Daughter of the Gods: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

by Stephanie Thornton

  Ti chuckled. “We might have to build a bigger treasure house just for the copper.”

  Neshi peered over her shoulder and let out a low whistle. “Lucky us.”

  “This calls for a celebration.” Hatshepsut motioned to one of the boy-slaves waiting outside. Moments later, a wonderful vintage of date-palm wine appeared with four blue faience glasses.

  “To Hapi, the fat old Man of the Fishes!” They pounded their glasses on the table. The wine tasted of earth and air, dates, and a hint of honey. “May the god of the Nile bless us with another bountiful Inundation and harvest next year!”

  The four of them sipped their wine as they chipped away at the mountain of papyrus scrolls. Hatshepsut traveled her way up the Nile through the ledgers as the hours slipped by, moving farther away from the City of Truth with each nome’s accounts. Finally, as slaves came in to light the lamps, she gave voice to an idea that had blossomed slowly in her mind.

  “Tutmose and I should take a journey down the Nile. A royal procession to celebrate our victory in Nubia.”

  And to boost her own popularity with her people.

  The men’s brushes stopped moving and they all looked up at her.

  “That’s a good idea,” Senenmut said after a moment. “An extremely good idea.”

  “It’s not often that the rekhyt get to see the living god or regent,” Ti said. “And Osiris Thutmosis never went on procession.”

  “My father never had a chance either,” Hatshepsut added. “He took me to visit some of the religious centers near Waset when I was young, but that’s as close as he got to a true procession.”

  “He had his military campaigns,” Neshi said. “That gave the people a chance to see their pharaoh and his might. But that was a decade ago. A procession is long overdue.”

  “How big would your entourage be? And how long would you be gone?” Ti was already sketching a long column of figures.

  “I’m not sure how long.” She thought for a moment. “Several weeks? The Nile is sluggish at this time of year. The group should be small—myself, Aset, some servants and guards.”

  “The children?” Senenmut asked.

  Hatshepsut nodded. “Of course.”

  “And your favorite Chancellor and Treasurer,” Neshi said.

  Hatshepsut grinned. “That goes without saying. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “That’s certainly workable,” Ti said.

  Their easy acceptances pleased Hatshepsut. “Appropriate the funds, and we’ll be on our way as soon as Isis ceases her tears and the Nile recedes.” Her stomach rumbled; she realized she hadn’t eaten since the morning meal with the children. “Shall we continue this tomorrow?”

  “We’ll be here before Re wakes,” Ti said.

  She stood, eager to tell Aset and the children about the procession. The children’s tutors would have to join them for so long a trip, or Tutmose and Neferure would fall behind in their lessons. A tutor schooled in military traditions had been acquired for Tutmose shortly after Senenmut’s arrival, but Senenmut was still officially Neferure’s tutor, despite his absence while in Nubia.

  Hatshepsut stopped with a start. If both the children’s tutors came, Senenmut would travel on the same ship with her, the two of them confined in very close quarters for weeks on end.

  There was no way they’d be able to keep their secret for much longer.

  • • •

  The day of embarkation dawned crisp and clear. Three cedar boats with Horus’ giant gold eyes emblazoned on their hulls sat at the dock, red and white royal pennants listless as they waited for the breeze. Hatshepsut, Aset, the children, and their servants would sail on the first boat, with the courtiers on the second. The final barge would carry a stable of goats and oxen ready to be slaughtered for the expedition’s dinners, and a floating kitchen to prepare the majority of their meals. All that remained now was for the passengers to board.

  Hatshepsut’s loose traveling sheath brushed her legs as she made her way to the royal nursery to collect the children. Aset was helping her son pack the last of his carved wooden soldiers for their journey.

  “One is missing,” she said to Hatshepsut, looking slightly frayed as she smoothed the braids of her wig. “It’s been a crisis.”

  Tutmose crawled about the ground, scrambling under chairs and behind chests. Then he stood, brandishing an ebony figure in his fist. “Found it, Mama!”

  “Crisis averted.” Hatshepsut grinned as Neferure came running toward her. “Are you ready for our trip, monkey?”

  Her daughter nodded. “I said good-bye to Nana.”

  “Good girl.” Hatshepsut planted a kiss on Neferure’s smooth head. It was probably a good thing Ahmose would remain behind; the former Great Royal Wife was growing frail and had no desire to leave the comforts of the palace to be crammed on a boat for several weeks. Her body may be tired, but her tongue was as sharp as ever. In such close quarters Ahmose would have sniffed out her daughter’s relationship with her steward, and Hatshepsut didn’t want to find out whose blood would have been spilled as a result.

  “I think we’re ready.” Aset held the linen bag of soldiers in one hand and her son’s hand with the other. “All soldiers present and accounted for.”

  They made their way through the maze of whitewashed corridors into the bright morning sunshine. A low hum began at the causeway and grew into a lion’s roar.

  “What’s that?” Tutmose asked.

  Across the river, the brown banks of the Nile seemed to shift, like sand in a storm. Only it wasn’t sand, but a swarm of rekhyt along the river’s edge. “Our people,” Hatshepsut said. “They’re very happy to see us.”

  And it wasn’t just her stepson’s titles that were carried on the breeze, but the exuberant cries of her own name shouted by Waset’s citizens. She held Tutmose’s hand and waved back. It took only a moment and soon he was waving in unison with her, even as Neferure hid behind Aset’s legs. The crowd threatened to scream itself hoarse, the sound refusing to ebb until they were all aboard.

  The cedar barque swayed lazily along the sparkling surface of the Nile, a line of overdressed nobles waiting to board the second boat. Red and white pennants snapped to attention on the first boat, the gilded oars all raised in stiff salute.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Senenmut emerged from belowdecks, dressed in a short kilt and without his wig. “They’ve been chanting your name for ages. And Tutmose’s, of course.”

  “Of course.” Hatshepsut glanced at Aset, but she had her back turned and Neferure on her hip, pointing out an egret swooping overhead.

  “Remind me to speak to whomever arranged our cabins,” Senenmut murmured.

  “Why? Is there a problem?”

  His voice dropped. “My room seems to be next to yours.”

  “Precisely as I’d arranged.” Although with only four cabins, there weren’t many options. Hatshepsut and Aset had their own chambers, but the children shared the third with their menats, and Senenmut, Nomti, and Tutmose’s tutor would have the last. Their slaves would sleep on reed mats outside the doors. The next few weeks would be cozy.

  Senenmut sighed, but it did little to hide his grin. “I’ll never get any sleep so close to you.”

  She glanced at Aset and the children, her voice a whisper. “We’re going to have to be discreet.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “No? Then what is it?”

  Now it was his turn to whisper, offering her a teasing smile. “Sometimes you snore.”

  She’d have smacked him, but he sauntered away to Neferure, asking loudly whether she had seen any crocodiles yet. He glanced back once, still grinning, but Hatshepsut was called to answer one of Tutmose’s questions, something about how often they could expect a hippo to overturn the boats.

  The barges eased from their moorings and slipped fully into the Nile’s muddy embrace. A handful of fishing skiffs made of lashed papyrus darted back and forth like pale dragonflies, crisscrossin
g the waves while showering the glassy brown waters with a bright confetti of purple and red anemone petals. The other vessels followed at a comfortable distance, a parade of nobility housed within the royal barges. It wasn’t until the dark smudge of the city on the horizon became a mere haze that Hatshepsut tore her eyes away from their home.

  The sails unfurled to take advantage of the scant breeze, pregnant with the wind’s first kiss. The boats continued merrily along their way that first day, carried easily down the lethargic Nile, the banks laden with precious silt now that the floods had receded. They passed a frenzy of life: bare-breasted women on the edges of naked fields, pulling in reed baskets of water from rickety wooden swapes; men driving plows and throwing barley seeds to be trampled underfoot; and small cities of brown and white goats grazing beneath palm trees. Neferure and Tutmose shrieked with glee at every soaring ibis and sleeping crocodile as Hatshepsut watched the multitude of mud brick huts that poked their heads above the green.

  This was her Egypt.

  • • •

  Late that afternoon, the boats floated by the island where Neferubity had flown to the sky, now a peaceful green knoll rippling with a carpet of sedge grass and papyrus fronds along the riverbank. Hatshepsut spared a moment to murmur a prayer for the kas of the dead; she liked to think her sister and father watched her from the Field of Reeds, and were pleased with all she’d done for Egypt and their dynasty. Everyone else was belowdecks, so the air was empty save for her whispered words and the grunts of the rowers, but then Aset came up, complaining about her oven of a cabin. Hatshepsut smiled, glad for the company.

  “I feel like I’ve rolled in the pens of the menagerie.” Aset sniffed herself and grimaced. “I smell like it, too.”

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” Hatshepsut hugged her and laughed.

  Aset blew a tired puff of air and tucked a damp strand of black hair back into her wig. “You’re touched, aren’t you? All this sun and wind, and you’ve finally lost your mind.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Hatshepsut said.

  “The heat? Or you being mad?”

  “The heat. It grew on me in Nubia.”

  “I just want a bath. I don’t suppose you lugged along that Cretan tub, did you?”

  “No, but there’s a perfectly good river at our disposal. We’ll go for a swim before we dock at Gebtu for the night.”

  “We can do that?”

  “You’re traveling with the pharaoh and the regent of Egypt.” Hatshepsut grinned. “We can do anything we want.”

  The royal barge anchored alone in the middle of the river, and they watched the rest of the entourage trek ashore for dinner as special guests of the town of Gebtu.

  “Try not to get into too much trouble out here,” Senenmut said under his breath; he was the last from their boat in line for the skiff that would ferry them into town. “Although I’m not convinced that’s possible with you around.”

  Hatshepsut grinned at his formal kilt, gold pectoral, and stiff wig. He would have to sit through an interminable parade of dinner courses and stiff conversation while she had the privilege of swimming naked in the Nile. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Of course not.” He straightened, rubbed his chin, and gave a thoughtful nod. “Yes, I think Neferure would enjoy hearing The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant. It’s a truly admirable piece of literature.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but his gaze flicked to the other side of the ship, where Aset waited with the children. Neferure and Tutmose played hide-and-find amongst the rowers’ benches, but Aset stared in their direction. Hatshepsut cleared her throat. “I’ve never cared for that tale. I’ve always failed to see the allure of the story of a rekhyt advising his pharaoh.”

  Aset turned away and clapped for Tutmose to come out from under a bench. Senenmut dropped his voice and grinned. “You’ll pay for that one day. Watch out for crocodiles.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  A smattering of domed pigeon coops crowded the shoreline, their clay surfaces pockmarked with roosts. Hatshepsut’s stomach rumbled at the thought of roast pigeon, but she was glad to avoid a stuffy meal of laughing at bland jokes and discussing the harvest tallies with the town officials. Nomti and the other guards scouted the area for hippos and crocodiles and, finding none, gave the group permission to toss aside their dirty clothes and jump into the river. The children splashed and giggled, little river otters at play.

  “Stay close to the boat, you little monkeys!” Hatshepsut leaned back to wet her hair, letting the river fill her ears. She hadn’t shaved her head since leaving for Nubia, so her hair curled round her ears when she didn’t wear a wig. She had it in her mind to leave the infernal thing in her trunk during the entire procession.

  “Are they at all like you and Thutmosis when you were young?” Aset glanced at the children and scrubbed her arms hard with natron soap, as if she’d never be clean again.

  “Sometimes. Neferure reminds me more of my sister. Thut and I were terrible trouble when we were younger.” She frowned. “I don’t want our history to repeat itself with Tutmose and Neferure.”

  “I think the two of them will be happy together one day.” A dreamy smile warmed Aset’s face. “More like Thutmosis and me.” She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” She swam over to Hatshepsut and wrapped her in a wet embrace. “I still miss him.”

  “He worshipped you.” Hatshepsut knew Aset still kept the black granite statues Thut had made for her, the two of them kept side by side on an altar in her apartments. “He’s waiting for you in the Field of Reeds.”

  Thut had worshipped Aset and Tutmose. Sometimes the memory still hurt.

  “Do you think you’ll ever love again?” Hatshepsut’s question came in a rush, as if she feared she wouldn’t get the sentence out unless it was blurted in a single breath.

  Aset shook her head. “No one could ever love me like Thutmosis. His love was the greatest gift the gods could have given me, and, despite my empty bed, I’ll be thankful for it until the day Anubis comes for me.”

  Hatshepsut grinned. “No one says your bed has to stay empty.”

  “You’re incorrigible.” Aset splashed her, then gave her an odd look. “What about your empty bed?”

  Hatshepsut glanced at the shore. Their secret would be out soon; Aset might as well hear the truth from her own mouth. “It’s not empty anymore.”

  “I’d suspected as much.”

  “You did? How?”

  “You’re far too happy these days. You don’t brood nearly enough.” She smiled. “So, tell me: Who is it?”

  Hatshepsut hesitated, clinging to the last precious moment of her secret before finally answering. “Senenmut.”

  Aset’s smile fell. “But he’s a rekhyt.”

  “That’s a bit hypocritical, isn’t it?”

  “It’s different for a woman, and you know it. Thutmosis was expected to take plenty of wives, sire multiple heirs. You’re the regent and it’s your duty to keep the throne safe for my son. Taking up with that rekhyt does exactly the opposite.” She swam over so Hatshepsut had to look at her. “What will happen to the succession if you become pregnant?”

  “I’ve taken care of that.” As soon as they’d returned to Waset, she’d started using the pessary the Royal Physician had once recommended. She counted back, and her heart stuttered. She hadn’t needed to purify herself since before the battle at Dongola.

  Her courses were late. Dear gods, how could she have been so careless?

  “I’m sure Senenmut is a good romp,” Aset was saying, “but couldn’t you at least choose someone a little less ambitious?”

  Hatshepsut swam back from Aset, her thoughts crowding her mind like a flock of pigeons. This baby could cost her position as regent. A son would mean competition for Tutmose’s throne, or perhaps put her in a different position altogether, one she’d only dreamed of.

  To have Senenmut’s child. The thought made her both quake with joy and tremble wit
h terror. A son with his crooked smile. The threat of childbirth.

  Aset’s lips pursed as if she’d been sucking lemons. “How do you know he doesn’t want the throne?”

  “Because I know Senenmut. He’s not like that.”

  And yet she felt the tiniest flicker of doubt. She shoved it aside.

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be about anything in this life.” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t like him, do you?”

  Now it was Aset’s turn to look offended. “I once saved his life, Hatshepsut. I just don’t want to see you or Tutmose hurt.”

  The children were hollering to get back on the boat, Tutmose trying to climb up the thick rope to the deck while Neferure waited patiently for assistance. Hatshepsut swam to Aset and clasped her arms with wet hands. “Senenmut would never hurt any of us. I trust him.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “I love him, Aset, and he loves me. Please be happy for me.”

  “I’ll try.” Aset sighed. “Just don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  Chapter 22

  The boats made good time the next day, passing naked boys swimming in the muddy waters of the Nile and finally spotting the glow from Nubt’s lamps as the horizon swallowed Re. The white walls of the city’s famed temple to Set towered over the sprawl of squat mud-brick buildings. While Amun reigned supreme in the capital, it was the powerful and ambivalent Set who controlled the rest of Upper Egypt. Osiris Tutmose had commissioned this temple shortly before he had gone to the West, and Hatshepsut yearned to see her father’s work.

  This city, the sacred center of Set’s worship since before the pharaohs, did not sleep tonight. The entire town crammed at the edge of the river to greet the visiting nobility. The crowd fell to the ground in one simultaneous henu as the ship bumped the dock. A thin and impeccably dressed man clambered to his feet, cleared his throat several times, and shifted from one foot to the other as if he had pebbles in his sandals.

  “Welcome to Nubt!” The harsh twang to the mayor’s vowels reminded Hatshepsut they were no longer near the capital. His smile revealed a set of worn teeth and pulpy gums, the result of too many years of eating bread milled with Egypt’s ever-present sand. “Set, our patron god, is pleased to open his city to the pharaoh and his entourage. We are happy that you could join our humble city as we feast and make merry in your name!”