Daughter of the Gods (11 page)

Senenmut cleared his throat. “You go in. I’ll follow in a while.”

Hatshepsut almost thanked him, but thought better of it as she sauntered back into the banquet, stepping around sticky puddles of wine and passing a woman vomiting into a painted urn held by a girl-slave. Taunting Senenmut was her favorite sport, but she couldn’t afford another slip like the one just now in the garden. She was determined not to let him see how he had managed to get under her skin.

Senenmut was entertainment, nothing more.

“W
hat do you mean, the pharaoh is indisposed?” Hatshepsut stood outside Thut’s chambers, arms akimbo as she glared at Mensah. She’d barely slept after playing hostess for her brother’s little party last night, the one he’d mysteriously disappeared from. Now she needed his official seal to demand the Sinai’s stingy governor increase the shipments of turquoise to the royal court.

“The pharaoh has given strict orders not to be disturbed until he says otherwise.” Mensah repeated his instructions, his upper lip curling into a sneer. The
medjay
on either side of the door gazed forward like statues.

“I am the Great Royal Wife.” Hatshepsut pointed out the obvious, trying to keep her tone level. “If I need to see my husband on official business, I’m sure he didn’t mean to exclude
me
.”

“The pharaoh left explicit instructions,
Hemet
.” Mensah’s voice didn’t waver, but she got the distinct impression he was enjoying his power to refuse her. “Not even you are to be allowed to breach the sanctum of his chambers.”

She arched a perfectly kohled eyebrow. Either Mensah was trying to make her life especially difficult, which was entirely likely, or Thut was hiding something.

“Why?” Her eyes narrowed. “Is he ill? Feeling the effects of too much wine?”

“I am not at liberty to say,” Mensah said. “Perhaps the two of you can discuss it this evening over dinner.”

“So I’m supposed to wait around and then scurry to my brother’s table? What crumbs shall he feed me then?” Hatshepsut dropped her hands, still holding the apparently unimportant Sinai papyrus her brother had asked her to attend to. She hadn’t gotten to bed this morning until well after Re had risen and had tossed and turned once there, reliving the scene in the garden with Senenmut until she was too exhausted to think any more.

“Fine. If you see my brother before then, please convey the message that I eagerly await his company over dinner.” She handed Mensah the rolled papyrus, now rumpled from being squeezed in her fists. “The pharaoh needs to sign this before then. The messenger is waiting to begin the trip to the Sinai to deliver it.”

Mensah bowed and took the papyrus in his thick sausage fingers. “I’ll give it to him when I see him.”

“Thank you.” Hatshepsut was curious to discover what her brother was hiding, but at the same time she didn’t really want to know. Anything Thut made a point to hide from her never ended well, including the frogs he had snuck into her bed when they were young. Hatshepsut hoped for her brother’s sake that this latest subterfuge wouldn’t be as juvenile.

By dinnertime she was starving and more than a little on edge, her stomach rumbling at the thought of food as she snapped at Sitre and Mouse while they dressed her. Mensah bowed this time, a little too obsequiously for her taste, and opened the doors to Thut’s apartments to allow her entrance.

Reed mats softened the pharaoh’s tiled floor, surrounded by a plethora of artifacts sent from foreign countries whose ambassadors were eager to please Egypt and her divine ruler. There was a golden elephant statue from Nubia that Hatshepsut had pretended to ride when she was young, a giant alabaster urn carved with griffins from Akkad, and a two-headed limestone stele from the Phoenicians. Slaves melted into the shadowed murals as they bowed to the Great Royal Wife amid tables strewn with tureens and platters. Hatshepsut touched a rose granite statue of Amun, one of the many likenesses of the hidden god of the air peppered throughout the room. Kipa slept atop the head of another across the room, her tail twitching each time she snored. Thut had decided to keep Amun’s statues when he had redecorated, perhaps as an invocation to the supreme god to guide him, as he had their father.

Hatshepsut rounded the corner into the cozy dining room, but stopped short as she saw its lone occupants ensconced on a single couch, their limbs intimately entwined. Her brother seemed to be feeding the woman from a bowl on his lap, her eyes closed and full lips open in anticipation.

The girl with gazelle eyes from the feast.

“And who is this?” Hatshepsut asked without thinking.

Thut’s hand stopped, a dripping bite of green melon suspended midair. His companion’s eyes snapped open in surprise. She seemed to be of sturdy
rekhyt
stock, with eyes the color of wet earth during the Inundation and thick bones beneath her many curves. The girl scrambled to the floor in a clumsy
henu
,
her face hidden under the thick braids of a very cheap Nubian wig.

“This is Aset.” Thut gave Hatshepsut a sheepish look and sucked the sticky melon juice from his fingers. His statement explained everything and nothing. The woman kept her eyes averted, too frightened to meet the gaze of the Great Royal Wife, as he helped her to her feet.

“Aset?” Hatshepsut asked, dumbfounded.

“Aset of Waset,” the girl said. “Dancer in the temple of Hathor.”

A common name for a common girl.

Hatshepsut rubbed her temples. “I remember you from the feast last night.”

“Yes,
Hemet
.”

“And your parents?”

“I have no family.” Aset raised her eyes. “I never knew my father, and my mother passed to Amenti a few months ago.”

Hatshepsut recognized the grief in Aset’s voice and, despite herself, felt sympathy for this little dancer. Life in a temple was easier than most, but it would still be a lonely existence without any family.

“One day you shall be reunited with your mother in the Field of Reeds, as Thut and I shall be greeted by our father when we pass to the West.” Hatshepsut took a seat opposite the one recently occupied by the two of them. This promised to be an interesting meal.

She motioned to a boy-slave to pour her a glass of wine, hoping it hadn’t been too watered. Thut cleared his throat and signaled to the waiting slaves as he took his seat. Aset sat with him, but put a decent space between them. At least the girl had manners.

“Aset will be staying in the Hall of Women.” Thut took off his gold bracelet, then put it on again. It was obvious he expected a challenge.

“I gathered as much,” Hatshepsut said. Filling the Hall of Women was Thut’s right and duty as pharaoh, but she’d wait until they were alone to give him an earful for surprising her like this. He’d made her look like a fool, yet this meant Thut would no longer monopolize her bed each night. She turned to Aset. “The gardens in the Hall of Women are lovely this time of year. The purple saffron blossoms are my favorite part of Akhet
.
”

Who knew if her brother’s interest in this girl would outlast the Nile’s floods.

Thut’s shoulders relaxed and he mouthed two words to her.

Thank you.

Hatshepsut didn’t wait for the others to serve themselves as she tore a tiny piece of roasted quail from its bone and dipped it in garlic sauce. She would be civilized toward the woman her brother had chosen. It wasn’t as if Aset had a choice.

Then again, neither did she.

•   •   •

The morning light slanted through Hatshepsut’s windows to bathe her in Re’s golden touch. She yawned lazily, stretching from fingers to toes. She had spent a delicious night utterly and completely alone in her bed. And she had actually slept. Hatshepsut was more than happy to gift the rest of Thut’s evenings to Aset as long as he spared her the occasional night. Great Royal Wife or not, she could ensure her future power only by fulfilling her duty of birthing the future hawk in the nest.

Yet there was plenty of time for that.

As Thut and his newest consort would undoubtedly be indisposed again today, this was the perfect time to attend to something he might not approve of, although Hatshepsut had already received his permission for the first part of her plan.

“Mouse.” Hatshepsut poked her head into the sitting room and beckoned the dwarf. “Please ask Dagi to have the royal barque ready in an hour. I’d like to go across the river.” She bit her lip. “And I have a message for you to deliver to Senenmut as well.” Hatshepsut scrawled a note in hieratic, too excited to waste time executing the formal hieroglyphics on the papyrus.

“And do you require an answer from
Neb
Senenmut?” Mouse asked.

It seemed strange to hear Senenmut’s name associated with a noble title, a recent gift from Thutmosis to his favored adviser. “No,” Hatshepsut said. “Just deliver the message.”

Mouse bowed and scurried off on her missions as fast as her squat little legs would carry her. It didn’t take long for her to return.

“I took the liberty of having the kitchens stock the boat with a basket of food.” Mouse winked. “For two.”

“Two?” Hatshepsut was already dressed in a simple white sheath and soft calfskin sandals, but the Nubian wig Sitre had chosen remained on its ebony stand. Hatshepsut checked the copper mirror and tucked a tuft of dark hair behind her ear. “And who will be joining me for lunch?”

Mouse shrugged, a wicked gleam in her eye. “I thought perhaps
Neb
Senenmut.”

“We’re picking out a spot for my tomb, Mouse, not going on a picnic.” Hatshepsut hadn’t planned to spill the secret, but she didn’t want Mouse thinking this was all a ploy for her to spend time with Senenmut. It wasn’t.

At least she didn’t think it was.

“Oh.” Mouse’s lips twisted into a pout. Apparently the idea of her mistress cavorting on the sands of the West Bank was more interesting than determining one’s eternal resting place.

“But thank you for the food. We’ll probably be gone all day, and I’m already starving.”

“Enjoy yourself. And try not to get dirty.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Hatshepsut called over her shoulder. She couldn’t wait to be free of the palace, at least for one morning. A giggle slipped under the doorway as she passed Thut’s apartments, followed by her brother’s muffled voice. She stopped in her tracks.

She’d heard those same sounds before. In the garden that night of the Festival of Intoxication.

She cared less that Thut had been so brazen as to have a tryst with Aset in the gardens than that she had been in the same garden alone with Senenmut. Thut loved Senenmut, but not enough to forgive him the treason of a private interlude in a moonlit garden with his Great Royal Wife. It was only by the grace of the gods that Thut hadn’t stumbled upon Hatshepsut and her adviser. Senenmut wouldn’t have survived the encounter.

Her adviser.

Hatshepsut stopped walking. Senenmut was loyal, someone with the intelligence to assist her and the backbone to tell her when she was wrong. A rare gifts from the gods, even if it was in the guise of an arrogant and ambitious
rekhyt
.

“May I help you,
Hemet?”
Mensah appeared out of thin air. “I’m sorry to inform you that the pharaoh—”

“I’m not here to see my brother. I’m on my way to the docks.”

“Of course.” Mensah bowed and stepped out of her way. The soft shuffle of his sandals seemed to follow her, but when she turned to ask if he needed something, he had disappeared.

Good. The last thing she wanted was for Mensah to report to Thut the details of her trip across the Nile.

Sunlight hit Hatshepsut in the face as she emerged from the palace. She wanted to run, but restrained herself to walk at a dignified pace down the path to the river’s edge.

Senenmut was waiting for her, standing on the dock next to the sailor Dagi.

Hatshepsut attempted to suppress the grin that threatened to break upon her face, but she had as much luck as squashing a sneeze.

“A lovely day for a boat ride, isn’t it?” Senenmut asked as she ap- proached, a lazy smile spreading across his lips and making her suddenly warm. He, too, had dressed casually for today’s excursion—bareheaded and wearing only a short kilt. His single adornment was Thoth’s leather armband high on his bicep.

“It certainly is,” Hatshepsut said.

Dagi bowed and gestured for the two to board a painted cedar ship that loomed high over the other boats. A giant Eye of Horus was emblazoned in gold on the side, and red and white royal pennants snapped in the breeze. A grin crinkled the sailor’s ruddy cheeks. “I’m mighty pleased to be summoned today. I feared the crew and I’d be put out to pasture after Osiris Tutmose was taken to his tomb.”

“No such luck, my friend.” Hatshepsut boarded, and Senenmut followed behind her. “I’ve plans for the valley, so your services will be needed more often.”

“Good.” Dagi shoved off thick ropes that tied the boat to the dock and freed the vessel before he stepped aboard. “That’s what I like to hear. Wouldn’t want the wife to make me take up farming again.” His grimace elicited a chuckle from Hatshepsut and Senenmut. “Them dusty old sails can’t wait to be unfurled. And your little attendant lugged down two baskets the size of baby rhinos.”

She smiled. “As long as they’re not so heavy that they sink the ship.”

Dagi seemed to contemplate that. “I doubt they will. Close, but not quite.”

Hatshepsut and Senenmut ignored the goat-hide awning and took their seats on the prow to enjoy Re’s morning light, far enough from the rowers to be out of earshot.

“So, is this a pleasure cruise or does your invitation have a more sinister undertone?” Senenmut closed his eyes and leaned back, hands clasped behind his head.

Her tongue tied itself in knots at the sight of him in the sun, the lines of lean muscle stretching across his chest and shoulders. Why in the name of Amun had she asked Senenmut to accompany her? Sometimes she doubted her own sanity.

The striped sail snapped in the breeze behind them, a rainbow of red, yellow, and blue. Today the Nile sparkled green in Re’s warmth. They passed wooden water wheels turning lazily in the muddy channels that fed Egypt’s crops of flax, barley, and emmer.

“Hatshepsut?” Senenmut peered at her, his brow furrowed.

She took a deep breath and tucked her feet beneath her; she liked looking at him. “By
sinister
, do you mean ‘Is there work involved?’ Because there might be.”

He shook his head, eyes closed again. “A morning boat ride on the Nile, the sun on my face, and a picnic. I knew it seemed too good to be true.”