Sovereign of Stars (15 page)

Senenmut said nothing. Hatshepsut wiped the kohl
from her face with the hem of her kilt, and turned back to face her
steward. “There is only one way more to secure my bloodline against
the ambition of my subjects. And that is to make Neferure my
heir.”

Senenmut’s hands fell limp onto the couch. “Your
heir?”

“Why not? She is my first-born child.”

“But she is not…” Senenmut smiled ruefully, despite
his distress, and Hatshepsut knew what words had died on his
tongue.
Not a son.

“Can you think of a more powerful token to secure my
position? Our position, Senenmut, for if I fall, so will you. Blood
of a god, god-chosen, and heir to the throne, living amongst my
women, ministering to them as a priestess. What greater security
have we than Neferure?”

His eyes left hers, wandered forlornly about the
room, as if he searched for an alternate path – any path that would
spare his charge a career of politicking and grant her the life she
yearned for. But at last he met her eyes again, and said
reluctantly, “None.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Even with the curtains of the litter drawn, the day
was unbearably hot. Neferure reached from her chair to flick one
length of cloth open, hoping she might allow a breeze inside. But
the heat was intense, demanding in its stillness. There was not a
breath of air in all of Egypt. Had there been, the gods surely
would have sent it to cool their favorite daughter's skin.

“That is the fifth time you've opened the curtains
since we left the ship,” Thutmose said. He waved a stiff fan of
crimped and painted papyrus before his face. Sweat glistened along
his upper lip. “It doesn't make us any cooler. All you do is allow
dust inside.”

With a disgusted grunt, Neferure let the curtain
fall. The half-sheer weave of linen did little to block the white
intensity of the midday sun, but Thutmose was right, after all. The
stifling interior of the litter was at least less dusty with the
curtains drawn.

What madness was this, to travel across the river
and into the bleak, dry valley on the western bank during the
hottest part of the day? Neferure missed the comfort of her little
palace, the house of a dozen small but beautiful rooms Senenmut had
built for her on the grounds of the Pharaoh's harem. Her rooms were
full of rich, dark ebony furnishings, soft couches upholstered with
cool silk, hundreds of bright linen cloths painted with goddesses,
with scenes of priestesses in worship. Senenmut had been wise in
designing the wind-catchers, and in positioning them, too. They
cupped the smallest breeze from the river in clever hands, and
poured the coolness and perfume of moving water down upon Neferure
and her servants.

Her home was the best and most comfortable in all
the harem, and never lacked for visitors because of it. When she
returned from her morning duties at the Temple of Amun, she settled
into the business of reading dreams for the Pharaoh's women – or
trying to, at any rate. It was often a frustrating proposition. The
meaning of a dream never seemed quite clear to Neferure, and more
often than not, she was left wondering whether the interpretations
she offered the women were from the gods, or from her own hazy and
bewildered heart. She reasoned her doubts away by reminding herself
that the gods would not allow her to speak an interpretation they
did not approve. Such thoughts were good enough for her, and, it
seemed, good enough for the women.

When evening fell, she would retreat to her rooftop.
There stood her own shrine to Hathor, roofless so that she might
sit in the midst of her seven statues of the goddess and watch as
the stars emerged. It was only by their soft silvery light that she
felt at peace. As the spray of Hathor's nurturing milk spilled
across the dense black sky, twinkling like the rattle of sesheshet,
singing to her heart, Neferure could forget the heat and heaviness
of her days, the weight of duty and expectation.

She could even forget that Senenmut's pretty little
palace was nothing but a cage, commissioned by her mother the king
as a sop for taking Hathor away from her. It had been two long
years since Hatshepsut had rescinded her promise to send Neferure
to Iunet. The palace was a sop, and the title, too. They called her
now not only God's Wife, but Divine Adoratrix, as if to emphasize
her love for the gods. A cruel thing, for the only god she was
allowed to adore was Amun, and he cared little for her. Sense told
Neferure that time would lessen the sting of that loss, and the
shame of Amun's denial. But two years had only caused her heart's
wound to fester.

What festered more was the other title – the one she
tried never to think on.
Heir.
It was a sacrilege, she knew
without know how she knew it. Something about the arrangement was
not maat, but it frightened her to think on it, frightened her to
acknowledge it. And so she let it alone, and let the title wash
over her indifferent shoulders whenever the heralds cried it,
whenever her mother demanded it.

Thutmose jerked forward in his chair, causing the
litter bearers to sway and mutter. He dropped his fan atop his
sandals in his excitement. “Look, sister! There it is!”

This time he did not object when Neferure parted the
curtains to clear their view. Ahead, Hatshepsut's own solitary
litter progressed down a barren flatness the color of old, brittle
papyrus. The white broken bones of long-dead myrrh trees stood at
regular intervals, demarcating the remains of an ancient road.
Beyond the king's litter, the face of a great cliff, yellow as
burnished gold, rose high into the glaring sky. At its base stood
the pale new facade of Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, and the wall
that surrounded it.

Despite her resolve to be unmoved by the latest of
her mother's several ostentatious monuments, Neferure could not
suppress a tremble of admiration. They passed beneath the pylon of
the outer wall, and she saw that the temple's base was wide and
sturdy, sprawling along the base of the cliff. Dozens of
new-quarried pillars glimmered in the sun, the shadows between a
violet-black so intense that they burned their image upon
Neferure's eyes. As she took in the sight, the number of pillars
seemed to multiply, to dance before her eyes, to expand the already
considerable dimensions of the temple. A shining ramp lifted from
the road to a broad terrace high above, and beyond, another ramp
rose above yet another row of pillars to the uppermost shrine.
Higher still, the yellow rock of the cliff face gathered itself
into an imposing natural spire, tall and bright as a beam of Re's
holy light. Neferure had the immediate impression of looking upon a
body in the throes of worship, arms wide-spread below a face
up-tilted, a face raised in awe to take in the blessings of the
gods.

“By Amun,” Thutmose said, nearly laughing.

She gave him a sharp look to quell his unseemly
enthusiasm. He was twelve years old now, and preoccupied, as were
all boys of his age, with tall monuments and other such displays of
royal power.

Their litter drew closer to the temple's first ramp.
As it grew in her sight, slow and inevitable as the Iteru's flood,
Neferure's awe gave way to unease. She let the curtain fall.

“I want to see it,” Thutmose protested.

But Neferure did not respond; she sat back in her
gilded chair, watching through the weave of the linen as the dark
slashes of shadow between pillars lengthened and towered
overhead.

At last their guard called out a halt. The litter
sank to the dry, bare earth. Thutmose could restrain himself no
more; he sprang from his seat, his arms tangling in the curtains as
he staggered out into the dust. Neferure followed more sedately,
taking care with her gown's pleats, stepping from the litter with
quiet dignity.

Hatshepsut, too, rose calmly from her litter and
stood gazing up at her monument. The fan-bearer Batiret emerged
from nowhere Neferure could discern, carrying, as ever, her great
half-circle of ostrich plumes on its familiar long pole. The shade
closed over the king's face just as she turned to smile in
Neferure's direction. The sudden sight of Hatshepsut's bared teeth
in the deep darkness of shadow made her shiver. Then her own
fan-bearer appeared, and the relief of shade was so sudden, so
protective, that Neferure nearly gasped.

“What do you think?” Hatshepsut said, turning away
again to stare up the great, bright length of the walls.

Thutmose answered. “Astounding!”

“Both Pharaohs approve,” said Senenmut quietly. He
stepped beneath Neferure's fan, and she slipped her hand into his,
grateful for his presence. “But I would know what the God's Wife
thinks.”

“Does it matter what the God's Wife thinks?”

“It matters very much to me.”

In spite of the heat and the strange unrest tingling
along her skin, she smiled at Senenmut's words. “It is beautiful,”
she said, because she knew his heart longed to hear it.

“Shall we go inside?”

Hatshepsut led them up the ramp. Neferure's vision
swam from the height. By the time they gained the first terrace, a
broad expanse of perfectly smooth stone, laid so well the eye could
hardly pick out the joins between blocks, the guardsmen and their
litters looked like a child's discarded toys in the valley below.
She noted two small pools in the courtyard. The spikes of new
papyrus shoots cast deep blue shadows upon the water.

The straight line of the ramp continued across the
width of the terrace via two rows of seshep. They crouched in
pairs, staring challenge into one another's eyes, so proud and
fierce she thought she might hear the scratch of their claws
digging into their granite plinths. Each lion's body wore the head
of Hatshepsut, and each head wore a different head-dress, though
all wore identical, knowing, almost mocking smiles.

The second ramp took them still higher. The air was
hotter here, for the sun reflected off the cliff's face and struck
mercilessly at Neferure's skin if she allowed herself to out-stride
her fan-bearer. They reached the upper row of pillars, stepped
through a pair of doorways, and the blessed coolness of shade
closed like healing water over their heads. Before them lay a final
courtyard, small and intimate, ringed by a depth of pillars yet to
be painted and carved. Across the courtyard, the door of a
sanctuary for Amun's holy person stood closed so that the darkness
the god favored would not be disturbed. Neferure's stomach quivered
at the sight of the sanctuary. She felt at the same time attracted
and repelled, and, unsure whether to approach or flee, she stood
rooted near a pillar while her family and their servants moved
across the courtyard, inspecting, chattering, Hatshepsut and
Senenmut pointing out this feature or that to Thutmose, who ran
here and there like a child hunting frogs in the reeds.

At length they retreated down the highest ramp, and
Hatshepsut led them into another hall where artisans had already
set to work. A depiction of Hatshepsut's campaign into Kush,
enacted when Neferure was a suckling babe, spread over the nearest
wall. The carvings were fine and sharp, beautifully detailed. Fine
grit from the artists' labors lay heaped where the walls met the
floor. A set of chisels and picks had been left behind. Thutmose
inspected them, then lifted one and mimed carving until Hatshepsut
chased him away.

“Don't dare ruin it! If you do, I'll have to march
on Kush all over again.”

“It was a mighty war,” Thutmose recited, his eyes
gleaming in their black rings of kohl. “The Good God Maatkare swept
through the ravines and into Kush's weak and trembling
territory...”

“And took them unaware, falling upon them from her
chariot,” Hatshepsut finished, crowing.

Neferure sighed. She and Thutmose had heard the tale
of the conquest of Kush uncountable times from their nurses and
tutors. Thutmose never tired of it, while Neferure would be well
pleased if she never had to suffer through its recitation again.
She paced the length of the carved wall. The too-familiar tale
unfolded before her. Hatshepsut led her men into battle; Hatshepsut
brought the Kushites low; Hatshepsut accepted their surrender, the
bound captives in rows, trembling and bowing before the Pharaoh's
majesty.

The final panel of the carving caught Neferure up
short. It depicted a portion of the tale she had never heard
before. Hatshepsut, wearing the kilt of a man and the Pharaoh's
high, rounded war crown, strode across the face of a
god
,
treading him into the earth. Neferure gaped at the scene, at the
sorrowing, helpless face of Dedwen, god of the Kushites, and the
fearsome straightness of her mother's body, the triumph of her dark
eyes.

Senenmut's hand came down softly upon her shoulder,
but she could not tear her eyes from the image.

“Did it truly happen?”

“Truly,” he said.

She conquered a god. She trampled
a god
into the dust.

Neferure tore her eyes from the face of conquered
Dedwen, peered over her shoulder at her mother. Hatshepsut smiled
broadly as she spoke to Thutmose, gesturing at the wall opposite,
describing the scenes she would commission there. Her face was so
plain, for all her divine origin, the bigness of her teeth and the
roundness of her chin so unassuming, so mortal. There were lines
around her eyes when she laughed at something Thutmose said.
This king – this woman – destroyed a god.
True, Dedwen was a
god of Kush, and so by definition inferior to even the humblest
household god of Egypt. But still, Hatshepsut had defeated him.

What other gods might she bring low?
There
could be no doubt that Hatshepsut was the offspring of Amun. Not
that Neferure had ever doubted it.

She returned her gaze to the temple wall, though now
she saw none of it. Her eyes seemed to look beyond the stone into a
black distance pricked by the light of thousands and thousands of
stars.