by Judith Tarr
Senenmut judged that he had gone deep into the palace before he was led to a room and told to wait. It was a small room, nearly bare, with a chair and a table and a woven rug on the floor.
There was a bowl on the table, half filled with water, and floating in it a lotus blossom. The walls reflected it, painted with lotuses, simple and somewhat faded, beautiful in their antiquity. A window in one of the walls looked out on yet another colonnade, and a garden of trees.
No one seemed to come here. The crowds of princes were all elsewhere, on the other side of the colonnade and behind a guarded door. One person trotted past the door of the room in which Senenmut was left, a woman in a tight linen shift, carrying a tray laden with bottles and jars.
Senenmut, reflecting on the likelihood of solitude in a crowded palace, allowed himself to dream. If he had been meant for lesser tasks, surely he would have been taken to the scribes’ hall and set to work. But he was singled out, led to a room in what surely must be the royal quarters, and left to his own devices. Was he being tested? Were there eyes in the painted walls, watching to see what he would do?
He judged it wise, after a circuit or two of the room, to sit in the best of the light and set out his palette and inks and brushes, and unroll the bit of papyrus that he kept for need. For a while he sat still, empty of inspiration. Then all at once it came to him. He bent to the papyrus.
~~~
“What are you doing?”
Senenmut had heard the footsteps, seen the shadows on the floor, reckoned and counted them. There were only two, one very large and wide in the shoulders, one much smaller and more slender.
The voice that spoke to him was light, a child’s voice or a young woman’s. It had a child’s curiosity but a woman’s self-possession, with nothing tentative in it.
He looked up. Yes, a child, but dressed as a woman in a white linen gown and a wide jeweled collar, with a wig of heavy plaits. A small imperious cat-face regarded him from amid the braids. “Are you writing a poem,” she demanded, “or a hymn to the gods?”
Senenmut quelled the first, impulsive retort. The king might be watching, judging him by his response to this girlchild, whoever she was. Royal kin certainly, or royal servant, to carry herself with such sublime self-confidence.
He answered her as sweetly as he knew how. “Why, lady, neither. I’m writing a letter.”
Her painted brows went up. Her eyes tilted upward like a cat’s, with no little in them of a cat’s expression: fiercely intent, fixing on him as if he were prey. “To whom would you write a letter?”
He bristled at the tone of it. And who are you, it said, to write to anyone at all?
But he remembered his resolve. The king might be listening. Or the king’s chancellor. Or any one of the great lords of the Two Lands. He answered this impudent child as if she were worthy of respect. “I am writing, lady, to my master, Seti-Nakht. He set me lessons, you see, and I am recalling them.”
“How dull,” said the girlchild. She lifted a hand.
Her shadow shifted slightly, coming into the light. Senenmut had thought it a trick of the eyes. No man could be as large as that.
This one was. He was as black as the kohl that lined his lady’s eyelids, so tall that he had to stoop to pass the door. And yet he did not move like other giants that Senenmut had seen. He was as light on his feet as a hunting cat, poised as if to spring.
“Nehsi,” she said—it was not a name, not properly: it simply meant ‘Nubian.’ “Fetch wine. And, I think, dates. And bread with cheese baked in.”
The Nubian bowed low. His face was still, but his eyes begged her to reconsider. She did not choose to see. He backed away, still bowing.
When his shadow had passed down the colonnade, the girlchild sat in the chair, which happened to be set just in front of the place where Senenmut had chosen to sit. She was pretty rather than beautiful, but she moved with striking grace, as if she had studied to be a dancer.
“Tell me your name,” she said abruptly.
Senenmut stiffened. One did not toy with names. There was too much power in them. And to demand a name of a stranger, with such a presumption of obedience— “You are arrogant,” he said.
The words escaped before he could call them back. Seti-Nakht would have flayed him with the rod, had he known.
This child seemed taken aback. But not enough, and not for long. “You dare much,” she said.
“So do you.”
Her lips went tight. “Do you know who I am?”
“Should I?” asked Senenmut.
With late-dawning wisdom, Senenmut began to suspect that she was more than a servant, and perhaps more than a royal cousin. She looked at him as if no one else had ever spoken to her so, with such complete disregard of her station.
When she spoke, she seemed almost amused. “Yes, scribe, you should know who I am. I am called Hatshepsut.”
His teeth clicked together. Yes, he should know who that was. Hatshepsut. Daughter of the old king, the king who was dead, and his Great Royal Wife. Wife of the God. The king’s wife, Great Royal Wife, queen and goddess.
He could not fling himself on his face. His inks would spatter. He bowed over the palette, cursing the flush that burned his cheeks. “Lady,” he said—and cursed himself. He was a scribe. He knew all the proper forms of address, or he had known them once. They were all fled; all forgotten.
The queen had no mercy on him. “Now will you tell me your name?” she demanded.
His eyes flashed up of themselves. Spoiled, he thought. Brat.
Queen.
He answered her with as much grace as he could muster. “I am called Senenmut, Ramose’s son.”
“Senenmut Ramose’s son,” said the queen, “who sent you here?”
“The Temple of Amon, lady,” he answered, “and Seti-Nakht the master of scribes.”
“Seti-Nakht.” The queen sounded—not pleased. Satisfied, somehow. But when she looked at Senenmut, that satisfaction vanished. “Did he send you to me as a punishment?”
“I am sent—?” But of course he was. This must be the queen’s house within the palace. This was certainly the queen: no one else would address him so directly, or with such certainty of her right to do it. He said, “Lady, he simply sent me.”
“That would be like him,” said Hatshepsut. “He believes that I need reining in. You too, I suppose. You have the look.”
Senenmut was blushing again, and cursing his body’s folly. “Are you saying, lady, that I should return to him? Shall I tell him that the gift does not suit?”
“Would you do that?” she asked. She sounded honestly curious.
“You are the queen,” he said. “I’m bound to obey you.”
She did not argue that. “No, don’t go back to him. Not yet. He must have had his reasons for sending you. I asked,” she said, “for a man of years and wisdom, a scribe well fit to serve a queen.”
And Seti-Nakht had sent a boy with few years and no wisdom, who had never learned the meaning of humility.
Hatshepsut was even less familiar with that virtue than Senenmut. He would have thought that only a king could be as haughty as she was.
“Read to me,” she said abruptly.
Senenmut’s mind emptied of wit. There was nothing to read but the letter in his lap, and he was not minded to regale her with that.
By the gods’ good fortune, the Nubian returned just then, bearing the wine and the dates and the bread. He carried other things, too: a case of scrolls and another in the same shape as Senenmut’s own, a scribe’s satchel, and not a new one, either. This had seen use.
The queen bade him eat, as imperious in that as in everything else. To his surprise, he was hungry. She, it seemed, was not. She watched him, censoriously maybe, or maybe only curious to see how a commoner ate. He took some small pleasure in showing her the manners that he had learned among the scribes.
He could not tell if she was disappointed. When he had had his fill, the Nubian took the rest away—li
ttle enough, at that—and left him alone again, for a little while, with the queen.
“Read to me,” she said again.
There were indeed scrolls in the case, written in a workmanlike hand, nothing beautiful in them. They were meant to be read and recorded, not to be admired. Why anyone should want to remember them, Senenmut could not imagine. They were only letters from foreign kings to the king of Egypt, begging for gold and offering daughters and whining that they needed his aid in this war or that.
“Surely you can read these,” Senenmut said, “lady. There’s nothing complicated about them.”
Ah: he had stung her, and he had not even been thinking when he did it. She spoke with excessive precision, through tightened lips. “I can read. A little. But not enough.”
“What, no one taught you?”
“I was taught,” she said, still stiffly. “I was not taught well. My father died, you see. My husband is not a man for, as he puts it, trifles. Scribes read and write. Queens command the scribes.”
“You could command a scribe to teach you,” Senenmut said.
“I have,” said the queen. “Or I thought I had. Seti-Nakht has a nasty sense of humor.”
He did indeed, thought Senenmut. “Is that what you want of me, then, lady? To read to you?”
“Read,” she commanded him.
In a fit of temper he obeyed her. He read from the scrolls, every word, even to the endless repetitive formulae of greeting and salutation. She sat with hands folded in her lap, listening with all apparent serenity. If the fourth consecutive recounting of the same arguments on behalf of the same king who was, he declared, destitute, did not bore her silly, then she was a stronger spirit than Senenmut.
He could let his eyes glide over the words, and his tongue utter them, and leave his mind to wander as it pleased. It noted that the Nubian came back and established himself on guard at the door. It saw how a strand of the queen’s own hair, glossy black and very thick, had escaped beneath her wig. It observed that the sun had shifted toward noon, and that the light in the room was fading slowly, for the window faced east.
She heard the whole of one scroll and most of another. Senenmut’s throat was raw, his voice hoarse. As he finished one letter and began another, she said, “Enough.”
He lapsed into welcome silence. The Nubian filled the cup that had been empty; he drank. The wine made him dizzy. He had had wine once or twice before, thin sour stuff, nothing like this sweet heady vintage. This must be the wine that kings drank at their feasts.
The queen had drunk nothing. Maybe there was calculation in that. “You read adequately,” she said. “I wish to learn. Can you teach me?”
“I am not a schoolmaster,” Senenmut said in the heat of the wine. “I do not wish to be one. If I did, would I be here?”
“Probably not,” said the queen. “I disappoint you, I see. Had you expected to be taken to the king and appointed Vizier of the Upper Kingdom?”
He was too furious even to blush. He was all cold, white and still.
She went on as if oblivious. “My husband dislikes scribes. He prefers what he calls honest men: soldiers and their kind, men armed with sword and spear instead of brush and palette. He’d be rid of your kind if he could. Scribes and priests, he says, are the bane of a warrior king. They throttle swift action. They diminish the glory of battle in a niggle of numbers.”
“I might be different,” Senenmut muttered.
She arched a painted brow. “My husband would never have summoned you. I the mere woman, I who am no more than Great Royal Wife—I have a use for you, or someone like you. You may refuse. The palace will be closed to you thereafter, but that surely will be no impediment to a talent as vast as yours.”
Senenmut bristled. “And what do I have to gain if I play schoolmaster to your majesty?”
“Why,” said the queen, “nothing. Except presence in the palace and the prospect of admittance to my counsels. I do have them, scribe. Yes, even I, who am not a king.”
Her irony was honed a shade too keenly. It irked her, then, that someone else must be king. That was a weapon if Senenmut had known how to use it.
He knew the scribe’s art. He was learned in the lore of the Two Kingdoms. He had heard of the intrigues of courts, the subtle and deadly games that the high ones played to allay their boredom. Boredom like gold was a luxury; only the wealthy were free to indulge in it.
The queen was bored. Whatever she did with herself, whatever was allowed her as the king’s wife, was not enough. She wanted more. This teaching that she asked for was but a means to an end. It would give her something that she needed, further a plan that she had in train. Through it she played the game of princes.
Senenmut meant to be one who ruled the game, not one who was ruled by it: a counter on a board, helpless to move except as his master decreed. Just so would this child-queen use him, take what he had and cast him away.
He rose. He bowed as correctly as he knew how. He said, “I wish my lady well of her ambition.”
She had not dismissed him, but neither did she stop him when he turned and left her. Part of him—and rather a large one—was railing at him for a fool. The part that ruled his feet wanted simply to be away from there, away from that imperious, impossible, exasperating girlchild.
3
Senenmut looked back on the gates of the palace in a kind of bleak exultation. He had talked himself out of his chief ambition. And for what? Because he had taken a dislike to the king’s wife.
He was fortunate that she had not had him flogged or worse. Her youth had preserved him: no doubt she had never been spoken to with such rudeness. She had not known how to punish it.
And now he had nowhere to go. The House of Life was closed to him. He had barred himself from the palace. If he went home so early, his mother would not rest until she had discovered the reason. Then she would flay him as royally as the queen had failed to do. And after that . . .
What? Sell jars to the brewers of beer? Write letters for the poor and the feckless? Talk himself into, at best, a lesser temple that stood in need of a scribe?
He stood in the middle of the street, the great processional way that led from the palace into the city, and saw nothing but the magnitude of his folly. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, gods.”
~~~
He wandered till evening, not caring where he went. Someone relieved him of his provisions, but even in abstraction he kept a grip on his scribe’s satchel. He did not know why he should, when he stopped to think. It was no use to him.
He could, he thought, go back to the queen, grovel at her feet, beg her to let him teach her.
And be schoolmaster to a chit of a girl?
He turned on his heel at that, and looked about him. He knew only vaguely where he was. His feet had carried him down to the river: far down and well away from both the palace and his father’s house.
It was running as low as it ever ran, as it did at every turn of the year. When the moon came round again the river would begin to swell; in a remarkably little time it would stretch as vast as a sea, drowning the rich farmlands that now were ripe with the harvest. When after a season it retreated, the black earth that it left behind would grow green again, and burgeon with the wealth of Egypt.
Even so shrunken it was a wide and potent river, thick with barges and with lesser boats: fishermen, ferrymen, a prince in his gilded yacht with musicians following in a smaller vessel, and a second with a cookstove lit and preparing his dinner, and a third laden with the flock of his concubines.
Senenmut leaned perilously far out above the river. He wanted what that man had. Yes, even now, when he was sunk in despair. The prince had a harper on his yacht, a young woman with a piercingly sweet voice. It rang clear over the water, singing of love among the reeds.
“Truer to sing of love betrayed,” he said.
The singer did not hear him. The little fleet passed away down the river. A barge followed it, heavy laden with cattle; and a fisherman hauling in
a net.
As the sun sank low over the red and barren hills beyond the river, Senenmut turned his feet toward his father’s house. He would not lie, he had decided. He would simply fail to inform his mother that Seti-Nakht had dismissed him, and that he in turn had dismissed the queen. The longer he put off the inevitable, the more likely he was to discover a way out of his predicament.
Or it could simply be that he was a coward. He went in as he did every evening. The servants had water for him to wash hands and feet and face. The aunts fluttered. The baby crowed in his nurse’s arms. Ahotep demonstrated a new accomplishment: somersaults across the family’s gathering room, till he came near to oversetting the table and the dinner that was laid out on it. Their father seemed not to notice. Their mother was abed with the headache.
That much reprieve Senenmut was granted: not to face her stern all-seeing eye. He ate hungrily, which spared him the aunts’ worry and fret. He could always eat, even in the depths of adversity.
~~~
That night, lying in the bed he shared with Ahotep, he dreamed that he had returned to the palace. The queen was there, sitting on a golden throne. Her headdress was shaped and colored like the wings of a falcon. Its head crowned her, its eyes lambent in the dimness of the hall; one blazing gold, one cold unseeing white. Such were the eyes of Horus, falcon-god, protector of kings. His eye that saw clear was the sun. His blind eye was the moon.
He turned his sun-eye on Senenmut, and then his eye that was the moon. He saw; he did not see. In dream it had meaning, but Senenmut was slow in the wits. He did not understand.
He woke still groping for understanding. Ahotep for once was up before him. He felt heavy. His head ached. So: he was ill. He had dreamed it, all of it, even to his meeting with the queen.
A small figure hurtled out of air onto his middle. He grunted. Ahotep bounced with bruising enthusiasm. “Senenmut! Senenmut, do you know who’s here? Guess who’s here!”
Senenmut growled and heaved the brat off him and shut his eyes tight. But there was no getting rid of Ahotep.
