Sovereign of Stars (26 page)

Bita-Bita ducked into the house and gazed about,
smiling. She was followed by a Puntite girl of a similar age, who
immediately prostrated herself full length across the log floor,
her fingers outstretched toward Hatshepsut. The girl murmured a few
words, and Bita-Bita said, “She has been given to you as your
servant for the days you will spend in Punt, Great Lady. And this
house – this house is very fine, and belongs to Queen Ati, who has
loaned it to your pleasure, although you are quite small for a
woman, even a king-woman.”

Hatshepsut grinned wryly. “The Queen is too kind,
and very stately. I am humbled before her obvious majesty. What is
the girl’s name?”

“Kani,” said Bita-Bita, and soon Hatshepsut set Kani
about the task of making her own majesty more obvious, in
accordance with Puntite custom.

By the time bells rang near the whitestone firepit –
an announcement of sunset and the feast to come, Kani said –
Hatshepsut looked as close to the Puntite conception of royalty as
she could manage. She wore a knee-length kilt of red wool,
undeniably itchy compared to the fine linens of Egypt, and two
cuffs of iridescent feathers around her wrists. She would not allow
Kani to pierce her nipples with her long, translucent fishbone
needle; instead, she had Senenmut fetch from their own trade goods
several lengths of golden chain. Draped round her neck, the chains
did the trick of adorning her breasts with the requisite gold, and
spared her the pain of diplomacy. Baubles of glimmering white shell
were tied to the braids of her wig, and at last Kani painted her
face, rubbing an intense red stain into her cheeks and onto her
lips. It had a bitter taste that made her mouth tingle; when
Bita-Bita explained that it was made by crushing up the bodies of
certain insects, Hatshepsut restrained herself from shoving away
the little pot of dye in Kani’s hands. Brushing powder of scarabs’
wings onto her eyelids was one thing. Smearing crushed grubs across
her lips was quite another.

“You look breathtaking, Great Lady,” Senenmut said,
his voice dancing with laughter.

Parahu’s men kindled a great fire in the central
pit. Hatshepsut was ushered to a low-backed ebony throne beside
Queen Ati’s own. The Queen was adorned simply by Egyptian
standards, with a necklace of golden discs and the bright yellow
cloth she seemed to prefer, a skirt of open weave loosely draped
across the thighs of which she was so proud. A yellow ribbon lay
flat across her lined forehead, holding back hundreds of thin black
braids. Close to the woman now, Hatshepsut was startled to note
that two blue-green lines had been permanently tattooed around
Ati’s mouth, accentuating the woman’s natural, stern frown. Ati
needed no ostentatious finery to prove her power. She wore it in
her very flesh, in the broadness of her face, the forceful jut of
her chin.

Course after course was brought before the royal
thrones, proffered up on great platters held by pretty girls with
wide, laughing smiles. The deep ruddy glow of the firelight, its
constant movement, had a soothing, intoxicating effect. Despite the
foreignness of the feast, Hatshepsut found each dish more delicious
than the last. She sampled round-bodied fish with intensely salty
flesh, charred in their own crisp skins; gamey bits of meat on
skewers, the name of which Bita-Bita translated rather hesitantly
as “tree rat”. A dish of some hard, green fruit with grainy flesh
pleased her, for it was drizzled in honey and sprinkled with the
spicy petals of an unknown flower. There was gazelle meat cooked
with the pods of red peppers, fiery on her tongue; bread made from
the tubers of a woodland plant; songbirds stewed until even their
bones were tender, and hardly crunched in her teeth. A girl
unfolded shiny, broad leaves of a tree, fire-singed. The opened
packet set free a gout of steam, exposing the delights inside:
several fat white grubs as large as Hatshepsut’s thumb. Feeling
brave, she popped one into her mouth and was surprised that it
tasted creamy and mild, and was not unlike the fine cones of cheese
she favored at her own feasts. She turned nothing away, but partook
openly, expressing her approval to the Queen in ever more earnest
gestures and the few Puntite words she had.

Even more than the food, the entertainment entranced
her. Punt had no lack of fine performers. Troupes of adolescent
boys danced, stomping, their bodies trembling with dramatic tension
as they enacted a tale of bravery with well-rehearsed coordination.
A chorus of girls sang in the firelight, whirling and clapping,
their colorful skirts flying, their voices high and sweet. Tumblers
broke from the great ring of feasters who gathered just beyond the
reach of the light, springing hand and foot across the courtyard,
leaping and twisting in the air, and the flicker of the fire seemed
to still them against the night sky so they hung in lively tableaus
like scenes on a temple wall. With each new performance, Hatshepsut
cheered her approval. And Ati, her imposing body overfilling the
throne beside her, softened her aloof arrogance, eying Hatshepsut
with reluctant approval.

Between a course of sweet nut milk drunk from salty
shells and a trio of women playing on reed flutes, Hatshepsut
ventured to look Queen Ati full in the face. The woman returned the
stare, unblinking and direct. Her eyes, wide and dark as the mouths
of tombs, reflected back at Hatshepsut the hypnotic dancing of the
firelight. Ati’s red-stained lips tightened in slow deliberation,
darkening the lines around her mouth with shadow. She leaned toward
Hatshepsut as if drawn suddenly toward an irresistible prize.

Hatshepsut, forgetting her careful diplomacy, shrank
back on her ebony throne, momentarily seized by terror. In another
moment the tumblers began their performance again, and she forced
her eyes away from Ati’s face, fixed a smile onto her lips with
effort. She could still feel the Queen’s stare prickling along her
skin.

**

The days that followed were rapid and wild with
activity. At the base of an especially large and well-tended hut,
in the growing humid heat of the Puntite afternoon, Hatshepsut
presented her full array of Egyptian treasure. Parahu and Ati sat
once more on their ebony thrones, which had been carried and placed
here, before the stateliest of their royal dwellings, by two strong
young men with the upcurved beards characteristic of their land –
sons of the Queen, Bita-Bita said. In a grove beyond the great
house’s pilings, the little white donkey grazed in the undergrowth,
tethered to a tree.

Ineni directed the laying out of Kushite gold in all
its forms for Parahu’s inspection, while Hatshepsut stood by
unmoving, her arms folded beneath her breasts, supervising the
offering. Ineni presented plates and cups, bracelets and chains,
figurines of animals and lesser gods. There was gold in flat discs
to be used by smiths as raw material; gold tainted by copper so it
shone with a pinkish hue; gold in thick nodules, pulled straight
from the earth. And he offered, too, several large baskets of
turquoise, unworked and ready for a craftsman’s touch. Ineni licked
one raw stone and held it out in the sun, so Parahu could see the
rich quality of its color.

The king of Punt seemed beyond pleased. He held
himself in regal stillness, nodding lightly at the offering, his
metal leg-rings chiming softly whenever he shifted this way or that
to gain a better view. But Hatshepsut did not miss the glimmer in
Parahu’s eye, and indicated to Senenmut with the raising of her
brows that they ought to bargain well. In the end, Parahu agreed to
a healthy quantity of incense – resins of three types – along with
a brace of baboons trained to the leash, twenty cords of precious
ebony wood and twenty-three of cedar, several tusks of elephant
ivory, and a selection of precious oils in well-made clay jars.
Best of all, though, were the trees. Ineni and Senenmut secured the
king’s permission to transport enough living myrrh trees to line
the avenue leading to Djeser-Djeseru. Amun’s walkway would bloom
again with fragrant, green life.

Nehesi set about organizing squadrons of men to
measure out their share of Parahu’s stores of resin and fashion
secure cages for the baboons. Day by day Hatshepsut oversaw the
preparations and the collection of her goods, busying herself with
the work. It seemed no matter where her work took her, moving from
this group of men to that, approving the packing and loading of the
fragrant myrrh into bundles and baskets, Queen Ati lurked somewhere
nearby, perched on the back of her sweating donkey, watching
Hatshepsut’s movements with quiet intensity in those dark, deep-set
eyes.

Soon messenger girls began arriving at Hatshepsut’s
hut, begging the She-King’s pardon for their intrusion, but
wouldn’t she please come share her supper with Queen Ati?
Hatshepsut scuffled her feet against the snake-charm set in the
floor and told Kani to refuse the invitation with regrets. For she
could not forget the way Ati had lurched toward her suddenly at the
feast, her eyes alight with an unsettling greed. Hatshepsut was all
too aware that she was in the god’s land, and the divine drew as
close in this place as in a temple. Ati was a force Hatshepsut
could not quite bring herself to face.

One night when a messenger lobbed some insult at
Kani and the two fell to pulling each other’s hair, screeching like
cats, Hatshepsut realized she could push propriety no further. Ati
was growing impatient, and her brusqueness was rubbing off on her
servant girls. The following day Hatshepsut’s men would depart for
the deep woodlands with their shovels and coarse linen slings, to
dig up and bind the precious myrrh trees, roots, soil, and all.
Hatshepsut would not accompany them, as such work was unfit for a
king’s hands. She was as sensitive to image as always, and knew she
could not twist her way into accompanying them into the forest –
not without making herself seem even more peculiar than she was
already. There could be no more avoiding the Queen of Punt, or her
hungry, black stare.

Hatshepsut shook the two girls apart and said to the
messenger, “Tell your mistress that I will come at sunset
tomorrow.”

The look of keen, almost mocking gratification in
the girl’s eyes was nearly masked by her quick bow, and then she
was down the ladder as fast and lithe as a tree-snake. The
encroaching dusk swallowed up her form as she ran through the
shadows of the forest to the place where Queen Ati waited.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Hesyre was quick with his copper scrapers. In
moments Thutmose's skin was dry, pleasantly throbbing from the
passage of the curved blades. The freshness of his skin seemed to
pass into all his senses, until his entire being, even his ka,
trembled with wild anticipation. Water from this bath puddled about
his feet. It was scented with mint and honey, and a drizzle of the
musky, bitter oil of the mandrake root – a thoughtful touch, added
by Hesyre when the master of the Pharaoh's bath thought himself
unobserved.

The man lifted a hand mirror of polished electrum.
Twin carvings of Hathor, the lady of love, adorned its edges. The
goddess arched her graceful body to cradle the mirror's disc, and
Thutmose found the sight of her round breasts and hips so
distracting, he could scarcely inspect his face to ensure his shave
was smooth and complete. At last he stepped back, nodded to Hesyre,
and allowed the man to wind a fresh white kilt about his hips. With
a few quick motions of his experienced hands, the ends of the linen
were tied in an elaborate knot, tailed by a fall of fine white
cloth to Thutmose's knees.

“Well,” Thutmose said when he was dressed. Silence
descended into the bathing room, so he whirled and fled from it,
out into the anteroom of his chambers, where the women who cleaned
the rooms and pressed his kilts were setting his lamps aglow. Their
forms made him faintly uneasy, the sway of their hips, the
slenderness of their arms and ankles. He dismissed them, and with
the tickling rustle of women's skirts, they vanished from his
apartments.

“My lord is unsettled, I think.” Hesyre stood beside
the bath's door with head deferentially bowed, but Thutmose did not
miss the note of amusement in his body servant's voice. He knew,
however, that Hesyre held a great affection for him, and so he
issued no reprimands.

Instead, he laughed. The sound surprised him. “Is it
so obvious?”

“If my lord should need any...advice...”

Thutmose stared at Hesyre. The man was not ancient,
but the lines on his face and the way he favored one knee attested
to advancing age. He was also pinched and fussy, and somewhat
effeminate. Thutmose found it rather difficult to believe Hesyre
could serve as a font of advice. Perhaps on the best oils to use in
a bath, or the way to polish the straps of one's sandals, but not
in this matter. He wished frantically that Ahmose had not moved to
one of her southern estates. Her advice had always been reliable,
and, though she was a woman, it had never filled Thutmose with the
embarrassed panic of Hesyre’s wisdom.

The man evidently took Thutmose's astonished silence
for permission to speak on. “My lord has no doubt visited the harem
several times.”

“Ah,” Thutmose said impatiently, feeling the heat
rise to his cheeks.

He had, in fact, visited the harem several times –
as often as he could manage, between drilling with the soldiers and
hearing the endless stultifying complaints of courtiers in the
great hall. He never knew how he found the courage to enter the
first time, though he'd repeated to himself again and again as he
rode from the palace to the harem in a closed litter,
You are
the Pharaoh. The women are yours.
Still, his legs had shaken
violently as he allowed his guards to lead him into the
intoxicating cool shade of the harem garden. And when he greeted
the surprised and enthusiastic women, his voice had cracked like a
worthless boy's.