ahmose,” he wailed, “I told him not to go near it!”

“
Go get your mother,” Ahmose said, and Wadjmose, ever the good boy, went flying off into the garden.

Ahmose carried her nephew into the fig grove, where at least the shade might comfort him. With luck, the vulture’s bite wasn’t severe. Perhaps it didn’t break the skin at all. She pushed through the branches, shielding Ramose as best she could from their clawing fingers. Hatshepsut was right beside her, gazing up from the garden floor with solemn eyes. When Ahmose looked into her daughter’s face, hope for Ramose trickled out of her.

Amun’s will shall be done.

She set Ramose on the ground. His bitten arm had been folded against Ahmose’s chest; when he was lying beneath the fig trees, she could see the severity of the wound. It was bleeding badly. It had soaked the front of her gown.

Hatshepsut watched the scene with mild curiosity in her eyes, sucking on her lower lip.

“
Take off your kilt,” Ahmose told her daughter. Hatshepsut complied and handed the garment over.

Ahmose wound it tightly about the boy’s arm and knotted it, praying it would hold until a physician arrived. “Shh, shh,” she said, scooping Ramose into her arms again and rocking him. “It hurts, I know, but you’ll be all right.”

“
What happened?” Mutnofret was beside them now under the fig branches. Ahmose passed the boy to his mother.

“
A vulture,” Ahmose said. “It bit him.”

“
A what?”

“
There was a dead hare, and vultures came.” Ahmose glanced at Hatshepsut, who stood naked and rocking on her heels, hands clasped behind her back. Better not to mention that Ramose had been racing the princess. “Ramose ran toward it before anybody could stop him. A vulture landed near the hare, and the bird bit him.”

Mutnofret stared at her, eyes wide, mouth dropped open in shock.

“
He needs a physician,” Ahmose said. “It’s bleeding badly.”

Mutnofret glanced at the stain on Ahmose’s dress, and nodded. Awkwardly, she took Ramose in her arms, hurried down the path.

Ahmose knelt once more and grabbed her daughter, hugged her fiercely. If Hatshepsut had reached the carcass first…but no. No, of course. Ramose’s fate was not Hatshepsut’s. An icy hand clutched at her heart, and she let her daughter go. The princess wandered to the path, peered after Mutnofret, and said nothing.

Ahmose became aware of miserable sniffling nearby. It was Wadjmose. His head hung low, and now and then he brushed at his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Come here,” she said to him, holding out her arms. He drifted to her without looking up. She pulled him close. “You are not to blame, Wadjmose.”