The Bull of Min (The She-King)

by L. M. Ironside

  “I know it.”

  Scrivener looked at him steadily for a long moment. Smith could feel the intensity of the man’s gaze, but he kept his eyes on the boat. It was small now, making haste for the yellow line of the shore.

  At last Scrivener said, “It’s only your tongue damns you.”

  “My tongue, and my common birth. You’re the only one who doesn’t think the high-born cunny he slid out of on his birth-day makes him the next best thing to Christ.”

  Scrivener sniffed at the indelicacy.

  “Sorry,” Smith said.

  “Listen, old boy: if you’d only give over to Wingfield once in a while, be more cooperative, less…less haughty…”

  “Less haughty, he says! It’s Wingfield you want for haughtiness, not I. And I’ll be hanged if I let that red popinjay strut about the colony as if he owns it.”

  “He fair does. He is a shareholder.”

  “Still…”

  “And it might come to hanging one day, Smith. Not this time, and maybe not the next. But soon or late…” Scrivener trailed off. The landing boat entered the surf, grounded on the strand. “I’d be sorry to see you hanged,” Scrivener said meditatively. “Christ knows there aren’t enough good men on this voyage. We can’t spare a one. Not even the commoners.”

  Smith turned to him with a rebuke, but he saw the humor sparkling in Scrivener’s eyes. The man laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Though Scrivener was slight and only a gentlemen unused to real work, his grip was hard and sure.

  They watched in tense silence as the landing party made their way up the strand. The men on the shore arrayed themselves in a rough half-circle, moved tentatively toward the thick stands of salt grass and wiry brush. After a time they ventured further, poking about with the muzzles of their matchlocks, turning this way and that to stare at the landscape which was suddenly surrounding them, holding them, lulling them.

  “So far, so well,” Scrivener muttered.

  And in that very moment, Smith noted a quick blur, a black shape sliding between the trunks of two thin oaks.

  “Merciful Christ,” Smith said.

  “Your pardon?”

  “They don’t see….” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted with all his might. “Ahoy!”

  But the landing party could not hear him over the pounding of the surf. Nor could they see what Smith saw from the vantage of the Susan Constant’s deck: the glide of tense, muscular bodies approaching, the sinister crouch, the flick of a deadly hand-sign among the seaside brush.

  One of them rose up from the saltgrass, a full head taller than any Englishman, the glaring face divided red and black like a devil from a child’s nightmare. In one rapid, unthinking movement the natural raised the black arch of a bow, drew, released. Before Smith’s eyes could track the first arrow, another was on the string, and then it too was flying. The strand exploded in a confusion of bodies, the red-and-black of the naturals rising from concealment, the panicked flash of sun on armor as the men turned and cried out and blundered into one another. Somebody got off a shot; a blue ball of powder smoke expanded in slow motion; an instant later the report of the fired matchlock cracked across Smith’s ears. Somebody – Archer, Smith thought – held aloft both hands in a pleading gesture, and immediately fell back on the sand, writhing.

  “Cannon,” a hoarse voice bellowed in warning. Smith clapped his hands to his ears in the same instant the cannon fired. The Susan Constant shuddered, a deep, bone-jarring, sickening tremor. The sulfurous stink of gunpowder burned Smith’s nostrils and eyes.

  The devils on the shore fled.

  The landing party scrambled back to their boat and rowed frantically for the Susan Constant. By the time they were hauled aboard, Wingfield was shaking and pale. The man kept whatever great oratory he’d composed to himself.

  The men hauled Archer out of the boat, laid him carefully on the deck. The man made a repetitive rasping grunt which now and then turned to a high-pitched squeal of panic before he controlled himself and fell back to his gentlemanly grunting. Smith pushed through the crowd and gazed down at Archer. Each hand streamed with blood, pierced clean through the palms with a pair of sturdy arrows. Another man, one of the sailors, clutched at his upper thigh where a matched set of arrows bristled.

  “Right,” Scrivener shouted. “Bring rum to dull their wits. Russell, boil a pot of wine. We’ll need to clean these wounds. Where’s the ship’s boy? Thomas Savage, fetch your sewing kit.”

  Wingfield turned to stare out at the shore. He made no move to direct the men. Smith sidled up to him.

  “Unfortunate,” Smith said quietly.

  The glare Wingfield turned on him was sharp and dangerous, thick with loathing.

  “I do think,” Smith murmured, trying for Scrivener’s sake to put some deference into his words, “that now would be an ideal time to open the box.”

  “The box,” Wingfield burst out. He took a threatening step toward Smith, and Smith thought for one welcome moment that Wingfield might strike him, might give him the chance to retaliate. Then the man reined himself in, and seized the point of his beard in a shaking fist. “An excellent idea, John Smith.”

  The sealed box was sent for, and once the men’s wounds were well in hand, Wingfied unsheathed his dagger, broke the wax coating the lock with a flourish, and pried open the lid. The parchment inside was tidily rolled. It hissed as it came open in Wingfield’s hands.

  “By decree of the Virginia Company,” Wingfield said, voice booming, “a ruling council of seven is appointed. The council shall consist of: Edward-Maria Wingfield, gentleman and shareholder…” he took a long and savory moment to stare into Smith’s eyes. “Bartholomew Gosnold, gentleman and investor; John Ratcliffe, gentleman and investor; Christopher Newport, captain of the Susan Constant; George Kendall, gentleman and investor; John Martin, gentleman…”

  Wingfield stopped short. The men on the deck shuffled, jostling one another, murmuring.

  “And?” Scrivener prompted.

  “And John Smith, soldier and adventurer,” Wingfield concluded. His mouth twisted, a sour, hate-filled leer.

  Smith stepped to Wingfield’s side. He held out his wrists to his fellow councilman, presenting the fetters lock side up.

  He had come to a new world, and John Smith would never wear chains again.

  *.*.*

  Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony is available now. For news about upcoming releases, be sure to join the mailing list! Updates are infrequent, always relevant, and your email address will never be used for any other purpose.

  Return to the Table of Contents

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Please, gentle readers! Set down your pitchforks and torches! I swear I meant no harm; I only wanted to entertain you.

  All right, I admit I got somewhat creative with history this time around, even more creative than I dared to be with the previous books in this series. In fact, I will confess that I’ve felt a persistent pang of worry over that whole Satiah/Neferure thing ever since I first came up with the idea back in 2008, when I started putting together The She-King inside my head. I knew I’d be taking a gamble with readers’ patience; all I could do was hope I could make the story engaging enough that my readers would be willing to venture with me into the realm of truly wild speculation.

  In my defense, it’s not an entirely absurd plot device. Thutmose III was probably married to Neferure at one point. After Neferure vanished from history, she was replaced with a Great Royal Wife by the name of Satiah. On one monument, Satiah appears with startling prominence – much greater prominence than any queen was ever given in ancient Egypt, before or since – although it’s not entirely clear whether the original version of the monument always depicted Satiah, or whether it was first meant to represent Neferure, and Satiah co-opted the monument later. Either way, my trick of making Neferure and Satiah interchangeable is supported by history, albeit in a very roundabout and tenuous way.

&n
bsp; Thutmose III did have a son named Amenemhat, and some Egyptologists believe that Satiah was his mother, while others speculate that Amenemhat came from the union of Thutmose III and Neferure. You can see where my inspiration for the Satiah/Neferure tangle came from.

  My other affronts to history, in this book at least, are minor by comparison.

  I moved the Battle of Megiddo (still a famous enough example of strategy, I hear, that it’s taught in modern military schools) forward in time by about two years. It was actually staged about two years after Hatshepsut’s death, but because it was such a dramatic and bloody battle, I wanted to use it as an expression of Thutmose’s grief and rage over Hatshepsut’s demise and his own perceived part in her downfall. For my purposes, the battle had to come immediately after the lady Pharaoh went to the big barque in the sky.

  And finally, Hatshepsut’s reign actually lasted twenty-two years (I have her ruling for about twenty-one.) It’s a remarkably complicated trick, to make real history align with the pacing of an entertaining story. For the purposes of fiction, I figured twenty-one years was pretty darn close to good enough.

  I promise more fidelity to actual history in my next novel. Honest.

  Return to the Table of Contents

  NOTES ON THE LANGUAGE USED

  This novel is set in historical Egypt, about 1500 years before the Common Era and roughly 1200 years before Alexander the Great conquered the Nile. With the dawning of the Greek period, a shift in the old Egyptian language began. Proper nouns (and, we can assume, other parts of the language) took on a decidedly Greek bent, which today most historians use when referring to ancient Egyptians and their world.

  This presents a bit of a tangle for a historical novelist like myself. Culturally, we are familiar with Greek-influenced names like Thebes, Rameses, and Isis. In fact, even the name Egypt is not Egyptian; it has a long chain of derivations through Greek, Latin, and French. However, the historic people in my novel would have scratched their heads over such foreign words for their various places, people, and gods. And linguistically, the modern English-speaking reader will probably have a difficult time wrapping her head and tongue around such tricky names as Djhtms – an authentic and very common man's name for the time and place where Sovereign of Stars is set (rather the equivalent of a Mike or Tom or Jim).

  On the balance, cultural authenticity is important to me, and so I've reverted to ancient Egyptian versions of various proper nouns and other words in the majority of cases. A glossary of ancient Egyptian words used in this book, and their more familiar Greco-English translations, follows.

  In some cases, to avoid headaches and to preserve (I hope) the flow of the narrative, I have kept modernized versions of certain words in spite of their inauthentic nature. Notably, I use Egypt rather than the authentic Kmet. It is a word that instantly evokes the reader's own romantic perceptions of the land and time, whatever those may be, and its presence in the story can only aid my own attempts at world-building. I have opted for the fairly Greeky, English-friendly name Thutmose in place of Djhtms, which is simply a tongue-twister; and the word Pharaoh, which is French in origin (the French have always been enthusiastic Egyptologists) rather than the Egyptian pra'a, simply because Pharaoh is such a familiar word in the mind of a contemporary reader. Wherever possible, I have used “Pharaoh” sparingly, only to avoid repetitiveness, and have instead opted for the simple translation of “king.” I've also decided, after much flip-flopping, to use the familiar Greek name Horus for the falcon-headed god, rather than the authentic name Horu. The two are close, but in every case reading Horu in my sentences interrupted the flow and tripped me up. Horus flies more smoothly on his falcon wings; ditto for Hathor, who should properly be called Hawet-Hor, but seems to prefer her modernized name.

  As always, I hope the reader appreciates these concessions to historical accuracy and to comfort.

  Return to the Table of Contents

  GLOSSARY

  ankh – the breath of life; the animating spirit that makes humans live

  Anupu – Anubis

  deby – hippopotamus

  Djeser-Djeseru – “Holiest of Holies,” the name of Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, known today as Dier-el Bahri.

  Heqa-Khasewet – Hyksos

  Ipet-Isut – “Holy House”; the temple complex at Karnak

  Iset – Isis

  Iteru – Nile

  Iunet – Dendera

  ka – not quite in line with the Western concept of a “soul” or “spirit,” a ka was an individual's vital essence, that which made him or her live.

  Kush – Nubia

  maat – A concept difficult for modern Westerners to accurately define: something like righteousness, something like divine order, something like justice. It is to a sense of “God is in His Heaven and all is right with the world” as the native Hawai'ian word aloha is to an overall feeling of affection, pleasure, well-being, and joyful anticipation. It is also the name of the goddess of the concept – the goddess of “what is right.”

  mawat – mother; also used to refer to mother-figures such as nurses

  Medjay – An Egyptian citizen of Nubian descent

  rekhet – people of the common class; peasants

  sepat – nome, or district

  seshep – sphinx

  sesheshet – sistrum; ceremonial rattle

  tjati – vizier; governor of a sepat or district

  Waser – Osiris, god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead. Also used as a prefix when referring to a deceased king.

  Waset – Thebes

  Return to the Table of Contents

  A MESSAGE FOR THE READER

  It’s only the end of February as I write this note, yet 2014 is already the best year ever for both writers and readers. In recent weeks, while I’ve been hard at work on revisions and formatting for the book you’ve just finished reading, the intrepid (and somewhat famous) indie author Hugh Howey lit the fuse on a bomb that is about to blow away the final shreds of stigma and myth that have been clinging to independent authors for years. Howey’s website AuthorEarnings.com is a fascinating tumble down an incredible rabbit hole, and I recommend you check it out if you are a writer yourself.

  The short version, for readers who don’t give a fig about the sticky and maddening world of publisher politics, is that I now have proof – actual, real, made-out-of-numbers mathematical proof that what I’ve been harping about in these notes I leave you in the back of all my books is true: this really is the best time in the history of forever to be a writer, or to be a reader. We now have the means to see, in clear, testable, trackable data, that books truly are in the midst of an exciting revolution, that our creative landscape is expanding and flowering, and that there’s no stopping the flood of exciting new content. I am thrilled, as evidenced by my excessive use of italics.

  With the release of this, my fifth novel, I am now ready to quit my “day job” and devote myself full-time to writing as my sole occupation. For that I must thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, because without you – yes, you as an individual – this couldn’t happen. I am intensely aware every day of the role readers have played in my success. I wonder whether authors who work with big publishers have that same awareness. I hope they do; it’s an amazing feeling, one no author should be denied.

  I’ve been humbled and inspired by the fact that my simple little stories of ancient Egypt have entertained and touched so many people. I love hearing from readers who have spent a few hours with my words and found it a good pastime, and I’m amazed that something as simple and everyday as story has the power to connect so many people who would otherwise find little in common. From the gal who lives across the Sound from me and shares my first name (hi, Libby!) to the Egypt nut Down Under who always recommends the best books on Goodreads (hello, Lisa!) to the 81-year-old former RAF member who has loved Egypt since he was a child (hi, Alan!), I treasure all the connections I’ve made through my books.

  I think it’s a beautifu
l thing, that the stories we share with one another can forge bonds between us. Story is an undeniable power in our society, and in 2014 we’ll see its magic increase and spread unfettered across the world. It’s an italically fantastic time to be a book lover.

  Please, if you enjoy my books, feel free to let me know. You can always contact me via my web site. And remember the power you have now, as a reader in the new political landscape of publishing: you control the destinies of authors like me, by telling your friends which books you’ve enjoyed. Write a review, tell a friend, send a tweet – however you like to exercise your influence, I encourage you to do it for this book and all the other books you’ll read, by all the other writers. It does make a difference.

  Until the next story we share, may your year be the best ever.

  Return to Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I spent most of my adult life striving to make a career writing books. During all those years, I worked at the oddest variety of jobs – any job, just to keep a roof over my head and food in my fridge – while I honed my craft and wrote my books. Some of my jobs were tolerable. Some were exotic and kind of fun. Most were a misery and I couldn’t wait to leave.

  What a cruel irony, then, that in the year when my books finally took off and I was at last able to make my lifelong dream a reality, I ended up at a job I truly loved.

  Every single person at Trupanion has been a delight to work with – something that can’t be said of most workplaces, especially not with companies as large and growing as this one. And yet it’s true: each individual is amazing. Many are good friends to me now. Some are as close as family.

  I wouldn’t be the person I am today without the friendship of my co-workers at Trupanion: Emily Renfrew, Erin Milholland, Forrest Downey, Whitney Drake, Cuppy Taylor, Connie Park, Emily Burns, Jessica Rogers, Diana Moreno, Crystal Alvarez, Stephanie Manzo, Julie Coulter, Heather Pike, Chrissy Barger, Diana Cross, Paulette Molnar, Pamela Olsen, Jenn Lach, Jayme Markham, Kelly Maheu, Bridget Lombardo, and Tuesday Reimers. Plus Shannon, whose last name I haven’t learned yet (sorry, Shannon.) And, of course, Nemo, Paisley, Dizzy, Romeo, Cole, Tank, Athena, Cyrus, Mr. Tibbs, Gizmo, Bishop, Iris, Butters, Half Pint, Cherry Bomb, Gary the Longdog, Steeeven, and The Dread Pirate Roberts.