“I have an aching back and I do not sleep well,” she retorted. “Other than that I am in good health. I am sorry that circumstances have forced you home, Ahmose. There really is nothing you can do for Sat-Kamose, and as for Aahmes-nefertari …” She shrugged eloquently, the wrinkled hollows above her collar-bones suddenly deepening with the gesture. “Your wife has fallen apart most regrettably. I love her but she always did lack stamina. She was easily frightened as a girl, and what that baby needs is the care of a strong, calm female. The wet nurse was admirable in that respect, but Aahmes-nefertari sent her away.” Ahmose straightened and gazed at her, fighting to keep his temper. Her tongue had sharpened with age, but he made himself remember that she did indeed love Aahmesnefertari even though her vision of the Queen was made up almost entirely of the memories to which she clung.
“I was not forced to come home,” he said steadily. “I came to see my daughter before she died and to support my wife. No better woman has been under so much strain without breaking, Tetisheri, excluding you, of course. Nothing ever breaks you.” She had not missed the sarcasm of his words but she did not rise to it. Instead she said unexpectedly, “Kamose’s murder broke me. Your father’s death in battle almost broke me. My speech is sometimes cruel, Ahmose. Forgive me. It is just so frustrating …” She trailed off into silence and he turned to his mother with relief. Here at least was an echo of Seqenenra, sane and quietly competent in her actions and intuitive in her decisions and pronouncements. Taking her hand and pressing his cheek to hers, he smiled at her.
“Thank you for the letter,” he said simply. She returned his smile.
“I knew you would come,” she replied. “It has been dreadful here, Ahmose. She would not relinquish the reins of government to me because you had entrusted the running of the country to her. It was a matter of pride. But if you had tarried any longer, I think she would indeed have broken utterly. I did not have the authority to give her any orders.” She indicated the pomegranate wine and shat cakes set out on the table. “Now sit and tell us of Tani,” she invited. “Your report conveyed little but shouted much.”
Ahmose’s heart sank. He had known this moment would arrive but still he shrank from it. Tipping the gleaming red liquid into a cup, he took a swallow of its fragrance before settling unwillingly into a chair. In spite of his desperate searching he could find no way to soften the blow that had already fallen on Aahotep, no little lies to bind up a wound already bleeding. So he recited the events of Tani’s refusal to tell him where Apepa had gone, her refusal to take ship back to Weset, her adamant desire to enter Sharuhen and be with her husband, in plain unvarnished language. He did not, however, repeat his sister’s all-too-realistic assessment of the reception she might have expected from the women of her family. Aahotep listened motionless, watching his face, raising her cup occasionally to drink but saying nothing. When he had finished, it was Teti-sheri who expressed her disgust.
“The person you describe is unrecognizable as the girl who left here with Apepa so bravely,” she snorted. “She allowed the Setiu to corrupt her will. Little coward! Thank the gods her father is not alive to see her betrayal! He would have whipped her and sent her to Weset tied to her cabin wall! We will not refer to her again. Now tell us of Sharuhen and the siege. That news is much more interesting.” She had blustered angrily in her old woman’s uneven croak, but Ahmose saw her quickly tuck her hands into the folds of her sheath to hide their trembling and he was filled with pity for her. Hastily he began to talk of Apepa’s escape, the burning of the palace, Abana’s capture of the Setiu and how he had forced them to reveal Apepa’s destination, all the drama and excitement on which she throve, and he was rewarded with a series of snorts, laughs and exclamations as she became more and more involved in the tale. Finally she slapped the arm of her chair. “Ha!” she crowed. “Now we have him, that spawn of Sutekh! It is only a matter of time before Sharuhen falls to you and you will be able to cut off his head! Well done, Majesty!” He did not spoil her delight by reminding her of Sharuhen’s impregnability. Draining his cup, he rose and bowed to them both.
“Apart from the morning audiences, I shall be spending all my time in Aahmes-nefertari’s quarters,” he said. “I ask you both to see to Pa-she and Ahmose-onkh. Does he still run off to play in the bricklayers’ mud pits?”
“The bricklayers have gone, Ahmose,” Tetisheri said. “The old palace needs nothing but whitewash and decoration. Even the gardens have been laid out around it, although they are still new and unlovely. Will you have it blessed soon?” I have dreamed of that moment since Kamose and I sailed north to reclaim Egypt, Ahmose thought sadly. Now it is here and all I can think about is Sat-Kamose. I feel no exultation, no sense of triumph. Fate has stolen it away.
“I do not know,” he answered heavily. “Perhaps.” He turned to the door but his mother’s voice forestalled him.
“Is she well?” Aahotep asked mildly. Ahmose paused.
“Yes, she is well, and more beautiful than ever,” he replied without looking at her. He rapped on the wood. Kares opened at once, and sick with desolation Ahmose stepped out into the passage.
The Royal Physician and Uni were waiting for him outside Aahmes-nefertari’s door and they went in together. It seemed to Ahmose that she must have been pacing just within her reception room, anxious for his return, the baby in her arms, for she almost ran to him as Uni closed the door behind him, her expression clearing. But when she saw the vial and spoon the physician was carrying, she halted abruptly. “No,” she said. Ahmose placed a hand firmly on her shoulder.
“If you must blame anyone for the feebleness of our children, blame the gods, not yourself,” he said to her in a low voice. “I do not condemn you. Don’t you know that? How can you believe that these losses, horrifying though they are, can possibly erode the love I hold for you? We are one, my dearest sister. We have survived many tests of our unity. We have been angry with each other. But underneath it all there remains a bond that cannot be severed.” Gently he eased Sat-Kamose from her grasp. “You are using her suffering to torture yourself and that is selfish of you. We must try to alleviate her pain and ease her passing into the presence of Osiris.”
“She will not keep it down,” Aahmes-nefertari protested faintly, but she made no further demur. She had gone very pale at his words, but something in her eyes had begun to change as he spoke. It was slender evidence indeed, but he knew that the battle for her sanity was won. Signalling to the physician, he folded the baby’s linen wrapping down under her chin. Sat-Kamose was watching him. Her quick breaths were hot on his fingers. Her head with its scant covering of fine black hair seemed to have grown larger, lolling in the crook of his elbow. It is an illusion fostered by the wasting away of her little body, Ahmose thought with a loving compassion that sheared through him like a sword stroke. Amun, you have given much with your omnipotent right hand, but you have taken away with your left.
The physician came close, his small spoon already full of the thin, milky liquid. Carefully he inserted it between the dry lips. Sat-Kamose wrinkled up her gem-sized nose, swallowed convulsively, coughed weakly, and began to cry. Ahmose rocked her, crooning a song half-forgotten from his own nursery days, and all present waited to see her vomit the drug. But she did not. After a minute her eyelids drooped. Ahmose felt her tense limbs relax. She fell asleep. “I will come twice a day and once in the night to repeat the dose, Majesty,” the physician said. “One ro each time and no more.” Bowing, he backed away and left the room. Ahmose passed the baby to Aahmes-nefertari, who walked into the nursery. Ahmose turned swiftly to Uni.
“Bring all our meals here,” he ordered. “Make them pretty and appetizing so that the Queen will be tempted. We will have beer instead of wine. Beer is more sustaining. Keep everyone away except Akhtoy, Ipi and Khabekhnet, and admit them only if their need is dire.” Uni smiled.
“I understand, Majesty,” he said. “I honour your wisdom.” Wisdom? Ahmose reflected ruefully in the moment when
Uni had gone and his wife had not yet reappeared. It is not wisdom, my good steward, but blind fear. What would I do without Aahmes-nefertari? I would be like a sail with no wind to fill it.
The following weeks assumed a rigid pattern whose shape was determined by Sat-Kamose’s needs and whose sombre colours were painted by death itself. Every morning Ahmose rose to the Song of Praise that had been resumed upon his return. He went to the bath house to be washed, shaved and massaged, to his own quarters briefly to be painted and dressed, and then with Ipi and Khunes he proceeded to the main reception hall, where he dealt with the business that had always accumulated from the day before.
Back in Aahmes-nefertari’s rooms he would greet the Royal Physician who would be waiting and together they would administer the great gift of the gods that had the power to banish pain and bring unconsciousness. Sat-Kamose always cried at its bitter taste and sometimes retched, but as time went by her stomach grew too weak to make the spasm that would expel the poppy. Encouraged, the physician had tried to feed her again with goat’s milk, but she could not retain it. She was in Ahmose’s or her mother’s arms almost continually. Ahmose, bearing his feather-light burden as he walked back and forth between the rooms that had become his whole world, was several times convinced that she had already died, so limp was her body and so faint her breathing.
At first he would return from the audiences to find his wife sitting beside her couch with Uni’s food untouched on the table before her and Sat-Kamose on her lap. Once the physician had left, he would be forced to crouch beside her and coax her to take just one mouthful and then perhaps another. She would comply listlessly, her eyelids swollen, her spine hunched over her folded arms, and twice she herself vomited what she had eaten in a fit of violent rejection against that which her child could not do, but gradually her appetite improved until more often than not Ahmose, entering her rooms, was overjoyed to see the platters empty but for a smattering of crumbs. Senehat would escort her to the bath house while Ahmose kept vigil over the basket that held such a precious, such a penetrating hurt for both of them.
At Ahmose’s insistence, Aahmes-nefertari submitted to the Royal Physician’s examination and his pronouncement was encouraging. “She has gained some flesh, her eyes are less full of the yellow of ukhedu, and her breath no longer stinks,” he told Ahmose. “I will not prescribe for her. All she needs is healthful food and rest. She sleeps well?” Ahmose assured him that she did. She had begun the nights in fits of shallow dozes interspersed with periods of wakeful agitation, when he would attempt to calm her with board games and stories by the light of the one lamp always kept burning. But slowly the duration of her sleeping hours became longer, her sleep deeper. One night she did not even wake when the physician entered quietly to give Sat-Kamose her poppy.
Ahmose, himself wakeful, spent many hours sitting by Aahmes-nefertari’s bed and watching her, rediscovering his delight in the sheer harmony of her frame, the dark hair foaming back from her wide temples, the delicate bluish tinge to her closed eyelids, the thick black lashes quivering under the influence of her dreams, the aquilinity of their father’s nose and the petal fullness of their mother’s mouth. The lamp’s even glow cast friendly shadows over her throat, heightened the brown cleft between her breasts, and made her shoulders gleam as though her skin had been oiled. It was not lust he felt. The days were too fraught with worries for something so strongly elemental. Tenderness and an awareness of her uniqueness as his wife, his beloved, filled him in these moments, giving him the patience and selflessness he needed to nurse her and his daughter through the ordeal in which they were all embroiled.
Once, just after midnight when the Royal Physician had gone and Aahmes-nefertari was sunk in unconsciousness, he left the women’s quarters, and with a word to Uni on his pallet outside the door should she wake, he set off for the temple alone. The moon was three-quarters to the full and the garden lay peacefully shrouded under its pallid rays. Feeling dazed after his long imprisonment, Ahmose paused to draw the warm air into his lungs before making his way out the watersteps gate, refusing an escort from the gate guards and turning onto the river path, a ribbon of greyness winding beneath his feet into the duskiness of palm trunks ahead.
The moon-drenched sky above was a haphazard pattern of faintly stirring leaves and branches and the Nile itself ran silver-grey and silent beside him. The town of Weset, now almost a city, lay enchanted beyond the shrubs and small fields to his left, its mud houses dark, its streets empty but for a few prowling dogs and an occasional spark of light where some citizen sat up, as sleepless as his King. Yet it murmured and rumbled quietly, its pulse a blend of every life, human and animal, that made up its existence. Far out on the desert a hyena barked sharply once, the sound echoing across the unseen dunes before dying away. I love this place, Ahmose thought as he strode along. Everything that I am has been moulded by its slowly multiplying impact on all my senses. I am the King of Egypt but I am first of all a child of Weset, and so I shall always be.
The temple forecourt was deserted. Ahmose crossed it quickly. The inner court, being roofed by mighty stone slabs, was drowned in darkness. A guard materialized out of the shadows to challenge him but, seeing who he was, retired with a quick apology. Removing his sandals, Ahmose approached the sanctuary. It was closed and sealed, of course, but that did not matter. A faint scent of incense hung in the air and mingled with the smell of dust and wilting flowers.
Ahmose knelt, then prostrated himself, arms outflung, face to the floor. With eyes closed he prayed for Sat-Kamose, for Aahmes-nefertari, for himself, the words coming easily and from a clarity of mind he had not experienced in a long time. After a while he sensed movement behind him but he did not look up. Someone settled beside him and also began to pray, and with gladness he recognized Amunmose’s voice. When he had said everything he wished to say to the god, he rose and the High Priest rose with him. “I heard that you had returned, Majesty,” he said, his voice falling flat in that small, close place. “Your mother sends Yuf to me with regular reports on the affairs of the house. The Queen asked me to appoint a substitute for her to perform the duties of Second Prophet in her stead until the little Princess recovered or died and I have done so. I gather that she is in poor health herself.” What a rigid sense of obligation Aahmes-nefertari has! Ahmose marvelled privately. Egypt could be disappearing under a lake of fire and she would still be concerned that she was unable to undertake her responsibilities.
“I have always valued your tact, Amunmose,” Ahmose replied. “She is bowed under a crushing weight but she is recovering. It is good to see you again. At the moment my duties to Amun are performed only in my heart and for that I do not apologize.” Amunmose’s face was a dim oval looming out of the darkness. Nevertheless Ahmose could read his sombre expression.
“Of course not,” the High Priest said. “I have no comfort to offer you, Majesty, unless it is a prediction emanating from the Seer’s vase. Sharuhen will fall and Apepa will be yours.”
“No comfort in my present distress,” Ahmose said heavily, “but I do not doubt the Seer’s gift. After all, he foretold today’s tragedy.”
“He is but an instrument of the god,” Amunmose said simply. “Please convey my respects to my Second Prophet.”
“I will indeed. And I thank you for your company tonight.” The outer court was a rectangle of greyness. Ahmose turned towards it, retrieved his sandals, and began to walk home.
Sat-Kamose died during the night of the thirtieth of Pharmuthi. The Royal Physician had made his accustomed visit just after midnight. Aahmes-nefertari had slept briefly but then had woken and got up, coming to sit on the edge of Ahmose’s cot where he was preparing to sleep himself. “A dream disturbed me,” she said apologetically. “I don’t remember what it was. I cannot rest again, Ahmose. I need to hold my daughter.” It would not matter, Ahmose knew. The baby was only semi-conscious most of the time and no longer even whimpered when lifted. He tossed back his sheet and stood.
/> “I will bring her to you,” he said. “Prop yourself up with cushions on my couch. Would you like a drink of water?” She nodded. Before he padded into the nursery, he poured her a cup and passed it to her, waiting to set it back on the table after she had emptied it thirstily.
“You have been wonderful to me,” she blurted impulsively. “More than I deserve. I love you so much, Ahmose. Forgive me for everything.”
“Everything?” he smiled, noting that the effects of her dream, whatever it was, were still upsetting her. All the same, her face had lost its haggard look and the flush of health was returning to her skin. “I cannot imagine what everything might be. If you are settled, I will fetch Sat-Kamose.”
He went through into the dimly lit nursery and bent over the basket, but his intent was stayed. He had seen death many times in the past few years and even on the features of otherwise unmarred soldiers its mark was unmistakeable. Or rather, the absence of its mark, he thought with a wave of terrible forsakenness. No matter how composed the face, how apparently deceptive the image, one glance can confirm that the ka has flown and only a vacant shell is left.
The baby’s half-closed eyes glittered but with a borrowed spark of life from the lamp. Her mouth was partly open, the rows of tiny bones across her chest utterly motionless. Ahmose lifted her and crushed her to him. Her body was still faintly warm but it was the heat of any inanimate thing left out in the sun, a cushion, a blanket, not hers, not generated by the meagre spark of life that had smouldered within her. Biting his lip fiercely in an attempt to stem the tears that were already stinging his eyes, he carried her out into the bedchamber.
Aahmes-nefertari gave one soft cry when she saw his face, and held up her arms. Reverently Ahmose placed the pathetic little corpse in them and then sat beside her, taking up one of Sat-Kamose’s hands in his and encircling his wife with the other. They did not speak. They stayed huddled together on the couch, both weeping, while the night deepened around them and their child’s body gradually became cold to their grieving touch.
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