Sovereign of Stars (2 page)

Hatshepsut went on as though she had not heard his
interjection. “But Mutnofret plotted against me. She has always
plotted against me. I cannot forget the way she brought her
influence to bear on Waset, how she took my throne right from under
me.”

“You ceded the throne,” he reminded her, not knowing
where his impertinence came from. Perhaps it was the disappointment
of the peas and sodden fish.

“To save Egypt from destruction,” she replied,
narrowing her eyes. “You are most foul-tempered tonight. You are
not getting enough sleep.”

“The King's Daughter won't allow it.” He smiled to
appease her, though he did not truly feel like smiling.

“At any rate, she was the last known agitator in my
city, and she is gone from Waset now like the rest of them.”

The king had moved swiftly, sussing out those who
opposed her and propelling them up or down the Iteru to comfortable
but distant banishments. Only time would tell whether the measure
had increased or diminished her security on the throne.

“With your enemies confirmed gone, perhaps we might
get back to hot suppers.”

“My taster must have time to do her job. If you are
displeased by the rate at which peas cool, take it up with the
gods, not with me.”

Senenmut scowled. “That child is too young to be a
taster. If you believe some enemy or other will try to poison you
again, why risk an innocent girl to find out?”

Hatshepsut lowered her eyes. “I know. I feel the
same. I tried to discourage her, but she insisted. She all but
begged for the honor of the duty.”

“You are the king.”

“Batiret has proven herself unusually loyal. I would
give her whatever she asks of me.”

“Loyal?”

“She chose to keep a secret rather than take it to
my husband, or to Mutnofret, and profit by it.” She held his eyes
for a moment, sober and pale, and he nodded, biting his lip.
“Besides,” Hatshepsut went on, “the girl is at least as smart as
you are, and twice as observant. Nothing slips past her
notice.”

“If nothing slips past her notice, then why not
allow her to supervise the cooks and leave off the tasting duties?
You could eat your food at the proper temperature once more. After
months of cold peas and sauces turned to jellies, a bowl of hot
broth would be as good as a festival.”

“I am surrounded by enemies.”

“You are not, Hatet. You said as much yourself
moments ago.” He stared at her resolute face helplessly. A sudden
burning in his chest caught at his ka, a relentless tenderness for
her, a fierce desperation to comfort her, though she was as far
beyond his comfort as the moon was beyond the reach of his
hands.

“I have managed to rout only the enemies I knew from
my city. It's the enemies I cannot identify that keep me awake in
the night. They are like shadows in darkness. I cannot see them,
but I feel their chill. I know they are there.”

“By the gods! You cannot live like this
indefinitely. You'll make yourself mad. You have Nehesi and his
guardsmen. You have me, for whatever that is worth. You even have
the hearts of the rekhet; they love you! What more do you
want?”

She did not answer for a long moment, but stared
cold-eyed into the king's chambers, past arrangements of ebony
tables, black granite statues of gods, through walls painted with
chariots in battle and papyrus in bloom. She saw nothing that
Senenmut could see. Then without warning her lips trembled, and she
raised her hands to her face, pressed the heels of her palms hard
against her eyes. Senenmut was beside her in an instant, dodging
around their supper table, pulling her into his arms, rocking her
the way he rocked her child.

“I want peace,” she said in a strangled, plaintive
voice – a small voice, high and childish.

She is only seventeen,
he reminded himself.
Seventeen, and a woman, and the king.

Hatshepsut reined herself in, gathered herself up.
Her hands fell away from her face and it was calm once more. The
only evidence of her loss of control was the light tremor in her
chest, and the single tear that crept down her cheek. The tear was
black with kohl. Senenmut smoothed it quickly away with his
thumb.

“All I want is peace – that is all. I want safety. I
want to know that no man will ever take from me someone I love –
anything I love, including my throne. Yet how can I have peace now,
knowing as I do how many men wait to tear me from my birthright?
Ankhhor was not the only one – I am not naïve enough to think that
he was the only one.”

“No,” Senenmut said. “You are not.”

“It is only a matter of time before some enemy
emerges again. Where is he now? Is he in my city? In my palace's
own walls?”

“You will make yourself mad...”

“Then I shall be mad!”

“It is no way to live.”

“
This
is no way to live.” She waved her fist
at the king's chambers, an arc that took in the gilding and
faience, the fine furniture, the gentle whisper of cool air through
the high, ornate wind-catchers. “And yet I love it. It is what the
very gods bred me for. I cannot turn my back on it, any more than I
can allow another to wrest it from me.”

Silence fell heavy between them.

Hatshepsut jabbed at her cold peas with the point of
her knife. “I wish sometimes that I had been born a rekhet. Then I
could live how I please, without the gods' yoke around my neck. I
could love whom I please.”

Senenmut looked away from her, blushing, though
there were no servants here to see. He went reluctantly back to his
own couch and drained his wine cup. “No rekhet lives as he pleases.
They all wish to be nobles.”

“Then I wish I had been born a noble, or a
priest.”

He laughed. “The nobles and priests all wish to be
the Pharaoh.”

She smiled in spite of herself, and in another
moment, quick as a leaping fish, she had snatched a green fig from
the bowl on the table. She threw it at him hard. It would have
smarted, had it connected with his forehead, but he caught it and
bit into it. The flesh was grainy and still just shy of sweet.

“You are trying to start a war,” he said around his
mouthful.

The smile dissipated from her face with a curious
slowness, as a water-fog disperses from the city streets on a
winter morning, receding by increments, quiet and inevitable. It
was replaced by a look of deep contemplation, her brows drawn
together, eyes distant once more, but lighting moment by moment
with the glow of revelation.

Senenmut swallowed the fig with great
difficulty.

CHAPTER TWO

They drifted out onto the king's private lake, the
clear waters lapping and gurgling against the hull of Hatshepsut's
boat. It was a small replica of the great pleasure barges which
plied the Iteru in the cool of the evening, carrying the wealthy
from estate to estate, from feast to fancy, their decks ringing
with music and flashes of color as dancers twirled for the delight
of noblemen and ladies. Hatshepsut's barge was as brightly painted
as any of its larger cousins, but it fit only two passengers
beneath the red linen sunshade raised on gilded posts. It was a
craft meant to facilitate private conversation, for while the
palace bustled with servants and politicians, ambassadors and
guardsmen, in the center of the king's lake there was none to
overhear but the fishes and the flies.

Hatshepsut's women stood gathered on the shore,
awaiting their mistress's return, growing smaller and more distant
as Senenmut poled the small barge toward the center of the still,
warm lake. The king reclined on a pile of cushions, trailing one
hand in the water, smiling whenever one of the tame yellow carp
rose to nibble at her fingers. With the ever-present eyes of the
palace receding on the shore, he stared openly at Hatshepsut. Her
smiles were thin and rare these days. It was a treasure as good as
gold, to see her lose herself in the pleasure of the moment – even
if that moment was brief.

Too soon, they reached the middle of the lake and
she gestured for him to stop. He laid the quant in the hull and
joined her beneath the canopy. The shade of it was soothing, cool
even in the windless afternoon, drowsily red.

Several days had passed since they had seen
Mutnofret off, and Senenmut had been too busy with his duties to
the King's Daughter to inquire into Hatshepsut's thoughts. But the
way her smile had faded at their supper had remained with him,
gnawing into his heart with a faint, distant worry. When she
summoned him for a private discussion – matters of state, her
messenger had said – he attended with both relief and trepidation,
for he sensed that this evening she would make her intentions
clear.

“I know how I will keep my throne,” she declared
when Senenmut was settled upon his cushions.

Your throne is not in danger,
he wanted to
tell her. But her words at their cold supper had remained in his
heart, taunting him.
Ankhhor was not the only one. I am not
naïve enough to think....
He remained silent, waiting.

She held up one hand in the red light of the canopy,
fingers spread. “Egypt is a chariot, and I must hold three reins to
drive it. Here...” with her other hand she indicated one space
between her spread fingers, “and here...” she touched the next
space, “and here. I am a fist.” And she closed hers, held it steady
in the space between them. “So long as I hold all three reins in my
fist, no man will be able to stand against me, for then he will
stand against all of the Two Lands.

“The first rein is the Amun priesthood. Amun is the
king of the gods, and all other gods and all other priesthoods bow
before him and before his servants. I have that rein. His name is
Hapuseneb.”

Senenmut nodded. “He is loyal to you; I am sure of
it.”

And why not? Hapuseneb was her own blood, if
distantly so – his mother had been a harem woman under the reign of
Hatshepsut's father; the woman was a cousin of Ahmose, which made
Hapuseneb a cousin of sorts to Hatshepsut. Senenmut furrowed his
brow, trying to visualize the complex web of family relations
between the king and her new High Priest of Amun. But it was not
their somewhat diluted blood ties that had inspired Hatshepsut to
raise her distant cousin to his high station. He had been the first
in the crowd to proclaim her on that golden morning when she had
appeared before her people in the regalia of the king, and raised
the crook and flail before her bared breasts. Hapuseneb had not
hesitated, and the Pharaoh had not forgotten.

“He risked his reputation – his very place amongst
Amun's servants – to support me. Through him I hold the Amun
priests, and through the Amun priests I hold the priests of every
other temple, every other god.

“The second rein is the civil service.”

Again Senenmut nodded. The nobles who were the
merchants and other great men of Egypt – the architects, the
scribes, the artisans, the land-owners – employed the rekhet and
kept them fed. “What is the name of this rein?”

“Ineni. He is growing old, I know, but he is still
influential amongst them, and very clever. He is loyal to me
because he loves my mother; for her sake, he will hold to me, and
will do whatever is necessary to hold the nobles to me.”

“Well enough; I can believe such a thing of Ineni.
He is a man of great influence, and he knows into which ears he
should speak. That much is true.”

“The third rein is the army.”

Senenmut glanced at her face. She watched him
levelly, a half-wary, half-triumphant light shining in her
eyes.

“Nehesi?” Senenmut guessed.

“Nehesi is my man unto death; I have no doubt of
that. But he is no rein upon the army's bit. He has little
influence outside of Waset, and Egypt's army has a greater reach
than the walls of my city. Nor could I make him my rein if I wanted
to. Soldiers are not like nobles or priests. I cannot force them to
revere a man, no matter how many titles or honors I heap upon
him.”

“Who, then?”

She lifted her chin, a familiar gesture that meant
she knew his complaints were forthcoming, and that she would not
suffer to hear them. “I must be the rein in my own hand, and win
over the army myself.”

“What?”

“I am going to war, Senenmut. This time I shall not
fight with figs, I promise you.”

“Win over the army yourself? You cannot mean
to...”

“Ah, I can. How else do I bring them to me? For I
must have them, Senenmut – all of them, generals and soldiers, each
one. Would any man of Ankhhor's sort dare to stand against the
entire army of the Two Lands?”

“Great Lady,” he said, hoping the title would
ingratiate him, hoping she would listen, “you are young, and
inexperienced in battle.”

“I rode my brother's chariot to save his men from
the Kushites. I trampled them beneath my heel.”

“That was one battle, and you were not in the thick
of it. You have no training in warfare, strategy, combat...”

She waved a hand. “I am the son of Amun.”

“Gods!” He threw up his hands, his stomach roiling
with desperation.

“They will attack anyhow,” she said coolly, dipping
her fingers once more into the lake's placid waters. “The Kushites,
or the Hittites, or the Heqa-Khasewet. Some tribe or other raises
banners against Egypt whenever a new king comes to the throne; you
know this, Senenmut. They have no doubt heard by now that my
brother is dead and a new Pharaoh has taken his place. They are due
at my borders, and they will arrive, as surely as the flood comes
each year. I only propose to give them what they seek.”

“You told me you wanted peace.”

She raised her eyes to his. They were as dark and
fierce as a falcon's eyes, the skin around them tight with rage. He
drew back a little under the force of her glare, burrowing his
elbows into his cushions as if he might physically retreat from her
ferocity – though Senenmut knew it was not he who incited that
stark, wild anger.