She grew paler and thinner as the days went by.
At last, weak and ill, she wrote a message to Senmut in the secret code she had told him she would never use again.
* * * *
Hatshepsut was informed about her daughter's deteriorating health and paid her a brief visit. She was shocked to see how thin Neferure was, and spent her time ordering her favourite dishes and insisting that she eat them.
She told her Amenemheb was not being punished, nor would he be if he stayed away. “You are both young, and I can understand how such a romance developed. But you are old enough now to understand our lives are not our own. Our position demands sacrifice if we are to maintain the good relationship between the gods and Khemet. See how late the inundation has come. We have to be so careful...” Her voice trailed away as she returned to her own thoughts and anxieties, but Neferure interpreted her words as meaning that the Two Lands had almost been plunged into the horrors of famine because of her own rebellious act. She turned her face to the wall and large tears ran down her cheeks.
Her mother rose, unaware of the true despair in her daughter's heart. She had never understood how very different Neferure was from herself.
“You have had time to mourn your lost love,” she said briskly. “I have given you time. But now you must stop. You must take your place again. You must eat. You must grow strong. You must face the world. I want no more of this hiding in your room and sulking."
Pharaoh swept out of the room without a backward glance.
The old nurse moved forward anxiously and tried to take the girl in her arms, but Neferure pulled away.
* * * *
Hatshepsut had her own troubles. With the coming of the inundation, she felt it was possible that Amun-Ra had forgiven her, but every night the young man with the dark and smouldering eyes who claimed to be her son, appeared in her chamber. He never spoke. When she demanded that he leave her alone, he smiled. When she tried to reason with him and asked him to explain his presence, he smiled. She pleaded. She even wept. But always he smiled that cold, cold smile and then faded away.
She went to Amun-Ra and asked what she must do.
But he too did not reply.
She neglected her official duties, and Hapuseneb became a tower of strength by deputising for her on every possible occasion. There may have been whispers at this arrangement, but he soon quelled them with a glare of his hard, black eyes. On the whole, the people respected him, but feared him. He was a more formidable man than Senmut, and less predictable.
The only thing Hatshepsut seemed to be still interested in was the arrival of her obelisks from the south. She believed in her heart that when they rose in their full glory in his House of Millions of Years, and when the praise-poems were carved on them and the electrum covering gleamed in the sunlight, surely then her father, Amun-Ra, would fully forgive her and rejoice with her.
She was often to be seen gazing out over the river towards the south, straining to catch the first glimpse of the barges bearing the granite monoliths.
Something of her old vivacity returned as soon as they were drawn up at the docks. Impatiently she went aboard as the first wooden gangplank was lowered, not waiting for the rich royal carpet to be laid for her sandalled feet. She stroked the smooth sides of the crystalline pink granite and traced with her fingers some of the praises to her lord she had ordered to be carved.
A throne had accompanied the barges, placed high on deck, with ostrich feather fans at its side waving in the moving air as though fanning an invisible majesty. This was to show that her ka had accompanied the obelisks on their journey from the mountain out of which they had been cut and would be with them to the moment of their erection. Only when the images of herself and her ka before Amun-Ra were cut into the rock of the small crowning pyramid would the throne and the fans leave the site.
The crew cheered as she took her place in full physical majesty on the throne. And then, in it, she was lifted high and carried triumphantly from barge to barge to inspect all that they had brought with them. Some said later that they had seen tears in her eyes when she looked at the obelisks, but this was only whispered, for pharaohs were supposed to be above ordinary human emotions.
Day after day she sat at the quayside on the throne that had accompanied the barges, watching the activity. Praise-singers ran up and down the banks, waving palm and tamarisk fronds. Crowds of people, some from very far away, pressed as close as they could get behind her guards to see what they could of the great event and the woman who had caused it to happen. The priests of Amun-Ra, hundreds of them of every rank, dressed in their best robes of office, passed up and down, up and down, covering the obelisks in clouds of incense.
With the river high, it was possible to manoeuvre the two giants quite near to the temple. Then they had to be taken overland; thousands of men pulling and heaving were employed with ropes and rollers.
Hatshepsut on her throne accompanied them every inch of the way.
The whole activity of placing the obelisks, carving them and erecting them took many weeks, and in all that time Hatshepsut showed no interest in anything else. Hapuseneb virtually ran the country, and Neferure, forgotten, grew weaker and weaker.
Hatshepsut had grown hardened to the presence of her phantom son and chose to ignore him. Her obelisks were nearly ready to be raised; and she believed that when they were, his unwelcome presence would cease. She would be back in Amun-Ra's favour, and no one would be allowed to threaten or discomfort her.
But one night something different happened that really frightened her.
She woke as she always did when her son's ghost appeared. She was about to turn over away from him, as she had grown accustomed to doing, when she noticed that this time there were two figures standing where there was usually only one. Startled, she sat up and had a closer look. This time the young man with the cold and accusing eyes had his arm around a young woman, who was weeping. Hatshepsut's heart gave a lurch.
“Neferure!” she cried, leaping out of bed. But even as she called out, the two figures totally disappeared.
Trembling, she drew on her robes and summoned her women. Together they rushed down the corridors of the palace until they came to Neferure's quarters. There they found Neferure apparently safely asleep in bed.
But Hatshepsut was not satisfied and insisted that she be woken.
With a white face the woman who had been given the task turned to the Pharaoh.
“Majesty,” she whispered, “the princess will not wake!"
“What?"
Hatshepsut flung herself forward and turned her daughter over. She had been lying curled up like a very young child, her thumb in her mouth.
She was dead.
Hatshepsut was ashen. The phantom had taken her.
She fell down on the floor beside the girl's bed and took her body in her arms and sobbed and sobbed. The women stood back, clustered together, both horrified and afraid.
What had she done? She had destroyed her two children, the two precious living beings that had been entrusted to her. She had been a good king and her country had benefited in many, many ways during her rule, but her own flesh and blood, her own babies, she had betrayed.
Suddenly her anger turned on Amun-Ra. She had done everything for him! She had made him the most important god in the Two Lands. She had endowed his temples with priceless gifts. She had strengthened his priests above all other priests. One mistake! Just one mistake, and all that was apparently for nothing. He had turned his face from her, and she felt she couldn't win him back though she erected a hundred obelisks and covered them with all the gold in Nubia.
The women were shocked at her unrestrained grief and did not know what to do. None stepped forward to comfort her.
Hatshepsut Maat-ka-Ra, beautiful and powerful Pharaoh of the Two Lands, had no one to turn to in the hour of her despair.
* * * *
Senmut did not receive Neferure's sad little message as soon as he might have,
for, after the experience with the book, he did not return to the city but walked out into the desert.
Now, wandering far from the city of the dead and the city of the living in the hour just before dawn, Senmut shivered, and not only from the chilling air. The ancient spells were indeed strong.
But why? Why? He asked himself this question over and over again. Why be told where the book was to be found and not be allowed to take it?
The more he thought about it the less he understood.
At last, exhausted, he sat down on a rocky knoll and watched the huge red-gold orb of the sunrise directly behind Imhotep's mighty brainchild, the great stepped pyramid of King Djoser. For a long moment the rising sun seemed to rest on the smooth white platform of polished limestone at the top, and the whole structure was suffused with gleaming golden light. Then it lifted off like the first phoenix taking flight from the first mound.
Around him the dark and undulating desert began to shimmer like the primeval ocean.
“O Lord of the Horizon, Falcon of Millions of Years, illuminate my eye with thine Eye. Teach me to see beyond the immeasurable Dark."
Senmut shut his eyes against the strengthening glare of the sun, but through his lids he could still see the blaze of glory, a disk-shaped hole of raging fire: the Eye that saw into his heart.
Senmut kneeled down in the sand and lowered himself face forward until his forehead felt the cool desert beneath it. Still the after-image of that disk of fire stayed with him. He could not shut it out. It burned into him. It consumed him.
He knew what he had done wrong. He had sought the book to satisfy his own curiosity and to give himself glory. He had thought that when he found it, it would be his, to use as he liked.
Djoser, with his cobra vision, had seen that while gazing into his eyes.
Imhotep had seen that as he carried the book away.
Where was there to hide from his shame?
Senmut did not know how he was ever to rise to his feet again.
He had been seen, not as the great and skilled viceroy and sage, the champion and companion of the Pharaoh, the creator of beautiful and eternal buildings, but as he was in his heart...
At last, when the heat of the sun on his back became too much to bear, he dragged himself to his feet and stood gazing out into the western desert that had no limit. He felt like walking out into it and never returning. He had had within his grasp what he had sought all his life, and he had failed it and lost it—not only for himself but for all mankind.
Putting one foot after the other, he began to walk. He did not know where he was going and he did not care. The sun rose higher—Kheper-Ra in its full divinity. Sweat poured from his skin, and his eyes burned as he strained to see through the heat haze ahead of him.
Did he see figures? Was there a procession coming towards him through the flickering and shimmering air?
He stood still, blinking, trying to clear his vision.
In the forefront was Ptah, the Creator of manifest form, with his close-fitting skullcap, beside him his consort, Sekhmet, the Destroyer, with the fearsome head of a lioness, her eyes red with rage. He had offended against the cosmic order—and he would suffer for it.
“I am suffering for it,” he whispered with a dry and parched throat. His lips were cracked, his stomach and head aching with hunger and thirst.
Behind these two were others: Amun, with his tall plumed crown and his consort, Mut, lion-faced, vulture-crowned. Hathor and Horus, Khnum and Neith, Isis and Osiris, Nepthys and Set. Djehuti and Seshat ... The procession stretched to the horizon, and all the myriad of gods were there in their male and female aspects, the great spirits who hovered over the world and played their role in the immense unfolding drama of each and every human soul.
Senmut fell to his knees and pleaded for forgiveness. Tears streamed down his dusty cheeks, and his throat constricted with the words that were choking him yet could not be said.
It seemed to him Sekhmet reached him first, and he fell into her darkness like a lost soul into the Void. No man could have regretted more what he had done. No man could have pleaded more desperately for a second chance.
He opened his eyes. He looked up into the impassive and curious face of a sand-dweller, a Bedouin. Behind him his tribe were gathered, waiting to see if the stranger would live or die. They had already searched for his valuables and found Pharaoh's seal ring. Was it they who had approached him through the heat haze?
His head was shaded and he was given water from a goatskin bag. Weakly he sat up and was propped against some baggage. He looked from face to face. These were a people who lived outside civilisation as he knew it. They were a people always on the move, fading into the distant deserts as soon as anyone tried to tax them and make them settle, emerging sometimes to trade the furs of the desert animals and the carpets richly woven from the wool of their flocks dyed with colours no city-dweller had access to.
They were a rough and mysterious people, their ancestors different from the orderly and law-abiding Egyptians, their gods savage and uncouth. Yet their women wore jewellery a queen might be pleased to wear—crystals drilled through, pieces of ostrich shell and bone, all linked together with beads of gold. So much gold! They were ragged, and poor, yet gold was swinging from their hair and their ears. Gold was coiled around their wrists, arms, fingers and necks.
The sand-dwellers had always known where to find gold and turquoise and amethyst. It was their trading which had first alerted pharaohs and officials to seek out the best areas for mining.
Senmut had not come in close contact with them before, though with his interest in languages, he had learned a little of their speech once. He used it now.
He was welcomed and given food. It was not often they came across a river-dweller who had taken the trouble to learn their language.
Senmut stayed with the sand-dwellers for some time, moving with them, camping with them, learning their ways. He found comfort in the fact that the complexities of his life were reduced to the minimum—walking in the cool of the morning and evening, raising the black woollen tents at night, striking them at dawn. He learned to hunt for his food. He learned to go without drink for extraordinary lengths of time. He learned to listen to their stories and sing their songs. He learned and learned and learned, but told them nothing about himself. It was as though Senmut had died and the man who was with them, clad like one of them, had newly sprung from the desert the day they found him. They wondered if he was a criminal escaping retribution, but did not question him. They watched as his clumsy attempts to live their life gradually gave way to skill and facility.
It was when he brought down a fierce lioness single-handed and received their enthusiastic approbation that he decided he was ready to return to the river. He looked at the animal's golden coat and its once magnificent and powerful limbs lying flaccid and helpless, and he knew the life of the hunter was not for him. For the first time he missed the life of the river-dwellers. It was good that he had lived so close to the elements for so long. In the old life he had forgotten how physical life could be, how insecure and primitive. But here he had almost forgotten how subtle and complex and interesting the life of the mind could be. He needed both.
He told the sand-dwellers he was leaving them.
They did not try to dissuade him, but gave him gifts and made speeches of farewell.
At the very last their chief held out to him Hatshepsut's seal ring. Nothing had ever been said about their taking it.
* * *
Chapter 14
Hatshepsut and her husband had had no more children, but the great Se-quenen-Ra and Aah-hetep, who had founded the dynasty, had had other children besides Nefertari and Ahmose, and through one of them, in direct bloodline, Hatshepsut found her heir, Meryt-Ra.
She now took the young princess into closer contact with the royal household and began to groom her for her role. She even went so far as to add her own name, Hatshepsut, to the girl's. She would never take Neferure's pl
ace, for, now that her daughter was dead, Hatshepsut realised just how much she had loved her. But she was determined that when she herself died, someone would rule Egypt with the true royal blood flowing in their veins.
She had intended Neferure to be Pharaoh like herself, but now regretted very much how hard she had driven the girl to satisfy her own ambitions. She would not make the same mistake with Meryt-Ra. She was sure the girl would make an adequate queen, but she did not have the drive of will necessary to rule a country. Hatshepsut Maat-ka-Ra decided to bow to the inevitable and settle for marrying the princess to Men-kheper-Ra.
In the moments of her deepest despair after Neferure's death she thought of stepping back from the position she had created for herself and letting Men-kheper-Ra have his head. She had had many good years of power and had achieved an enormous amount in the Two Lands. She knew there was whispering and manoeuvring for her overthrow among Men-kheper-Ra's supporters. She felt no guilt about what she had done, but she was suddenly very, very tired.
* * * *
When Senmut returned to Waset, lean and brown from his desert sojourn, he found her in this mood. He expected rage because he had been away so long and so mysteriously, but he was not subjected to it. She was at her lowest ebb and needed a friend.
The news of Neferure's death devastated him. With tears in his eyes, he clutched her little note pleading for him to come to her at once. He had failed her. Once again he had failed.
But this time regret strengthened rather than weakened him. What was done could not be undone, but perhaps something could be salvaged from the ruins for the future.
He listened to Hatshepsut's words of despair and agreed with her that it would be a good time to give up the throne. He suggested they marry and retire from public life to one of her numerous estates.
“Let Men-kheper-Ra take the strain of kingship. You have suffered it enough."
He took her in his arms and stroked her silken skin. She did not respond to him as she once would have done, but neither did she draw away.
Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun Page 21
