by Judith Tarr
At the moment he did not care. He had been bored, too, perhaps. So many duties, so many responsibilities. So much that was a burden, so little that gave him honest pleasure.
Hat-Nufer bore her royal guest away, sweeping Senenmut in their wake. She had words in plenty for both of them. Neferure listened no more assiduously than Senenmut did: he saw the sidewise slant of her smile, the wandering of her glance as she took in the halls and courts through which she was half-led, half-dragged.
It was worth his mother’s disgust and the possibility of uproar in the palace to see Neferure returned to herself again. He had rather hoped the women would go off for women-talk and leave him to rest in peace, but Hat-Nufer had no intention of sparing him. He found himself in the room he seldom used, which was meant for the lord of the house when he entertained noble guests. The chairs were stiff with disuse, but the room was clean and the wine was good—as it ought to be: it was the royal vintage.
His young queen had never dined in comfort with a few friends. Either she feasted in court or she ate alone under the eyes of maids and guards. She did not sneer at the mere six courses or the lack of a wine for each—there was only the one vintage, and date wine for Iuty, who could not stomach the nobler grape.
Iuty had appeared in some indignation, prepared to inveigh loudly against this change in the nightly ritual. Senenmut seldom dined at home; when he did, he dined alone. Hat-Nufer and her sons and her second son’s wife gathered in the women’s hall, never in Senenmut’s; and how much more comfortable that hall was than this, Iuty spared no effort to make clear.
“And my husband and his brother unaccountably late,” she said, “and now it seems you’ve brought in another child-bride for Senenmut to refuse to look at—mother-in-law, such lack of consideration is quite beyond endurance.”
Before anyone else could cure Iuty of her misperception, Neferure said with demure expression and glinting eyes, “Oh, no, I’m not one of your noble brother’s brides. I am already married.”
“Are you, then?” Iuty demanded. “Then have you come to offer him a sister? A cousin? A mother?”
“My mother likes him very well,” said Neferure—wicked, wicked child. “But I don’t think he’ll marry if he can help it. He’s wise, maybe. Don’t you think?”
“I think that you have a terribly affected accent,” Iuty said. “Have you been listening to ladies chatter in the court?”
Senenmut could only watch and listen in shocked fascination. Hat-Nufer wore an expression of unholy glee. Neferure was enjoying herself much too much. “They do run on, don’t they? At such length—and with such monstrous dullness.”
“It’s not as if they had anything better to do,” said Iuty. She glowered. “Where are those boys?”
Neferure’s delight must be complete. Ahotep strode in just exactly then, and Amonhotep behind, the former gleaming in the livery of the king’s guard, the latter managing to look enormously languid and elegant in nothing more elaborate than a linen kilt.
Ahotep stopped short, so abrupt that his brother collided with him. Equally abruptly he dropped down in front of Neferure. “Majesty! How in the world—”
“I was bored,” Neferure said to him as she had to Hat-Nufer. “This is wonderful. Here, get up. I’m not wearing my crown tonight.”
He got up with alacrity and no little dismay. “Lady, you can’t—”
“I decide what the queen’s majesty may and may not do,” Senenmut said mildly, “when she does not choose to decide it for herself. She was, as she says, bored. I brought her where she might safely be entertained.”
“At my expense!” Iuty was whitely furious. Too furious, Senenmut noted, to throw herself at the queen’s feet as her husband had—if she could ever have done such a thing. “You were making sport of me.”
“I am sorry for that,” Neferure said quickly, with honesty that Senenmut had always loved in her. Perhaps it was his fault. Queens had to be circumspect; but Neferure had never entirely mastered the art. “It was only . . . you see, no one ever talks to me like that. I’m always the queen’s majesty. I’m never the guest who comes unlooked for, and who must have designs on the lord of the house. It’s rather delightful.”
It was difficult to resist Neferure at her most charmingly apologetic. Iuty was proof against much, but even she warmed a little.
Ahotep was appalled. Manhood had transformed him from a lively child into a sternly dutiful soldier in the king’s guard. Whenever Senenmut had in mind to marvel at the gods’ whims, he remembered the child who had been and the man who was now. All that was left of that boisterous infant was a certain inclination toward levity when he was not vexed with royal follies.
Before Iuty could say anything to provoke the queen further, Ahotep said, “Lady, you are safe here. But surely—”
“Oh, do let her stay,” Amonhotep said in a tone he must have studied long: it was half a drawl and half a yawn. “If the palace has sent out its hounds, we’ll head them off soon enough.”
“No one has followed me,” said Neferure, “or will.” She lifted her chin as she said it, tilting eyes at him. “Have we been introduced?”
“I doubt it,” Amonhotep said, “majesty. My name is Amonhotep. These tedious old men are my brothers.”
“All men are tedious,” Neferure said with an air that invited him to contradict her.
Amonhotep smiled lazily. “Yes, aren’t they? Life is so dull.”
“No one knows that better than I.” She sighed deeply. “But still, there are moments . . . have you ever driven a chariot as fast as the horses will gallop, straight through the city and out into the Red Land?”
“I have never driven a chariot,” he said. “I leave that to my brothers.”
“Oh, then you must learn,” she said. “Senenmut, give him horses. Teach him. He’ll die of boredom else.”
“I have horses,” he said before Senenmut could speak. “I look after my brother’s estate. We’ve bred one or two that will carry a man.”
“What, on their backs?” Neferure was intrigued. “I’ve heard of such a thing, but nobody does it.”
“I do,” said Amonhotep.
“But don’t you fall off?”
“One learns not to,” he said.
“Still,” she said. “What possible use is it?”
“Why, think,” he said. “A chariot is a noble thing, but it requires two horses and a harness and rather a lot of time to get it ready. A horse that’s to be ridden, now: bridle it, spring onto its back, and off you go. And you can go where a chariot can’t. I’ve ridden up the crags of the Red Land, faster than a man can go, and sat my horse on top of the world.”
Well, Senenmut thought. That was the first he had heard of that. His little brother had secrets. Wonderful ones, from Neferure’s expression. She seemed to have forgotten that there was anyone else in the room.
Women loved Amonhotep. He was not as handsome as Ahotep, but his face was pretty enough, and he had a beguiling way about him. He certainly knew how to capture the young queen’s interest. She had left the chair she had been sitting in, to take the one nearest him. The others were invisible, inaudible, forgotten.
Ahotep caught Senenmut’s eye. He was frowning. Senenmut raised his brows and shrugged. “It seems,” he said, “that boredom loves company.”
The prisoners of ennui did not hear. They had bent their heads together, deep in converse. Horses at first, but any number of things as they went on. Senenmut had not known that Amonhotep could be so very interesting—or so interested in so many faces of the world. He had always seemed immensely and hopelessly bored.
Senenmut had to pry his charge loose. Even then he might not have succeeded, but Ahotep the guardsman took her deftly in hand. He used no lure but common sense. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “Best you be in your proper place when they close the gates for the night.”
If Senenmut had said it, she would not have yielded. But Ahotep had no expectation that she would disregard him. Sh
e frowned, dallied, sulked a little, but in the end she went away with him.
Amonhotep included himself in the party. He did not ask; he simply followed. Perhaps she would have changed her mind, but his presence persuaded her to be sensible. Or at least, thought Senenmut, it allowed her to pretend to sense.
27
In Amonhotep, Neferure had found a friend. They met in shared ennui and continued in conjoined fascination.
Senenmut had never known that his brother had such wit or such an abundance of skills. He had always been the baby, the youngest son, the one who had no talent for anything in particular.
Perhaps he was no great master of anything, but he was a fair journeyman in a remarkable number of things.
“It does astonish me,” Senenmut said to Ahotep one evening when they happened to be in the house together, “that I could know a man from birth, and never know him at all.”
“Yes,” Ahotep said. “You who have a name for keen perception—you never have seen very clearly where your kin are concerned.”
Senenmut had been speaking lightly, sipping a new vintage of wine and expecting nothing but companionship. Ahotep’s severity took him by surprise. “What, do you have secrets, too?”
“All men have secrets,” his brother said.
Senenmut’s eyes narrowed. His light mood had gone abruptly dark. “What are you telling me?”
Ahotep did not answer at once. He sipped his wine slowly—he was not as fond of the thinner, drier vintages as Senenmut was—and appeared to be engrossed in the pattern of lotus-flowers painted on the wall.
Senenmut did not choose to press him. After a while that stretched long, he said, “I don’t know that I’m telling you anything. People are talking about the young queen’s new favorite. The king likes him, too.”
“The king finds him nearly as refreshing as she does,” said Senenmut. “They do grow weary of the same faces over and over. Courtly faces, faces that never look directly at them, but bow and turn aside. Our brother knows how to accord a king proper respect, but without ever seeming obsequious.”
“He learned that from you.” Ahotep set down his cup half-finished, stretched and sighed and slid down in his chair, for once like the child he had been. No one could be more exuberantly tired than Ahotep. “You haven’t heard what people are saying, have you?”
“People are always saying things,” Senenmut said. “They say the king is insisting that the kingdom go to war, so that he can see whether real soldiers fight as well as his wooden ones. They say also that the queen regent objects firmly to any such notion, and that the young queen cares little what either of them does.”
“You would know the truth of that,” Ahotep said. “You sit in all their councils. But do you listen to rumors? Most of them are nonsense. The one for example that makes you rather more than the queen’s friend and counsellor.”
Senenmut went very still. He hoped that his expression did not alter. “Oh, is that still lurking in corners? It’s inevitable, I suppose. The queen is still young enough to attract such whispers; and all her counsellors are men. Does anyone say why I must be the one who comforts her in more ways than the usual?”
“Maybe,” said Ahotep, “because you do.”
Senenmut found that his mouth was open. He shut it.
His brother regarded him levelly, sternly, till he began to bristle. Then, startlingly, Ahotep laughed. “Gods, brother! You look so guilty.”
“I am not—”
“Don’t,” said Ahotep with a return of his sternness. “Don’t lie to me. I’ve known for years. I followed you once or twice, long ago. You never knew. I saw where you went. I could guess what you did there. There’s not much else a man will do in a queen’s chamber in the hours between midnight and dawn.”
Senenmut sat back, suddenly limp. He felt as if the air had been driven out of his lungs. And yet he knew an enormous, almost giddy relief. “You never said a word,” he said.
Ahotep shrugged, looking faintly embarrassed. “By the time I’d turned into a dutiful soldier of the king, it had been going on for years, and the king her husband was dead. What was betrayal had become a kind of comfort. She can’t marry again, not without complicating the regency. You’ve always been discreet: I’ve heard barely a word of what you are to each other. The little I have heard is simply the spite of courts. They say she’s taken the priest Hapuseneb to her bed, too, and her Nubian—that’s the heaviest wager—and even some of her less likely counsellors. Ahmose Pen-Nekhbet, Ahmose the General, has a surprisingly large faction.”
“Old Ahmose? Gods! I didn’t know he still had a shaft to raise. He’s absolutely ancient. He even fought against the Hyksos, when he was just old enough to carry a spear.”
“So he says,” Ahotep said. His voice rose to an old man’s quaver. “Yes, yes, I served under King Ahmose himself. Now that was a king, that was!”
Senenmut laughed too loud, perhaps, and too long, but he needed the release. “Oh, yes! That’s Ahmose Pen-Nekhbet to the life.” He sobered. “Do you despise me, brother?”
“For what?” Ahotep asked. “Keeping the queen so content with you that she’s never looked at another man?”
“No,” Senenmut said. “Keeping the secret from you.”
“That was only sensible,” said Ahotep. “I admit, I was angry at first. You could have told me. But when I grew a little older I reflected on what I was then, how I never could keep quiet. You were wise to keep your counsel.”
“I’m glad,” said Senenmut. He meant it. Ahotep the child had been an endless nuisance. Ahotep the man was friend as well as brother. As much a friend, he acknowledged to himself, as Hapuseneb; as much even as the queen.
They did not embrace one another. It would have been false somehow; as if they protested too much.
They drank wine for a while in companionable silence. As Senenmut poured a second cup for each, Ahotep said, “People are saying that our brother and the queen are sharing more than confidences in those long hours they’ve begun to spend together.”
Senenmut had been hoping, foolishly enough, that Ahotep would not say what he had been leading up to since he invited Senenmut to share a new jar of wine. It was not that Senenmut preferred to avoid the truth. He had not seen it; had refused to see it. But Ahotep had forced him to open his eyes.
“It may be,” said Senenmut, “that the rumor is as false as the queen regent’s liaison with her Nubian.”
“Do you think that?” Ahotep asked.
Senenmut had to meet that steady stare. It was not easy. Too many things were coming clear. The sudden vanishing of Neferure’s boredom. The way she sang to herself when she thought no one was listening. The sheen on her, the beauty grown notably greater, and not because she had changed her wigs or her eyepaint or her jewels. She had the look of a woman with a lover.
Or a friend. He clung to that, as feeble as it was. “It is so difficult,” he said, “to be a queen. To have a friend—a person who wants nothing of her but her company, who loves her for herself—is well-nigh impossible. She’s enough like her mother that she takes little pleasure in women’s company. Why shouldn’t she have chosen a man for a friend?”
“When a woman is as young as that,” said Ahotep, “and has as little to do, it’s not only friendship she looks for in a handsome and charming young man. Our brother is both.”
Senenmut shook his head. “I don’t want to believe it.”
“Neither do I,” Ahotep said, “but someone must. When you became more than the queen’s friend, you knew as well as she that there would be no more children. This queen’s husband is a child. If her belly swells as is the way of things, the world will know that the king had nothing to do with it.”
“Thutmose might prove precocious,” Senenmut said. But he stopped himself before Ahotep could begin. “No, don’t say it. He’s much more intelligent than he looks, but his body is a child’s still. He was late to walk, late to talk. He’ll likely be late to manhood, too.”
“You don’t think the queen will?”
“I think we can wield a stronger flail against our erring brother than against the Great Royal Wife.”
Senenmut closed his eyes. He was weary suddenly, weary to the bone. “Sweet Hathor. And it’s I who brought her here where she could meet the boy. I never imagined—”
“One never does,” Ahotep said. “I wonder. Has anyone ever said it of you and the queen regent?”
“Seti-Nakht has never regretted a thing in his life,” said Senenmut. “For all I know he intended it.”
“Seti-Nakht is a wiser man than either of us.” Ahotep drained his cup and rose. “I say we do it now. Soonest done, soonest over.”
Senenmut swallowed his protests. He had never felt less decisive than he did now. But Ahotep the soldier more than made up for it.
That came of training in combat, Senenmut thought. A man learned to face his fear and kill it quickly. Courtiers were more inclined to run away from it.
Senenmut was a courtier. He had never liked to think of himself as such. He was the queen’s servant, the commoner whom she had made a prince. Courtiers were idlers, cat-sleek creatures born to rank that they had never earned. The queen’s true servants, the men and women who labored long in her service, must be something other; something more honorable.
But courtiers they were, and courtiers they would always be.
He sighed. “Well then,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
~~~
Amonhotep was not in his rooms. The lone drowsy manservant knew nothing. “He went to the villa,” he said yawning. “Or maybe to dinner.”
Ahotep would have whipped the truth out of the fool, but Senenmut stopped him. “Don’t waste time. You know where he is.”
Ahotep nodded heavily. “We’ll wait till morning, I suppose. He’ll creep back in the night.”
So had Senenmut done for nights out of count. So would he be doing tonight if Ahotep had not delayed him. He set his lips together and withdrew from the empty rooms.
