Daughter of the Gods (14 page)

When she was finished, she surveyed her handiwork, the figure of a man and a single word in hieroglyphs.

Senenmut.

Thut had sought to obliterate him completely, to kill Senenmut and destroy his body, to cut out his heart so he could never arrive in the Field of Reeds. But as long as Senenmut’s name and figure remained somewhere in this world, he could rise again. She had killed him, but she would keep him alive in the afterlife.

She owed him so much more, but this, at least, she could give him.

She tucked away the scrap of leather, hiding it in the bottom of the old reed basket with Sekhmet’s red amulet.

Remnants of another life.

Only then did she remember Senenmut’s note. Frantic that Sitre might have already taken the sheath to be laundered, she breathed a sigh of relief when she found it flung over a chair. Untying the string and carefully unrolling the delicate paper, she didn’t realize the tears had escaped until they dropped to the paper, blurring the single line of Senenmut’s almost illegible script.

I’d wait my whole life for you.

H
atshepsut had slept only once in the dark days following Senenmut’s death, but fanged demons and the albino witch had stalked her dreams.

Your name will live forever.

You shall be the downfall of those you love.

Egypt will prosper, but those closest to you shall find only anguish and ruin.

Senenmut was dead. Thut despised her. She’d betrayed and been betrayed.

A man was dead at her hands, and not just any man. A man she might have loved, had she been given the chance.

She didn’t sleep again, only turned her back toward the door and stared at the swirl of lotus flowers and frolicking red and white calves painted on the wall. It was then that she noticed a line of uneven notches carved into the plaster. She touched their rough edges, counting each one. Seventy-seven.

A lucky number.

A story from her childhood floated to her mind about a farmer’s daughter brought to her father’s palace as a concubine at the beginning of his reign. Hatshepsut had once come upon her mother talking about the girl with Sitre.

“An unlucky end for so lucky a woman,” Ahmose had said, shaking her head over her needlework. “She should have felt honored to be chosen for the pharaoh’s bed.”

Then her mother had looked up and seen Hatshepsut in the doorway. After that, the discussion had turned to talk of eye paints and perfume.

Hatshepsut rolled over for the first time in days. Sitre sat next to her bed, eyes closed and hands resting on her lap. An onyx grinding stone with half-ground pebbles of kohl lay forgotten at her side.

“Sitre, what happened to the girl who last lived in this room?”

Her
menat
’s eyes fluttered open and she reached out to touch Hatshepsut’s cheek. “So, you’ve decided to join the land of the living again.”

For now. That didn’t mean she was going to stay.

“The girl in this room? What happened?”

Sitre shook her head. “One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”

“I want to know. She was one of my father’s concubines, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, she was.” Sitre sighed. “And an ungrateful one at that. She asked to go home, but of course that wasn’t allowed.”

“But she left on her own, didn’t she? After seventy-seven days.”

“How did you know that?”

Hatshepsut glanced at the carved notches on the wall, envisioning the hennaed hand that had etched them. “Lucky guess. What happened to her?”

“She hanged herself with a linen belt,
Hemet.
” Sitre’s eyes flicked to the worn cedar beam running across the ceiling. “And don’t you go thinking you might want the same end. I’d follow you to the Field of Reeds just to wring your neck if you did.”

Hatshepsut rolled onto her back, imagining a body dangling from the beam. It was a tempting thought, but she didn’t deserve an easy escape. She’d have to find another way out of the Hall of Women.

Sitre’s hand touched hers. “This came for you a while ago.”

In her palm lay a pink lotus blossom, a little wilted but still fragrant. Attached was a scrap of papyrus.

Hatshepsut opened it, heart pounding at the thought that this might be a final message from Senenmut. She wasn’t sure she wanted to read it if it was.

Her blood went cold at the familiar handwriting.

Forgive me.

Mensah.

She crushed the flower and paper together in her fist, singeing them in the flame of an oil lamp before letting the fire overtake both. She would never forgive him, not as long as she lived.

“Was that from Mensah?” Sitre’s voice was soft, as if she feared that speaking too loud might cause Hatshepsut to break.

Hatshepsut nodded, unable to find words.

“Thutmosis has made him vizier.” Sitre glanced at Hatshepsut. “I thought you might wish to know.”

To know that her former lover had betrayed her and been rewarded with an elevation to the second-highest position in the Two Lands? How many punishments could she bear before the gods managed to destroy her?

“Sitre?”

“Yes?” She had gone back to grinding the kohl.

“I need to bribe a priest of Anubis.”

The grinding stopped. “Should I ask why?”

“I need to mummify something.”

Sitre’s face softened and she patted Hatshepsut’s hand. “I’ll get you whatever you need,
sherit
. I always will.”

•   •   •

It took a few days, but Sitre found a
wa’eb
priest of Anubis, one with the stench of death clinging to him, who was willing to tell her the forbidden secrets of mummification in exchange for a pair of gold bracelets. Muddling through his instructions as best they could, the women washed Senenmut’s heart with palm wine; swathed it in sacred linen discarded by the gods’ temples; and filled the ebony box with natron, myrrh, and cinnamon. Hatshepsut choked back a sob at the sweet smell of the familiar spice. Then, alone, Hatshepsut buried Senenmut’s heart in a quiet corner of the Hall of Women, under the shade of a sycamore tree.

“I will see you again in the Field of Reeds,” she whispered, smoothing the earth and sand. “I swear it.”

Tears threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed them away, embracing Sekhmet’s fury until she felt like a caged lion, ready to devour the first person who crossed her path. She hoped Mensah might be that person—she’d dreamed up at least a hundred unique ways to torture him in exchange for his treachery—but locked away in the Hall of Women, she’d likely never see him again. She’d have to content herself with imagining his body being pushed from a cliff or torn limb from limb by jackals. For now.

Sitre had finally thrown her out of her own chambers, after she’d hurled a faience urn against the wall and watched with some small satisfaction as it fractured into hundreds of blue fragments, like tiny shards of the sky.

She had to do something, anything. Otherwise she’d soon run out of vases.

There was one task she wasn’t looking forward to. She picked up the box inlaid with mother-of-pearl figures of Horus and Hathor that Mouse had prepared at her request and crossed the empty courtyard, catching sight of her mother’s chambers from the corner of her eye. Mutnofret had cited poor health and retired to a rich estate in the Nile delta—one renowned for its beekeepers and date farms—so now Ahmose was finally left in peace. Normally Hatshepsut might have slipped past, but a visit with her mother offered a welcome distraction. She rapped on the portal.

“Enter.”

The door groaned on ancient hinges. Her mother sat on a leather footstool, embroidering a colorful hem on a new sheath. “The dutiful daughter descends from on high to check in on her mother.” Ahmose spoke without malice, setting down her sewing and looking up. She gasped. “What happened to your eye?”

No amount of kohl could cover the evidence of the fight with Thut. The bruise had faded to a sickly shade of yellow around the edges.

Hatshepsut’s hand fluttered to her eye. ”It’s nothing—just a disagreement with Thut. How are you?”

“I may die from boredom soon. The only excitement I’ve had in months has been the arrival of that new chit, Aset.” Her mother’s lip twitched and she stabbed the fabric with the slim bone needle. “I was surprised to hear that Senenmut left court to return to his mud hut in Iuny. I thought the
rekhyt
and Thutmosis were close. Didn’t you spend some time with him as well?”

Hatshepsut nodded, unable to speak. If only Senenmut really had gone to Iuny. But she wouldn’t talk of that with her mother, or with anyone, for that matter. She blinked hard and motioned to the inlaid box of sweets she’d brought as a gift. “I’m on my way to visit Aset now.”

“Why in Set’s name would you do that?”

“Because I like her.” Not to mention she was indebted to her, not that candied dates and honeyed almonds could adequately thank the girl for saving Hatshepsut’s face from being beaten to a bloody pulp. “I have no reason not to.”

“She’s competition for your husband.” Ahmose spoke as if she were talking to a dullard. “And for a son.”

Hatshepsut’s eyes flicked heavenward. “I know my duty, Mother. But Aset is not going to usurp my position. She’s a commoner, for the love of Amun.”

“A commoner with plenty of colorful gossip following her from Hathor’s temple.” Ahmose glanced at the door and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “They say she managed her place at the Festival of Intoxication only because she poisoned Hathor’s senior dancer. Rumor has it she mixed ground elder flower into her bread.”

“Tongues will wag about any girl singled out by the pharaoh.”

“There’s more,” her mother continued. “It seems the High Priest of Hathor also enjoyed Aset’s many charms. Apparently he was quite put out at the pharaoh’s demand to release her from the temple.”

“Next thing you know, she’ll have seduced Amun himself.”

The gods knew Aset had already seduced Horus, or at least his representative here on earth.

Ahmose pursed her lips and waggled her needle at Hatshepsut. “You mark my words. That girl is trouble.”

“I have a spy at the temple of Hathor.” She’d contacted Merenaset only once, shortly after her audience at court, and received a report that she was enjoying her official duties as chantress and that the High Priest of Hathor had a collection of the goddess’s best offerings hidden in his personal storeroom. Hatshepsut had suspected as much, and she had filed away that information for future use. “Would it make you happy if I asked for a report on Aset?” she asked her mother.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it would. I saw Thutmosis with her yesterday—it’s sickening how he fawns over her. I had hoped your brother would have more sense than to start plucking
rekhyt
from every field in Egypt. He must be looking for someone like his mother.”

Hatshepsut didn’t wish to listen to a recital of the ills her mother had suffered—imagined or otherwise—at Mutnofret’s hands. “If Aset pleases Thut and he makes her happy, then so be it. Perhaps Hathor smiles on them.”

The gods knew Hathor certainly didn’t smile on Hatshepsut. And she preferred to keep her distance from Thut, at least for now.

Ahmose shrugged and picked up her sewing again. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I wouldn’t trust that girl any more than I would an angry scorpion.”

Hatshepsut kissed the top of her mother’s head and inhaled a trace of lotus perfume. “Then I shall be careful not to step on her.”

The former Great Royal Wife snorted before resuming her attack on the embroidered orange fish. “Have Sitre bring you a cut of cold ox flesh. Hold it over that eye to take down the swelling.”

Hatshepsut shut the door and leaned her forehead against the cool wood. Beaten and disgraced, she now had to court her replacement and find her way back into Thut’s good graces.

Anything to keep from thinking of Senenmut.

•   •   •

Girl-slaves scattered like tittering sparrows when Hatshepsut was announced into Aset’s airy chambers, some of the largest in the Hall of Women. The rooms had once belonged to a daughter of the Hittite king, but like the rest of the old generation, the woman had been retired to lands near the Atef-Pehu oasis, left to shrivel and die like the grapes those lands were so famous for.

The apartments were mostly empty, containing only a bed with crisp white sheets and feet carved like cattle legs, several gilded chests and reed baskets, and a scuffed gaming table left behind by the Hittite princess. Aset’s slaves had abandoned a game of
senet
, the blue faience and alabaster pawns strewn about the board. The match hadn’t been going well; one of the pawns had drowned in the House of Life and several had already been knocked into the afterlife.

“Hemet.”
Aset sank to the ground and pressed her forehead into the woven reed rug. A rough wooden crate appeared to have exploded next to her, gaudy necklaces and rumpled linens strewn about the floor. A pair of worn reed sandals poked from the box along with a chipped wooden statue of Hathor. A thick ivory trinket of some sort lay at the bottom.

There were no jars of elder flowers or anything else out of the ordinary. Hatshepsut’s mother would be disappointed.

Hatshepsut managed a smile but winced at the pain that knifed through her eye as Aset scrambled to her feet. Hammered gold bracelets similar to a pair of Thut’s glimmered at the girl’s wrists, but she still wore the same cheap Nubian wig from her first encounter with Hatshepsut. Her painted lips and netted dress of blue faience beads belonged on one of Waset’s prostitutes. The netting strained against her full breasts, threatening to snap and shower beads over the tiles.

Hatshepsut cleared her throat. “I wondered if you might enjoy some company this afternoon.”

“Of course. It would be my honor to entertain Egypt’s Great Royal Wife.” Aset glanced about the chambers as if trapped. Then again, she was.

Hatshepsut’s gaze strayed to a pair of black granite statues on the window ledge. The tall one bore Thut’s pointed chin and broad forehead, while the shorter possessed Aset’s wide eyes and upturned nose. A closer inspection revealed Thut’s cartouche etched into his kilt, an epithet praising his loyal and beautiful concubine on the woman’s sheath.

Aset bit her lip. “The pharaoh gave those to me this morning before he went hunting.”

Hatshepsut read the rest of the inscription. She pursed her lips. “So your
kas
will always be together in the Field of Reeds, even if your bodies disappear.”

Aset didn’t answer.

It had been a mistake to come here, she realized, but it was too late to leave now. Another penance from the gods.

“Do you play?” She gestured to the
senet
table.

“Not very well.” Aset ran slender fingers over the alabaster pieces. Her nails were ragged, bitten to the quick.

Hatshepsut handed over the box of sweets. The inlaid figures of Hathor and Horus seemed to mock her now. “I thought we might enjoy these. The dried apricots are soaked with honey made from bees fed only cornflower blossoms.”

“Thank you.” Aset opened the box and popped a date rolled in crushed almonds into her mouth. “I hadn’t expected a visit from you so soon,” she said, chewing as she spoke. “Not after the other night.”