Sovereign of Stars (30 page)

As she stood gazing into the surface of the palace
lake, watching the ripples of rising fish distort her dark
reflection with its one bright pink bloom, she realized with sudden
certainty where the answer to her quandary was surely hidden – the
one place she had not yet thought to search, had not even dared to
consider. She paused, listening to the whisper in her heart,
half-unheard as it always was. She felt the faint wobbling in her
middle that indicated the words of a god.

“Mistress,” she whispered. “Lady of Delights.”

Hathor struggled to respond through the dense cloud
of Neferure’s unatoned sin.

I will clear your way, goddess. I will.

It had been many years since Neferure had visited
the Pharaoh’s apartments – the other Pharaoh, the chiefest of the
two. Her mother, Maatkare. Many years, yet still Neferure’s feet
knew the correct path. She allowed her own ka to lead her, obedient
to the strength of her own assurance. Soon enough she reached the
two great doors, carved with twin scarabs raising sun-disks above
their backs, gilded and painted in lapis-blue. With the Pharaoh
away on her expedition, there was only one guard on the door, and
he stepped aside with a bow when Neferure smiled at him, sweetly,
benignly. What harm was there in the Great Royal Wife, the king’s
own daughter, entering the royal chamber?

Her mother’s fan-bearer looked up sharply, an angry
remark ready to spit from her lips. When the woman saw who
approached her, she dropped into a hasty bow.

“Great Lady,” she said smoothly.

“Rise.”

She did. The fan-bearer’s face was calm, but
Neferure did not miss the light of suspicion flaring in her
eyes.

“Your name?”

“Batiret, Great Lady.”

“You have served my mother long.”

“Ah; I have served her since before you were born,
Great Lady.”

“That is a long time indeed.” Neferure gazed around
Hatshepsut’s anteroom, outwardly airy, even lazy in the late Shemu
heat. Her eyes, though, swept keenly over the rich hangings, the
fine furniture, the very tiles of the floor she stood upon. She
searched the scenes depicted on the walls, the various kings of the
past striding and fighting, hunting, conquering, worshipping. They
were all as alike as lentils in a pot, all of them mortal. And none
of them yielded up her answer.

She made toward the first of several doors set along
the nearest wall. Batiret scampered after her, fussing with the
length of linen she had been folding when Neferure arrived.

“Great Lady, is there aught I might do for you?”

How to search the apartment thoroughly without this
pest of a woman buzzing around her? Neferure turned to look Batiret
full in the face – and stopped, seized with revelation.

“You have ever been loyal to my mother.”

“Of course, Great Lady. Always.” The gruffness of
simple pride was in Batiret’s answer.

Neferure considered the woman, her frank, honest
face, her open and fearless nature, evident in the way she stood
square and unafraid under the Great Royal Wife’s scrutiny.

“I would reward you for your good service to my
mother, and to Egypt.”

“Reward me, Great Lady?” Suspicion crept into
Batiret’s voice, and she tried to temper it with a half-bow.

“I would have you come to supper tonight in my own
palace.”

Batiret straightened. She was silent for as long as
propriety would allow, and in that brief moment Neferure saw the
doubt and worry clouding in her face. But no one could refuse an
invitation from the Great Royal Wife.

Batiret had no choice but to bow her acceptance. “As
you wish, Great Lady, though I am unworthy of the honor.”

Neferure took the flower from her wig, breathed in
its sweet smell once more. Then she tucked it into Batiret’s own
hair, smiling, and left the Pharaoh’s rooms.

**

Thutmose sighed as his guards closed the doorway to
the House of Women behind him, shutting out the distant sounds of
Waset – the merchants crying in the great central marketplace, the
blows of carvers’ hammers ringing like bird cries in the marsh. The
doors shut out the smell of Waset, too, the fishy odor of the
quayside, the acridity of pitch coating boats’ hulls, sewage
draining down the sides of the streets, the faint sweetness of
bread baking, beer brewing, meat roasting. The young king did not
know whether his sigh was one of relief or despair. For as the
pleasant perfumes and soft music of feminine laughter washed over
him, he felt the weight of duty settle over his shoulders, cold and
stiff as a jeweled collar against his skin.

Neferure had grown cold and unresponsive in his bed,
and his confidence in his ability to please her – as a husband or
as a king – was badly shaken. He had turned to his harem nightly,
taking two or three women into his bed, rising to the charms of
each one until, by the end of the night, he had to be carried in a
litter back to the great palace, too weak and sleepy to drive his
chariot at the head of his guards. The women laughed with delight
and made bawdy jokes about the greedy desires of their handsome
young king. The men of his guard – those he was close to – advised
him with knowing winks to enjoy his stamina while he could, for
when his youth left him he would not manage to throw his spear so
many times in a single evening. Hesyre wordlessly prepared salves
for Thutmose’s overworked flesh, raising his fussy brows in the
bath while he bent over his work. But no matter how pained he
became, no matter how he longed for a night of simple sleep,
Thutmose returned to his women.

Part of it was the pleasure. Ah, as Neferure was
quick to remind him, he was only a man, and what man could resist
so many willing women in his bed, such an endless parade of beauty
and variety? Ankhesebet with her squirming and her squeals, Nedjmet
with her lithe dancing and her eager mouth, Sheshti’s translucent
white skin, always under veils to protect it from the harsh sun,
Khuit with her skin as black and sweet as ripe figs. Bebi and
Benerib, who would happily tangle the sheets together. Ankhesiref
who liked it on her back. Meritamun who straddled him. Henuttawy
with her firm, round buttocks and her preference for it on her
knees, face pressed into the mattress, her yowls stifled by a silk
cushion – no, he would be no man at all if the lure of so many
singular pleasures did not draw him back night after night.

But more than the pleasure, it was the pressing need
of his house. Neferure wanted nothing of him. That was now plain,
and he would not force her. And so he told himself that even a son
conceived on a harem girl would be better than no son at all, would
hold the throne securely enough. Was he himself not the son of a
harem girl? That was the thought that pushed him onward, to take
another woman into his bed, and another, long after the lamps had
burned low.

No woman had yet announced a pregnancy, though, and
Thutmose felt his ka tremble under the weight of his unfulfilled
duty even as he fell atop another willing woman.

It was Henuttawy who was the first to meet him in
the harem’s antechamber, swaying in a transparent fall of pleated
white linen. The gown was caught below her pretty round breasts by
a green ribbon studded with wrought-gold flowers, appealing in its
simplicity. She offered him a cup of cool wine, took his arm as
they strolled out into the gathering night. It had been a long day
of hearing petitions, deciding on an endless stream of matters that
seemed so small and insignificant to Thutmose. What did it matter
which noble house would inherit the property left by some deceased
merchant who had no heir? What did it matter how great a percentage
of the emmer harvest should be set aside against famine the
following year? What did it matter that the House of Hirkhepshef
sought the blessing of the throne on the marriage of a daughter to
some Ankh-Tawy lord? Nothing mattered at all, when set beside the
empty wombs of Thutmose’s wife and every one of his concubines. In
the face of his dark fear, Henuttawy’s soft, gentle bearing and
easy smile were a welcome light – even if she did cast little
sneers of triumph at the women who had not been quick enough to
greet their king.

A purple dimness fell over the harem garden,
softening the edges of the flower beds, soothing away the fierce
heat of daytime. Bats emerged from their hiding places, dipping and
weaving across the grounds. Thutmose lost himself in the peace of
watching them, allowed his eyes to become pleasantly fooled by the
crossing of their paths. Henuttawy’s melodious voice lulled him,
talking of some quiet nicety – a music lesson she had taken, the
harp, the flute. As if in response to her story, distant music
rippled across the grounds from the direction of the House itself,
a tinkling of electrum bells, the strings of a harp singing a
smooth counterpoint to the rhythm.

She led him to a favorite place, a small clearing
surrounded by a ring of sycamores. Hundreds of tiny white flowers
bloomed among the short grass, little stars in a reversed, violet
sky. Suddenly Henuttawy dropped her story mid-sentence and kissed
him, lifted his hands to her firm breasts. “Here, my lord. Take me
here.”

“Here? Outside?”

“Ah, yes – the women will all stay away. I made sure
of it. I told my servant where we would be.”

“Why here?”

Henuttawy sank gracefully to her knees, her hands
working now at her own soft breasts, shivering. “When a woman’s
skin touches the earth during the act of love, it increases her
fertility tenfold. Didn’t you know that, Majesty?”

He could not tell whether she was telling the truth,
or whether she had invented the story just to be clever. Henuttawy
was fond of clever little tales. But he reasoned that anything, at
this point, was worth trying. He bent over her, kissed her long and
deep while his hands loosened the ribbon beneath her breasts, an
expert by now at a maneuver that had once confounded him.
Henuttawy’s flimsy gown fell into the grass, and she turned on her
knees, pressed her face into a patch of the little star-flowers,
moaning with anticipation. Thutmose hiked the hem of his kilt and
went willingly toward his duty.

But before he could take the girl, a harsh scream
cut through the night air. The music from the House of Women
faltered abruptly.

“Gods,” Henuttawy said, scrambling upright,
clutching her gown about her. “What in the name of Sobek…?”

The scream came again, high, panicked, painful.
Thutmose ran from the grove.

Women streamed from the pillared portico of the
house, looking about in confusion. Meritamun, tall and slender and
the most sensible woman in the harem, saw him and hurried toward
him.

“What is it? Who is hurt?” he demanded.

“No one, Majesty – at least, no one that we can
tell.”

“Where did the scream come from? Some woman is in
distress, clearly. I want to know who.”

Meritamun shook her head, at a loss – and in the
same moment, as if directed by the same unseen hand, she and
Thutmose both looked toward the other building on the grounds: the
little palace of the King’s Daughter.

There it stood, so unassuming in the night-time,
surrounded by the shadows of its shade trees. A single small fire
burned at its apex, where Neferure kept her shrine to Hathor. A
lamp flickered dimly somewhere just below, passing by a window on
the second floor.

“Come,” Thutmose said, and sprinted for the
palace.

There were no guards on the door. There never were,
for Neferure was strange and distant enough that the women of the
harem feared her, though none would admit it. Thutmose shoved
against the door, but it was blocked from the inside. He kicked at
it desperately, and gained only an inch or two of space before it
jammed.

“Set!” he swore, striking the cedarwood panels with
a fist. The door would not give.

A cry came from the upper floor, weak and
frightened. Thutmose left the door and circled the wall of the
palace. A flock of women trailed after him, chittering in their
agitation like unsettled geese on a pond. Yet more women hung back
in the garden, their linen blurs of brightness in the twilight, too
frightened to approach the dwelling of the Great Royal Wife.

“Here, Lord!” Meritamun appeared from around a
corner, waving him on urgently. He came to her and looked where she
pointed. The black eye of a narrow window opened above them,
staring unseeing out into the garden. It was high up, but Thutmose
thought he might just be able to make the leap.

He sprang into the air. His hands smacked against
the stone still, clawing; his fingertips held him, though they
shrieked in pain. He flailed his legs against the mudbrick wall,
searching desperately for a toe-hold, and hands caught at his leg,
braced him. Meritamun crouched beneath his foot and straightened,
levering him upward with his foot braced on her shoulder. His chest
cleared the sill.

Thutmose grunted, twisted himself sideways, reached
one arm through the window, pulled himself halfway inside. The room
was dark, unlit; couches and tables loomed in the blackness,
four-footed and crouching like beasts waiting to spring. Thutmose
heard a sob from the second floor, and a woman’s voice pleading. He
kicked, pulled, cursed – and he was through, toppling onto the
thick rugs of Neferure’s floor.

He held himself very still, waiting, but no alarmed
cries came, and the heart-wrenching sobs continued unabated. He
crept to the front door and dragged aside the chest that leaned
against it, marveling that little Neferure had been strong enough
to place it there. Then, bracing himself against the menacing dark,
he groped his way to the staircase and climbed to the second
floor.

The beautifully appointed sleeping chamber of the
Great Royal Wife was on the second story, where the windows and
wind-catchers might cool her rest during the worst heat of summer.
A single lamp flickered on its three-legged stand, the warmth and
merriment of its light a grotesque counterpoint to the scene
unfolding before Thutmose’s astonished eyes. Amidst the finery of
the Great Lady’s chambers, between a large standing chest of oiled
cedarwood and the red silk couch that had been a wedding gift from
Thutmose, the form of a woman huddled, pressed against the prettily
painted wall, her arms thrown up over her face. She bled from a
gash on her arm, an ugly wound that pulsed a dark flow onto the
bright white tiles and puddled about her drawn-up feet.