Yet I have never acknowledged his supremacy. He is not the chosen of the gods. He does not have the blood royal. He was never inducted into the Mysteries of Osiris as I was, by my late father the Pharaoh, may he live, who intended me to rule. The coronation of the child was a hastily organised, superficial affair: He did not grasp the cobra, nor run around the white walls at Memphis, nor did he shoot off the symbolic arrows.
But they did crown him and it made me sick. I, who had been the Queen of the Two Lands, occupying the throne by my husband’s side, I who had in all but name actually reigned more effectively than that sweet but ineffectual man, I who had the pure blood royal – I was relegated to an inferior position. I would be regent, they said. But everyone knew that the priests would call the tune.
I gritted my teeth and I bided my time. Two years after the misjudged coronation of the little upstart a vision came to me: a vision that proved my incontestable right to the Double Throne. I was shown how my heavenly father, the great god Amen, impregnated my mother, and told her that the child would be a daughter, Hatshepsut – and she would reign. I then took steps to have myself properly crowned; I have worn the Double Crown ever since. I sent the child back to the priests. I insisted that he should remain merely a very junior co-regent, with no independent powers. Later he went to the military and now, in his thirty-second year, he is the Great Commander of the Army and he is angering me.
Although I am a woman, I have been the Son of Horus, the Pharaoh Ma’atkare, Ruler of the Two Lands, for more than twenty years. In that time I have balanced the opposing forces in Egypt in a delicate game of power. I have controlled the priesthood, the nobles, the bureaucrats and the military. I have prevailed because I am able to read men, to charm them when need be, to inspire loyalty, to manipulate and in the final analysis to outwit them. They do not expect a woman to be cleverer than they, and therefore they are at a disadvantage. A woman, yet a king with might and majesty. It has been a potent combination and it has served me well in maintaining the balance of power. I have always enjoyed this game and I have played it adeptly. Yet I am tiring. There have been too many deaths and the wolf pup at Memphis keeps snapping at my heels.
I sighed again.
“Majesty,” said Khani, who had stood silently while I considered his news. He was always able to be still, to be patient. Most men cannot. “You must keep your eyes open. Especially those at the back of your head. You must be vigilant.”
“I always am,” I said shortly. “Why this particular warning? What do you know?”
But clearly he had no specific information to give. “Just be vigilant,” he repeated. “I am due back,” he added. “I was given a document to deliver to the Grand Vizier. But I should not tarry. None saw me come here.”
“A document? From Commander Thutmose?”
He nodded. This too was disturbing. Usually there was no love lost and little communication between those two. Something was decidedly going on.
“Thank you, Khani,” I said. The shadows under the lush trees closed around his disappearing form as he strode away.
I was deeply concerned, too much so to return to my writings. Instead I sat down, knowing that at least one of my pet cats would jump onto my lap. Bastet came at once and settled down, purring. I stroked her creamy fur thoughtfully. She blinked her blue eyes at me. The other one, Sekhmet, has tawny fur and golden eyes like her namesake the lion goddess. She was probably off somewhere looking for mice. Like myself they are both daughters of the sun, but only Bastet has her nurturing qualities; the destructive powers of the sun are to be seen in Sekhmet. She is less companionable but she keeps the vermin down.
Even Bastet did not do much to soothe my troubled spirit. I wished that I had someone to talk to other than a state official. I wished Khani could have stayed. I wished that Inet could have been there with me, assuring me by her repetition of the known and familiar that the world is a safe and predictable place; keeping the threatening forces that I feel closing in on me at bay.
Here endeth the first scroll.
IT IS INDEED an important and a dangerous document that King Hatshepsut has entrusted to me. I am overcome that it should be given to me, a mere assistant scribe, and not to the Chief Royal Scribe. Yet I think I understand why this is the case. First, if it is true that there are those who seek Her Majesty’s life (and I have reason to fear, alas, that this may be so), then they will keep a close watch on all those in her employ and especially those known to have her trust and thought to have ways of influencing her. The Chief Scribe may soon find that documents in his care are confiscated under some pretext or another. But nobody will expect me to have anything worth reading.
Second, I am Her Majesty’s faithful servant and great admirer and she knows that she may depend on me. Indeed, she may be sure of my entire loyalty since already once I almost gave my life for the King. It happened some five years ago. Her Majesty had expressed a wish to sail to her great temple at Djeser-Djeseru, which was built for her by the late great Senenmut; it has a shrine to accommodate the god Amen on his annual procession from Karnak, but it also has a double chapel for King Hatshepsut and her royal father Thutmose the First where she wished to make offerings to her late father’s Ka.
Pharaoh also wished to view some samples of white marble reported to have a beautiful tracery of green veins. It had been unloaded at Djeser-Djeseru, where the ramps for transporting materials were still in place. This unusual marble had apparently been located in the Eastern desert, and if the Pharaoh found it pleasing, orders would be given for extensive quarrying. I was instructed to accompany the group, for I have knowledge of such materials due to the fact that I spent a portion of my training as scribe in a number of quarries.
The journey was not to be a royal progress, just a trip on a simple barge, an opportunity to get away from the pressures of the court and the never-ending demands of governing the kingdom, so it was a fairly small group that set out that day and the atmosphere was informal. Her Majesty reclined on the deck beneath a striped awning, attended by two slave women waving basket-weave fans, for the day was searingly hot. Her ladies-in-waiting were seated around her on cushions, one of them playing a merry air on a long lute. Two bodyguards were on board, but their usual vigilance had relaxed in that seemingly safe situation. They were joking and throwing sticks. We sailed smoothly northwards with the flow of the great river. A light breeze carried the scent of damp earth. The water was the colour of lapis lazuli between the lush, palm-lined green banks. In the shallows small boys played with a bleating goat.
Suddenly the low prow of the barge dipped. A swimmer had approached the boat unseen under the water and had clambered aboard. Moving with the agile grace of a predatory lion, the man leapt past the astonished rowers and onto the deck where the Pharaoh was enthroned. In his hand he clutched a dagger. Only I registered immediately what was happening. I had no time to think, I just acted. I lunged forwards from my seat just below the deck and caught the man’s wrist. He turned on me ferociously and I smelled garlic on his breath. When he struck at me I felt a burning sensation in my arm. We struggled mightily on the swaying boat. I had not the strength to overpower him, for he was powerful and wild with hatred, but I held him at bay. My intervention slowed him sufficiently for the Pharaoh’s bodyguards to come to their senses and assist me.
He was tied up and taken ashore at the first opportunity. It turned out later that he was a farmer who had lost land which he believed to be his in a case before the Grand Vizier some days previously and he blamed the Pharaoh. For his attack on the King he forfeited his life.
As for me, I was bleeding from a gash in my arm, but I accounted the pain as nothing since I had been of service to Her Majesty. She herself attended to me once the attacker had been subdued, stopping up the wound with her own kerchief. Her hands were deft and gentle. I remember that she smelled of myrrh, even after a morning in the sun, and I remember the golden colour of her eyes, looking so closely into mine that I could only blink, and stutter.
“M-Majesty, it’s n-nothing, you should not bother …”
“Of course I must,” she said, in her low,