Sovereign of Stars

by Lavender Ironside

“Lady,” she whispered in the cool blackness of the shrine, “have mercy on me at last, and fill me.”

  Neferure sank to the floor, folded her legs beneath her, and waited.

  She waited for hours, until her legs seared with cramps. She stretched them out on the floor and shook them, but she did not rise. She waited until the thin sound of the morning song came through the shrine’s walls as pale and distant as a waning moon. Morning had come, but the shrine she had chosen remained closed, and she remained enveloped in darkness. She waited as hunger seized her belly, an insistent gnawing at first, then, as the darkness whirled through her senses, intensifying with a ferocity that rent her from within.

  “Neferure.” The voice was sharp, shrill. Her mother’s voice. It rebounded off the unseen stone walls, echoing, reversing upon itself as a ring of ripples rebounds when a stone is dropped into a pool. “Neferure, Neferure, Neferure, Neferurerurerurerure.”

  The voice quieted, became melodic and soft. “Neferure.”

  She felt an unseen presence bend over her, a warmth tipping across her body, the warmth of a nurse raising her from a cradle and holding her close against a bare, male chest.

  “Who is there?” she said, and her words came out slowly. Her tongue, addled by hunger, did not know how to speak.

  “Mistress of jubilation,” said the soft voice, “Lady of the dance.”

  “Lady?” Neferure turned her head, quivering with eagerness. She tried to do as Imer had taught her, as Ahmose had taught her, letting her ka fall open like a blossom in the sun.

  “Mistress of the harp, Lady of joy without end.”

  “Yes,” Neferure sobbed. The blackness drew in close about her, touched her with eager, rough hands, and she fell open, a blossom wilting in the sun. “Lady, come in!”

  There was a pressure against her chest, a rushing sensation as a chariot in the wind, a gasp, a chill rising through her body, a warmth pulsing deep inside. O, gods, her ka cried, overwhelmed at their sudden presence, the undeniable force of them, all clamoring at once within her heart. She would burst – she could not contain them all.

  And then she saw, with pale, trembling disbelief, that she did not need to contain them. She was becoming them, becoming one of them, by the grace of Hathor, whom she had served selflessly for so many years as she had served the thronw, patiently awaiting her reward.

  “How?” she cried out, reaching for the divinity that was her birthright, not knowing how to grasp it.

  She stretched her hand into the darkness, and beneath her fingers she felt once more the dry, dusty hair of the bull of Min, its hot, trembling strength beneath her fingers, its breath on her thighs. She had looked up from the bull, gazed through the settling dust, and it was Thutmose she saw, staring back at her, his eyes full of fear, of awe, of worship.

  It is my birthright, her ka insisted. But how?

  Thutmose and the bull merged into one form, and it was her brother she felt now beneath her grasping hand, his breath blowing like a bellows, his body roaring with a god’s might.

  “You begged for a god to fill you,” the soft voice whispered, “and so he shall.”

  “Yes,” Neferure said again, but this time she did not weep. At the sound of her voice, a hinge sang behind her. Someone was pushing the door to the shrine open. Lamplight fell across the floor, crept toward Neferure where she crouched on the cold floor, pained by her cramps and by hunger. The light crossed her face. She squinted, eyes streaming with tears.

  “Great Lady,” said a young apprentice, “Imer told me to bring you water.”

  There was the thump of a jug settling onto the floor beside her. Neferure thrust her hands into its mouth, sucked greedily at tepid water cupped in her palms.

  “What is the hour?” she croaked.

  “First starlight, Great Lady.”

  “Help me up.”

  The girl obliged, pulling Neferure to her feet, then sliding one thin shoulder beneath Neferure’s arm to support her. A wise decision; Neferure’s legs shook, weakened by her long ordeal. With the apprentice’s help, she staggered toward the door. When she reached it, she clutched at the stone, sagging against the doorway. She could not move another step.

  “Bring me food – bread and beer. Meat, if there is any.”

  The girl ran to do her bidding. Neferure listened to the sound of her retreating footsteps, and when silence filled the temple again, she shut her eyes to remember the vision.

  A god will fill me in truth, she said within the quiet of her heart, and the joy of the knowledge weakened her legs anew.

  She turned to offer her thanks to the aspect of Hathor that had guided her. The light streaming through the open door penetrated the shrine with a shaft of brilliant gold. It fell upon the painting of the goddess on the shrine’s far wall: the lion-headed one, grinning her feral smile, teeth flashing like daggers as she strode through a river of blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The dawn came red, a rising swell on the eastern horizon. Hatshepsut stood in the door of her tent and watched morning break. The living sun cast a ruddy mantle on the world below. The line of cliffs to the north, the rank of rocky hills to the south, and beyond them, in the cruxes of their hunched shoulders, an endless expanse of dunes – all were like carnelian stone, luminescent and burnished in the blood-red light. Her bare feet sank into sand. It, too, was red, a powder so fine it worked its way into the cracks of her skin, dried her out, roughened all she touched with the faint trace of desert dust.

  It is no wonder the gods have named this place the Red Land, she mused, brushing her hands together to clear them of the powdery sand. Her efforts made no difference. In moments her hands would be coated again. Everything is the color of blood.

  As the sun shrugged itself free of the horizon, Hatshepsut became aware of a deep violet haze hanging below the dawn’s glow. The sea. They would reach it by evening – at last, after a week of trudging through the Red Land. She had sailed her fleet upriver one day’s journey from Waset to the place where the river bends. There she moored and met with a fleet of a different sort: an overland one, made of donkeys and men in vast numbers, strong men with broad backs to tote the light poles and linens that would become her tents, to carry uncountable skins full of tepid water, to carry great woven baskets upon their shoulders bearing to Punt vast measures of Kushite gold and Egyptian turquoise, and which would, she hoped, fill with the exotic treasures of Punt for the trek back to Waset. They had set out eastward, at first following the flat plane of an ancient trade route, a depression through the desert sands barely visible to the untrained eye. Ineni had hired the best and most experienced desert navigators the king’s wealth could buy; within hours of walking the faint track, it led them between two low lines of hills, ridges of deep red rock against which the sand lay in great soft heaps. The hills turned to cliffs, and the track became a broad, long-dry wash, not unlike the one she had ridden between Ta-Seti and Kush, years before when her blood had been as hot and fierce as the desert itself. The wash went on for spans uncountable, for days, and Hatshepsut’s expedition followed it under the guidance of Ineni’s navigators.

  Nehesi had taken a great liking to those navigators, learning the secrets of desert travel from them and chattering back what he’d learned to Hatshepsut, secrets of finding the rare seeps that held water far below the sand, clever ways to trace the flight of birds to rare patches of greenery where leaves and roots could be chewed and sucked for moisture. Nehesi seemed to thrive on desert travel; in no time at all, he had grown to love the long mornings of trudging through deep sand, the afternoons crouched and dozing beneath dust-stained linen shades through the worst of the daytime heat. He loved the evenings, too, when the expedition would strike its temporary encampments, roll the linens and poles onto the bearers’ backs, dole out a few mouthfuls of water to each man and each beast, and head into the gathering night to walk until the moon was setting.

  Nehesi loved it, but Hatshepsut despised it. Late mornings were a t
orment, an unbearable slog with sweat coursing down her back, running into her eyes and stinging until her vision clouded with tears. She would force herself onward until she could tolerate the heat no more, and then would call a halt and fall, grateful but uncomfortable, into the wan shade of her makeshift tent. At least the night walks were cooler, but the hours allotted for sleep were too few, and she was soon plagued by headaches and the shakiness of exhaustion.

  We will reach the sea tonight, thanks be to Amun. She could press on for one more day.

  Senenmut emerged from his tent, separated from Hatshepsut for propriety’s sake but pitched nearby in case his lady should call on her steward. Her lips cracked as she smiled at him, aware it was the first she had smiled at anyone in days of trekking. The violet horizon cheered her. Her goal was within sight. Senenmut ambled over, kicking his feet in the sand, and bowed to her.

  “Great Lady.”

  “Do you see it, Senenmut?” She pointed eastward.

  “Ah! It is the sea, unless it’s another cruel illusion made by the gods.”

  Those illusions had tormented Hatshepsut at first, those green shimmers in the near distance, a wavering in the air as of the humidity above a fresh, cool garden. Ineni’s navigators had warned her that the gardens were but a trick of the eyes, and soon Hatshepsut had taken to cursing their sight as she sucked her spare mouthfuls of musty water from her drinking-skin.

  “It’s not an illusion. Oh, Senenmut, won’t it be wonderful to see the water again? I miss the Iteru.”

  “I miss it all – the Iteru, cold water, fresh food. Our wheat cakes have gone stale, and I have never liked the taste of dried fish.”

  “I would wrestle a man for a fresh melon.”

  “Had I any melons hiding under my wig, I’d take you up on that.”

  Hatshepsut laughed. She pulled her own wig from her head and ran her hand over her hair. Natural hair, unshaven – something she hadn’t experienced since she still wore the side-lock of childhood. The growth was not much more than stubble, but still she had forgotten how it felt, tickling against her scalp, the nape of her neck.

  “Leave it on,” Senenmut warned. “The sun will be well up soon, and without something on your head you’ll catch heat-sickness.”

  “Yes, Mawat.” She replaced the wig while Senenmut affected a scowl.

  Ineni approached from the direction of his tent. Hatshepsut had worried about the old steward, thinking the journey too trying for a man of his years. The week in the desert had thinned him, so that the skin hung more loosely from his deep-lined face, but he had held his own admirably, often striding alongside Nehesi, engrossed in conversation.

  “Great Lady,” Ineni said, bowing. “Are you ready to strike camp? The navigators estimate that we will reach the port of Tjau by early evening.”

  “I am more than ready,” she said.

  From somewhere in the encampment a donkey brayed, its grating voice sounding clear and close in the dry dawn air. The murmur of men’s voices came to her, the clack of poles being bundled together.

  Hatshepsut clapped her hands, and raised her voice to the morning. “Break camp, men! Tonight we meet the sea!”

  **

  The expedition marched into the port town of Tjau to the cheers and acclaim of its meager population. Tjau was a distant outpost in the vast Egyptian territory, and had little care for proper Egyptian culture. Rather than kilts and linen gowns, men and women alike wore simple tunics of coarse wool, and kept their heads unshaven and unwigged, though close-cropped. Their deep, rich complexions and broad faces indicated their Puntite heritage; these people were descended from the god’s land. The fact of it buoyed Hatshepsut’s kas. It seemed a good omen.

  Tjau, being remote and far removed from the Pharaoh’s benevolence, was a poor holding. Its governor had little, and so Hatshepsut did not require a feast, but accepted his obeisance with good grace and his offerings of fresh meat and fruit with eagerness. She took the small tribute of Tjau to her encampment at the edge of the town, and sat in the confines of her tent reveling in the taste of melon juice on her tongue. The water in her cup was cold and fresh and tasted lightly of a mineral saltiness. She drank it greedily until her belly protested.

  When she felt rested, she emerged into her night camp, happy at the sound of men laughing. The air was dense with humidity, a familiar feeling reminiscent of home. It lifted the spirits of her men. She breathed deep; the smell of the sea clutched at her senses with a compelling force, an odor of clean air and faint decay, of sharp salt and the pale skin of fishes. Its movement made a continual susurrus in the night-time, a soothing sound.

  She found Ineni passing through the crowd, a skewer of goat’s meat in his hand, and called to him.

  “Great Lady. Try the meat; it is well spiced.”

  “Thank you, no. I had my fill in my tent. Walk with me; I would see the water.”

  She summoned Nehesi, and Senenmut came along with her guardsman, for they had been engaged in a game of dice and an earnest discussion of the problems of desert warfare. They walked together through the camp, past the place where the donkeys stood tethered in rows, switching their tails against the small, persistent flies of the seaside, their shaggy heads buried happily in heaps of cut grass and scatters of grain. A rocky strand led out to the hard-packed sand of the shore. South of where they stood, the poor buildings of Tjau flickered with torch fires and rare spots of lamp light, burning in the high, narrow windows of the mudbrick houses.

  A cluster of torches bobbed near the shoreline like a flock of waterfowl on the Iteru. Ineni pointed toward them. “The men I hired, Great Lady. They are making ready to assemble the ships in the morning.”

  He had told her of the process before they’d even set out from Waset. The port of Tjau was full of clever ship-builders, who could piece together great boats as a child assembles a wooden puzzle. Hatshepsut’s gut quivered with worry. Ships were solid, enduring things. She had been uncertain in her throne room, when Ineni had delineated his plans, that piecemeal boats could carry her safely to Punt and back. Now, as she stood listening to the sea move restlessly in the night, her uncertainty tipped closer to fear.

  The calm, cool air of the seaside was a relief from the ferocious heat of the Red Land – ah, no mistake in that. But the sea itself turned out to be a beast just as fearsome as the desert. She had envisioned another Iteru: wider and deeper, to be sure, but with gentle, lapping waves, the kind children may swim in on a Shemu day. The reality was sobering. It pitched constantly in the starlight, each wave a sharp tooth in a black mouth, tipped by a cold white glow. Nearer, where the water met the shore, it curled in cascades that chased one another down the strand, and the violence of its movement set froth to churning, leaving webs of white behind that dissipated from the surface of the gravel.

  “Can their boats truly carry us all that way, Ineni?”

  “It has been done before, Great Lady.”

  “Not for many generations.”

  Nehesi slapped his hands against his broad hard stomach, as if preparing for a much-anticipated feast. “Have you lost your taste for adventure, Great Lady? Why, I recall a girl of seventeen years who kicked the Pharaoh out the back of a chariot and raced against the Kushites. Surely that girl is not so far away.”

  Hatshepsut squinted at him. The starlight limned his features, the bull-strength of him, the eager gleam in his eye. “Perhaps I should give this expedition over to you,” she said. “You are so hungry for adventure, after all.”

  “Ah!” He laughed. “You could make me a chancellor. I like the sound of that.”

  “Very well,” Hatshepsut said, grasping at the suggestion, absurdly grateful for the distraction from her growing fears. “You are my chancellor, and if you keep our toy boats together, and bring me to Punt and back still in my own skin, the gods will never forget your great deed.”

  “Chancellor Nehesi. Do you hear that, Senenmut?” He pounded Senenmut on the shoulder, and the steward winced. “Watch y
ourself, or you may find yourself deposed. Great Steward Nehesi has an even prettier ring to it.”

  “Remember,” Hatshepsut said, “you still must keep me alive until we return to Waset.”

  “An easy thing.”

  “We should rest, Great Lady.” Senenmut bobbed his head at her elbow, and she recognized her own anxiety in the tightness of his voice. “Ineni tells me that the boats will be sea-worthy by tomorrow afternoon. We must set out then. It has been a long walk across the desert. We all need a good night’s rest.”

  Sea-worthy. She gazed out at the waves for another long moment. Their incessant clamor, their sharpness and single-mindedness, brought to her heart the image of a lioness clawing doggedly at a small creature’s rocky den. Have I overstepped myself? Have I reached too far in my desperation to retain my throne?

  But no. No – Punt was Amun’s own land, full of all the sweet perfumes and beauties that appeased the god. He would not allow her to reach too far. He – and Nehesi – would see her home safe again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Thutmose counseled himself to lay back calmly on his cushions as Neferure approached the palace lake. He lay in his two-person replica of the great pleasure barges, reclining against his rich silks as he watched her come, making her quiet, careful way down the garden path. Her entourage of women trailed her, four of them holding aloft a bright red sun-shade. In its warm shadow her face was demurely downturned, her eyes shyly on the gravel of the path. Fan-bearers flanked her, stirring the air, and a harpist trailed the lot, plucking a sweet and soothing melody. Even gazing at her feet, she was fine as an artist’s carving, smooth-polished and delicate. Her two weeks in Iunet seemed to have lent a glow to her cheeks, a secret, confident happiness that Thutmose had never seen in his sister before.

  She arrived at the raised stone lip of the lake and paused, waiting for her servant to offer a hand. Neferure stepped lightly onto the stone. Her sandals were polished silver, chased across the upturned toe, and a collection of bracelets at her ankle chimed gently, a coy counterpoint to the slap of water against the boat’s hull. She lowered herself carefully into the boat, sinking with her customary light, natural grace to the cushions. Thutmose’s man on the shore cast off the line, and the boat drifted toward the center of the lake, carrying the two into privacy.