Aset gave a bright grin, showing off her dimples. “Neferure probably wants to look perfect for you tonight.”
Tutmose didn’t seem to swallow his mother’s explanation, but took a seat anyway, his lean dog curling at his feet. Hatshepsut hoped he hadn’t deduced Neferure’s reaction to being told she had to marry him.
Slaves marched in carrying blue faience glasses of wine and golden trays of imported Minoan olives, pomegranate-melon salad, and bread with cloves of garlic baked inside. Hatshepsut waved away a basket of mandrake berries with their intoxicating flesh. They didn’t need help celebrating tonight.
“Are you enjoying your training in the Division of Horus?” Senenmut asked Tutmose between bites of salad. To Hatshepsut’s delight, the two had been spending more time together lately as Tutmose grew into his role as soldier. At first Hatshepsut had thought Tutmose only endured Senenmut’s tales of the campaigns to Canaan and Nubia, but she had watched more than once as Tutmose had listened with rapt attention, asking questions about battle strategies and fighting techniques.
Tutmose’s face lit with pleasure as he looked down at the symbol of Horus on his pectoral, the falcon god’s wings spread wide. He tossed his dog a few scraps of bread. “It’s hard work, but I love it. I can’t wait for the opportunity to campaign.”
Hatshepsut smiled. Since the skirmish in Nubia, she’d made it a point to keep the military close to home. There had been no further rebellions, but she saw no reason to expand Egypt’s borders at the expense of her soldiers’ lives. If Tutmose so wished, he could make that a focal point of his own reign.
She turned to Aset and nodded at her hands. “It looks like you’ve been busy.”
Aset’s fingers curled into balls, as if she was trying to hide the stains and cuts. “I’ve been practicing my hieroglyphs.”
“It appears they’re winning the fight.”
Aset stretched her fingers out, picked at the nails. “The stains are from the ink, but the cuts are from trimming papyrus reeds. I’ve taken up weaving. I make a fairly decent lotus-blossom basket.”
To Hatshepsut basket weaving sounded like as much fun as gouging her eyes with a dull needle, but she kept her tongue. She was happy Aset had a new interest all her own, especially now that Tutmose and Neferure were to marry.
Aset left her couch to sit next to Hatshepsut, her golden plate balanced on her lap. She peeled the flesh from an olive with her teeth and dropped the pit to the ground. Tutmose’s dog glanced up at the possibility of a treat, then rested his head back on his paws. “What have you decided to do with Nomti?”
Hatshepsut set her plate between them, her appetite fleeing. “He claims he’s innocent,” she said. “I’m not sure what to do with him.”
Aset glanced to Tutmose and Senenmut, but they were still absorbed in conversation. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Have you ever wondered about the night of the khamsin?”
“What do you mean?”
The only time Hatshepsut thought about that night was when she woke up from a nightmare of a pillow pressed over her face and a pair of strong hands pressed around her neck.
“Do you think Nomti might have been involved?”
“What?”
Senenmut glanced up at the sharpness in her voice, but Aset shifted on the couch next to her. “What if Nomti knew Mensah was going to use the khamsin to sneak into your rooms? What if he allowed it to happen?”
Hatshepsut shuddered. The idea was plausible, but she didn’t care to know if Nomti had betrayed her more than once. She sipped her wine, hoping its warmth would chase off the sudden chill in her bones. “Nomti’s involvement could never be proven. And that was years ago. I can’t imagine that the two episodes would be linked.”
“No,” Aset said, “but still, it’s something to think about.”
Aset moved back to her couch and an awkward silence settled around them. Hatshepsut easily drew Tutmose into a discussion of the historical conquest of the Nine Bows, Egypt’s enemies over the ages and one of their favorite topics to debate. Aset tried several times to join in the conversation, but she knew little about the subject and had to be corrected on inaccuracies about the Hyksos and the Mitanni. Tutmose’s exasperation with his mother grew the more she tried to please him, until finally Aset ceased talking altogether and Hatshepsut had to ask her about the intricacies of basket weaving. They continued talking until their plates were empty and the slaves were ready to bring out the cucumber soup and roast goose. Still Neferure hadn’t arrived.
Tutmose stood and brushed imaginary crumbs from his kilt. The dog sat up, tensed as if ready to run after his master. “I’m going to see if I can track down Neferure.”
Aset shook her head and took a hurried sip of wine before standing. “I’ll find her—she’s probably in her room, fretting over which sheath to wear.”
“No, Mother, I’ll go,” Tutmose said.
“I’m sure he can find her,” Hatshepsut said. Perhaps a moment alone with Neferure would allow Tutmose to smooth things over.
Aset looked unsure, but she relented and sank back down on her couch. “Hurry back.”
Aset waited for Tutmose’s silhouette to disappear into the lamplight of the corridor before she spoke. “Is Neferure really ready to marry Tutmose?”
“I told her she had to be.” Hatshepsut pursed her lips. “Your son’s indiscretion left me no choice.”
Aset frowned. “I’m not pleased about the situation with Satiah myself. Tutmose should have known better.”
At least they agreed on that.
The conversation slowed. Senenmut attempted to draw Aset into a discussion of the upcoming wedding, suggesting which food to serve and what jewelry to commission for Neferure, but clearly neither was his area of expertise. Finally, they all settled into an uncomfortable silence.
And then they heard it. A feral howl splintered the night air and shattered the peace of the garden. At first Hatshepsut thought it might be Tutmose’s dog, but she realized the sound was human, not animal.
“Tutmose,” Aset said.
“Neferure.” Fear flooded Hatshepsut’s body.
Senenmut made it into the corridor first, Hatshepsut and Aset close behind him. They tore past Hatshepsut’s chambers and the palace offices, but he came to a stop just inside the gilded gate to the Hall of Women.
“No, Hatshepsut.” He grabbed her arm, his face stricken, but she pushed him off and continued into the courtyard, drawn to where Tutmose stood with his dog at the edge of a deep pool ringed with lotus-blossom tiles, the same one she had stepped into so many years ago after the banquet announcing her own betrothal to Thutmosis. The granite statue of Amun stood at the edge, the god’s face sneering at her beneath his plumed crown.
Floating below the surface of the pool was Neferure.
Her sheath billowed around her like gossamer wings. The full moon swam in the pool’s reflection, surrounding her in its cool embrace and illuminating the drowned fabric with an ethereal glow. But nothing could light Neferure’s serene face. The life had leached from her so that her skin was tinged an insubstantial white. She was a glorious butterfly, one whose tenuous hold on this world had slipped away.
Hatshepsut moaned and fell to her knees, biting her fist and closing her eyes to the image that would remain imprinted forever on her ka. Her lungs collapsed, her heart eviscerated from her heaving chest as she sank even deeper onto the floor, smothered in a veil of grief. She wanted to tuck its edges around her and dive into the black abyss to join her daughter.
She was only distantly aware of Aset’s keening behind her, of Senenmut’s shaky arms as they enveloped her to pull her from the ground. In the midst of her grief, the words of the past returned, garroting what remained of her heart.
Your name will live forever.
You will be the downfall of those you love.
Egypt will prosper, but those closest to you shall find only anguish and ruin.
She had done this. She had broken her p
romise by forcing Neferure to consent to a future she couldn’t fathom and had caused her daughter to flee this life as surely as if she’d held her under the water herself. Hatshepsut howled in pain and tore at her hair, her clothes, her skin.
It was from Hatshepsut’s sense of duty that Neferure had been borne, and it was also what had killed her.
Hatshepsut shoved Senenmut away, unable to bear his touch or the tears welling in his eyes. Stumbling to her feet, she collapsed again, almost falling into Tutmose as he comforted Aset. Her eyes locked with Aset’s.
“You did this!” Aset screamed. Black rivers ran from her kohl-lined eyes; saliva and snot dripped from her face. “You killed her!”
She lunged at Hatshepsut, but Tutmose and Senenmut held her back. It took two medjay to pull her from the garden as she spat and clawed at them. Hatshepsut almost wished they’d let Aset go. She was right.
She had killed her daughter.
“Help me move her,” she whispered to Tutmose and Senenmut, the words pulled from her throat by their roots.
Misery warped Tutmose’s handsome face. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Senenmut—he, too, had lost the only daughter he would ever have.
“Tutmose and I will get her,” Senenmut said as they approached the pool, his voice strangled.
“No.” Hatshepsut shook her head violently. “She’s my daughter.”
Looking down on the exquisite creature held in the water’s embrace, Hatshepsut’s vision blurred as her tears overflowed. She slipped and smothered the sob that threatened to escape her throat. She waded to Neferure and pulled the limp body into her arms—the warmth already fleeing with her ka. A wail broke from the back of her throat as she smoothed her daughter’s dripping hair and wiped the rivulets of water that ran down her face. She would never again hold her daughter in her arms, comfort her, tell her how much she loved her.
It took little strength to lift Neferure from the pool and into Senenmut’s waiting arms. Even with her sodden hair and clothes, she still weighed scarcely more than a fledgling. Reverently, Senenmut laid her out on the tiles, his tears anointing her forehead.
A crowd of horrified slaves had gathered. Many of them scratched their skin and ripped their clothes in a display worthy of professional mourners. Tutmose’s dog howled into the night once and then fell silent, as if announcing the departure of the god he so resembled.
Only then did Hatshepsut notice the bulge under Neferure’s waterlogged linen sash, tucked right at her heart. Hatshepsut knew what it was before she retrieved it: the ivory votive statue of Amun. Unable to serve her god in this life, Neferure had taken him with her to her death. Hatshepsut flung away the god, wincing as the statue clattered across the tiles.
“Bring her to my chambers,” Hatshepsut said.
She had to get away from the slaves, away from their howls and Tutmose’s pain. She barely waited to see Senenmut scoop the lifeless princess from the ground before blindly retracing the path to her own chambers.
Senenmut closed the door behind them and laid Neferure on the bed. The water from her hair and clothes bled onto the linen sheets.
“I need to be alone with her.” Hatshepsut choked on the words.
“Hatshepsut, this isn’t your fault.”
“Get out!” She picked up an alabaster vase and hurled it at him. It hit the wall and shattered into hundreds of sharp white pieces, each the same pale hue as Neferure’s skin.
Sobbing, she crawled into bed and clutched Neferure to her as Senenmut closed the door. The warmth of her skin had fled entirely, leaving it cold and clammy.
She was gone.
“I’m sorry, Neferure. I’m so, so sorry.” Weeping, she kissed Neferure’s cheek and breathed in the wet scent of her daughter’s hair, the waterlogged trace of sunshine.
She wanted to die, to join her daughter in the next world.
But that was an honor she would never deserve.
Chapter 30
She dreaded night.
Somehow Hatshepsut had managed to rise from bed in the days following Neferure’s death and accomplish the bare necessities to keep her kingdom running, yet she wished for the power to stop Re from setting and the moon from rising. It was in the black of night, despite the spells carved into her ivory headrest and the protective amulets tied about her wrists and neck, that the nightmares descended.
Senenmut had woken her last night and stroked her hair until she calmed, but the same nightmare tormented her each time she closed her eyes: Neferure flailing in the moonlit pool while Amun’s broken statue from the temple of Karnak chained her below the water. Some invisible force held Hatshepsut back at the water’s edge, and the god’s lips morphed into a malicious grin, his glee demonic in the face of her suffering. Her eyes would snap open to her dark chambers, her heart pounding and her scream lingering in her throat.
She often wished that Nomti had managed to kill her, that she might be waiting now in the Field of Reeds to greet Neferure after her daughter’s long, happy life.
Only one dream over the past few days had been unique. She and Neferure lay in a hammock, arms linked together and a canopy of green above them. Neferure’s contented breath fluttered on Hatshepsut’s cheek as her daughter slept. Black-and-yellow butterflies danced from flower to flower to sip sweet nectar while puffy white clouds lingered high in Nut’s belly.
Then Hatshepsut woke up.
And her arms were empty.
She thought she had discovered the bottom of her well of tears, but that dream found a hidden spring not yet tapped. Her mattress was drenched by the time she managed to dam the tears again.
Hatshepsut found no solace in knowing that Neferure would be in the Field of Reeds after the seventy days spent preparing her body had ended, that her daughter’s heart would easily pass the test of Ma’at’s scales. Neferure would be happy in the afterlife as she never had been in the mortal world, but Hatshepsut didn’t care. Her daughter belonged in this world, not in the afterlife with Anubis.
She was a monster, a mother who had killed her own child.
Her head shorn in mourning and the skin of her chest scratched to bloody ribbons, Hatshepsut knelt before a shrine of Amun and mouthed the words of what was becoming her regular prayer. She begged for forgiveness, but most of all she hoped that the curse she bore had now been fulfilled. She had sacrificed Neferure on Egypt’s altar.
She could only pray that the gods wouldn’t demand further penance.
Nut’s belly glowed pale pink with the approaching dusk. For once she was glad for the required seclusion during the seventy days of mourning, thankful to forgo the formal banquets and never-ending meetings with ambassadors and courtiers. Even so, she had asked Tutmose and Senenmut to dine in her chambers tonight. Traces of grief were etched deeper in the granite carved lines around Senenmut’s eyes and in the slump of Tutmose’s shoulders. But, then, she must look worse.
She would right something tonight, something she should have done a long time ago.
The three traded tired niceties as barefoot slaves padded out bearing tureens and platters of oxtail soup, roast quail stuffed in roast duck, white cheese dusted with cumin, and slices of melon drizzled with honey. The smells and silence were so thick, they threatened to suffocate the room.
“Tutmose.” Hatshepsut folded, then refolded her linen napkin. Would nothing ever sit right again? “I’ve been remiss in my duties by not promoting you to Supreme Commander of Egypt’s armies, an error I’d like to correct now.” She waved a hand, and Mouse appeared with a golden platter bearing Egypt’s blue war crown, the same helmet that Hatshepsut had worn in the campaign against Nubia almost fifteen years ago. It was a true work of art—blue leather with hammered gold disks and the uraeus poised to strike. “Wear it with pride.”
“Really?” Tutmose blinked, waved away the slave serving his portion of stuffed duck. His face lit like a boy’s, yet there was no doubt that Tutmose was now a man, his skin toughened from all the time he’d spent under Re
’s glare and his muscles hardened from years of training. The hawk in the nest was not born from her body, yet Hatshepsut understood him better than perhaps anyone else who had shared her blood. “You’d promote me?”
The accusation hung heavy in the air, or perhaps she only imagined it. She should have done this before, but even now she sought to placate the gods. This title might begin to atone for her mistakes while giving Tutmose a chance to make up for his carelessness with Satiah. Yet she was too weary to explain all that now.
“Your performance in the Division of Horus is exemplary,” she said. “It always has been.”
Tutmose cleared his throat and reached out to touch the blue crown with reverent hands, like a boy touching a woman for the first time. It was quite likely that this man who sat before her would relish wearing the war helmet more than he’d ever enjoy the double crown. “I’m honored,” he said. “With your permission I plan to strengthen our forces near Megiddo—I don’t trust the king of Kadesh.”
“You don’t need my permission.” She managed a smile. “You’re in charge of the military now.”
“You’ve deserved this promotion for some time,” Senenmut said. “We’re both extremely proud of you.”
The two talked about Tutmose’s plans for Megiddo, but Hatshepsut let her mind wander, eating whatever the slaves placed before her without tasting any of it. She was painfully full by the time the men finished their discussion, only a pile of quail and duck bones left. Food and misery made excellent companions.
Mouse shuffled in with a golden platter of sweet-smelling desserts, squinting as she neared the table. Mostly deaf, Mouse still insisted on serving her mistress regardless of Hatshepsut’s multiple offers of retirement, claiming she’d rather die while polishing the leather of the double crown than while reclining in luxury in a vineyard. Despite her stomach’s protests, Hatshepsut took a honey cake dotted with dried apricots, but it was as dry as sand. Senenmut claimed a papyrus basket of candied almonds, one with a pattern of pink and yellow lotus flowers. He held it out to Tutmose and Hatshepsut. “Care for one?”
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