by Judith Tarr
It had struck fast and hard, her physician said to Nehsi: a fierce cramping in the belly, a great resistance to aught that was fed her, and a flux that went on and on, and would not yield to any physic.
“Poison,” Nehsi said.
The man pursed his thin lips. “Possibly. But there are other indications, suggestions that it might be something in her own body. Such can befall a woman in particular as she ages; and her majesty has been much vexed with the ending of her womanly courses.”
Nehsi regarded him narrow-eyed. He had been a loyal man from his youth, but who was to tell now who was loyal and who was not? When a king grew old and took sick, and a young king waited with taut-strung eagerness to take the throne, a wise man shifted his allegiances as quickly as he might.
Nehsi could not be wise. He was Hatshepsut’s man. So he would remain until he died.
He left the physician standing there, and went in to the king.
As young as he had been when the first Thutmose died, he remembered the air of that sickroom. Vividly: for now it was the same. The crowding courtiers, priests and healer-priests, physicians, servants and hangers-on. The shifting of glances, the slow stirring of bodies now toward one another and now away. Even in the king’s own chamber, allegiances were changing, minds turning toward the world that would go on after the king was dead.
She could recover. She had been strong, and might be still. But her age, the nature of her sickness, the young king whose face Nehsi did not see among those here, turned this waiting into a deathwatch.
She lay in the midst of them, a small and shrunken figure under the coverlet of purple from Tyre, with her head propped on a headrest of chalcedony. She wore no wig, but her face was painted. It seemed all enormous black-rimmed eyes, a living amulet, a doubled eye of Horus set in the deathmask of a king.
There were amulets in truth on her breast, a clattering mass of them, and the workings of spells scattered all about her. Nehsi caught the unmistakable scent of the dung that was reckoned essential in healing magic. It might, he thought, be meant to mask the loosing of the bowels in death.
She was not dead yet. She saw him coming through the crowding faces. The light in her eyes nearly broke him. He had not seen it in months—years. She was glad to see him, as she had used to be; smiling as he bowed over her, catching his hand in both of hers. They were bone-thin, and cold; as cold as her eyes were warm. “Nehsi,” she said. Her voice was a husk of itself.
He knelt beside the bed, in part for homage, in part for ease of speaking to her. People craned. He noted distantly how suddenly they were gone, driven back to the room’s edges. The one who had driven them, no less than Tama herself, mounted guard over the king and her father, and held off even the most indignant courtier with a hard and implacable stare.
Nehsi, safe in what was almost solitude, said softly in her ear, “Tell me what you ate, that did this to you. Did he bribe your taster? Corrupt the wine?”
She shook her head, still smiling, though with an edge of pain. “Not poison after all. Women’s trouble, the doctors say.”
“The doctors have to stay alive after you’re gone,” Nehsi said.
“He wouldn’t do it,” she said, as stubborn as ever. “He’s not brave enough. It’s the gods, Nehsi. The god my father. Two sevens of years he gave me under the Two Crowns: more than woman has had in time out of mind. Now the rest of the gods demand their own back. They want a man again over Egypt. The flood is their sign. Fourteen years it rose high and splendid. This year it hardly rose at all. There would be famine in the Two Kingdoms, if we had not been wise and gathered the excess of the harvests.”
“You don’t honestly believe that,” Nehsi said. “It’s much too convenient.”
“The gods like convenience,” she said. “Sometimes. They find it amusing.”
She was not going to listen to him or believe him, no matter how obvious it was that if a god had killed her, it was the living Horus who so feared and hated her. She could not have done such a thing. No more could she conceive of another who would do it.
“You were always the wisest of women,” Nehsi said to her, “but when it comes to that one, you are a perfect fool.”
“Someone said that to me once,” she said, “about my husband. It’s a curse, I suppose. Every king should have a curse. I’m fortunate that this has done so little harm.”
“It has done great harm. It has killed you.”
“Hush,” she said, though he had not raised his voice. “Hush, dear friend. It’s grief that makes you wild. I know. I was . . . so . . . wild after he died: my beloved whom we buried in the place that you know. He was at me constantly, too, over that stumbling boy.”
“He was a wise man,” Nehsi said, “and foresighted.”
“He’s waiting for me,” she said. She sounded lighthearted, untainted by fear. “Hapuseneb, too. And my father. They’ll all roar at me, I’m sure. I’m going to laugh and tell them to be sensible. Everyone dies. How many women can say that they died and became Osiris—king over the dead as Horus is king over the living?”
“One or two,” Nehsi said, “long ago.” And when she frowned: “But none as glorious as you.”
“I should hope not,” she said with some asperity. She raised a hand that trembled with weakness, and patted his cheek. “Go away now. Greet your wife, bellow at your pack of children. Come back to me when the sun sinks low. Yonder jackals slink off then to their lairs. We’ll have a little peace.”
Nehsi did not think that the jackals would retreat tonight. The translucence of her face, the light in her eyes, told him that he had done well to arrive so quickly. She might not see another morning.
He said none of that. He bowed low and kissed her hand, and left her to the scavengers. “Until evening,” he said, “my lady and king.”
55
Nehsi went home as Hatshepsut bade him, to Bastet’s strong embrace and the uproar of his offspring. But having seen that all was in order there, he took Tama with him, and a pair of his sons whom he found idling about the stables, and went hunting.
He was not hunting the young king. He returned to the palace, to that wing of the old queens’ house which had remained occupied through the reign of a woman who was a king. There dwelt Thutmose’s concubines, such of them as he had, and his mother Isis.
Isis, like her son, had yielded with apparent submission to the rule of Maatkare Hatshepsut. But like Thutmose, she had kept her counsels, and bided her time.
She was still beautiful. Like the goddess for whom she was named, who also had been born a mortal woman, or so some of the priests said, she seemed blessed with ageless youth. Nehsi reflected unkindly that she owed much of it to the artistry of her maids, and the rest to a certain emptiness of mind that kept her face smooth, unmarred by lines of care and character.
Nonetheless she was marvelous to look at, as beautiful as any woman in Egypt, wigged and painted and adorned in her solitude as if she had been still the cherished concubine of a king. He remembered her perfume from long ago, the oil of roses that spoke of innocence and childlike simplicity. Nothing could be less like the unguents that the king favored, complex as they were, and rich with myrrh.
Nehsi had his doubts of her intelligence, but of her shrewdness he was perfectly certain. She had lived as quietly as a woman might who knows better than to provoke a king. She might, and on this Nehsi gambled, have persuaded her son to wait as she waited, until the King Maatkare had begun to fail of her power.
It was difficult to believe that, looking into her sweet and baffled face. She had always been afraid of Nehsi, as a child is, because he was so large and so visibly strong. That fear had not altered with the years’ passing. It made her shrink a little as he bowed to her, hand to cheek as if she feared that he would strike.
He would not allow her to sway him so, to soften him into dealing gently with her. Having done proper obeisance of a prince to a king’s mother who had not been a queen, he remained standing over her. She lacke
d the will to bid him sit, although it would have removed his looming shadow.
He would not take it away unless she commanded him. He looked down at her, at her flower-sweet terror, and indulged himself in a moment of pure contempt. It was worthy of Hatshepsut, that contempt. It hardened him for what he must do.
“My king is dying,” he said.
She blinked up at him, seeming witless; but he knew better. “I heard that,” she said in her sweet voice. “I am sorry for it.”
“Are you? Or are you sorry for how it came about?”
“She is grown old, they say,” Isis said. “She was queen for so long, since she was a child; and then she made herself king. She has grown weary. The life trickles out of her.”
“She is no longer young,” said Nehsi, “but she should have lived for yet a while. As she will not. Because your son made sure of it.”
“My son?” She was all innocence, all wide eyes and astonishment. “Does she blame him because she had to be king? Nothing ever compelled her to wear the crowns. She could have given it all up when he came of age, and left him to bear the burden.”
“That is not what I am saying,” Nehsi said, lowering his voice to a growl. “Don’t play the child with me; and don’t pretend to innocence. Your son decided at last that he had had enough of being younger king to an elder king whom he both fears and hates.”
“What, poison a king? How could he do such a thing?”
“Easily,” said Nehsi, “if he told himself that the king was a usurper, and that the gods had turned their faces from her.”
“My son is innocent of any wrongdoing,” Isis said.
Nehsi fixed her with his hardest stare. “Yes? Then was it you who did it? Poison is a woman’s weapon. From a man and a warrior I would expect a knife in the dark, or an arrow in the back.”
“I have done nothing,” Isis said.
“I don’t believe you,” said Nehsi. “I think you found someone to procure the poison, and someone else to administer it. Did she drink it in her wine? Eat it at the feast? Was it given more than once? Tell me.”
“I have done nothing,” she repeated.
He watched her consider tears, but discard them. That was well. Weeping would have made him angry. Then he might have done something even less wise than this that he was doing.
“Listen,” he said, “and listen well. You may deny what you have done until the gods themselves cast you down. But I know. I remember. I will never forget.”
“I could have you killed,” she said.
He showed her his teeth. “Oh, do that! I’ll haunt you from beyond the dead. My spirit will flutter about you, bird-winged in the day, man-tall in the night. Everywhere you look, you will see me. Every word you speak, you will hear the echo of my voice. I will stand forever as close as your shadow, supping your breath, eating away your name. And when you die, I will be waiting for you.”
She had gone pale. “You can’t do that!”
“I can,” he said, “and I will. Unless you do a thing for me.”
Even in her terror, she was a canny creature. Her eyes narrowed. Her mouth went small and tight. She was not so beautiful now, or so sweetly childlike. “What are you asking of me?”
“In truth,” he answered, “little. Only keep a rein on your son. I know what he means to do once my king is dead. He will destroy her if he can: efface her name, pull down her monuments. Promise me that you will prevent him.”
Her eyes went wide again, but the innocence was gone from them. “But, sir, how am I to do that?”
“As you always have,” Nehsi said. “By coaxing, wheedling, even threatening. He will not touch the name or the memory of my king.”
“If he is truly determined, no force of man or gods will prevent him.”
“No force but yours,” said Nehsi. “You taught him to hate her. Now teach him to stand well away from her memory. Or I haunt you. I walk in your every dream. I take you with me on the paths of ordeal, and when my heart is weighed on the scales of Justice, yours too shall be set there, and shall inevitably fail. How will it be for you, my lady, to have been judged among the dead while yet you live, and found wanting?”
He paused. She had drawn together, shivering as if with cold. Her pallor would have alarmed him if he had allowed himself to care. “I will hold you to this,” he said. “Your son will not kill my king’s name and memory as he has killed her body. You will make sure of it.”
She looked up at him. For all her terror, her eyes were narrow, sly. “But I shall die before him. Then he will do as he pleases.”
“You would do well to see that he pleases to let my king’s memory be.”
“I won’t promise you that,” she said.
He hissed, which made her start. “You will try.”
“You should go to him,” said Isis, “and not torment me. I’m only his mother. He is the one who will do whatever he will do.”
“I am only half a fool,” Nehsi said. “He who would not hesitate to slay a king would hardly pause at a king’s minister.”
“He is afraid of you,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sure. But he is a man. He will cast down his fear and set his foot on it, and brandish his sword in its face.”
“You aren’t going to go away until I promise. Are you?” Her voice was faint and small.
“I am not,” Nehsi said.
“Then I promise.” She lowered her head till he could see only the crown of her wig. “I will do what I can. I will not even have you killed. It will hurt you a great deal to be nobody after having been a great prince for so long—and to be without her. That will be anguish, won’t it? It’s little enough to keep my son from killing her memory, for a while. In the end he’ll win. You won’t haunt me on the other side of death; the gods won’t let you.”
“But on this side of it,” Nehsi said, “I can make your life a perpetual misery.”
“I don’t want that,” said Isis. “Go away now. You have what you wanted.”
“I shall make very sure of that,” Nehsi said.
~~~
It was bluster and empty threats, but it was all he had. He left her sitting there, terrified and crafty at once, and all her beauty vanished, wiped away by the words that they had spoken together.
There was one more thing that he must do before he returned to his king. His son Seti had taken a few hours’ rest in the barracks. Nehsi found him in his bed with a plump maid beside him; hauled him up, great hulking young man that he was, and flung him headlong on the floor. He sprawled there, gasping with shock.
Nehsi set a foot on his neck. “You failed me,” he said, his voice so low it was no more than a rumble in his chest. “You’ve let her die.”
“She is not dead yet,” Seti said from the floor, with a fair degree of snap in his voice for a man who lay prostrate under another man’s foot. “All the physicians are saying that it’s women’s trouble. Was I to tell the gods to keep that from her till you came home?”
Nehsi kicked him onto his back. He glared up at his father, little cowed, though he knew better than to resist. Nehsi could not suppress a small crowing of pride in this son that he had sired.
“The physicians are in the younger king’s pay,” Nehsi said almost calmly. “As you should have known. She’s been poisoned. It’s so obvious, I wonder at you. Are you securing yourself with Thutmose, too? Has it occurred to you that your father is old and will die soon enough, but you have to live with this king for years thereafter?”
“I had hoped,” Seti said through clenched teeth, “that you would think better of me than that.”
“I might,” said Nehsi, “if she had not fallen ill under your guardianship.”
“It happened in a moment,” Seti said. “She had entertained a few lords and their ladies in her private dining chamber—something to do with a change in the taxes of the Tenth Nome, and the wedding of one of the nomarchs’ daughters. The wine was a new vintage, and strong. Most drank it as it was. She had hers watered—he
avily, I noticed. The waterjar was the same that is always there. We gave a bowl of it to one of the barracks dogs later, after she fell ill. It’s still romping about, chewing shieldstraps to shreds. We never found any evidence of poison.”
“Then someone came in and changed the water while you were fretting over her illness. That’s the simplest thing in the world to do.”
“I know that,” Seti said. “But we found nothing, therefore we can prove nothing.”
“The water should have been tasted before it was given her,” Nehsi said, “as every other drop she drank and morsel she ate was tasted. But no one thought of the water, did he? So simple a thing. So easy to detect if she had drunk it plain, but she drowned it in wine, and with it the taste of the poison.”
“Are you going to put a few servants to death? You can start with the steward of her dining chamber. He was near the waterjar rather often.”
“I well may do that,” Nehsi said with a growl in his throat. “Now tell me what should prevent me from beginning with you.”
“Nothing,” said Seti.
Nehsi lifted his foot abruptly and pulled Seti to his feet. He struck his son in the face, a hard, backhanded blow. Seti withstood it without expression. “That is for your failure. This,” he said, pulling the young man into a tight embrace, “is for your courage in telling me the truth.”
Seti stood back when his father would let him, hands on Nehsi’s shoulders, not smiling, not quite, but his eyes were warm. And relieved, Nehsi noticed. That was well. A son should walk in proper fear of his father.
“Father,” Seti said. “Do you want me to go hunting a king?”
“I would dearly love,” said Nehsi, “to bury that young man deep and set a mountain on his grave. But my king will not kill a king. No more will I. He lives; there’s no help for it. I’ve done what I can to make certain that he takes no more vengeance on her than he has already.”
