Sovereign of Stars (36 page)

Moonlight streamed through the door to her garden.
It made one great bar of silver upon the floor, and Ahmose moved
toward it as if drawn upon a string. She stepped into the glow,
felt the brush of minute grains of sparkling dust against her
cheeks, the motes dancing on the indiscernibly slight rise in
temperature within the moonbeam. Eyes closed, her body unshaken and
strong again, a memory flooded her heart. She remembered sitting up
in a bed, a fine bed with blood-red linens, and reaching out a hand
to her husband. Thutmose’s face was half moonlight, half shadow,
vital and filled with wonder. The bar of light falling over his
form split him in two, man and god, and she saw his other guise,
the arm and shoulder blue as lapis. She smelled again the perfume
of myrrh. She breathed again the breath of life.

“You foolish old thing,” Ahmose chided, and opened
her eyes.

The garden beckoned her, all shadow and moon-glint.
She stepped barefoot into the grass, and when the cool, yielding
blades touched her skin, she heard laughter among the flower beds.
Ahmose turned her head. Out beyond her low wall, a single dark raft
moved with the current of the river, a chip in a flood, tiny,
drifting ever away. The laughter sounded again, and she checked
herself from running. Ahmose walked with the dignity befitting a
lady of the court, a regent, a Great Royal Wife. And yes, God’s
Wife of Amun, too. She turned a bend in the grassy path. A shape
moved from one clump of lilies to the next, glowing white in the
moonlight, the gown trailing, a wisp of silk ruffled by movement.
The pretty young face was turned just away from her, so she could
not be sure of the features, but she heard a voice say, low and
rich, “I believe you were right, little sister. He is
suitable.”

“Mutnofret?”

“Sisters, first and always,” Mutnofret whispered,
and laughed, her laugh receding into the garden.

She hurried after the white glow, tears burning her
eyes, nearly running. She ached with the need to hold Mutnofret in
her arms, to press her cheek against her sister’s, to let their
tears mingle in the immeasurably thin space that separated them, a
space of so little consequence that only the salt of their weeping
could find its way between. But when she rounded another bend in
the path, Mutnofret was gone.

Walk
, the voice called.

Ahmose stood still.

She thought, suddenly and absurdly, of Meryet. The
girl’s belly had grown big, and soon another life would enter the
world, another squalling babe, another child running naked through
the garden, her wet-nurse cursing her, catching her up, Ahmose’s
husband laughing at the spectacle, laughing and drawing Ahmose in
close beside him.
Let’s ride in the chariot,
she whispered,
and the child squealed and laughed from somewhere in the garden’s
depths, and evaded her nurse again.

Meryet will bear an heir for the king. Neferure is
gone – poor child, we will never see her again. If only you would
have taken pity on her, Mut, Amun, and spoken to the girl. It was
none of her doing, none of her fault. She could never help who her
father was.

And Hatshepsut – she could not help who she loved,
for Ahmose knew as well as any woman that the heart seeks what it
will seek, and finds what it will find.

Walk
, said the voice. And Ahmose, her mouth
bitter with sorrow for Hatshepsut, for Neferure, for kind and good
Senenmut, even for herself, found defiance at last. Fifty years she
had been the faithful servant of the gods, always turning to their
goad, tame as a steer. Now her legs were strong. She could stand on
them unshaking.

“No,” she shouted at the sky.

Ahmose braced, shocked at her impiety, terrified for
one wild heartbeat that in her anger she had undone everything. But
the night insects went on singing their mindless chant. The moon
moved slowly, shyly behind the branches of a sycamore. And Ahmose
whispered, her heart hot with a secret and welcome fire, “I will
not.”

She smiled.

She heard a rustle in the doorway, one of her women
come to check on her, no doubt roused by her shout. Ahmose turned
to call to the girl, a good one, no doubt, as they all were. She
turned, and opened her mouth to tell her she was all right, was
only a foolish old woman enchanted by the moon. But the wrong words
came from her lips – words she did not intend to say, words she
could not quite understand.

“Lady?” the girl said, a note of panic in her
voice.

Ahmose raised a hand to comfort her, felt it raise
but saw it hanging limp and useless at her side.

“Oh,” she said faintly, “Amun.”

Her legs gave way. She fell weak as water into the
grass.

**

Her women brought a guest as dawn broke over the
garden wall. Ahmose had indicated, with the last of her strength,
her words halting and half of them wrong, that she wanted to lie
out there, in the garden among the flowers, so she could watch Re
rise full of hope and forgiveness in the morning sky. She did not
want any guests, but she no longer had the power of speech, and so
she turned her face slowly, with great effort, to see who came to
her garden.

He fell onto his knees beside her bed, and his
sorrowing face hung close in her clouding vision. He was older, of
course, as was she. The lines were so deep around his eyes, and
Ahmose feared, gazing at him in wonder and gratitude, that there
were more lines of sorrow than of laughter.

I would have made it otherwise, if I’d been
able,
she said. She said it with her heart, not her throat, for
her heart’s voice was the only voice left to her.

But whatever the nature of the age that marked him,
his look was still gentle, still a little shy, but fulsome and
bright with love.

Ineni pulled something from his belt. He held it up
to the rising sun. The rays lit it, and it glowed from within: a
piece of myrrh, pure as clear water, golden-green, Amun’s
favorite.

“I kept it for you,” he whispered, “from Punt. The
best piece in all the god’s land.”

Her lips twitched, and he smiled back at her.

“Ahmose,” he said, and said nothing more. The name
was enough, laden with long years of regret, with the pain of loss
she herself had felt time and again, with joy and peace and
love.

Ineni held the myrrh to her nose. She breathed deep.
The odor was sweet: the odor of all the good things in her life.
Hatshepsut’s soft head as a babe at her breast, the feel of the
regent’s throne against her back, Mutnofret giggling in the harem,
a girl, an adoring sister. The smoke of incense in the temple. The
sweetness of Amun’s kiss, and Tut’s, and Ineni’s.

He placed the bit of myrrh into her cold, stiff
hand, helped her close her fingers around it.

“To give to your husband, when you see him,” Ineni
said. “A gift for the lord of the gods.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Thutmose found his wife in the garden, lying on a
blanket in the shade of the great sycamore’s spreading, fragrant
branches. Her ladies were gathered about, spinning quietly or
gossiping in whispers, one of them mending a linen gown spread
across her lap, the needle she plied glinting in the sun. Meryet
did not see him at first, and he hung well back on the path,
content to simply watch her, savoring this rare moment of
peace.

Motherhood became Meryet as all things became her.
She took to it with the same natural grace, the same quiet,
thoughtful pride she showed in handling a foreign emissary,
presiding over a feast, or sitting the throne of the Great Royal
Wife. She lay on her stomach, lifting her soft, pale shoulders with
propped elbows. Her collar of jewels swung like a curtain in a
breeze, hiding from his sight her sweet breasts, already regaining
their shape after her pregnancy, after she had turned the prince
over to a wet-nurse to feed. Her neck was slender, graceful,
bending gently over the squirming baby. The braids of her wig fell
away from her nape as she leaned down to kiss the boy, and she
cooed softly, her voice low and soothing.

The prince caught one of his mother’s braids in his
little fist. She pried his fingers away, laughing, the wet-nurse
looking on with a fond, plump smile. Amunhotep, the second of his
name, grew quickly. He had been a small thing, even for a newborn,
when he had arrived in the world. But he was ringed all about by
soft folds of fat now, and Thutmose loved to watch the way the
boy’s eyes would focus suddenly on a face he recognized, and the
little red mouth would open in an early approximation of a
smile.

He approached delicately, faintly regretful to
disturb the idyll. Thutmose nodded to the women who bowed to him,
murmured
Majesty
; he greeted Meryet with a kiss on her
brow.

“He can nearly roll over,” she told him. “Watch.”
And she blew on the boy’s cheek, making his eyelids flutter, until
he turned his face toward her and arched his back, squawking like a
baby bird.

“Nearly,” Thutmose agreed. He caught the babe’s
little warm foot in his hand. It was so tiny, so carefully
made.

Amunhotep
. Meryet had suggested the name, for
she was keenly observant even in the hours after giving birth. She
saw how Ahmose’s sudden death pained Thutmose, for she had been the
only grandmother he had ever known.

The death pained both the Pharaohs. Hatshepsut had
withdrawn into her chambers and seldom emerged when duty did not
demand her presence. She never had made amends with Ahmose over the
Neferure mess – had never recalled her mother to court, had not, so
far as Thutmose knew, spoken a word to her since Neferure
disappeared. “A grudge only wounds the one who carries it,” Meryet
had said softly when Thutmose tried to explain the state of his
family to his new wife. Hatshepsut was surely wounded now, bereft
of her mother, made to place Ahmose in her tomb with so many words
between them unsaid.

And so Meryet had named their child Amunhotep, the
name of Ahmose’s father, with the hope that the babe would remind
Hatshepsut – would remind them all – of the unbreakable bond of
blood and the redemption of renewal.

But it was more than a family name to Thutmose.
Amun is satisfied
, it meant. And surely this child was proof
of the god’s appeasement. More of Thutmose’s women were pregnant
now; more children on the way, his house increasing. The succession
was secure, the northern sepats well within his control through
Meryet’s house. The throne was his, and would remain his.
Hatshepsut could rest easy. The god was satisfied, in spite of her
sins.

Thutmose scooped the boy up. Never had his hands
seemed large to him before, but now, holding his tiny son, they
were as broad as paddles. Gingerly, he tucked Amunhotep against his
shoulder and rocked him, smiling into Meryet’s eyes.
Would that
this moment could go on forever
, he pleaded in his heart.
Would that I never had to hear another petition, judge another
man, fight another battle.

But Meryet’s eyes slipped from his, slid beyond his
shoulder and the baby to the depth of the garden. The smile left
her face abruptly. Thutmose heard the pounding of sandals on the
pathway, and a breathless call.

“Majesty!”

Thutmose sighed, handed the child back to its
mother, who tucked Amunhotep protectively against her breast. The
baby fussed at the interruption.

It was Kynebu who came running, Hatshepsut’s chief
steward. The man was usually the very image of calm control, but
his face was terrible with worry, a mask of twisted grief.

Hatshepsut
. Thutmose was on his feet before
he realized he had moved. “What is it, man? Speak!”

Kynebu, forgetting himself, clutched Thutmose’s arm,
as raw a gesture as if they had been brothers alone in their
father’s house. “Majesty…a…a good and loyal servant to the throne
is dead.”

Not Hatshepsut, then. Thutmose drew a deep breath of
relief. “Who?”

Kynebu’s head dropped suddenly into his hands, and
he gave voice to a low wail of pain. “Senenmut, my lord.”

Thutmose’s immediate reaction was anger. He had not
thought of the steward’s name in nearly two years, not since he had
made Hatshepsut send the man away. Then his thoughts were all for
Hatshepsut, his mawat, already grieving the death of her mother and
the disappearance of her daughter.

“Does Hatshepsut know?”

“Not yet,” Kynebu said. “I thought it better to tell
you first. I thought…I thought it best to show you.”

“Show me?”

“How he died, lord.” The quiet chill in Kynebu’s
voice gripped Thutmose’s heart with a fist hard as stone.

**

Senenmut’s estates were not far to the north of
Waset. Thutmose, tailed by ten of his personal guard, covered the
ground quickly in his chariot, Kynebu clinging grimly to the rail
beside him, weeping silent tears. They crossed the long causeway
that passed above Senenmut’s fields, drew rein in his courtyard –
fine and well maintained, Thutmose noted, even through the urgent
worry gnawing at him. Grooms appeared from the great house to hold
the horses’ reins, their faces red with weeping.

“Take me to him,” Thutmose said, and Kynebu, ducking
his head in obedience, led the way.

They passed from an outer portico through a room –
quaint by Thutmose’s standards – set for isolated living: a
solitary couch, a lone table, a single tall harp in the corner,
dust clinging to its strings. A niche in the wall held a few
statues of gods, but the offering bowl was clean and bright, seldom
used. Kynebu hesitated on the threshold of another door. Thutmose
could see beyond his guide a plain, serviceable bed, a dressing
chest that lacked ornate carving. And the rank stench of blood hit
him with a terrible force.