Her moon bloods.
Tears streamed down her cheeks at the stark realization. There had been no nausea, no tender breasts, no lethargy these past months. She’d never been pregnant, just missed her courses.
Only now that the hope of it was gone did she realize how much she’d wanted this baby, a child that had never existed. And then she knew without a doubt that this was a message from the gods, a warning not to reach too high. A son from her womb would imperil Tutmose’s succession, just as Aset had predicted. Hatshepsut already had a precious daughter and the love of a wonderful man.
Still, she wanted more.
As she lay curled on her mattress, racked with silent sobs, something tiny and pale caught her eye on the wooden planks. A scrap of papyrus.
Another of Senenmut’s poems. The handwriting was his, but this time it wasn’t poetry he’d written. The words were bittersweet.
One day you’ll build monuments to rival these.
Chapter 23
YEAR SEVEN OF PHARAOH TUTMOSE III
The second obelisk was ready to soar. Cushioned on the sand, its electrum-capped pinnacle was aimed at the horizon, but in moments the workmen would hoist it to forever pierce the sky. The men guzzled from dirty water skins, wiped sweat from their brows, and unclenched fists burned by the ropes. The first obelisk stood guard at Amun’s entrance to Karnak, awaiting its mate.
“They’re even taller than Grandfather’s.” Neferure shielded her painted eyes from the glare of the gilded monuments. The shafts of the obelisks were covered in gold foil and as blinding as the sun disk on today’s cloudless morning.
Time marched loudly past as Hatshepsut gazed at her daughter, the only person aside from Tutmose left on this earth who shared her family’s blood. Over the past years almost everyone from her father’s generation had passed to the West—Sitre, Mutnofret, and finally even her own mother. Anubis had felled that aging branch of the family tree. There had been no more pregnancies either, due to her secret use of the Royal Physician’s pessary. Her heart ached at the necessary deception, but she couldn’t allow her desires to open the door to future civil war and bloodshed. Always she reminded herself of the sacrifices Egypt demanded of its rulers. Senenmut had only nodded when she’d told him of her mistake, and seemed to accept her hints that perhaps Neferure’s difficult birth had made it impossible for her to bear other children. He never broached the subject of trying for another child and had since thrown himself into becoming Neferure’s acting father. Perhaps things were better this way.
Now, only a hairsbreadth shorter than Hatshepsut, Neferure was about to celebrate her tenth naming day. A willowy wisp of a child, she possessed the translucent beauty of a pale moth and grew more quiet and reflective with each passing year. Sometimes she was too quiet.
“I dedicated the obelisks to my father,” Hatshepsut said.
“And to Amun. I read the inscriptions,” Neferure added shyly before confusion clouded her delicate features. “But Tutmose’s name is on them, too. And he didn’t have anything to do with them—he’s too busy with the army.”
“But he’s the pharaoh,” Hatshepsut said. “And one day, after all his military training, he’ll be a great pharaoh, one worthy of your grandfather’s name.”
The workmen shouted as they hoisted the obelisk, pulling the heavy granite in unison while scrambling men pushed away the sand at its base. Hatshepsut squeezed Neferure’s hand, barely able to breathe. The slightest crack would cause the magnificent monument to topple and obliterate in an instant what had taken seven months to create. These were the tallest obelisks ever raised in Egypt—as high as six men. To have one of them fall or crack now would be a horrible omen, not to mention dangerous.
The shouting continued. Somewhere in the melee of voices was the reassuring sound of Senenmut’s deep timbre as he supervised. Over the years, Hatshepsut had gifted him with a multitude of titles until he outranked every other man in Egypt. Senenmut was her sun as she reigned over Egypt in all but name.
She felt a twinge at that thought, some emotion she refused to name. She had served Egypt faithfully these past years, had watched her kingdom prosper as Tutmose grew into a sturdy and intelligent boy. And yet, in a few more years she would hand over the kingdom and fade from public life. It would be painful to sit in the shadows and watch her stepson rule.
A loud cheer interrupted her thoughts as the obelisk sank triumphantly into its vertical position, its gold and silver top glowing.
The workmen parted to let Senenmut pass. His presence wrapped Hatshepsut in a warm embrace. “They’re magnificent.”
She resisted the urge to smooth the lines from his eyes as he squinted into the reflected sunshine of the two monuments. Senenmut was a wealthy and powerful man now, easily shouldering the mountain of titles and responsibilities she had bestowed upon him. There was still a small group of nobles—once Mensah’s most ardent supporters—who resented the meteoric rise of a rekhyt to their ranks, but they knew better than to voice their dissent. By now the entire court, if not all of Egypt, realized the regent’s relationship with the Steward of Amun, but the prosperity she had brought to their pockets made it inconsequential.
Standing in the shadows of her two greatest accomplishments to date, flanked by her daughter and the love of her life, Hatshepsut should have been deliriously happy.
But she wanted more.
• • •
Hatshepsut glanced up from her discussion with the Phoenician ambassador as Senenmut strode into the throne room, ignoring the herald that tripped after him, sputtering to get out all his titles. Senenmut looked as if he’d just come from the quarries—he probably had—but the court still cleared a path for him. Some even bowed in full henus. Thick leather armbands clasped both his wrists and heavy gold rings encircled most of his fingers. “A word with you, Hemet?” He looked about and spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear. “In private?”
Some courtiers had already headed for the door.
“We’ll continue our discussion later.” Hatshepsut smiled at the ambassador. The curls in his dark beard jiggled as he bowed and backed away from the dais. She’d never understand the Phoenicians and their preoccupation with facial hair. They truly were barbarians.
Before dismissing the slave and herald, she poured a faience glass of gazelle milk spiced with cinnamon and cardamom and offered a cup to Senenmut, but he ignored it. “You look as though Egypt’s been invaded,” she said.
“Worse. Your favorite cupbearer has returned to the capital and is on his way to seek an audience with you.”
“No.” She choked on the milk. “Not Mensah.”
“In the flesh.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Mensah was a dung beetle, one that refused to die no matter how many times she stepped on it. The past years had seen a steady stream of scrolls from him in his outpost at Buhen, in which he borrowed verses from Egypt’s ancient poets to laud her virtues and praise her beauty. He’d even built a temple to Horus in her name at the fort. The letters never failed to entertain Hatshepsut, but Senenmut rarely shared her humor.
He scowled. “When you sent him to Buhen, it wasn’t far enough.”
“I’d send him to Crete if I could, but I doubt their king would thank me for it.” She smiled, but Senenmut only crossed his arms over his chest.
“This is serious, Hatshepsut.”
“Mensah is nothing more than a pest.”
“A pest that almost had me killed—”
“Because he was ordered to spy on us by Thutmosis.”
“He lied to you.”
“Because he loved me.”
They’d spoken of this before, but that didn’t make it any easier to say the words, to see the flicker of pain on Senenmut’s face. Mensah’s execution would have violated Ma’at, but that didn’t mean her decision to let him live was any easier to stomach. “We were all young fools then,” she said, “but he’s harmless now.”
Senenmut made some n
oise in the back of his throat, part laugh and part cough. “You’re blind. The man wants the Isis Throne.”
She resisted the urge to laugh, then recalled Mensah’s proposition to do exactly that when she’d once visited him in chains. “Why do you say that?”
“Because my spies intercepted this.” He pulled a rumpled scroll from his pocket and handed it to her.
A thin film of granite dust coated the outside of the papyrus, its seal already broken. Hatshepsut unrolled it, and gasped as she scanned the treason within.
“That filthy jackal,” she muttered. The letter was addressed to a minor noble, asking for his support after Mensah had made Hatshepsut his wife and assumed the Isis Throne, as well as promising the petty courtier his share of titles and wealth in return for his assistance.
“Filthy and brazen,” Senenmut said. “I don’t know how many more of these he’s sent out, but I suspect it’s quite a few.”
“Why would he think I’d ever accept his suit?” Hatshepsut stood, rapping the scroll angrily against her open palm. “I’m regent. I already have the throne.”
“No. You only sit next to it. Egypt will soon clamor for Tutmose to wear the double crown, and if I’d been sent to rot in Buhen the past seven years like Mensah, then this would be my final effort to convince you to seize the Isis Throne.”
“With him at my side.”
“Naturally. The regent and a man from one of Egypt’s most ancient families would have a good chance of winning a coup against a ten-year-old boy.”
Senenmut was right. After seven years on the throne, if she chose to act against Tutmose, she would have more than a good chance of success.
“I’m no fool.” Hatshepsut stood, starting to pace. “If I agreed to marry Mensah, he’d support a coup and be kind enough to lock me in the Hall of Women when it was over. I’ve already played that game.”
“It may not matter if he has your support or not. He might force you, and with his family background, he could likely garner plenty of followers even if you did manage to refuse him.” Senenmut waited for her to speak. “You will refuse him, won’t you?”
She ceased pacing and stopped before one of the painted murals, a hunting scene of a crocodile with a brown duck pinned in its jaws. “Should I?” She glanced at Senenmut over her shoulder. His expression was murderous.
“Hatshepsut—”
She laughed, a low, throaty chuckle. “Of course I’ll refuse him, you simpleton.” Her hennaed fingernail traced the crocodile’s jaw, picked at the duck’s head until the paint flaked away. “I only wish I knew how he was going to react.”
“He might slink off to Buhen to lick his wounds. Or, more likely, he’ll go through with the coup anyway. He may try to kill Tutmose. Or you.” He touched her arm and forced her to turn to look at him. “You can’t send him back to Buhen after this treason.”
“No. Whatever happens, this will be the end for one of us.”
Senenmut blanched. “No, not us, not you. Him. Kill him now. Avoid the risk.”
Mensah’s plot might be a curse from the gods, or perhaps it was a gift in disguise. Perhaps even the best gift of all.
“I won’t kill him now, not until he’s revealed himself.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You’re willing to put your own life in danger—”
She touched a finger to his lips, leaving the faintest trace of plaster dust. “Mensah will set his own trap and then we’ll snare him with it. There will be no escape for him this time.”
Senenmut reached out to touch her, his hand barely brushing her cheek as he cupped the side of her face. “And if your plan fails?”
She shrugged, but her heart pounded against her ribs. “Then it won’t matter anymore. I’ll be dead.”
• • •
She received Mensah alone in her private chambers, wanting him to speak plainly before she humiliated him for the last time. The fool actually dared to meet her eyes before he swept to the ground in a full henu. Her foot itched to kick the complacent smile off his face, but she managed to restrain herself.
Time had wrought changes on the former cupbearer. Mensah’s skin was as weathered and tough as ox hide from years in the desert, but his braided black beard echoed the pharaoh’s official false beard. His waist had thickened, but his chest was freshly oiled, his body as solid as that of a pharaoh carved onto some temple wall. There was a good chance his head would soon be decorating a pike on a similar wall.
When she spoke, her voice could have frozen the Nile. “You’d best have a good reason for leaving Buhen unattended.”
“I do indeed.” He rose and brushed imaginary sand from his shoulder. “Let’s not play games, Hatshepsut. We both know why I’m here.”
She bristled at the casual use of her name. “You want to rule Egypt. However, we already have a pharaoh.”
“No, we have a boy who is too young to shear his youth lock, not a pharaoh. I’ve always said you and I belonged with each other, Hatshepsut, but now, together, we could do something great.”
“And Tutmose?”
He shrugged. “I bear no ill will toward the boy. His death would be clean.”
“To clear the way for our children.” She stepped toward him, willing her face to take on an expression of Hathor’s adoration when she really wanted to claw his eyes out.
“Naturally.”
“I see you’ve given careful thought to your plan.”
“I’ve had seven years to think about it. Your royal blood and my ancient family would usher Egypt into a golden age, supported by the nobles who’ve already promised me their loyalty.” He stepped closer, daring to take one of the braids of her wig and wind it around his finger. “‘Your hair snares my feeble heart, your breasts steal the breath from my lungs, and your eyes trap my ka.’”
She recognized the line of ancient poetry from one of his letters and jerked her head to pull the hair from his hand.
“I’d give you more than my ka,” he said. “You know this is the right path, Hatshepsut. The only path.”
“And if I have other ideas?”
“Like stepping aside when Tutmose comes of age? You’ll never do that, not now that you’ve tasted power.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She shoved his hand away, ready to call for Nomti and the other guards outside the door, but Mensah grabbed her wrist and muffled her cry with his hand.
“Perhaps I misjudged you. Perhaps you’re content to remain insignificant for the rest of your life, but I’ve been groomed from the day I was born to govern Egypt. Your brother realized that and made me his vizier.”
“Just as I realized you weren’t qualified for such a lofty position and rectified his egregious error.”
Mensah bristled, anger simmering beneath the surface of his wicked smile. “You can’t dispose of me so easily.”
“Let go of me.” She tried to twist out of his grasp, but his hand was as strong as any manacle.
He pulled her in to his chest, his breath hot on her ear. “There’s something else I know about, a little secret you’ve kept that could destroy everything you’ve worked for these past seven years.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? Allow me to refresh your memory, then.” He pulled her to a cedar bench, pinning her on his lap so she could feel the hardness between his legs. “You may recall that you banished me to the Temple of Amun after your brother’s death, that I served there first as wa’eb and then as Second Lector Priest.”
She struggled against him, but it was no use. “I don’t see the point of this.”
Binding her wrists with one hand, he stroked the hollow of her neck with the other. “While serving the Great Cackler, I worked under the supervision of the High Priest, a man marked by the gods.” He touched her right cheek. “Right here, a purple stain like a thumbprint.”
She fell still and her body grew cold.
“That’s right.” He continued to caress h
er cheek with his rough thumb. “You bribed him the day the invisible god cast you off.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“I don’t have to prove it, Hatshepsut. All I have to do is mar your name and you’ll be thrown into obscurity. That’s your greatest fear, isn’t it?”
“You can’t bully me into marrying you.”
“No? Amun rejected you, but you bribed the High Priest to hide that fact. You may not realize how thoroughly many of your nobles detest Senenmut and would rather see one of their own share the power of the Isis Throne. All of Egypt knows you consort with that foul rekhyt and shower him with undeserved titles, but do they know the Great God rejected you or that you bribed the High Priest to cover it up? How do you think your people would feel to realize Sekhmet’s daughter has deceived them all this time?”
The metallic taste of defeat filled her mouth. A woman controlling the throne was an aberration, one the rekhyt would not tolerate long if they believed her to be corrupt. She swallowed hard, looked at him through her lashes. “You make a convincing case.”
“Does that mean you accept?”
She smiled and leaned toward him as if to kiss him, but stopped short of his oiled lips, smelling the garlic on his breath. “It means you’d best get out of here before I scream for my guards. Get out of my palace.”
His grip on her wrists tightened and his lip curled in the sneer of a feral dog. “Think carefully, Hatshepsut. I won’t make this offer again.”
“And I won’t ask you to leave again.”
He shoved her off his lap so hard that she fell to the ground, smashing her elbow into a table. He spat at her and stormed off.
She scrambled to her feet and rubbed her elbow, grimacing at the film of oil from Mensah’s chest that covered her arms. The door slammed behind him, but reopened, and Nomti’s huge frame filled the door.
Daughter of the Gods: A Novel of Ancient Egypt Page 28
