The Crook and Flail

by L. M. Ironside

  He left Paweraa to make his own slow way back to the house and outbuildings. Senenmut sprinted to meet the chariot.

  The driver was Hatshepsut's personal guard. He drew in his horses and stared down at Senenmut, his mouth tight with worry.

  “What is it? What has happened to her?”

  Nehesi put out his hand. Senenmut clasped it, allowed the man to boost him into the chariot. “She is in the birthing pavilion.”

  “Early. At least half a month early, by what she told me.”

  “She will not stop crying for you. One moment she demands somebody fetch you, the next she pleads, and the next she simply wails your name. I have never seen her in such a state.”

  Nehesi turned his horses, hissed them back along the causeway. Ipet-Isut loomed in the distance, its towering walls a bright smudge on the horizon. Once past the city of temples, it was but one mile more to Waset and Hatshepsut's side.

  “She cries for me, not for her husband?” Senenmut knew it was absurd, under such circumstances, to attempt a casual air. And yet he knew he must try all the same.

  Nehesi pierced him with a dry, level look. He said nothing for a long while as the horses' hooves pounded, as the chariot rattled and jarred. At last the guardsman broke the silence. “No, not for her husband. He has gone south to make war on the Kushites.”

  Of course. It was a ridiculous question, Senenmut knew, but he was obligated to ask it all the same. He had been at court the day Thutmose announced he would trek to the border once more, this time to attack the Kushite king in his own territory and throw him into the dust. “For the glory of Egypt,” Thutmose had pronounced. “To continue the great work my father started, to conquer every land until every place the sun touches belongs to Egypt, to our gods!” The courtiers had cheered and the Great Royal Wife had smiled upon her throne. But later, as Hatshepsut lay upon her couch, her ladies rubbing soothing oils into the skin of her swollen belly, she had sniggered over Thutmose's blustering. “He has no care for continuing my father's work, and no stomach for expanding Egypt's reach. Even had he, the boy would not know how to go about it. He only wants to put an end to the whispers at court, Senenmut.”&theZnbsp He had asked, “What whispers?” And Hatshepsut had been too pleased to supply the answer. “That he is weaker than a woman – weaker than me.”

  Senenmut fixed his eyes upon Ipet-Isut, willing it to come nearer, faster, faster.

  “Even were the Pharaoh not gone away,” Nehesi said quietly, barely audible above the relentless clangor of the wheels, “she would call for you still, I think.”

  Senenmut risked a glance at his companion. Nehesi caught his eye, said nothing. Then, with a force that nearly knocked Senenmut to his knees, he pounded him upon the shoulder. Senenmut stood stunned and fearful until Nehesi laughed, a grumbling cough of a sound, and Senenmut understood that the blow was not an attack, but a brotherly tap. He knows. But we are safe in him, Hatshepsut and I.

  It took more than an hour to reach the palace. Nehesi tossed the reins of his blown horses to a guard and once more led the way through the maze of corridors, past pillars and porticoes, into the garden. Senenmut wanted to run, wanted to take up a sword and fight – something, someone, anything. He was afire with a terrible energy, a fear, a longing, a desperation that could not be contained. She calls for me. Is it because I am her chief steward? Or because I am the father of her child?

  Was he? He had wondered, had agonized over not knowing. For so many nights, so many months, sleep had eluded him. He had lost uncountable hours watching the moon track across the sky, aching in his stomach and head, picturing the child growing within her, wondering. He dared not speak his fears – his hopes? – aloud. Since their return from the southern border, Thutmose hated Hatshepsut more than ever he had before. Hatshepsut had told Senenmut, of course, brimming with pride, how she had conquered the Kushite captives. And she had told him of the look on Thutmose's face when he saw her with her foot raised in victory – the naked loathing she had seen in her husband's eyes. Senenmut had seen it himself. The whole of the court had seen. There were times when, as the royal couple sat side by side upon their thrones, Hatshepsut would speak and Thutmose would turn upon her eyes black and clouded by hatred. He made no pretense at concealing his feelings for his sister. Thutmose hungered for a reason to tear Hatshepsut from her throne, put her aside, strip her of all rights and titles. To kill her. This child may be all the excuse the Pharaoh needed to be rid of his troublesome wife.

  Nehesi guided him through the garden, turning down this pathway and that. They dashed through a cloud of swirling gnats toward a grove of slender shade trees. Over the sound of their own feet on gravel, Senenmut heard the ululating song of women, a clapping of hands. With a hot, tingling flood of relief he recognized joy in the sound, not sorrow, not mourning. They pushed through the grove; there before him stood the birthing pavilion, its thick linen walls painted with the images of the gods who protect women in travail: Tawaret the deby, her round snout open wide, tongue and breasts comically pendulous; Bes, the bearded dwarf, guardian of newborns; Iset and Hathor, Horus and Heket. A breeze stirred the pavilion's walls; the gods danced upon it as if in celebration.

  A heavy-breasted woman stopped Senenmut at the pavilion's door. Her face was lined, though she wore a wig of youthful braids. “This is a place for women only, Chief Steward.”

  Hatshepsut's voice rose above the singing. “My steward is here? Midwife, let him in.”

  “Ah, lady, I am here.” He tried to dodge around the formidable bulk of the midwife, but she stepped quickly this way and that, barring him.

  “I said let him in. The birth is finished, thank the gods. A man can do no harm now.”

  The midwife narrowed her eyes at Senenmut, then, bowing toward Hatshepsut, she let him pass.

  Hatshepsut lay naked upon a mattress. A shaft of light fell through the pavilion's door, shimmering the drops of sweat on her bare brow. She breathed easily, but her eyelids were heavy with exhaustion when she gazed up into Senenmut's face. A servant knelt over her, wringing a wet cloth over her thighs, wiping away the last traces of the birthing blood.

  Her arms were wrapped tightly around a tiny bundle swaddled in a length of fine purple wool. She clutched it to her chest. Wordless with awe and anxiety, he knelt beside her. Gods, let the child not bear my face. It would mean the death of all three of us. And yet he ached to look upon the baby. The need to see its face, to know it, welled in him with a sharp and beautiful poignancy.

  Hatshepsut turned her arm, shifted aside to expose the child to his eyes. “My daughter,” she said. “Neferure.”

  “Beautiful as the sun,” he repeated. “A good name.” She was red and creased, as all newborns were, her brow furrowed and angry. But even as small as she was, he could see in the shape of her face, the set of her eyes, the angle of her nose, nothing but Hatshepsut. She was her mother's daughter. No one who looked upon her could discern anything more than that. Senenmut's chest trembled with relief.

  Hatshepsut stretched the bundle toward him. His heart stilled with reverence. He took the babe in his arms, marveling at her lightness and warmth. She stirred in protest, uttered a brief, shrill cry, then settled again. He could feel Hatshepsut's eyes upon him as he stared into Neferure's small, clenched face.

  “You will be her Chief Steward, as you are mine,” she said quietly. “And you will be her tutor, as you were mine when I was but a girl. You will be with her always, teaching her, protecting her. I have spoken it; it will be so.”

  He chuckled. “Another title, Great Lady? You honor me too much.”

  “This is your greatest honor. This is your greatest title. Cherish it, Senenmut.”

  He could not keep the tears from his eyes. With Neferure in his arms he was helpless to wipe them away. One dropped from his lashes and pattered onto the baby's cheek. She flinched and grimaced, and the tear rolle aldd to the crease beside her tiny round nose, trickled onto her lips. When she tasted it, she made a curious growl
ing sound. Senenmut laughed. He pressed his forehead to the babe's, inhaled her strange, warm, thick-sweet odor. “I will cherish the honor, Great Lady. Thank you.”

  The women had continued their singing outside the pavilion, and now their song rose in pitch, broken here and there with the special delighted squeal that women will give when they see a small child and wish to pinch its cheeks or dandle it in the air. Senenmut looked up, expectant, and grinned in welcome as Iset entered the pavilion, beautiful and beaming. She carried Little Tut in her arms. The boy's eyes were wide and serious. When he saw Hatshepsut lying on her mattress he reached his hands toward her, whining.

  “Look, Tut,” Iset said, lowering herself beside Senenmut. “Look at your sister.”

  The boy surveyed the newborn, unimpressed, then squalled and squirmed from his mother's arms, clambering onto the mattress to cuddle into Hatshepsut's side.

  Iset sighed. “He has been asking for you all day. I tried to explain to him that you were busy getting him a sister, but he did not understand. I think...”

  The singing outside cut off abruptly. The buzz of many voices talking at once took its place, and the midwife at the door stuck her head outside, craning it this way and that. She drew back a step into the pavilion, turned and stared at Hatshepsut, her eyes wide and frightened.

  “What is it?”

  “Great Lady, a messenger,” the midwife stammered.

  “Let him in.” Iset moved to cover Hatshepsut's nakedness with a sheet. She scooped Tut into her arms, her face pale.

  Senenmut clutched the child to his chest. His heart raced.

  A man ducked into the pavilion, bowing, his face haggard and shadowed. Senenmut recognized him from court: one of Thutmose's junior stewards, young but skilled and intelligent. He waited in a stoop for Hatshepsut's leave to speak.

  “What is your message?”

  “The Pharaoh, Great Lady.” The man stared at his palms, searching. When he raised his face, it was stark with exhaustion and grief. “He is dead.”

  “Dead?”

  The steward dropped to his knees as if expecting some blow from the God's Wife, some punishment. But she lay stunned beneath her sheet.

  “Tell me how it happened,” she said at last. “Midwife, bring a cushion for this man, and a jar of cool water. He is near as worn out as I am; anyone can see it.”

  The steward transferred himself heavily onto the cushion, drained the jar in a single, long draft. “You nt yare kind, Great Lady. I have not slept for two nights. I took two men and a skiff from the Pharaoh's own ship, and we sailed ahead of his barge, back to Waset to tell you.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He paused, considering his words. “When the king reached the southern border, he was full of eagerness to begin his conquest. I was beside him all the while. I cautioned him to temper his eagerness – I and his other advisors, ah, and the general of the garrison. All his men. But he was hot as an untamed horse. With the dawn of the next day, he led an attack into the hills, and his men did find a small Kushite village. They killed some ten or fifteen men. It was a small victory, not worth the risk, we told him. And now the Kushites knew we were there.

  “That night he returned to his encampment, and at dawn the next day a party of Kushites fell upon us. They were swift and used the land to their advantage. We lost too many men, but managed to throw them back, and even took a captive: a young man hardly older than the Pharaoh himself. He was brave and wild. He spat at us and cursed us in his own tongue and ours.

  “I said to the king, 'How is it that this captive knows our language? He is a man of some import; he must be, to be so educated. Let us find out who he is.'

  “The general, he...” The steward glanced at Iset, at Tut in her arms, obviously reluctant to expose the lady and the child to the details of his tale. “Well, he coaxed information from the Kushite, and he learned that the man was a prince, the son of the very Kushite king the Pharaoh had meant to kill. We counseled the Pharaoh to be sensible, to use this man to guide him to wherever the king now hid. But the Pharaoh, he was...very brave, as you know, Great Lady. He was full of his own youthful pride. He said, 'Let me send a message to this Kushite king, to strike fear into his heart before I fall upon him and take his hand as my trophy.'

  “He approached the captive prince with his sword in hand. We urged him to stop, to hear our counsel, but the heat of war was in him, and he would not be persuaded. The Kushite's arms were bound behind his back, but he struggled to his feet when he saw the Pharaoh coming for him with death upon his blade. The Pharaoh struck and the Kushite danced aside. And then...then, Great Lady, before any of us could stop him, the Kushite kicked high, and caught the Pharaoh in the throat.”

  The steward dropped his head into his hands, trembling.

  “Go on,” Hatshepsut said, steady and cool.

  “The king collapsed. We carried him to a tent and did all we could, but his throat had swollen; the firmness, here...” he touched his fingertips to his own throat to show the place, traced the protruding stone, “...the place felt broken beneath the fingers, shattered into pieces. The fortress has a physician, of course, and he did all any man could do, but the Pharaoh's breathing was labored, and before two hours had passed, his ka was fled.”

  He fell silent. Hatshepsut stared at the wall of the pavilion, softly ubsprandulating in the breeze. Senenmut followed her gaze. It rested upon the painted figure of Horus. The god's stern eye seemed to stare back at her.

  “What happened to the Kushite?” Hatshepsut said at last.

  The steward shook his head in some confusion. “The Kushite, Great Lady? Why, he was killed, of course. The general took his hand.”

  “A brave man.”

  “The general? Ah, he is...”

  “The Kushite.” She turned her face from Horus, considered the steward for a long moment. The man dropped his head under the strength of her stare. “And so you sailed before my husband's barge. Before his body.”

  “Ah. We put in at the first good-sized town we came to and requisitioned from the local House of the Dead enough salt to keep the Pharaoh's body for proper enbalming. He lies under the salt even now, two days out at the most, I would guess.”

  Hatshepsut returned her eyes to Horus. The god nodded as he moved in the wind. In the silence, Little Tut fussed in his mother's arms. At last Hatshepsut said, “You have done well. Go and rest. My Chief Steward has heard you; he will spread your news to my court.”

  The man bowed his way from the pavilion. When he had gone, Hatshepsut turned her face to Senenmut. He was startled to see sorrow there – a genuine mourning, when all he could feel was relief covering him, body and ka, like a glorious, soft mantle of gold.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The boy king Thutmose had lain beneath the enbalming salts for two months and ten days. His body had been emptied of its vital parts, the parts stored in jars. He was wrapped, finger by finger and toe by toe, in the most delicate of linen, spun from the straightest stems of flax. His coffins were carved and gilded, painted, inscribed with prayers and dedications from his sister-wife. A mask of gold was laid atop the still, hard form of the king's body, which looked small now, even for a boy not yet fifteen, bound in his wrappings like a goose trussed for roasting. The eyes of the mask were wide and smiling, boyish, kind, as Thutmose's had never been. Senenmut looked the mask, and turned away from that childish, almost pleading gaze. He turned and walked from the king's bedchamber as the final stars faded from a blue-black sky. He arrived at the gates of Ipet-Isut as dawn broke, spilling a pure light upon the crown of the high wall. The light ran along the wall's crest eagerly, as fire runs down a trail of spilled oil, snake-quick and flickering. It was the first hour of the day of the Pharaoh's funeral.

  By the time the pale morning sun reached its hands over the wall to touch the inner courtyards, patched with their chapels and shrines, the priests of Amun had arnera0 He tuings lill gathered at the water steps to await their barge. It would ferry the
m across the river to the valley where Thutmose's tomb waited. The boy had been so young; the tomb had belonged, in truth, to an older noble, some loyal man of the court. He had proffered it to Hatshepsut and she had accepted, set painters to work modifying, recarving, brushing over the grown man's life with the tale of the departed Pharaoh, his lineage, the sum of his few accomplishments.

  Senenmut stood for a moment and watched the priests as they clustered about the mooring, hugging themselves in the brisk dawn air. He remembered his own days as a priest, when he was not quite fifteen himself. He remembered the funeral of the last king. He remembered Hatshepsut, a small girl in a side-lock, resolute and staring and very small on the great litter that bore her above a river of wailing mourners.

  He tried to picture Neferure at that age – eight or nine, the age must have been. But all he could picture of the girl was a warm weight in his hands. Already she had grown too fast. The women all said it was an ill thing when a child was born too soon, that they seldom lived to weaning, and when they did they were stunted in body or in mind. Hatshepsut would grow quiet when the women said such things, withdraw into herself, her fond motherly smile freezing into a mask as strange and ill-fitting as Thutmose's. “You did nothing to cause it,” Senenmut told her one day, when the talk of Neferure's early arrival caused Hatshepsut to frown. She had shaken her head. “I wonder.”

  And yet in spite of the bad omen of her early birth, in spite of the hanging fire that had preceded her, the girl showed every sign of thriving. She suckled at her nurse's breast like a hungry little calf. Her cry was strong and musical. Already she lifted her head on a wobbling neck, a feat which never failed to make Senenmut sigh in admiration. The years would pass before he knew it – eight, nine, and more, and all too soon Neferure would be wed to Tut. Thutmose, they must call him now that his father was gone. Thutmose the Pharaoh, the third of his name. May he be a better husband to Neferure than his father was to her mother. That was the plea Senenmut would set before Amun's seat this morning, before he, too, made the crossing to the Pharaoh's tomb. The plea, and an expression of thanks. They were safe now, all three of them. A father could ask for nothing more.