by Judith Tarr
Nehsi grieved for that more than he could ever have grieved for Senenmut. That arrogant, irritable man with his caustic wit and his irresistible brilliance had taught her to preserve her humanity. Now there was no one to do it.
Nehsi might have once; but time and duty had taken him apart from her, given him a wife and children, separated his life from hers. When he looked to bring them together again, the gulf was too wide. He was on one side of it, lord and prince, servant of his king; she on the other, king and goddess, loving him, he never doubted that, but as a king loves her most loyal servant. Not as a woman loves a man.
They could not have that. The gods had not willed it. He could only try to strengthen her with his presence, invite her to speak to him when they were granted a few moments alone together, reach as he could across the barrier of time and rank and sorrow. She was never there for the touch of his hand. She had shut herself away.
He had done everything that he could do, short of picking her up and shaking her as if she had been one of his children. He contemplated that, knowing what it would cost him if he roused her anger, but almost beyond caring. Almost. His wife’s face, the thought of his children, the youngest still nursing at his mother’s breast, restrained him.
Time and the gods must heal her. Nehsi would do what he could, but if that was not enough, then it was in the gods’ hands.
52
Thutmose the king had grown from silent and subdued youth into a warlike manhood. He was as much among the soldiers as ever, training with them, marching when they passed in review, sitting in the councils of the generals.
And yet he had never been to war, never raised sword or spear on the field of battle. Maatkare Hatshepsut did not wage war. She waged peace. She ruled through embassies, through trading ventures, through the force of her name in any land that offered fealty to Egypt.
“And it is not enough,” he said to the gathering of generals, on the day that happened to be his birthday. He was four and twenty, a man grown by any reckoning, but something about him was still young and oddly unformed. He had been late to grow into everything else; why not the solidity of manhood?
Nehsi happened to be among the generals that day. He had heard rumors that dismayed him, tales of unrest in Asia. The king would send another embassy, he supposed, or demand a greater levy of tribute, thereby occupying the restive peoples and quelling their impulse toward rebellion. The generals, as one might expect, proposed another solution altogether. And Thutmose was foremost among them.
“The center of the unrest,” he said, “is Kadesh. Its king, it’s said, musters three hundred princes under his banner. He has ambitions, and those are lofty. To conquer Asia; to drive Egypt back within its borders. Perhaps he would even rule us as the foreign kings did.”
A growl ran round the circle. No one had ever forgotten or forgiven the invasion of Egypt by kings from Asia, who ruled for a hundred years, until King Ahmose rose up and destroyed them.
Thutmose, Nehsi took note, suffered no hesitation of speech in front of these men, nor any lack of either quickness or intensity. He paced the room in which they kept council, a room appropriately warlike, painted with scenes of the first Thutmose’s battles. He reminded Nehsi of a panther crouched to spring or a cobra coiled to strike: pure power tightly leashed, held just at the point of bursting free.
This was a dangerous man, Nehsi thought. The swift brilliance that Nehsi saw in him here was never uncovered before the elder king; nor had Egypt seen it. Only these men, these lords and generals, who lived for war.
They were his. There could be no doubt of it. Whatever they might have said to one another, in Thutmose’s presence they were silent, waiting upon his pleasure.
He halted just before he struck the far wall, and spun on his heel. The figure of his grandfather reared up behind him, lofty in his chariot, smiting his enemies. “It has been thirty years,” he said, “since a king of Egypt waged war in Asia. My father ventured a campaign or two, a skirmish, but nothing of moment. Not since my grandfather’s day has a king made his presence felt outside of the Two Lands.”
They nodded, some gravely, some with passion that came close to anger. Nehsi held still. Thutmose fixed eyes on him, eyes that glittered as if with fever. “You’ll go back to her, won’t you? You’ll tell her I spoke sedition here.”
“That depends,” Nehsi said, “majesty. Is this sedition?”
“How can it be? I am king.” Thutmose lifted his head at that, arrogance that verged on self-mockery. “She will never agree to a campaign.”
“Have you asked her?” Nehsi inquired.
Thutmose stiffened. “What use is that?”
“Much,” said Nehsi, “if she agrees with you.”
“But she never will.”
“Do you know that? Do you know it for certain?”
Thutmose drew breath as if to prolong the argument, but shook his head instead and said, “I’ll ask her, then. I’ll wager you a good bronze blade that she forbids us to lay hand to weapon.”
“I’ll take that wager,” Nehsi said.
~~~
Hatshepsut laughed in her nephew’s face. “What, a war? Do you know nothing else to do or say or think? Listen to you! Armies this, soldiers that. Asia is quiet, has been quiet for thirty years. If it shows any sign of restlessness, I’ll send my messengers, and all its rebellious princes will fall groveling at my feet.”
Thutmose, quenched and stammering as always in front of her, nevertheless discovered in the depths of anger a new and unlooked-for courage. It stripped the mask from his face, showed her the vivid and hating creature within. “They mock at us. They laugh, and call us fools, weaklings, cowards and slaves. Send men, strong men, to show them what Egypt is. Prove to them that our strength has not failed because we bow to a king who is a woman.”
She could have seen then what in truth he was; but temper blinded her, and decades of contempt. “Are you asking me if you can lead an army into Asia? Do you think I’d let you go so far away or wield so great a power? I’ll not have you drain the Two Kingdoms of their young men and empty their treasuries, simply so that you can play at soldiers.”
“It is not play!” His voice had risen. It was light, without great depth or force; so raised, it was distressingly shrill. “Can you not understand? Peace succeeds only against enemies who also want peace. These enemies want war. And they will get it, regardless of the cost to themselves or to Egypt.”
“I see nothing of the sort,” Hatshepsut said, flat and final. “Don’t you have duties in the temple? Go, perform them. Leave the tedium of kingship to those better suited to endure it.”
Nehsi, watching, bit his tongue. Thutmose raised his clenched fists as if he would strike her. She looked him levelly in the face. He spun on his heel, mute with fury, and fled.
In the ringing silence after his departure, Hatshepsut said mildly, “I shall have to find something else for that boy to do. But not, as Amon be my witness, a war.”
“It might not be an ill thing,” Nehsi ventured, “to let him lead an army somewhere reasonably harmless. Give him strong generals, unshakably loyal to you; surround him with guards who will protect him from himself as from his enemies; and if he takes the bit in his teeth even then, you well might consider allowing him to take the forefront of a battle. The gods willing, an enemy’s arrow may find him.”
“No,” she said in revulsion so strong that he flinched. “Never say such a thing. Never, ever. Child and fool and simpleton he may be, but he is king of Egypt. No mortal man may slay a king.”
“Are you a mortal man?”
In that instant, Nehsi saw hatred in her eyes. It was brief; it passed; but its memory lingered like a scar in his soul. “Even I,” she said with terrible softness, “will not kill a king, or arrange to have him killed.”
Nehsi bowed low and low, even to the pavement at her feet. “Lady,” he said. “Great king.”
Once she would have raised him and told him to stop his nonsense. Now s
he said above his head, cold and remote, “Leave me.”
He raised himself to his knees. Her face above him was as cold as her voice, and as unyielding. There was nothing in it of the woman who had been his friend, his dear lady, his king whom he loved.
Still he tried once more to break through the wall of her obstinacy. “Lady, please. Listen to me. That was a backward child, but he has grown into a man; and he hates you.”
“He is afraid of me,” she said, “and with good reason. Did I not dismiss you?”
“Lady,” Nehsi said, bowing low again. He had no choice then. He backed away from her as her servants did, making a sacrifice of his pride.
And she said no word, offered no forgiveness. She was his king; he was her minister, and he had presumed too far at last. He was no longer welcome in her presence.
~~~
Hatshepsut had, perhaps, erred. She had sent Thutmose back to the temple in which he was a minor priest, one of many who offered incense before the god. In so doing she had set him in mind of a thing, a dangerous thing, and one that should not have been possible.
Nor would it have been if Hapuseneb had not fallen ill. It was a convenient illness but not, Nehsi ventured to believe, caused by anything other than age and weariness and the gods’ will. One forgot that the priest was not a young man; he was so lively by nature, so quick with his wit. But he was old, and age had caught him at last.
“Do you know,” he said to Nehsi from his sickbed, “Senenmut has been dead half a dozen years; and I was years older than he to begin with. I miss him, old friend. I miss him sorely.”
“So do I,” said Nehsi. “He might have been able to make our king see sense.”
“If he could see it himself,” Hapuseneb said with a snort. His sickness was of the lingering kind, a blueness to the lips, an inability to stand up without falling over; it neither clouded his mind nor greatly interfered with his capacity for conversation. He was short of breath, to be sure, and needed to rest between bouts of chatter; but he pressed on regardless. If his servant-priests ventured to remonstrate, he drove them off.
He paused for breath, his lips so blue that Nehsi was alarmed; but he would not let anyone hasten to his aid. “Yes, Senenmut might have been some good in this affair—though he was never able to make her see the truth about that boy, either. Do you see in him what I see? He’s locked in a cage now, but when he’s set free, he’ll fly as high and fast and far as Horus’ falcon.”
“She’s never seen it,” Nehsi said. “I doubt she ever will.”
“She may have to,” said Hapuseneb. “I need to rest now, and you have things to do, I’m sure. Come back tonight. There’s a place I’ll have my lads show you, and a thing that you should hear.”
“What—” Nehsi began.
Hapuseneb waved him into silence. “Tonight. Come back; come quietly, and come alone. I’ll have a man meet you at the postern. He’ll show you what you need to see.”
Nehsi sighed irritably, but he assented to the priest’s game. For game it was, and too much like Hapuseneb, whose predilection for levity was well and widely known.
One should indulge a dying man. If that too was not a jest.
No; Hapuseneb had a look Nehsi knew too well. Men who had it did not live long.
~~~
Nehsi returned to the temple near sunset, when the shadows had grown long and the lamps were being lit in the houses of Thebes. His own house would be lively at this hour, with the tribe of his sons returning from their various duties and offices, and his wife and his daughters coming out to welcome them, and the servants running back and forth, fetching this and that.
He would have given much to be there and not here, dressed plainly, unattended except for a lone quiet guard who happened to be his son Seti. He had not been advised to avoid notice, but he knew Hapuseneb. If it had been wise for him to come in state as a prince of Egypt, the priest would have said so.
Therefore Nehsi came as a simple man, a petitioner to the temple, or perhaps a priest coming in late for his season before the god. The one who let him in was familiar from Hapuseneb’s sickroom, a plump young man with a bright eye. He might be a cousin or nephew of Hapuseneb: there was a resemblance.
He did not chatter, which was in his favor. He led Nehsi quietly and competently through the maze of the temple, avoiding traveled ways, keeping to the shadows as much as he might. If he thought it peculiar to be creeping about like a thief in his own place, he did not mention it.
At length he brought Nehsi to a room of no particular distinction, except in one respect. Hidden in a niche behind the statue of some half-forgotten king was a door that opened silently, and beyond it a passage full of whisperings and murmurings. The reason for it came clear when the priest beckoned Nehsi down and round a corner, and then touched his arm, bidding him halt.
Nehsi suppressed the hiss of surprise. He had heard of such places but never seen one. He should have expected to find one here, in the most powerful temple in Egypt. This was a spyhole, a listening-post that looked out through cleverly cut and concealed openings into a privy chamber.
He doubted very much that the choice of the chamber was happenstance. Plots within plots had been the way of Amon’s priesthood for time out of mind. And there in the chamber sat a gathering of priests, brown shaven heads, white kilts and mantles. The one who spoke to them was a priest also, clad as they were, but he carried himself as the king he was.
Thutmose had let the elder king show him the way through his difficulty. He had gathered what looked to be a fair selection of the more influential priests. But not Hapuseneb. Not the First Prophet, the high priest. Even if he could have risen from his bed, Nehsi doubted that he would have been welcome in this gathering.
“He’ll be dead soon,” Thutmose said, “and a new First Prophet set up in his place. Then whom will you look to, sirs? A king who for all her strength has begun to grow old, or a king who is in the full flower of his youth?”
“That other king may be no longer as young as she was,” one of the priests observed, “but she is as powerful as she has ever been. What can you do to oppose her?”
“Ask rather,” Thutmose said swiftly, “what you will do when she dies as she inevitably must, and you find yourselves in the service of a younger king.”
“She’s not as old as that,” said another of the priests. “She could live another thirty years. What if she decides to dispose of you before she dies—or to make another man her heir? Or even,” he added with the suggestion of a shudder, “a woman.”
“There is no one,” Thutmose said. “And she will not harm me. She’s both too arrogant and too afraid of the gods’ wrath.”
“As you are, who have suffered her regency these past one-and-twenty years?”
Thutmose did not rise up in rage, which rather surprised Nehsi. “Perhaps,” he said with studied calm. “And perhaps I needed so long to gather my strength.”
“What have you, then? A few generals; a pack of soldiers. All the rest is hers.”
“Not necessarily,” Thutmose said. “Those generals and that rabble of fighting men, reckoned together, make a mighty number.”
“Well then,” said a man who had not spoken before, a soft and deceptively lazy voice, a face that Nehsi, from this angle, could not see. “Are we to understand that you’ll stage a rising of the army in Egypt?”
Thutmose shook his head impatiently. “Of course not! I want a pair of solid realms to rule once her so gracious majesty is dead. I can’t have that if I’m fighting a civil war.”
“So?” said the lazy one, and Nehsi imagined a lift of brow. “You’ll sit quietly, then, and wait for the gods to take her.”
“The gods will do as they will,” Thutmose said. “I’ll rule alone in the end, king and god as she is king and goddess now.”
“Certainly,” said the languid voice. “Are you threatening us with terrors that may be decades distant? Or is there something that you want of us?”
“Something
that I want, yes,” Thutmose said, “and something that I can promise you.” He paused. They waited, trained to patience as courtiers were. He said, “I want alliance. Your aid and your support of my cause and my kingship. Your First Prophet is dying and will soon be dead. The king will tell you whom you may choose to follow him, but the right of decision is given to you. Choose one who is pleasing to her, but who will serve me when and as I ask.”
“And if we do that? What do you promise us in return?”
He hesitated for the space of a breath. Nehsi did not think that it was fear. Caution, rather, and care in choosing his words. “When I am king,” he said, “I have no intention of sitting at home mourning a dead scribe, dwelling on the glories of a single expedition sent to Punt, a temple built, a pair of obelisks raised. These are the least of the things that I shall do.
“I shall go forth,” he said, “I, Menkheperre Thutmose; I shall gather the greatest army that ever was, and lead it into Asia. My grandfather conquered Nubia and Syria. Since his time they have both slid away from us. Their people mock at ours when we walk in the streets of their cities. Their kings speak of setting themselves free of us, of casting us back into the deserts from which we came.”
“Is that all you will do?” the languid one asked. “Ramp about with bow and sword, and spend the treasuries on empty bloodshed?”
Thutmose’s eyes glittered with passion that Nehsi had never seen in them, not even in mock battles among the soldiers. “You echo her words as if they were inviolable truth. And yet I tell you, priest; I tell you all. What is it that war brings into the Two Lands?”
“Death,” said one of the priests.
“Death for some, but that is the price the gods exact. For many more, it brings wealth: gold, jewels, captives, all the booty of a conquered nation. When a nation pays tribute it pays as little as it can—and less of late, since our elder king has been so indulgent with the whinings of its embassies. The spoils of war are greater than anything that a nation might offer of its own accord.”
