Servants in their short wigs and plain linens grew more plentiful as she approached the great hall. They bore trays of drink and food, towels clean and soiled, cones of perfumed wax for the guests' wigs. As she passed, some of them stopped to whisper. Was this how Mutnofret felt at the wedding feast, turning every head as she passed? The guards at the great hall’s doors bowed to her, murmuring her name and titles. When she nodded, they shoved open the doors.
The long room was filled with the upper class of Waset. A throng of servants waited along the walls, balancing trays of beer and watered wine, simple loaves of bread and dense cakes and withered fruits. A poor enough feast, yet there was no lack of celebrants. The crowd’s mood seemed festive enough in spite of the small harvest. Ahmose was glad to see it.
She entered the room and walked solemnly to the Horus Throne. As she crossed the long hall, voices rippled behind her like a boat’s wake. Her ribbons floated in the breeze of her steps, trailing her rich dark perfume.
When she was seated, Mutnofret entered, beautiful as always, and fashionably dressed. The second wife’s eyes avoided Ahmose’s until she was halfway across the hall. When she did look up at the Horus Throne, Mutnofret’s eyebrows jumped. It must be startling, Ahmose supposed, to see such an exotic and striking figure as herself on the throne, in the white shift of a holy priestess, with her scalp shining and bare. She nodded to her sister, calm and sure.
Mutnofret took her throne gracefully, avoiding Ahmose’s eye. The second wife's demeanor was happy, though, not petulant. The light mood of the crowd seemed to buoy her. Perhaps the sisters would pass a pleasant night between them. Ahmose hoped it would be so. She would not hesitate to send Mutnofret away again, if need called for it.
Ahmose listened to recited poetry, sipped wine, watched troupes of dancers and acrobats perform late into the night. At last, feeling sleepy, she excused herself to walk in the garden. The night was pleasantly warm, and she wandered down to the lake’s edge, recalling how she had watched Tut skip stones across the water. That had been so long ago. She cupped handfuls of water, splashed them over her shoulders until her white shift was soaked. A breeze lifted, cooling her skin.
“I hoped I would see you here tonight.”
“Ineni.” Ahmose turned from the lake’s wall. He wore the formally long kilt that was stylish among noble men, folded with sharp vertical pleats. His bare chest and shoulders were pale in the moonlight.
“You are beautiful, Ahmose. You should have feasts more often, so I can look at you more.”
“Be careful,” she whispered. “What if someone hears us?” The garden was not empty. Men and women wandered here and there, moving from flower bed to shadow to pool of moonlight; laughter rose into the night. From a nearby hedge, densely planted, came a sigh and a moan. Ahmose’s skin tingled.
“Why don’t you come for a walk with me?” Ineni said.
“Are you drunk? Don’t be stupid!”
“Maybe a little drunk. From looking at you.”
“Oh, Ineni. You’ve had too much wine. No, don’t come closer…” for he had taken a step toward her, smiling foolishly.
“All right, then,” he said, backing off, grinning at her. “I’ll just go over there, into that stand of myrrh trees, all alone.”
He laughed, walked away, casting bleary looks back over his shoulder at Ahmose. She sat on the lip of the lake and watched him go, her pulse alive in her stomach and cheeks. The leaves and branches of the grove closed around Ineni, blotting out the bright white blur of his kilt and the brown of his back. For a long time she sat unmoving, the water drying on her shoulders and shift. Far up the path, the forms of a man and woman bent around each other, tangled in an embrace. Ahmose watched the man’s hands travel down his lover’s back, describe the arc of her hips with a graceful sweep. From beyond the hedge, a woman’s voice cried wordlessly, breathless and urgent.
Ahmose counted a hundred heartbeats, looked cautiously around the garden, and walked calmly toward the myrrh grove. This is stupid, stupid, she told herself. Their chariot rides were bad enough, and far too frequent. But at least in the chariot they were alone, out in the hills beyond the fields, and Ahmose was disguised. Stupid, stupid, but the night was in her blood now, and wasn’t she the God's Wife? Was this palace not her own, after all? Stupid, dangerous, but when she pushed through the branches of the grove Ineni was waiting for her. His skin was warm. It smelled sweetly, greenly of the trees.
When Ahmose returned to the feast, flushed and shaking with excitement and guilt, she entered the hall to find Sitamun bending over Mutnofret’s shoulder, whispering. The second wife found Ahmose’s eyes, studied them while her servant spoke into her ear. And slowly, mockingly, Mutnofret smiled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE DAY AFTER THE FESTIVAL of Khonsu was muggy and uncomfortable with flies. It seemed impossible that the flood could be so low on such a day as this, with the air so wet and dense that every breath tasted of reeds and mud. Ahmose waited on her cairn for the spotted horses and scratched her itching skin through the coarse linen dress. The sky was strangely subdued, hazy, as though a great length of gauzy fabric stretched from horizon to horizon.
Hardly another soul could be seen on the road. Between the light traffic and the dampness of the air, there were no distant banners of dust to give travelers away. She saw Ineni first as a dark speck fading out of Waset, detaching itself from the wall of the city, growing, forming itself into tiny horses and shrunken chariot as he drove toward the crossroads. She was on her feet and smiling before she could make out his face.
Ineni pulled the horses to a stop. She ran to the chariot, took his hand with a welling excitement under her heart.
“Kiss me!”
He frowned, and hesitated. “Ahmose, you know I adore you, but last night was…”
“I am the God's Wife! Do as I say and kiss me.” She pulled him to her, pressed her mouth to his, guided his hand to her breast. It was as if her body exerted some strange control over him. His objection melted away. He pinched her nipple through the rough fabric, and it scratched at her, hurting deliciously. She shivered.
“Let’s get off the road,” he said thickly, and broke away from her to stir the horses into action.
They climbed the dirt path again to their rock on the hill. This was where they came most often to be alone together; the rock was as familiar to her now as her own bed.
She unknotted her dress while Ineni hobbled the horses. The cloth fell away, so she stood in nothing but her sandals and wig. When he straightened from his work, his eyes lingered on her body for a long, breathless time. Then he came to her and lifted her up; her sandaled feet tapped on the rock when he set her there so that she stood over him. He pressed his face against her belly, his fingernails pricking at her spine until she arched her hips backward. Then he hunched, and his breath was against the place between her legs, and she gasped when she felt the fire of his kiss there. She held tight to his shoulders so her shivering legs would not drop her to the stone.
Something just as hot and wet as Ineni’s mouth fell upon her shoulder, then her arm, then her back. She opened her eyes. Ineni’s back was speckled with shimmering light. A horse whinnied. The ground began to hiss, and in an instant Ahmose’s body was soaking and chilled.
Ineni looked around, eyes wide, mouth gaping. He ran a few steps toward the horses, which tossed their heads and lashed their tails, then back to Ahmose, who hopped about on the rock and grabbed for her tangled gown.
“Get the horses,” she cried over the sound of water pounding earth. She managed to pull the wet dress around herself, worked it into a sloppy knot. Water pelted her from above and below, splashing up off the hard stony ground to cover her hem with mud. She ran to help Ineni manage the beasts.
“Unhook them from the chariot,” he called.
She had never hitched a horse before, but she seized one leather line running from harness to chariot and followed it with her hand. It was obvious enough where
it hooked to the vehicle's shaft; it took her only a moment to pull the strap free.
“Now the other!”
She dodged around the back of the vehicle. It lurched toward her as the horse backed, screaming, and she nearly slipped in the mud, but righted herself with a hand on the muddy wheel. The other horse was free in an instant. Ineni pulled the horses, still linked together by their harnesses, away from the cart, allowing them to kick and dance in a circle around him. He held tight to the long reins. His mouth moved; he must be soothing them, but all she could hear was the roar of the rain.
At last the horses seemed resigned. They stood still, ears pinned, backs hunched against the stinging rain. Ahmose came toward them cautiously, her hands out as if to placate the beasts.
“I’ve never seen rain before,” she said, teeth chattering.
“Nor I. I have read about it plenty. We are lucky to be on the highlands. A sudden fall like this can make floods all through the valley – kill livestock, people, too, if they’re caught in a wash.”
Kill livestock. With food so scarce, Egypt could ill afford to lose a single goat or calf. She swallowed hard. “What do you think it means?”
Ineni’s eyes were shadowed under the dense gray sky. She could read none of his feelings in his face, but his silence spoke well enough. She looked away, ashamed. This was Amun’s wrath, surely. Amun had seen their wickedness, had disapproved of their defiling the sacred Feast of Khonsu. He had opened up the skies in punishment. Now Egypt would lose precious cattle, and it was Ahmose’s fault. Forgive me, her ka cried out. Forgive me, Lord Amun! I will never…even in her own thoughts the words were bitter. She forced them out, resolute, chastened. “We cannot do this again, Ineni. The gods – they will not have it. If I am to be God’s Wife, I must keep myself only for Amun. Amun – and my earthly husband.”
He nodded, patting a horse’s soaking muzzle, avoiding her eyes. “I know.”
“I would have it otherwise, if I could.”
“And I.”
“But it cannot be. We know that now.”
One hand came free of the reins and touched her lightly at the nape of her neck, trailed down the wet cloth clinging to her back, all the way to the back of one thigh. She wanted to sob, to rail against the gods. Instead, she stood still and took the stinging lashes of Amun's rebuke. Each of the thousand-thousand drops that stung her skin shamed her. Never again.
Ineni drove her all the way back to Ipet-Isut. The rain ceased as suddenly as it had come on, and a cold wind blew the gray sky away to the south. A band of colors arced across the river between Waset and the Holy House. The foreign beauty of the arc of colors pierced her ka. Every sensation is weightier with my heart broken. Ahmose kept her hands on the chariot’s rail all the way home.
She did not care if the temple guards saw her climb down from the steward’s chariot, soaked through with a face like stone. She marched past them in her cheap wig and smeared makeup, down Ipet-Isut’s avenue, which was stunned and deserted in the wake of the downpour. She kicked her chamber door closed and stripped off the gown for the second time. It hit the floor with a wet smack. She untied her sandals and threw them across the room, heaved her wig at the wall, climbed miserably into her bed before she saw the scroll lying on her bedside table. It stared at her, taunting and ominous. With trembling fingers she picked it up and untied the red cord that bound it.
You have taken my title and flaunted your treachery before the court. You have betrayed your family. All my children are dead, and I have no more happiness in this world. I am an old woman, with no strength left in my bones to punish you in this life as you deserve; and if the priests believe you are the God’s Wife, there is nothing I can do, save this. You take my last shred of joy for yourself, and so I curse you with all the unhappiness of an old woman’s heart.
Ahmose sucked in a ragged breath. Nefertari. Had Mutnofret told her? Or had word simply reached the estate in the southern hills at last? It hardly mattered now. That arrow was loosed, and nothing Ahmose could do would call it back into her quiver.
Cursed with unhappiness. Lady of sorrow. She gave voice to her sadness at last, pulling her blanket over her head and wailing, wailing. How could it go so wrong just as it went so right? Was this Amun, or some darker god who cut at her heart? Was there any difference now? She howled beneath her blanket until her eyes were swollen and hot. When Twosre came in to sit silently at her side, patting, stroking, she stopped her keening but not her tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AGAIN THE ITERU ROSE, SPANS shorter than the year before. The harvest was small, the stores near empty, the cattle thin and dull-coated. Men muttered. Women’s eyes were dark. The Black Land reeled on the verge of a plunge into famine.
Nothing that could be salted and eaten was thrown back into the river. Suspicious stews were prepared in Ipet-Isut with stringy white meat or tough chunks of fish, bony fins still attached, the broth thin and greasy. There was little bread and less milk, and all the fruits were withered or over-ripe. Ahmose ate it all, and gratefully. Her belly was never empty, and she thanked the gods for that blessing. She doubted the rekhet were so lucky. No reports of death by starvation had yet reached her, but that did not mean people were not dying. She saved bits of the best fish and meat and porridge from every meal she ate, burning these offerings at every sanctuary in the Holy House by turns. She pleaded with the gods to spare her people, to intervene. But the gods were silent, and Ahmose was guilty and afraid.
There was no feast for the Royal Son Wadjmose’s weaning. The boy marked two years of age quietly, without public acclaim. It was not fitting for the Pharaoh’s son, but feasts were an ostentation the throne could ill afford. Even at the palace meals were smaller, simpler, and less savory. Mutnofret complained daily, but there was nothing to be done. All of Egypt must wait out the lean times and save feasting for future days. Even the Pharaoh’s house was required to humble itself.
“It is not fitting that Wadjmose’s weaning should go uncelebrated, though,” Ahmose said to Twosre one dull, dry morning. They were picking scraggly herbs in Ahmose’s palace garden in the hour before court came to session. “He is the First Royal Son. And I am sure when Tut returns, Wadjmose will be the heir. There should be some sort of acknowledgment – just not a feast.”
Twosre shrugged. “But what to do? Any kind of celebration at the palace is always feasted. It would not make the nobles think highly of the Royal Son if frog stew and watered-down milk were offered them.”
“Why don’t we have a ceremony at Ipet-Isut? There will be no expectation of a feast at the temple, I should think. A feast would be unseemly. But it would mark the occasion, at least.”
“A fine idea. You and the High Priest can hold it in the forecourt of the Amun temple. Quite a large crowd can fit there, I know. No one will grumble over a missed feast if they get the honor of attending a ceremony at the Temple of Amun.”
“Exactly. And I imagine it will make Mutnofret very happy, too.”
It was more than a year since Ahmose had given up Ineni’s companionship, and since then she had devoted herself wholly to her duties. She still kept Mutnofret from the throne hall, telling the court the second wife was busy with the Royal Sons’ tutors, or entertaining foreign dignitaries. It would impress no one to know the truth: that Mutnofret was banned from court by the God’s Wife, and stewed helplessly each day in her apartments.
When Thutmose returned from his campaign, he would be cross to see such discord in the royal family. Ahmose knew she needed to reach out to Mutnofret now, to make an offering of goodwill to her distant, cold sister. She held no false hope that they would be close again. Those days were gone forever, washed downstream like a fragile leaf midriver. But some semblance of unity would please their husband when he came home. Perhaps she could at least make Mutnofret smile. A smile was worth riches, in these lean and frightening times.
“It is good to see most of Waset’s greatest houses still know how to show proper re
spect.” Twosre gave a wry smile.
Ahmose and her woman stood well concealed behind the line of myrrh trees that grew between the pylons outside the Temple of Amun. They peeked through the branches at the crowd, which swelled by the minute. There were representatives from every important family in Waset, as far as Ahmose could tell, and many faces she did not recognize – visitors from Iunet and Abedjwet, Edfu and Swenet, come to pay their respects to the king's eldest son, and to be seen doing it. Even during lean times, even with Thutmose off at war, there was strong support for the throne. Ahmose remarked on it, wondering that so many would make the journey during times like these.
“The Pharaoh has done well by the people, Lady, and that’s the plain truth.” Twosre tugged at her elbow, pulling her back toward the Temple of Mut. Ahmose took one last, long look at the crowd milling in the twilight, then turned to follow Twosre. Tut has done well, but what have I done? Will he still need me beside him when he returns?
Back in Ahmose’s small temple chamber, tonight’s clothing and jewels were already laid out. Faithful Twosre had been to the Waset palace early in the day, fetching this dress and that shawl, this wig and that collar from the Great Wife’s chambers. Ahmose had grown so used to the simple garments of a priestess, even wearing her simple white shift and ribbon crown to court, that she hardly knew anymore how to dress herself for affairs of state. Twosre was a treasure beyond price.
Ahmose was unhappy to see, though, that Twosre has chosen the red dress – the Mut dress, the one she had worn when she took the temple. It was a hard thing to look upon. The dress carried too many painful memories – how she had plotted with her sweet Ineni, how he had swallowed hard when he saw her in it. How they conspired to take Nefertari’s title – for the sake of Tut’s throne, of course! – and how her grandmother had spurned her and cursed her. Nefertari’s curse had been a true one. Ahmose could not recall a single moment of true happiness since the day Amun poured down his punishment upon her, that far-off day in the hills when Ineni had lifted her up to stand on the rock, when he had…
The She-King: The Complete Saga Page 18
