King and Goddess (25 page)

He rather doubted it. He had by then been some years in the
queen’s service. He stood guardian already to the princess Neferure, and held a
handful of offices besides. Idleness had never vexed him; as for boredom, he
barely knew the meaning of the word.

And here was the youngest of Hat-Nufer’s sons, a man in
years but never in responsibility. He lacked the petulance of most petty
lordlings, but he certainly had the air of ennui.

“Suppose,” Senenmut said, “that I make you steward of my
estate. Would that be too dull a duty?”

Amonhotep did not leap up in eagerness, but neither did he
recoil as if in insult. “I could learn to like it,” he said. “May I have
hunting parties?”

“Not too often,” Senenmut said, “and not too extravagant.
You’ll have an allowance, paid at each new moon. If you exceed it, I’ll give
you no more till the next new moon. If you fall into debt, I’ll not lift you
out.”

“You won’t need to,” said Amonhotep with the confidence of
the young. “I can cipher—I was good at that, though you’ll not likely remember.
I’ll keep a good reckoning of your accounts.”

“I do remember,” Senenmut said, “though the shock of your
expulsion from the Temple of Amon rather obscured the pleasure of it.”

Amonhotep neither blushed nor avoided Senenmut’s stare. “Ah.
Well. I couldn’t sit still. It was so dull—except for the numbers.”

“Setting fire to the store of papyrus was hardly a proper
means of alleviating boredom,” Senenmut observed dryly.

“It was only the scrap-heap,” Amonhotep said, “as you know
very well. And they put it out directly. It never threatened the best stock,
nor would I have let it.”

“Which,” said Senenmut, “is why you were merely expelled and
not whipped till you bled.” He sighed. “Ah well. That’s years past, and you say
you’ve grown wiser. I’ll trust you to keep a good accounting of my estate.”

Amonhotep regarded him narrowly. “You will send a man or two
along to assist me. Won’t you? To make sure.”

“Would you respect me if I didn’t?”

“No,” Amonhotep said. He bounded to his feet. “When do I
begin?”

“In the morning,” Senenmut said.

The gods knew this for certain: he had never been as lively
as that, even when he was young. His brother grinned, saluted him, and trod
lightly out into the evening, no doubt to while it away in wine and song and a
woman or two.

Senenmut had a slight leaning toward wine. Song he loved,
but not tonight. Women . . .

He sighed again, deeper this time, with more of resignation
than of regret. The queen had indicated that she would rest tonight. Tomorrow
was a festival day, with rites in the temples, processions, feasts and high
audiences, all of which she must adorn with her presence. It was not that she
could not sleep in his arms; it was what else she would want to do, that could
run far into the night.

No doubt of it, he thought as he poured wine into his best
silver cup, the one that had come from far away in Asia, with a herd of horses
running one by one around the rim. They were no longer as young as they had
been, he and she. Not old, no, not yet; but he was past thirty, and she was
near it.

He sipped the strong sweet wine, resting for a moment in the
memory of her face. How swiftly time flew, yet how slowly it could pass,
bearing them all to the sanctuary of their tombs.

His mood was strange tonight, not dark, but not light,
either. He had no inclination toward his bed. When he sought his garden, the
last light was fading from the sky.

It was the season that in Asia they called winter, cold to
his thin southern blood. He wrapped a lionskin about him, his brother Ahotep’s
gift, that that bold soldier had caught and killed on some campaign or other.
It was warm, and smelled still, a little, of lion.

One of the servants set a lamp in the niche by the door. He
sat on the edge of its light, watching the stars come out. It was astonishingly
quiet. The bustle and hum of his house under the sun had died to a murmur. Now
that the women’s war was ended, no one rent the night with contention. Amonhotep
had gone out; Ahotep was on night-duty in the palace—as he had arranged to do
every night since the war began.

Senenmut was as nearly alone as he could ever be. He thought
briefly of going to the stable to visit the Dawn Wind and perhaps offer her a sweet;
but he was too lazy to move.

Perhaps Amonhotep had the right of it. Perhaps he did rest
too seldom. But there was so much to do. All that he did, the queen did and
more; how could he retreat, when she knew even less peace than he?

“There’s rest enough in the tomb,” he said, “if I want it
even then.”

The night breathed about him. The stars stared coldly down.
The moon, the blind eye of Horus, rose slowly over the roof of his house. It
was waxing but not yet full. He paid it reverence as a wise man should.

He should go in. Nightwalkers and demons of the dark could
walk even within walls, with the moon to guide them. Still he lingered. If he
had been unwise to trust Amonhotep with the management of his estate, and hence
of his horses, he would learn it quickly, and perhaps to his grief. But he
could hardly call back the gift, now that it was given.

He shook his head at himself. The moon invited him to rest
in its quiet, but he could not stop the yapping and circling of his mind. Best
go in, pour another cup of wine, sleep if he could. The morning came early, and
the festival in which he had a notable part. He had a new office: Steward of
Amon. He managed the estates of the god much as he had given Amonhotep leave to
manage Senenmut’s own.

In the court they called him Mighty of Offices, not seeming
to know that he heard, or to care. He had chosen to take the title as a
compliment. The envy in it could not diminish him. Only in the night, under the
moon, did he stop to wonder when the weight of all his offices would bow him
down.

“Not yet,” he said abruptly, briskly, rising and gathering
his lionskin about him. “By the gods’ mercy, not ever. They made me to serve my
queen. No one serves her better.”

Which no doubt made him a braggart; but it was no less true
for that. Grinning at himself, clutching his lionskin, he went in to the light
and the warmth and the sweet headiness of the wine.

Somehow, while no one was looking, the child Neferure had
become a woman. She was if anything more beautiful than her mother, and willful
with it, without her mother’s firm good sense.

In that she reminded Senenmut of Amonhotep. Like him she had
no such burden of duties as had weighed down her mother. She was queen, and
must rule to some degree, but under her mother’s regency she had little to do
but be beautiful, tyrannize her servants, and try to evade Senenmut’s quelling
hand.

She was, like Amonhotep, enormously and dangerously bored.
The duties of a queen did not greatly interest her. She lacked her mother’s
tolerance for tedium; nor did she seem to love the Two Lands as Hatshepsut did.

“You take too much for granted,” Senenmut was driven to snap
at her, one day when she was particularly obstreperous. She had agreed to
attend an audience with an embassy from Lagash, but had sat through it
speechless and sullen while her mother exerted herself to be charming. She
would have left before it properly ended, had not Senenmut all but sat on her.

When at last he did allow her to leave, it was to herd her
into her workroom and stand over her while she sulked through an hour of
reading and ciphering.

“Truly,” he said at last in pure exasperation, “you know
neither gratitude nor sense. You are Great Royal Wife in the Great House of
Egypt. You have duties and obligations. You were born for them. The gods made
you a goddess, but no such gift is without price.”

She sneered at him. “Oh, please! I’ve heard it a thousand
times before. Can’t you think of something else to beat me about the head with?
If I’m the queen, then where is the king? Why does he get to play with his
little wooden soldiers while I have to sit through days of crashing boredom?”

“The king,” Senenmut said through gritted teeth, “is
learning the arts of a man.”

“It isn’t manly to sit in audience while bearded foreigners
babble on and on about nothing?”

“When you were eight years old,” Senenmut said, “you enjoyed
a child’s freedom, too. You are a woman now. You should learn to think and act
as one.”

“Oh, don’t I?” She arched her back and tilted her chin and
sleeked at him like a cat, as women did in the market when they would drive the
young men wild. “Am I a woman, really? Do I look like one? Am I beautiful? Do
you love me?”

Senenmut dared not laugh. Pride was so fragile when one was
young; and this was a queen, than whom nothing could be prouder. “Of course you
are a woman,” he said, “and of course I love you. I’ve known you since you were
born.”

She hissed and flounced and abandoned her wanton posing—and
not before time, either. “Oh, you are so dull! Everyone is dull. The king is
dullest of all. He’s such a child. Will he never be a man?”

Ah, thought Senenmut. He could remind her that she had known
since she married a child barely weaned, that she must wait long years until he
could love her as a man loves a woman. But young womanhood did not want to hear
what it had agreed to while it was still a child. The blood was hot; boredom
was fierce, made worse by resentment that she must be queen while her king
indulged himself in the pleasures of youth.

Best cut that off before it grew and flowered into hatred.
“Here,” said Senenmut. “Since you clearly have no mind for anything useful,
shall we do something outrageous?”

She brightened at once, though she was wary still. She knew
him too well to expect that such pleasure could come without a price. “What?
The chariot again?”

“Actually,” he said, “no. I was thinking of something truly
different. Have you ever seen a house that was not a palace?”

“I went to Lord Hapu’s villa once,” she said.

“That’s nearly as big as the White Hall in Memphis,”
Senenmut said, “and somewhat more imposing. No: I mean a real house. Mine.”

There. He had caught her. She looked herself again, the
Neferure whom he had loved so long, bright-eyed and laughing, clapping her
hands. “Your house? Oh, can we? We never have.” She darkened abruptly. “There
will be a reason why I can’t go. Someone will stop me.”

“I don’t think so,” Senenmut said.

“Then why did you never invite me before?” she asked with
devastating logic.

He looked her in the eye and told her the truth. “I never
thought of it. You have this palace, the palace in Memphis, the palace in
Abydos, the hunting lodge in—”

“They are all so dull,” she said: her old refrain, begun
anew.

“So,” he said. “My house is dull, too, but it’s a different
kind of dull. For one thing, my mother is in it.”

That made her smile again. “I do like your mother. She’s
never flustered when she talks to me.”

“Nothing flusters my mother,” Senenmut said. “Here, will you
come? We’ll take one maid—Tuyu, I think. She can hold her tongue when she’s
told to.”

“And my monkey,” said Neferure. “He’ll come, too. Tuyu can
hold him.”

Senenmut drew breath to refuse, but thought better of it.
One dog-nosed monkey and one discreet little maid would not encumber them
unduly. They were fetched quickly enough, the monkey clinging to Tuyu’s neck
and chittering nervously at Senenmut.

“There,” he said to it, “stop that. You’re going exploring.”

The monkey grimaced at him, baring formidable fangs.
Senenmut grinned back. Senenmut had excellent teeth for his age: not too badly
blunted, nor too yellow, and missing only one or two. The monkey subsided,
startled, muttering to itself.

~~~

They were careful as they went abroad, to attract no
notice. Neferure was only a little more elegantly clad than her maid; her
ornaments were almost plain, and her wig was such as any wellborn woman might
wear.

She advanced with an air of grand adventure, taking the way
that Senenmut walked every day. Her presence transformed it from daily
ordinariness to a kind of well-worn splendor.

Neferure had forgotten her sulks and her ennui. She would
have pressed ahead if Senenmut had not stretched his stride. The monkey had
left the maid’s shoulder to cling to its mistress’ neck, peering through the
plaits of her wig and chittering at people who passed.

It was remarkable how few people spared them a glance.
Senenmut was noticed: he was expected; it was known that he passed every day on
foot from his house to the palace, commanding a chair only when he was ill or
indisposed. His companions were nigh invisible in the company of his escort,
his guards and the servants whose number and quality proclaimed the loftiness
of his estate. That they hung about idle while he labored in his queen’s
service was an irony that he could, in wry moments, appreciate.

The whole gaudy procession amused Neferure to no end. She
was accustomed to far greater, but she had never walked among the servants, nor
been jostled when she lagged, and hissed at for a sluggard. The maid Tuyu
bristled, but Neferure’s glare restrained her when she would have spoken.

Senenmut might not have seen, had he not been inclined to
wander a bit himself, leaving the servants to maintain the dignity of his rank.
Tall portly Ptahotep with his air of mighty consequence and his complete lack
of measurable wits made a fine semblance of a personage; he hardly needed to be
persuaded to stride just behind the four toplofty guardsmen, nose in the air,
condescending to notice nothing and no one.

Neferure had this much of a queen’s training: she did not
burst out laughing in the middle of the processional way. She had no parasol,
either, to protect her soft ivory skin; but Tuyu was far more alarmed by that
than she.