The Bull of Min (The She-King)

by L. M. Ironside

  “I had a love once. A woman – Iset.”

  “Thutmose’s mother?”

  “Yes.” Hatshepsut paused. “She was my comfort, my companion, the sister of my heart. And yet I picked her up and wielded her like a tool, used her for my own ends, carved out my power with her. When she died, I thought all my kas would shatter from the grief. Worse than losing Iset was the knowledge of what I had done to her.”

  The king fell silent. She lifted the edge of her sheet, ran the linen absently between her fingers. Meryet waited.

  “But I did not learn from Iset. The gods set her in my path, gave her to me, that I might learn. I paid no heed to the lesson. I used my own daughter the same way, and so the gods took Senenmut, and Neferure, too.”

  Meryet clenched her hands into painful fists; her nails dug into the soft flesh of her palms. No – I mustn’t tell her. Thutmose was right; I have to believe he was right. It would only wound her more, to know her daughter still lives.

  There was a rustle of soft linen outside the bedchamber door. A moment later, Batiret entered, her face downcast, her cheeks streaked with tears. She held a little cloth bag in her hands; her fingers were white from clutching the fabric in tight, trembling fists.

  The woman’s demeanor filled Meryet with sudden dread. “What is this?”

  Hatshepsut sighed. “Maat. I have used others for my own ends all my life, Meryet. At least I might offer myself up now.”

  “Offer…?”

  “For use. Gods, child – let me serve some purpose greater than my own power, greater than my pride, now that I stand at the end of this road. Let me undo some small part of the pain I have caused. Let me do it for Iset’s sake, and for Senenmut’s.”

  She held out a hand, beckoning to Batiret. The woman sank sobbing onto Hatshepsut’s bed, stretched herself along her mistress’s body, her face pressed into the linens. Hatshepsut stroked her fan-bearer’s shoulder with a fond, gentle hand.

  “What is in that bag?” Meryet jumped up from her stool. “Batiret, give it to me.”

  “She will not give it to you,” Hatshepsut said quietly.

  Meryet gaped at the king. A chill stole over her body, raising goose flesh on her skin. She shuddered. “You can’t.”

  “Thutmose will not leave Waset until I am gone. You know it’s true. You know there is nothing you can say to convince him to abandon me to my fate. He is crippled by his own guilt; his heart is in a fog; he cannot make the decision to go. Meryet, my dear daughter, you know you cannot sever the weight of his guilt from his ka. It keeps him tethered here, tied to me. It keeps all of Egypt tied to me, like a bird in a fowler’s snare, while I linger. While I am useless. We must make this decision for him. We must free him to act. Let me be the knife that cuts the bird from the net. I will free Thutmose, that he might save Egypt from disgrace.”

  “There must be some other way – some way to convince him that he must go north. You still might recover your health.”

  “No,” Hatshepsut breathed.

  Meryet could see, in the starkness of her dark eyes, in their impossible depth, what it cost the king to say that single, small word.

  Batiret raised herself slowly from the mattress, her pretty face flushed and distorted with sorrow. She opened the bag. Hatshepsut reached inside, withdrew a small clay vial sealed with a cap of yellow wax.

  Gripped by desperation, frantic to cling to Hatshepsut as if she might hold her to life with her own arms, Meryet scrambled onto the bed. She met Batiret’s swollen red eyes over Hatshepsut’s body. Meryet did not know whether she ought to beg Batiret to stop this, stop Hatshepsut, talk sense into the Pharaoh – or whether she should permit it, throw up her hands and allow the gods to do with them all as they would.

  Batiret reached out to clasp Meryet’s hand. “She is right, Great Lady,” the fan-bearer said in a trembling voice. “Only this will save Egypt. Let her free the Pharaoh to act.”

  Weakly, Meryet shook her head. She loved Hatshepsut too much to agree – to permit that she should die. “There is some other way; I know there is.”

  Hatshepsut gave a little laugh. It shook her diminished frame, and for a brief moment the fierce bravado of the king she had been shone once more in her face. The force of Hatshepsut’s natural power subdued Meryet’s fears. A slow ripple of calm spread outward from her heart.

  Maat.

  “You cannot stop me, Great Royal Wife,” said Hatshepsut, her voice rich with humor, with determination, with love. “I am the king.”

  Meryet bowed her head in acceptance. Amun, do with us all as thou wilt.

  She held out her hands for the vial, and when Hatshepsut placed the cold clay in Meryet’s palms, she worked the wax seal from its narrow mouth. It was Meryet who held the vial to the Pharaoh’s mouth. A droplet of the poison beaded on Hatshepsut’s lip. It was white as milk, thick like honey.

  Poppy. She will feel no more pain, no more suffering.

  Hatshepsut fell into a deep sleep, her chest moving steadily with her breathing, while Meryet and Batiret lay to either side of their king, wrapping her body with their young, strong limbs, washing her cheeks and forehead with their tears. Hatshepsut’s sleep deepened, and deepened, going deeper than the river, deeper than maat, deeper than the black between the night’s stars.

  PART TWO

  THE GOD

  ETERNAL

  1461 B.C.E.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ONE FINAL OBSTACLE LAY BETWEEN the armies of Egypt and the treachery of Hatti and Kadesh. The ridge of mountains rose above the valley floor, an unbroken line of high, jagged hills taller than any temple or obelisk, the peaks as fearsome as the teeth of a grinning lion. Thutmose stood with his back to the vast Egyptian encampment, staring up the steep flank of the nearest mountain. Ancient tracks of rivulets scored its dun-colored flesh, their crevasses sprouting with dense greenery. Bare rock lay exposed to the sun and wind like the old bones of some gigantic and long-dead beast. Thutmose felt the waning heat of the setting sun on his back, felt the last drying beads of sweat run down his shoulders and spine, painting streaks in the pale dust of long travel that covered his skin.

  The sound of a man approaching came to him, but Thutmose did not look around. He could not tear his eyes from the mountains. Like a dead beast’s spine – like a fallen, ancient thing, immovable, unchangeable.

  “No matter how long you stare at it, Mighty Horus, you’ll never make it crumble, nor bore a hole in it large enough to drive the chariots through.” Tjaneni stood half a step behind Thutmose, hands on hips. “The only way beyond is two days to the south. The hills aren’t so high there.”

  Thutmose made no reply. His heart scarcely registered Tjaneni’s words. He had spent countless hours back in Waset – weeks, months studying maps of the region. He had known the mountains existed, had known he must lead his army around them. Yet somehow he had not expected them to be so…insulting. These Set-cursed rocks were more arrogant than any king could ever hope to be. Pharaoh he might be – sepats may rise and fall at his whim, men may live or die, temples and gods prosper or perish – but Thutmose could do nothing to these mountains but stare.

  The very fact of the mountains stirred the rage that had carried him this far, many days’ march beyond the traditional border of Egypt – though this was Egypt, too, and had been since his grandfather conquered it. It is my land, his heart thundered, and these are my mountains. It seemed he should be able to strike them down with his fist, tear through them like a knife through wet linen.

  The anger that had roiled inside him since Hatshepsut’s death certainly felt potent enough to flatten a mountain range. It had blown his ships north like a gale. It had filled his horses with the speed and endurance of the gods. Now it broke in a desperate, furious foam against the bones of the steep hills, crashing like the salt waves beyond the Delta. His ka moved unceasingly like those very waves, pitching, tipping, roaring.

  Tjaneni held out a skin. Thutmose took it absently and drank; the beer
was flat and warm, but it tasted distinctly of home: Waset’s fields dreaming peacefully of the harvest to come, the river moving slowly, grandly beneath the hot sky. All at once Thutmose missed Meryet and his son with a wrenching force. He nearly doubled over with the pain of his longing, and might have, had Tjaneni and the mountains not been there to see.

  The scribe evidently saw the yearning flicker in Thutmose’s face, for he said quietly, “They will be all right, Great Lord – your wife and child.”

  Thutmose nodded, and smacked the drinking skin into Tjaneni’s chest with what he hoped was a confident smile. The man gathered up the skin with a look of concern writ plainly on his face. Are my fears so easy for my men to see? Thutmose asked himself.

  He had done all any man or king could do to ensure Meryet’s safety. He had assigned Nehesi to her service, admonished the man to be her shadow, day and night, now that his service to Hatshepsut was at an end. Nehesi was old, but still stronger than most men in the guard, and after so many years at Hatshepsut’s side, he was wise in the ways of palace and court alike. And Nehesi had troops – enough trusted men that Meryet would only ever be out of their sight behind her closed chamber doors. Even then, they would patrol her rooftop, her garden wall, and would do the same for Amunhotep and his staff.

  I must trust that it will be enough.

  Satiah couldn’t leave her own dwelling, much less work her way past Meryet’s palisade of guards. Unless she truly had some magic, some divine intervention that spirited her beyond thick sandstone walls under the very eyes of alert palace watchmen. She had done it once. Might she do it again?

  His fists clenched involuntarily at the thought. They rose of their own accord, and he was aware that he must look foolish, childish, on the verge of attacking the insolent mountains with knuckles and feet. But he could not make himself relax. It felt good to make a fist – good and right and maat, in a way that nothing felt maat anymore, for now all was a confusion of duty and guilt and rage.

  “Lord,” Tjaneni said, his voice mild and helpful, “may I suggest a visit to the priests’ tent? You seem overtaxed by the day’s journey. Perhaps quiet communion with the gods will aid you. I could arrange…”

  Thutmose shook his head sharply, and Tjaneni fell silent, bowing his acquiescence.

  The last thing Thutmose wanted now was communion with gods. Amun’s eyes! It was the gods who maneuvered him to this trap, was it not? The gods who stirred his enemies to conspire, who allowed them to intrude on his grief over Hatshepsut. It was the gods whose wrath he feared when he forced Hatshepsut to put her lover aside – the gods who had made Thutmose their instrument in depriving her of happiness, before they callously snatched her off to the afterlife.

  It was the gods who had seen fit to preserve Satiah in life while snuffing out Hatshepsut’s flame all too soon. And Satiah – was he more furious with that demon of a woman, or with Amun and his kind? Thutmose could not decide. Satiah still had the power to manipulate him – still, years beyond boyhood, with the Horus Throne his, with all Egypt at his feet, with an army at his back. He was still the child tottering under the weight of the ceremonial crown, cowering in a field of emmer, watching that small, slender brown hand stroke the forehead of the great white bull.

  His dread of the gods and of his sister weakened Thutmose. He hated himself for that weakness.

  “Just tell my cooks to prepare a meal,” he said at last. “And a bath of some sort.”

  Tjaneni turned at once to obey the command. When the man was gone, Thutmose told himself he would walk slowly back through the camp, seeing how his men and horses fared, making quiet preparations for the two-day trek south to the low mountain pass. He told himself he would do it, yet somehow he could not tear his eyes from the mocking face of the mountain. He still stood with his back uselessly turned to the camp when Tjaneni returned to announce that his bath was ready.

  Inside the rough army tent that served as the royal accommodation, Thutmose stooped over a clay basin, wetting a scrap of linen to wash the dirt from his skin. No brazier was yet lit; the setting sun glowed through the heavy fabric of the walls. He closed his eyes and scrubbed at his face, listening to the musical sound of the water dribbling from the cloth back into the basin. The sound filled him with a curious poignancy, half rapture, half desperation. It was a singularly ordinary sound, simple and honest. Falling water always made the same soft music, whether it fell in the presence of a rekhet or a king.

  When his supper arrived, a rabbit roasted whole on a fire-blackened spit and a few onions boiled in wine, he ate in silence, alone. The camp went about its nightly duties beyond his tent’s walls, moving and rustling with quiet efficiency, fiercely focused on the days to come. Full dark descended on the valley. The red glow on the tent’s walls was long gone. Thutmose left his tent, gave a few brief words of reassurance to his guards, and returned to the edge of the encampment.

  The sight of that immovable wall of rock drew him, engrossed him with its might and the obvious futility of his cause. A flagrant banner of white stars waved behind the mountains’ crest. The dark bones of the earth reared up, dense against the starlight, clenched like defiant fists. He thought maat might be enclosed in those stony palms, if only he could find a way to make them open and spill their truth, release the stifling grip on his heart.

  The gods put these hills here, too, Thutmose mused. Another reason to scorn divinity.

  Footsteps scraped on the faint trail behind him.

  “Tjaneni.”

  “Ah, me again, Mighty Horus. I thought I might find you here.”

  “Are you coming to send me to bed, Mawat?”

  The scribe chuckled. “It’s my duty to record this expedition, as you commanded….”

  “And your duty to shoot as many lying Hittites as you can with that remarkable bow of yours.”

  “It’s the arm that draws the bow that’s remarkable, Lord, not the bow itself.”

  In spite of his dark mood, Thutmose chuckled. “You are ever the modest one.”

  “Personal scribe to the Pharaoh – ought I to be modest?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “You forgot about the Retjenu.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll shoot as many of those toads as I will Hittites.”

  Thutmose thumped Tjaneni on his wiry shoulder.

  “Easy, Lord, or you’ll destroy the magic of the remarkable bow.”

  “Tell me, Tjaneni. Do my enemies know we are here?”

  He shrugged. “If they don’t know yet, they will soon. We can’t move along the line of their mountain range for long without being sighted.”

  “It will take two days to make the southern pass.”

  Tjaneni nodded.

  “And another day to cross it,” Thutmose went on morosely, “and two more days to double back on Megiddo. Amun’s eyes. We may as well blow on flutes and bang on drums the whole while, for all we’ll take them by surprise.”

  The scribe sighed.

  Thutmose turned back to his scrutiny of the dark peaks, as if some answer lay there. They looked different by starlight. The sharper, starker glow revealed new contours in the rock, filled the tracks of the ancient rivulets with shadow as black and precise as kohl around an eye. As Thutmose watched, some wisp of vapor moved across the sky, the breath of a cloud forming. Starlight and shadow rippled across the mountain’s surface, and the deep black contour seemed to dip into itself, rolling and bending for the space of one heartbeat to reveal what Thutmose had not seen by the light of day.

  A narrow cleft between two peaks, opening onto a flat, stony path.

  He recalled, with a pang of loss so sharp it threatened to make him cry out, Hatshepsut tracing a line of charcoal on a map, her eyes ringed in shadow. Thutmose lifted his chin, buoyed with sudden inspiration. That’s it.

  There, in that dark cleft, was the place where the jealous, hard-clenched fist of Amun would open. Thutmose would force it open, and cause maat to spill out across his land.


  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HATSHEPSUT RESTED FOR SEVENTY DAYS beneath the embalming salts. The season of Shemu dawned as Meryet and her son laid the Pharaoh to rest in the tomb of Thutmose the First. It had been Hatshepsut’s wish to lie eternally beside the father she had loved so well as a child. The tomb’s newly widened walls were painted afresh in preparation for Hatshepsut’s funeral. The brightness of the colors seemed obscene, almost sacrilegious in the light of the priests’ torches when they made their way deep into the darkness, bearing the nested and gilded coffins of the woman who had been king.

  Meryet held Amunhotep on her hip in the orange light of the torches, spoke the words for him, guided his tiny hand to rest the sacred rod against the mouth of Hatshepsut’s funeral mask. The boy looked with quiet solemnity into the lapis and ebony eyes of the mask, the precious stones set into a new skin of smooth, eternal gold. Amunhotep acted as the heir in place of his father, for Thutmose had taken the army north within days of Hatshepsut’s death. The bird was freed from its snare.

  Duty done, Meryet returned gratefully across the river and shut herself in her chambers, thinking to have an isolated cry with no one but Batiret for witness. The loyal woman had attached herself as fan-bearer to the Great Royal Wife’s retinue, and Meryet was glad of her company. They had shared something of immeasurable import, that sad day when they had lain sobbing on Hatshepsut’s bed, their fingers entwined and their tears mingling. Though she was only a minor daughter of an unimportant house, Batiret was as close now to Meryet’s heart as any sister.

  But a quiet moment with her new sister was not to be. When she arrived at her chamber door, Meryet found a young man waiting, bowing low over his clenched hands. He wore the red-striped kilt of a messenger. When he straightened, she saw that he clutched a small papyrus scroll.