Chapter Seven
THEBES, EGYPT
How will I make it through this afternoon?
The line of supplicants stretches the length of my audience chamber and into the courtyard.
Each priest or land manager or steward brings his own request or problem, one he believes is unique although I know is supremely inconsequential in the eyes of the gods.
All I see is the pettiness before me, and I am horribly frustrated by it.
I know I should not be. I tell myself to be grateful to wield the power I have—most women have none—and to address these people’s complaints with the magnanimity of Amun, creator of all, most powerful of the gods.
I pray to the gods to lift this restlessness from me, to instill in me the right mindset to hear these pleas.
But then sunlight reflects off the gilt pattern decorating the archway to the garden, and I long to be outside in the glorious growing season of peret.
It is so much more pleasant than the inundation season of akhet or the harvest season of shemu. And it’s fleeting.
Nedjem senses my mood, and motions for the servants to wave their ostrich fans more vigorously.
She assumes I’m drowsy from the warm afternoon, and she would be correct on most days.
After all, every morning, I rise while the world still sleeps to rouse the god Amun to deliver us the dawn.
But today, my disquiet has more to do with the futility and tedium of the applications before me than the heat or my exhaustion.
A furor erupts in the courtyard outside.
I turn toward the sound, even though I know it goes against decorum for the God’s Wife to shift in my inlaid chair in this setting.
Has a fight broken out among stewards over production of wine or honey or grain?
Certain disputes can impact the people in my charge, of course, and I care about those rarer arguments.
But most of the petitions before me seem to focus upon the profits particular stewards or priests believe they should receive.
One of my mother’s handmaidens arrives at the entrance to the audience hall and signals to Nedjem.
I try to concentrate on the presentation before me, but the girl’s arrival is most unorthodox.
I can see Nedjem’s expression turn from concern to horror, and I raise my hand to cease the incessant nattering of a temple priest.
At the unexpected silence, Nedjem races across the hall, kneels before me, and whispers in my ear, “There is news about your brother, Prince Amenmose.”
“What news?” My voice is tremulous. My full-blood brother Prince Amenmose is the next oldest and presumptive heir to my father’s throne after the death of Wadjmose.
“News that only your mother, Queen Ahmes, can share.”
Only the most terrible news could not be heard first by my trusted servant Nedjem.
An unfamiliar dread courses through me, and I jump up from my chair.
My sandals clatter as I run through the audience hall, leaving shocked supplicants and priests in my wake.
My handmaidens race to keep my stride, but only Nedjem can keep pace.
Dashing through the labyrinthine passageways that connect my quarters to my mother’s, I arrive in her audience chamber panting.
I expect an upbraiding for such incivility—Would the goddess Isis allow herself to be seen in such a state, she might say—but I receive no such rebuke.
No one even turns in my direction. Courtiers, servants, and maidens encircle my mother’s empty throne.
What is happening? Where is she?
I slow down and approach the people clustered around the throne. Then I see it. There, on the floor before the throne, is a heap of diaphanous linen. Under which lies my mother.
Pushing the onlookers aside, I kneel before her. “Mother.” I dare to call her by an intimate name, rather than Queen Ahmes, even though we are in the presence of others. When she does not move, I lay my hands on her back and say, “Mother, it’s Hatshepsut. What’s happened? What can I do to help?”
My mother does not answer me. She does not even acknowledge me. Instead, she pushes herself to her knees and begins swaying. A high-pitched keening emits from her mouth, and soon all the women join her on the floor, wailing along with her.
Her grievous ululations answer my questions. Words aren’t necessary. The news about my brother is now plain. My older brother, son of Pharaoh Thutmose and his Highest Queen Ahmes, heir to the throne of Egypt, is dead.
I fall to my knees and join the women. Images of Amenmose come to me.
The black-haired princeling seated alongside other royal boys at the House of Life, wax tablets in hand learning script and sums from tutors, a sight that made me burn with jealousy as I always received my instruction alone.
Amenmose on the brink of adulthood, tall as my father but as scrawny as a child, walking in a procession at Fayum before the royal hunt.
A full-grown, sinewy prince on a barge traveling home to Thebes, triumphant from a successful military campaign in the Sudan as the Great General of the Army.
Glimpses all, no full memories of conversations or playtime, no recollections of familial rituals or friendly banter.
This distance had been intentional, of course, a carefully cultivated tradition in the royal family so that we could do what was necessary.
The royal bloodlines must be kept pure, I’d always been told, and so a princess could only marry a prince.
It simply wouldn’t do to feel too fraternal toward Amenhose, because he was more than my brother. He was my betrothed.
I keen for the brother I never really knew.
I wail for the pain my mother and father surely must feel at the loss of this prized son, one of very few born of my father to survive into adulthood.
I cry for the loss of the destiny in which I’d believed—a mistake surely, as planning tempts the gods.
I sob for the uncertain future that we all now face.
A figure enters our circle. The women continue swaying and keening, but the men stiffen and then bow. I feel the weight of a hand on my shoulder, and when I look up, I see the inexorably sad face of Thutmose staring down at me.
I leap up from my kneeling position, and my father places a steadying hand on my arm when I falter. “You must take heed, Hatshepsut. Much depends on you. Now more than ever.”
As I follow him to his throne room, the magnitude of his words unfolds before me.
Before today, I held an important place in my father’s kingdom, but now I am more than the most powerful female in his realm.
I am the sole remaining child of Pharaoh Thutmose and his Highest Queen, Ahmes, and as such, the highest-born royal child in the land.
Only through me can their bloodline prevail.