The Sekhmet Bed (40 page)

Hatshepsut was not like the other four-year-old girls. She shunned dolls, unless it was to rip them apart. When she was made to wear a pretty dress, she rolled it over and over at the waist and tied it with a sash so the skirt hung short like a boy’s kilt. And when Ahmose encouraged her to let her hair grow, she screamed and kicked until Sitre-In gave in and shaved her scalp bare. Just like a boy’s. She wasn’t growing long and lean like the daughters of the harem women, either. She was broad, strong, and tanned from playing in the sun at Wadjmose’s war games. The only hint of her femininity was a soft half-ruggedness about her face, and matted black lashes so thick she always looked like she was wearing kohl.

Sitre-In worked constantly to teach the wild girl proper behavior. The whole family sat now at a long table for supper, and the young nurse slapped at Hatshepsut’s wrists, for she had reached for the bread before the king.

Hatshepsut hissed like a cat. It amused her to make animal noises. Sitre-In shoved the platter of bread out of the girl’s reach, and Hatshepsut scowled at the nurse, rocking her bottom side-to-side in the bowl seat of her stool.

“
All right now,” Tut said. “We need to remember our manners, Hati.”

“
You remember
your
manners,” she shouted. “I’m hungry!”

Tut’s eyes crinkled. Ahmose shot him a heavy look.
Don’t laugh. It will only encourage her.
The Pharaoh straightened in his chair, frowned at his daughter. Hatshepsut squeaked, and sat very still, her hands resting in her lap, eyes very wide and staring straight ahead. Pretending to be a temple statue, Ahmose assumed.

“
That’s better,” Tut said. “Now, Wadjmose, since it is your special day, you take the first serving of every dish.”

Ahmose smiled at her nephew. The boy eagerly picked up the platter, selected the best piece of bread for himself, and passed it to his mother. It was indeed a special day for him. Wadjmose had completed his first day of real military training. Not just horse care and running with the other boys, but true soldier’s work. He’d entered training almost three years earlier than most boys. The fact that Wadjmose was First Prince of Egypt surely had something to do with it, but all the credit couldn’t go to his blood and birth. Wadjmose was exceptionally bright and serious in his studies. He applied himself wholly to everything he did. The Instructor of Boys had recommended Wadjmose for advanced training without any prompting from Tut’s stewards. The boy had his father’s ability with bow and horses. He, too, would be a strong arm for Egypt.

“
How was your first day? Tell me all about it!” Ahmose leaned her elbows on the table and watched Wadjmose eat. He dipped his bread in honey and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing quickly. They must have worked him hard. She’d never seen Wadjmose with such an appetite before.

“
It was wonderful,” he said, his mouth still full.

“
Remember your manners,” Hatshepsut yelled.

“
Quiet, Hati. It’s your brother’s turn to talk.”

Hatshepsut knew better than to try scowling at Ahmose. The girl went back into her wide-eyed temple-statue pose. Ahmose held the platter of bread out, but Hatshepsut didn’t move, staring ahead with her huge, unblinking eyes. Ahmose dropped a piece of bread into the princess’s bowl, then passed the platter along to Sitre-In.

“
I got to drive a chariot,” Wadjmose said. “
Two
horses! And then we ran laps, and then I had to carry a shield.”

“
It sounds like fun.”

“
It’s hard work. The shield was heavy. I’m sore, and hungry.” He took another huge bite of his bread.

“
The Instructor of Boys tells me you were especially good with the chariot,” Tut said from the head of the table. “I’m proud of you.”

Wadjmose blushed.

Hatshepsut shifted on her seat. She looked for a long time at Tut, then at Wadjmose. “When do I start soldier school?”

Mutnofret, sitting across the table from Ahmose, raised her eyebrows, then turned to smack Amunmose’s wrist; the boy had let out a donkey-bray laugh.

“
What?” Hatshepsut stared hard at Amunmose.

“
You’re a
girl
, stupid,” he said. “You can’t be a soldier.”

“
I am not!”

“
Yes you are! I’ve never seen you piss standing up!”

“
All right,” Tut shouted. “That’s enough! Amunmose, you’re old enough to know better.”

“
So is she,” Amunmose muttered. “When’s she going to learn she’s a girl?”

“
She knows she’s a girl,” Tut said.

Hatshepsut sucked in a breath, ready to shout a denial at her father, but Ahmose and Sitre-In each seized one of the girl’s arms.

“
Enough out of you,” Sitre-In said. “Sit and eat quietly, or go to bed hungry.”

Desperate to change the subject, Ahmose turned to her other nephew. “And what are you learning in school, Amunmose?”

“
Numbers,” the boy said, sulking. “I hate numbers.”

“
Numbers are important to learn. You’ll be a great man some day, and you must know how to keep track of numbers.”

“
Amunmose is excellent with numbers,” Mutnofret said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “He’s very clever.”

“
I’m clever,” Hatshepsut said.

Amunmose rolled his eyes.

“
I am,” she insisted. “I’m cleverer than you!”

“
What did I tell you, Hatshepsut?” Sitre-In stood and took the girl’s hand. “No supper for you!”

“
No!” Hatshepsut screeched, grabbing her bread and stuffing it in her mouth. Sitre-In, with the patience of a goddess, pulled the bread out again. The nurse dragged Hatshepsut out of the great hall.

***

Ahmose took her time finishing supper. She was in no hurry to rush to Hatshepsut’s room to comfort the girl. The princess had been a trial lately. It seemed every day she craved more and more of her father’s approval. Any favor Tut showed to either of the boys was met by Hatshepsut with sulking at best, and outright disruption at worst. Hatshepsut was cultivating a jealous streak as wide as the river. Ahmose wasn’t sure how to curb it.

After supper, she found Sitre-In sewing in the far end of Ahmose’s private garden. She asked whether she might sit, too. The evening air was refreshingly brisk, and the garden was especially peaceful tonight.

“
Of course you may sit, Great Lady,” Sitre-In said, shifting her neat pile of linen on the bench to make room.

“
Did you get anything to eat, Sitre-In?”

“
Ah, Great Lady. I had a friend from the kitchens bring me my supper.”

“
And Hatshepsut?”

“
None for her. Just as I promised.”

Ahmose sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I suppose that’s for the best.”

Sitre-In gave Ahmose a level, matronly look. Were nurses born with that look, Ahmose wondered, or did they have to practice it? “Hatshepsut needs rules. And consequences for breaking the rules. I know she is a princess, but if she is to grow into a gracious and fair queen, like you, Great Lady, then she must understand why we have rules.”

King
, Ahmose did not say.
She is to be king
. Even the girl’s nurse wouldn’t understand. “She wants to become a soldier.”

“
No doubt. And she’d be a good one, I would wager,” Sitre-In said, laughing.

“
I wonder.”

The nurse laid her sewing in her lap and looked at Ahmose. Not with the nurse’s stare this time, but with genuine surprise. “Great Lady? Forgive me, but you can’t be serious.”

“
I don’t know. Would you believe me if I told you…” She trailed off, uncertain. Sitre-In would think her a fool. But the nurse was waiting with her brows still arced over her green eyes. Ahmose took a deep breath. “Would you believe me if I told you Hatshepsut has a male ka?”
Or eight of them?

Sitre-In did not seem at all surprised. “Yes, I’d believe you,” she said, and picked up her needle again.

“
You aren’t startled at all.”

“
I can’t think why I should be. Just look at how she behaves, Great Lady. Have you ever known a
girl
to be so fierce?”

And suddenly, it seemed so easy and natural to share all her thoughts and fears with this sensible woman. She told Sitre-In everything. Ahmose’s knowing, from a young age, as if by divine prophecy that she would never have a son. Tut’s dream. The vision on the night Hatshepsut was conceived. The rest, too. How Tut wouldn’t name Hatshepsut heir because of her sex. How Nekhbet took Ramose away as punishment. By the end of it, Sitre-In had laid her sewing down again, and was watching Ahmose’s face with rapt attention.

“
What do you think, then?” Ahmose said. “What should we do with the girl?”

Sitre-In considered the question for a long time. At last she said, “I don’t think the people would understand, Great Lady. You and I know Hati, but we are her mawats, her mother and her nurse. The court and the commoners and the priests – they will never see her ka. All they can see is her body. And it is a girl’s body.”

Ahmose nodded. “You’re right, of course. It’s been a year since…since Ramose. A year, and the Pharaoh still hasn’t said a thing about an heir. And nothing else has happened, thanks be to all the gods. We have lost no one else. Maybe he is right, after all. Maybe I’m to have a son one day. An
actual
son, in body and in ka. I’ve thought for years I would never have a son, but…”

Sitre-In’s needle sparkled in the moonlight. She drew her thread in, out, in, before she answered. “Even a very great priestess might be wrong now and again, Great Lady. You could still have a son.”

“
Yes. I suppose you’re right.” But Ramose. Why was that price paid? Why punish the royal family in such a cruel way, if the son who would be heir hadn’t even been conceived yet? It didn’t make sense. But Ahmose didn’t have the energy to fight it anymore. “We should start educating her. She needs to learn to be a proper girl. And some day, a proper woman.”

“
No soldier-school for her, then?” Sitre-In sounded amused, and a bit disappointed. Ahmose understood. It was a hard thing to deny Hatshepsut, even for a sensible disciplinarian like Sitre-In. There was a power in the girl’s eyes, when she got what she wanted, when she was pleased. She had a way of making others want to please her.

“
I suppose not. We should see about finding her a music teacher. And she should take dance lessons with the girls in the harem. It’s time for the prince to become a princess.”

Ahmose nodded, but in her heart she was uneasy. The words of Mut that terrible night in the temple. The finger touching the water. The ripples spreading. Still, a year later, these things unnerved her.

There was a rustle among the flower beds. Ahmose looked up, startled. Hatshepsut, dressed now in her boy’s kilt, stomped over the black shoulder of earth carrying a little white jar in her hands. It was a chamber pot. She set it on the path in front of the bench and stood over it.

“
Watch,” she said. “I can, too.”

And, lifting her kilt slightly, she urinated into the jar, standing upright. Hardly a drop splashed.

FORTY-TWO

All in all, Hatshepsut adjusted well to life as a girl. Once she realized the Pharaoh was pleased when she wore dresses, practiced temple dances with the other harem children, and plunked clumsily at her harp, she applied herself to her lessons with a focus Ahmose had never seen in any four-year-old. The girl even allowed her hair to grow out. Sitre-In wetted it daily, combing it toward Hatshepsut’s sidelock so it would lay in place until it grew long enough to work into the braid. In just a few weeks’ time she had learned some basic melodies on her harp, though she often threw it across the room in frustration. It was hard for her to sit still and be ladylike, Ahmose knew. Especially when Amunmose and his friends ran about the gardens in their kilts, making war.