Sovereign of Stars (16 page)

I, too, have the blood of Amun in my body. Do I have
the power to trample gods? Or the power to raise them up?

With a bitter pang, she recalled the white bull of
Min, the feel of its hide beneath her fingers. She remembered the
whispers that ran through Hatshepsut's court, circulated amongst
the palace servants. Oh, yes, she had heard them – heard all the
rumors. Why should they not be true?
Neferure tamed the white
bull. Neferure is favored by the gods. Neferure's very name is
holy. She tamed the bull. There is nothing the King's Daughter
cannot do.

She reached out a trembling hand, laid her fingers
on Dedwen's cheek. She willed him to live again, to rise up and
roar like a bull in the emptiness of her mother's bare hall. She
opened herself, reached her heart out to the divine, offered it
like a piece of myrrh on the sacred fire.

Live,
she commanded the god.

But the wall remained flat and cold, and Dedwen only
stared back at her with empty, defeated eyes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

By night, the valley lived.

By day it was a flat, dry expanse, as blank and
unused as the untouched clay shard of a lazy schoolboy. After
sunset, the floor of the sacred ravine turned from dry yellow to a
mysterious blue-black as deep and dark as ink, and the vertical
rock walls faded into blackness. Lights bloomed in the dark: scores
upon scores of torches flaring, moving, swaying forward and back
like a garden in wind. Revelers carried their torches and lamps
from the valley floor up secret, hidden trails that climbed into
the rocks, where they found the tombs of ancestors a hundred years
gone. Lines of light flickered as they ascended, draped like golden
chains across shoulders of night-blue stone. The living once more
carried bread and beer, honey and wine to the homes of the dead,
too long forgotten. The night rang with songs of celebration, cries
of drunkenness, of fear, of passion. Fires blazed along the length
of the newly built canal, and reflected in a double row that
wavered and shimmered, that bent with the water's movement like a
snake dancing in the grass. The movement of light was as the
movement of the Iteru, constant, vital, an unceasing mystery. For
the first time in generations, Egypt celebrated the Beautiful Feast
of the Valley, resurrected from obscurity by the majesty of the
king’s new temple.

Hatshepsut leaned alone on the low wall surrounding
the highest terrace of her temple. The wine bowl beside her was
empty. She closed her eyes, feeling the touch of the valley's brisk
wind on her eyelids. Her wig's many braids shifted when the wind
touched them; the feel of it set her to swaying. She rocked high
above the deep blue valley, the wine a warm pulse in her blood,
listening to the rising and falling of song, the calling of the kas
of the dead amongst the rocks.

West
, she thought.
Here I am as far west
as I may go, unless I were to dwell in the Red Land.

She had built her temple in the west, the place
where the god died each night in the form of Atum-Re, the sun who
set in all the colors of blood – the bright, the deep, the fiery.
The place where the god entered the underworld, where he would
strive each hour to return to the sky. The west was the place of
the mysterious Lady, Hathor, She of Seven Faces, who welcomed all
into the underworld.

I built my temple in the west. I dedicated a
beautiful sanctuary to her, in this very spot. What more does
Hathor want?

Hatshepsut had increased the numbers of girls she
dedicated to the Lady's service at Iunet. Each year she sent more
than the last, until she was hard-pressed to find suitable
candidates near Waset, and was obliged to send her stewards and
priests to search farther afield. She had given a larger portion of
the treasury to restoring temples up and down the Iteru, joining
her own plans to Neferure's, ensuring the disused shrines to Hathor
– or any ancient aspect of the Lady's being – were renewed prior to
any other god's.

And yet the dreams had not ceased. With cruel
reliability, her sleep was haunted every handful of nights by the
image of the goddess who strode into a circle of light and changed
her face from gentle smile to lioness's leer. And each time, no
matter how Hatshepsut pleaded, no matter how she ran, no matter how
bravely she stood and challenged the goddess, the fangs sank deep
into her neck, and ripped and ravened, and her blood flowed like
hot, choking wine. Sometimes the goddess had eyes of two colors,
and white braids in her hair. Sometimes she had Ahmose's eyes, or
Senenmut's, Iset's, Hatshepsut's own.

This year will be different. I have revived the
Lady's own celebration. I have rededicated the Beautiful Feast of
the Valley to her, and she will be appeased. She will go quietly
into the west, and let me be.

Hatshepsut opened her eyes. Her vision swam, seemed
to lift a chain of lights making its way up the most distant cliff
face high into the stars, so that some stars burned a steady
silver-white, and some flickered golden. She rubbed her eyes with
the heels of her hands, then cursed at the smear of kohl and
malachite powder on her palms. At the sound of her voice Nehesi
glanced up from where he stood below, guarding the base of the
ramp, defending her loneliness. The ululating wail of drunken song
lifted from somewhere deep in the valley. It pierced her heart and
left her gasping. Then it faded away again, and Hatshepsut
shivered.

She groped for the wine jar and found nothing.

“Batiret!”

Her woman appeared – the only attendant she would
keep tonight, high and solitary at the apex of her great temple.
Tonight Hatshepsut would remain alone with the god.

Batiret appraised her mistress with the usual
no-nonsense flick of her eyes. “Water, I think,” she said.

“More wine.”

“The Great Lady will have a terrible headache in the
morning.”

“The Great Lady does not care. The Pharaoh must be
drunk! It is the way of the festival!” Her words ran together.

“The Great Lady will vomit.”

“Let her!”

“And I shall have to clean it up.”

Hatshepsut draped an arm across Batiret's shoulders.
“You are beautiful.”

The woman bore it patiently. “Most definitely water
for you.”

“Kiss me!”

Batiret leveled a dry look at Hatshepsut. “You do
not desire me. I am not Iset.”

The name jarred her. She inhaled sharply, the scent
of fine wine and myrrh from the braziers in Amun's sanctuary, the
fainter overtones of acrid dung-smoke and sweet wheat cakes baking
over open fires far in the valley below. She smelled water from the
canal. That canal had taken a year to construct, so that Amun's
barge might be floated the length of the valley to her temple's
forecourt. All to revive the festival. All to appease Hathor. All
to protect the ones she loved. Like Iset.

“She wants Neferure,” Hatshepsut muttered.

“Great Lady?”

“But she cannot have her. I pledged her to Amun.
Neferure is God's Wife. She is Divine Adoratrix. She is my heir!
That is maat.”

Batiret's arm went around Hatshepsut's waist; the
woman tugged at her until she took a few stumbling steps toward the
private courtyard at the temple's crown.

“Maat is all,” Hatshepsut said in a booming voice
that sounded comical even to her own ears.

Batiret giggled behind her free hand.

“My father used to say it. Hatet, maat is all!”

In the center of the courtyard, Batiret lifted her
face to gaze up at the stars. Hatshepsut imitated her, but the
stars lurched and rotated like an unmoored boat in a fast current.
She clutched at Batiret's shoulders. “What is maat, anyway? Do you
know? I surely do not. Every time I think I've served maat, I
discover I've done it all wrong. What is it, then, Batiret? Tell
me.”

“For you, maat is water,” she said, and disentangled
herself from Hatshepsut's arms.

Hatshepsut swayed, swam in a pool of starlight. The
shimmer of it on the stones of her temple's floor seemed to take
the shape of faces. She stared at them, trying to identify them,
trying to discern who stared back, who stared at the Pharaoh with
such impunity. But the eyes kept blinking, the mouths kept
twisting; she could make nothing of them.

Batiret set a pottery jar on the floor. The circle
of water visible at its lip reflected the points of a hundred
stars, stretching and breaking as the vibration of the jar's
movement ran in rings across its surface, expanding and
contracting.

Batiret lifted a dripping cup to Hatshepsut's lips.
“Drink.”

When her belly was full, Hatshepsut staggered past
the pillars to the wall of her temple. In the dimness she traced
the shape of a body with her fingers, carved into the smooth stone.
Artisans had worked a full year to adorn the temple with the images
she had commanded, and now she could not remember whose image dwelt
on this wall, rendered eternal by chisel and pick.

A sudden weariness gripped her. She pressed her
palms, her cheek, against the unseen figure in the stone.

“Leave me, Batiret. Join Nehesi. Keep everyone away.
I must be alone. Alone with the god.”

Hatshepsut was aware of the gentle scrape of stone
against her knees, aware of a sinking sensation, aware of her knees
buckling slowly, so slowly, as if all happened in reverse. She
heard herself snore as she surrendered to sleep.

**

When she rose up, her legs were steady. The walls of
the temple pulsed with a faint light: green, the color of
resurrection.

She gazed up at the wall where she had crumpled –
hours before? Days before? She could not tell how long she had
slept. A bead of green fire ran along the edge of a carving,
tracing the form of a striding king. Wherever the fire traveled, it
left a line of its own substance glowing, until it traced the
king's arm, his shoulder, his face, the great arcing reach of his
proud crown. The fire met its own tail and the king stood outlined
in eerie light.

Hatshepsut stared, wondering. Was it an image of her
own self, or of her father? She could not discern the king's face.
She stepped nearer, cautious of the fire, hugging her body with
trembling arms.

Hatshepsut.

She had not heard her father's voice since she was a
small child. But she recognized it at once, the deep, mellow
softness, so incongruous a voice for a king or a soldier.

“Father.”

You must remember, Hatet. Maat is all.

“But what
is
it? You must tell me.”

I did not listen. I did not serve. And all my sons
died – all but you.

“Only tell me how to serve, and I will do it.”

Thutmose the First laughed, a loud percussive sound,
drums in a temple, a jackal in the night. The memory of his laugh
beat painfully at Hatshepsut's heart. She remembered his smile
close to her own, his voice whispering legends in her ear as he
held her to stand on a ship's rail so she might watch the great
pyramids, black against a setting sun, slip past their boat. She
did not fear standing on the rail. She did not fear the river
below, though it was full of crocodiles and weeds to tangle her.
She could never fall. Her father held her tightly.

Who is the son who loves Aakheperkare, the king,
Thutmose, he who has gone to live forever with the gods?

It was part of the litany of the Opening of the
Mouth, the rite a new Pharaoh performed when his predecessor died.
It was the rite that sent the old king to the Field of Reeds,
granted him eternal life, and passed kingship of the Two Lands from
the deceased body to the living body. Hatshepsut had never been
granted the privilege of performing the rite for her own father.
Ahmose had spoken the words on behalf of Thutmose the Second, whose
regent she was, and Hatshepst herself had spoken the words on
behalf of her own Little Tut over his father's gilded coffin. But
she had never given the gift of the afterlife to her father, nor
received the kingship from his arms into her own.

She stepped toward the fiery outline of Thutmose the
First until she stood eye to eye with him, until she felt his gaze
look into her own kas, filling her with a throbbing green light.
She did not have the netjerwy, the sacred metal rod that opened the
mouths of kings. She laid her bare fingers on the stone lips of her
father, and felt him breathe in.

“I am the son who loves Aakheperkare, the king,
Thutmose.”

When she stepped away from him, his face had
changed. The mouth was twisted with disgust, the eyes burning with
hateful light.

Hatshepsut cried out in shock. Her ka crumpled as if
dealt a blow; she quailed on the floor of her temple.

And then she recognized the face. It was her
brother's.

Hatshepsut
. He spat her name as though the
taste of it was foul on his tongue.

She made herself stand up, made herself face him.
“Thutmose.”

Where is my kingdom? Where is my throne?

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he glared back at
her, his pupils sparking, flaring.

You took it from me. You took it all; even my
son.

“They were never yours, brother. Egypt was never
meant for you.”

Do you not see? This is not maat. You are not maat.
You will walk in darkness forever, because you are not maat.

Against her will, she took one small step backward,
retreating from his words, from his hate-filled grimace.

My kingdom,
wailed Thutmose the Second. His
voice rose and wavered like the cries of the revelers in the
valley.
It is a terrible thing you do, Hatshepsut,
Hatshepsut!

She threw her arms up to shield her face, crossed
them before her eyes, trying without success to block out the rage
and misery roiling in Thutmose's resurrection fire. The heat of him
beat at her body, and she stumbled backward, afraid she would
burn.