Sovereign of Stars (10 page)

Suddenly a great, painful lump rose up in Neferure's
throat, choking her. She swallowed hard. Her ribs seemed too small
for her heart, squeezing it like a fist.

The girls, startled out of propriety, looked at one
another in shock or seized their mothers' hands. Some of them
looked decidedly frightened, on the verge of tears – though a few
appeared to grasp at once what an honor, what a glory it would be
to become a priestess of Hathor. Those stood a little taller, while
Neferure sank into her throne.

Hatshepsut rushed to soothe the fear of the more
timid children. “You will not be required to go, nor will your
families make the decision for you. It is each girl's choice, for
Hathor wants her priestesses to come to her willingly, and to
devote their whole hearts to her service.

“She is a mighty goddess, you know, one of great
power and mystery. She once ruled the west bank of the river
herself. She wears seven guises, and brings joy to our hearts and
children to women's wombs. And she is the fiercest warrior, the
face of Sekhmet, who protects our lands from enemies.”

Neferure's heart beat so hard she thought her whole
body must shake with its rhythm. But the eyes of all – the nobles
and their daughters, the stewards and servants of the great hall,
even Thutmose – were on the Pharaoh, not on her daughter. She felt
a pulling sensation deep in the seat of her ka, a longing she could
not name, a whispering she could not hear.

“You have two weeks to choose. But it must be your
own choice, and no other's. Those of you who do wish to serve the
goddess shall be provided with all you need by your Pharaohs, and
given gifts of gratitude, and sent to Iunet like the worthy
tributes you are.”

Neferure saw the consideration in the eyes of the
noblemen and their wives, saw the excitement grow on the faces of
the girls clustered about them. She wanted to leap from her throne
and join them, stand before her mother's throne and declare that
she was the flower of Egypt, the daughter of the king, the
worthiest tribute of them all. She would go to Iunet, not these
mortal-bred children, and Hathor would rejoice in her presence as
Amun never had.

But Senenmut and the king had too often filled her
heart with the tenets of maat. Neferure had no more courage than
did a mouse, no will to defy her training. She sat still on her
throne as the noble families were ushered out of the royal
presence, her back straight, her face serene, her eyes betraying
nothing, the very picture of a good King's Daughter.

**

That evening Neferure's ka would not settle. It
moved uncomfortably between a curdled, shivering weakness and a
boiling rage that made her feel as though her skin might burst, as
though her body would split in two and her angry spirit swell to
engulf her whole room – the whole of the House of Women, in fact –
with the force of her fury.

She ignored her supper and would not even touch the
sweetened cow’s milk her former wet-nurse Takhat offered, but told
the silly-hearted woman that she wanted strong red wine. Takhat
only laughed, which made Neferure all the angrier. She stalked
about her chamber, throwing cushions against the walls and stomping
her feet until Takhat's composure finally broke. The nurse unbent
from her sewing and drove Neferure out into the twilit garden with
shrieks of “Out, out from under my wig, you nasty little
lioness!”

But the garden provided no relief to Neferure's ka.
She tried to sit still on the bench beneath the sycamore, tried to
open her heart to the gods as Ahmose had taught her. She tucked her
legs up beneath her skirt, clasped her hands lightly and rested
them on the tight linen bridge her dress made between her knees.
The garden whispered in deep blue shadow, and bats made their
miniscule chirps among the sycamore leaves, but the gods said
nothing to Neferure, and her fury only grew.

It's not fair. It's not maat!

“I want to be a Hathor priestess,” she said aloud.
Her voice stumbled somewhere between plaintive and commanding. The
only reply was the small, flitting song of the bats in the
gathering darkness.

At last, when she knew that peace would evade her
until she had set the world's greatest injustice to rights,
Neferure went back through her lamp-lit doorway to her small
chamber in the House of Women. Takhat looked up warily from her
needlework.

“I want to go to my mother.”

The wet-nurse sighed.

“I want to go to my mother
now
.”

“This is behavior unbecoming the King's
Daughter.”

“Don't talk like a noble lady to me. You're just a
rekhet.”

“I am the wet-nurse to the King's Daughter, and that
puts me a good deal higher than any fancy lady covered in gold and
gems.”

“Well, it doesn't put you higher than me.”

Takhat rolled her eyes. “That long-faced nurse of
yours...
tutor
...whatever he calls himself now –
Senenmut
should have thrashed you more often when you were a
little thing. Maybe then you would know the proper way to treat
your servants.”

“Don't you talk of Senenmut that way. He knows
better than to thrash me.”

But the mention of his name sparked an idea in
Neferure's heart. It caught alight, flaming hot.

Where was Senenmut tonight? Typically he would take
supper with Neferure, and they would go over plans for the temples,
and he would listen to all her cares and concerns and smooth them
away with a gentle hand on her brow and a soft, loving smile.
Surely his absence was a part of what unsettled her ka, but it was
the injustice she had been made to suffer through in the great hall
that truly vexed her.

Even Takhat did not know where Senenmut was.
Neferure could see that at once; she felt the assurance of it deep
in that place Ahmose had spoken of, where her ka quivered and
raged. And without Senenmut close to hand....

“Take me to my mother or I'll scream and cry!”

“Oh, stop this at once! It's been six years since
you last nursed at my breast. You are not a baby any longer.”

Neferure sucked in a breath, held it a moment, held
Takhat's eye. The challenge crackled in the air between them, but
Neferure knew she had already won. She unleashed a high-pitched
scream that rebounded off her chamber walls.

“Set take you!” Takhat threw her sewing onto the
couch beside her and clapped her hands over her ears, glowering,
thinking to outlast Neferure's tantrum.

But she screamed again and again, and pitched
herself onto the floor, kicked her heels against the tiles, beat
her fists until Takhat stormed from the room calling Senenmut's
name. Neferure kept up her shrieking, though her throat felt raw.
It almost felt good to scream, to give some voice to her ka's great
anger. And she knew Takhat would not find Senenmut in his apartment
at the outer wall of the House of Women, where he was supposed to
be conveniently located to see to the needs of the King's Daughter.
If he had been nearby at all, he would have come to Neferure's
chamber with her supper tray.

She let her tantrum go on until at last Takhat
returned to the room, scowling her defeat, and said, “Get up, you
beast. The guards are fetching a litter to take you to the
palace.”

Neferure ceased her screaming and climbed to her
feet. She tugged her dress straight, smoothed the locks of hair
that had pulled free of her braid, and walked sedately from her
chamber with Takhat trailing behind, muttering in impotent
wrath.

**

The guards on Hatshepsut's door clapped and called
out Neferure's presence, but it was a long time before the door
opened.

To Neferure's uneasy surprise, it was Senenmut who
opened the door. He gazed down at his pupil slack-jawed, in a state
of dumbfoundedness totally unfamiliar to the girl. She narrowed her
eyes at him. His only duty was not to Neferure, she knew. He was
still the king's chief steward, and had many other titles besides.
There were a dozen reasons why he might be in the king's personal
chambers so long into the evening, but it rankled her all the
same.

“I want to see my mother.”

Senenmut glanced over his shoulder, into the dim
depths of the king's anteroom. It was poorly lit – too dark for
reading off tallies or drafting plans for more obelisks or...or
whatever Senenmut's duties to Hatshepsut may be.

The sound of a far door swinging reached her, and
the light scuff of slippers on faience tile. Senenmut pulled the
door wider, stood back for Neferure to enter. Takhat refused to
come; she lurked in the hall with the guardsmen, her hard stare
full of unpleasant promise. Neferure shrugged at her wet-nurse and
escorted herself into the king's presence.

Hatshepsut made her way from the door to her private
chamber, wrapped in an informal light robe instead of the gown or
kilt Neferure had expected. Had she been sleeping, then?

“Light a few more lamps, Senenmut. Neferure, what is
the meaning of this?” Her voice held an unmistakable impatience.
Hatshepsut was often awkward in her attempts to be motherly, but
she seldom lost her patience.

Courage flooded Neferure's limbs; it replaced the
former quivering in her ka with a welcome rush. “I want to be a
Hathor priestess. I want to go to Iunet and pledge myself to the
goddess, like those other girls.” She felt grown-up and powerful,
standing in the king's chambers without her wet-nurse, speaking the
true words of her heart.

Hatshepsut frowned. “You cannot. Your duties lie in
Waset, with Amun. You know that.”

Somehow she had not expected such a flat denial,
though flat denials were Hatshepsut's most oft-traded ware. “But
why? You told the girls in the throne room today that they were the
best in all of Egypt. I am the King's Daughter. I am descended from
a god! Am I not better than they? Will I not please Hathor
more?”

Senenmut had finished with the lamps; he sank onto
the edge of the couch where Hatshepsut sat and clasped his hands on
his rather rumpled kilt. “You are the very best girl in all of
Egypt, Neferure.”

“And that is why you are reserved for Amun,”
Hatshepsut added.

“I am not even God's Wife! Amun will never miss
me.”

“You are God's Wife; don't say such things.”

“I am not!”

“You hold the title, and you are learning the
duties, little by little, as is maat for a girl your age. One day
you will take on the role fully and serve Amun as I did, and as
your grandmother did, and her grandmother before her. You will be
his adoratrix. That is your duty: the adoration of Amun. It is a
light duty, to love a god. Would you rather grind wheat? Tend
cattle and step in their dung? Get blisters on your fingers from
spinning and weaving?”

“I am not his wife. He spurns me!”

“What makes you say that?”

“He never speaks to me. Lady Ahmose said I could
hear the gods speak, but I...I...” Bereft of words, she could only
pound her fist against her chest, helpless to articulate the way
she burned there, the way some unknown god always whispered there,
too distant to hear, too unknowable to draw near. She craved that
nearness, yearned to feel enlightened, understood in the way only a
god could understand. And she would be understood, and enlightened,
and known if she could but let that quiet god in. She was sure of
it,
sure
of it.

Senenmut's eyes filled with sympathy, but something
else, too. Resignation. Even he knew it was useless to make such
demands of Hatshepsut. She was the Lord of the Two Lands, and
Neferure was, in spite of the vast potential she felt coiling far
deep inside her like a seed in the black soil, nothing but a little
girl.

Briefly she considered another tantrum, but her
mother's eyes were dark and hard and impatient, her mouth tight
with disapproval, and Neferure's throat was too raw and constricted
to scream.

All at once her vision blurred. Hot tears slid down
her cheeks, tickled alongside her nose. She wiped at them, angry to
have lost composure before the king.

Senenmut came to her. He sank to his knees so that
she might weep on his shoulder. But Hatshepsut rose and returned to
her private chambers, a coldness in her silence that both
frightened Neferure and made her feel faintly, quietly triumphant.
But far larger and darker than her triumph, she felt a weight of
sorrow dragging at her heart. It was a desperation she could not
explain, even within her own thoughts. She only knew that inside
she was like a chasm in the hills, a dark cleft in stone that
echoed with a terrible emptiness Amun could not fill.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The grain stood waist high. It tickled Thutmose's
forearms and the small of his back, but he did not flinch. He tried
to stretch himself taller, to rise out of the emmer field as
regally as Hatshepsut, who stood proud and unmoving like a statue
beside him, gazing toward the procession that made its slow way
from the Temple of Min.

The two Pharaohs were dressed in identical finery:
long formal kilts, white-pleated below the embroidered and beaded
aprons which hung to their knees. The aprons depicted the Two
Ladies who protected the double land, Nekhbet of the south and
Wadjet of the north, the vulture and the cobra everlasting. Woman
and boy wore broad golden collars adorned with long cabochons of
turquoise, lapis, and carnelian; they glowed in the mid-day
sun.

The collar was heavy; Thutmose shrugged his
shoulders, slowly and carefully, to ease its weight. He hoped none
of the festival-goers would notice his discomfort. Hatshepsut made
no concessions to the weight of her ceremonial garb, and Thutmose
was determined to follow her lead as best he could. Sweat had begun
to collect beneath his stiff artificial beard. It was made of
braided flax stems wound about with golden bands, and it was
unwieldy and itchy at the best of times. He was afraid it would
become a torment in the heat of the day, but he would not poke his
fingers beneath the straps to rub the irritation away. Not unless
Hatshepsut did first. The only kindness of ceremony was the high
spire of his white crown. In spite of its height it was ingeniously
made, light and hollow. It protected his head from the sun and kept
him cooler than any wig would have done. The Pharaoh's crown was
one small mercy.