Sovereign of Stars (8 page)

Grateful for the distraction, she raised her own cup
in reply, grinning, and called for more music and dance. She sank
down on the small throne beneath her sunshade, pulled Thutmose onto
her knee, hugged him close to her chest while he giggled and
squirmed and declared that one day he would have obelisks taller
than the Great Pyramids.

“You are exactly as a child should be,” she told
him, and laughed at the face he made, innocent and puzzled.

She turned the boy loose to watch the obelisks once
more.

**

Just after sunset, when the party had dispersed, she
found them in the palace's great garden. Senenmut was making little
boats from leaves and setting them adrift on the smooth, dark
surface of the lake, while Neferure plucked petals from a bundle of
flowers that lay on the lake's wall, and laid the petals carefully
inside Senenmut's tiny green barques.

“May I come to your quay?” Hatshepsut called
softly.

Senenmut glanced up at her and smiled, but Neferure
pulled the thick black braid of her side-lock across her own eyes,
hiding her mother from view.

Hatshepsut sat on the lake's low wall. “My sweet
girl, you nearly scolded me in front of all our fine guests. You
must not do such a thing. I am the Pharaoh.”

Neferure turned away. “So is Thutmose. I can scold
him.”

“You should not.”

“He is just a boy.”

“He is the king. We all must show him respect.”

“Even you?”

“Of course; even I.”

“Then should you not show respect to dead
kings?”

Hatshepsut glanced at Senenmut, thinking to give him
a look full of reprimand for putting such ideas into his charge's
heart. But he looked so genuinely startled, his brows arching
sharply beneath the fringe of his wig, that Hatshepsut could only
turn her eyes back to her daughter in helpless silence.

At last she managed, “Are you troubled by the
question of respect? It is only natural. Yes, Thutmose is just a
boy, and perhaps it angers you that we must show him the respect
due a king. Perhaps it is time for you to hold the respect of the
court, too.”

Neferure glanced up from her petals, eyes suddenly
keen with interest.

“Yes?” Hatshepsut felt a sudden wash of relief at
the girl's approval. “Would you like that? There is a special place
for you at court, Neferure. A very sacred place.”

“Sacred?”

Hatshepsut nodded. She caught Neferure's beautiful
face in her hands and said, “How would you like to be God's Wife of
Amun?”

Neferure frowned.

Hatshepsut's hands fell. “Will it not make you
happy?”

The girl shrugged. “I am honored.”

Senenmut grimaced, twirling a leaf in his
fingers.

“I thought you would be thrilled,” Hatshepsut said.
“You are so keen on religion.” Neferure said nothing, and
Hatshepsut sighed. “What is this, child? What gnaws at you?” She
bent over Neferure and said playfully, “I think you have little
mice in your heart, gnawing and gnawing!” Hatshepsut tickled the
girl's chest, but Neferure did not smile. She only flinched
away.

Senenmut spoke up softly. “It is the pylons, is it
not?”

Neferure nodded.

“Oh, dear girl. You cannot let such things trouble
you.”

“You should not tear them down.” Tears came to
Neferure's eyes. Hatshepsut drew back a little, startled; she had
seldom seen her daughter cry, since she was old enough to
speak.

“The pylons are blank. They were never carved.”

“
You
should carve them.”

Hatshepsut ignored the suggestion. “We build these
monuments to the gods, Neferure. The gods deserve beautiful things,
do they not?”

“Those obelisks are not for the gods. They are for
you.”

Heat flushed into Hatshepsut's face. Senenmut caught
her eye and gave a tight half-shake of his head.
Calm
, his
eyes cautioned.

“The gods…the gods will be angry.” Neferure tripped
over her own tongue, and flushed like her mother, frustrated by her
own inability to explain. “And
I
will be angry.”

“Why will you be angry?” Senenmut asked gently,
taking Neferure's hand.

The tears spilled over her cheeks. She turned from
Hatshepsut and threw herself into Senenmut's arms, her face pressed
against his shoulder. “Because he was my father,” she wailed.

Senenmut looked up at Hatshepsut over Neferure's
frail little body, heaving with her sobs. The pain in his eyes
stabbed deep into Hatshepsut's heart.

CHAPTER NINE

Ahmose came to the Pharaoh's chambers within minutes
of Hatshepsut's summons.

“You are still living in the palace,” Hatshepsut
said, startled, taking her mother's hands in her own. “Wouldn't you
prefer an estate in the hills, with breezes coming off the river,
and good smells from your fields? Waset reeks like a midden heap
half the time and like a whore's neck the other half.”

“Who taught you such coarse language, Majesty? Never
your mother.”

Hatshepsut kissed her cheek. The lines of old
worries had settled deep into Ahmose's face. The skin on her hands
and had begun to slacken ever so slightly. Hatshepsut recalled her
mother when she was a young regent, ruling Egypt in the name of
Thutmose the Second, her face hardly touched by the cares of such
an impossible task. She was over forty years now, well on her way
to old age. Somewhere between then and now, the past had imprinted
itself indelibly on the former Great Royal Wife.

“No, I do not wish to live outside the palace again.
It has been my only true home since I became a woman. The years I
spent living elsewhere were a mistake. I've no doubt an estate
would be quieter – and yes, sweeter smelling than the city. But I
would never know what to do with myself in the hills. Can you
imagine me farming? Crops don't obey a command to grow. I know how
to do nothing but give commands. Once a Great Royal Wife, always a
Great Royal Wife, I suppose.”

Hatshepsut led her across the bright tiles of the
anteroom floor, past couches and tables of precious wood
upholstered in eastern silk and fine Retjenu wool, past the alcove
where her musicians' many instruments stood on polished stands,
waiting the king's pleasure. She had had the walls painted and
carved afresh when she had taken her throne, undoing the damage
Thutmose the Second had caused, restoring what she could remember
of her father's murals and the works of Pharaohs before him.

Ahmose hesitated before Hatshepsut could lead her
through the doorway to the private chambers. She brushed with her
fingertips the face of the first Thutmose, her long-dead husband,
the father whose face and ways Hatshepsut could barely recall.

“I miss him,” Ahmose said. Her voice did not rise
above a murmur. She sounded like a woman talking in her sleep. “For
all the difficulties between us, I loved him – my Tut.”

Hatshepsut took her elbow. “I did not intend to
wound you by summoning you here. These were his apartments, too,
and you and he...”

“It is no matter. I am growing old, and old women
are sentimental.”

Ahmose allowed herself to be guided through the
private chambers and out into the garden, where Hatshepsut's women
were finishing their tasks, spreading a light supper on a table in
the early evening shade. Where light lanced through the branches of
broad-leafed trees, families of gnats spun in shimmering, wavering
funnels above the grass. A hesitant evening wind shook the trees,
disturbing the gnats. Ita and Tem had tied gleaming strands of
copper plate in the branches, and they chimed with a musical patter
like water pouring from a jar. Ahmose paused at the sound, smiled a
little sadly. She was often melancholy now, in the years since
Hatshepsut had sent Mutnofret away. The question of whether
Hatshepsut had been cruel to exile her aunt had plagued the king
often over the past seven years. Little Tut – Pharaoh Thutmose,
Hatshepsut reminded herself; the boy balled his fists and scowled
whenever she called him Little Tut – was Mutnofret's grandson, and
she had not seen the boy since he was a baby.
Perhaps there is
little difference between cruelty and justice,
she thought as
she led Ahmose to her place at the table.

“You brought me here for a reason,” Ahmose said,
lifting a pretty enameled bowl full of fine, light beer to her
lips. “It was not to feast my excellency.”

“You are quite excellent enough for any king to
feast.”

“A Pharaoh has no need to flatter her subjects.”

“You enjoyed it, all the same.”

Ahmose smiled. “Why did you summon me, Hatet?”

Hatshepsut drew a deep breath. “Neferure. I am
concerned about her.”

Ita presented a steaming roast duck on a platter
carved with papyrus fronds. It smelled rich and earthy, filled as
its cavity was with a bundle of herbs singed black at their ends
from the roasting fire, but Ahmose did not touch the portion that
was placed in her supper bowl.

“What concerns you? Is she ill?”

“I do not know, in truth. Something plagues her –
has always plagued her. She is so solemn, one might almost call her
grim. And she seems to understand things no child can
understand.”

Ahmose chuckled to herself, and sliced a bit of her
duck. “Is that all?”

“She is upset over my obelisks. She knows I plan to
tear down my brother's gateway and raise them in its place. It's
put her into a sulk the likes of which I have never seen. I cannot
get through to her.”

“She will learn to accept it.”

“She is too quiet.”

“Most mothers would bless the gods for sending them
a quiet child.”

“There is a strangeness in her quiet. It is
not...not maat.” Hatshepsut gazed into the dense shadows of the
garden. The trees moved again in the breeze, and the copper bangles
sounded somehow menacing, alien and knowing. “I fear Neferure may
have a demon in her heart.”

To Hatshepsut's surprise, Ahmose burst into
laughter, full and loud. When she narrowed her eyes at her mother,
Ahmose composed herself with an obvious effort, the fingers of one
hand pressed to her mouth. “I am sorry, Majesty. Forgive me.”

“Why do you laugh?”

“Oh, Hatet. Neferure is not demon-ridden. Don't you
see? She is god-chosen.”

Hatshepsut rocked back in the seat of her stool,
relief warring in her heart with a new, nagging suspicion.
“God-chosen? Are you certain?”

“Did I not tell you as much that night I found you
in the garden, when Mut showed me what you intended to do and sent
me to stop you?”

“You did not say...”

“Daughters never listen to their mothers.”

Hatshepsut's mouth twisted wryly. “Ah, and that is
the gods’ own truth.” She took a much-needed draft of her beer, for
her mouth had gone quite dry.

“When Neferure seems quiet and strange, she is only
listening to the voices of the gods.”

A bristling intensity crept beneath Hatshepsut's
skin. She stared blankly at her portion of duck, examining the
sensation, prodding at it with her heart until at last its meaning
became suddenly, shockingly clear. She was
jealous
. She
envied the girl this connection to the gods. Indeed, it seemed more
than a bit unfair, that Neferure should hear their voices speaking
within her. She was but a child, and Hatshepsut was the king, and
son of Amun, after all! Hatshepsut had never heard Amun's voice –
not with any certainty, at any rate – not in the way the god-chosen
reputedly heard. She tried to silence the voice of envy, but it
only wailed the louder. Yes, and Neferure had so much more of
Senenmut's heart than she, tied up as Hatshepsut always was with
the demands of the throne. Ah, she and Senenmut saw one another
often enough, worked together – but they had had no time of late to
love one another.

You are being ridiculous,
she told herself
firmly.
The Pharaoh will not be consumed with envy over a
seven-year-old girl. Do try to recall that you are the Lord of the
Two Lands and not a shrieking fishwife.

When she had stifled the flush of envy, a more
sinister chill gripped her. She remembered too vividly the terrible
night she had spent watching the bats flit over the palace lake,
the reflection of the hanging star burning in the water, the
cramping in her womb.

“I wonder whether she is god-chosen after all, or
whether it was something I did that made her so strange. The
potion...”

“It is not the potion, nor a demon. Neferure will
come to understand what it means to be god-chosen as she grows. She
will open to it like a flower in the sun. That is the way it
happens for those who are chosen. It’s how it happened for me.”

“Will you tutor her for me?”

“She has her tutor, I think.”

Hatshepsut smiled a little sadly. “Senenmut can
teach her many things, but not this. She needs you to guide
her.”

Ahmose lowered her eyes, a show of obedience – but
Hatshepsut could see the spark of joy that shone behind her
downcast lashes.

“I offered Neferure the station of God's Wife
recently, you know. She did not seem pleased.”

“How could she be? She is far too young. You were
twice her age when you took the station.”

“She is not too young to begin learning. Just simple
tasks – the temple songs, how to burn incense...”

“Ah, such tasks may be within her reach, but pushing
her too far and too fast would be a grievous mistake. A woman – or
a girl – should come to Amun's service willingly, ready to give her
heart in full to the god.” A muscle in Ahmose's jaw pulsed faintly;
it seemed to Hatshepsut that her mother dragged these words from
her throat. And well Hatshepsut knew why: Ahmose had not come to
the station with a pure heart, but with selfish motives, and she
had suffered for her folly.