The Sekhmet Bed (10 page)

The bed chamber was cleverly built. It would stay cool during the warmest months, and during the chill of the sowing season rugs could be hung over the wall’s gaps to keep out the wind. Patterns of black and silver reached toward her across the floor, shadow and pale light playing through the miraculous wall. She stumbled toward the bed, shedding sandals, jewelry, and gown. She removed her wig, the braids soaked in the fragrant oils of the festive wax cone she’d worn, melted down now to a sticky white stub. She tossed wig and wax alike carelessly on the floor. There was nowhere to set them anyhow – no stand, no table. And if the braids stuck in the wax, she could get another wig. She was the queen of Egypt.

Ahmose’s bed was double the size of the one she’d used in the House of Women. It was piled with clean linen sheets, strewn with cushions of cool silk. An aged ivory headrest, padded with a blue bolster, waited at the top of the bed’s gentle slope, but she ignored it. Naked, she crawled atop the bed and huddled into the cushions, pulled a thin sheet over her exhausted body.

She imagined she was a gazelle fawn, fragile and fearful, cowering in a thicket. The hunter would come for her soon with his bloody spear. She shivered, recalling the physician Wahibra’s words.
The mother was just too small, too young.
Ahmose didn’t know how old or how large a woman must be to survive bearing, but her hands crossed defensively over her narrow hips, shielded her small, high breasts, and she knew she was too young. Like Aiya.

She lay paralyzed in the striped shadows of her bed chamber for hours before sleep took mercy. She fled into her dreams, bounding like a gazelle before a lion.

***

Late morning sun lanced into the courtyard, filtered through the climbing vines of a plant with huge, flat leaves. It was all over the columns on Ahmose’s side of the yard and provided pleasant, sweet shade. She had ordered her servants to set up her breakfast in the courtyard; men were busy moving the fine new ebony furniture she’d claimed into her rooms, and she could not eat there.

She had slept late, waking to the morning sun full in her face, shining insistently through her columned wall. A good night’s sleep had done her well – that, and the fact that Thutmose had not come to take her. She felt calm and determined now, ready to face her new life head on, a barque under full sail.

Ahmose had asked for two chairs at her breakfast table, intending to ask Renenet to join her, but her cousin was still asleep. Instead, she imagined Aiya’s ka for company, silvery as moonlight, with the perfect, soft belly of a virgin, holding her son on her knee. In her thoughts Ahmose chatted with Aiya about the wedding feast, gossiping over the singers, the dancers, the scandal of the High Priest kissing Iryet in the back corner. Ka-Aiya laughed and smiled, kissed her baby boy, told Ahmose how pleasant the life beyond was; though of course Aiya was not there yet in truth, could not be there until she was properly entombed – and that would not happen for two months yet. Still, it was a pleasant diversion.

“
Good morning, sister. Did you sleep well?” Mutnofret padded across the courtyard. Evidently her own apartments were not far from Ahmose’s. She wore a more modest gown than last night’s spectacle, simple white linen with no adornments.
Understated
.

“
I did, thank you,” Ahmose said tersely. She bit into a melon and looked away from Mutnofret.

Mutnofret seated herself in the other chair. Ka-Aiya vanished. “I didn’t sleep
this
much.” She snapped her fingers to show how little. “I hope you enjoyed the wedding night as much as I did.”

Ahmose flushed. So Tut had been with Mutnofret all night. Her relief at avoiding the pain was replaced in an instant by anger. As First Queen, he should have visited her bed before any other. But she couldn’t show her feelings to Mutnofret. She crossed her legs, leaned back in her chair, and flipped a sandal to show how she didn’t care. Flap-flap-flap, it said against her foot.

Mutnofret tried a different approach. “What did you think of my dress last night?”

“
I thought some of the fatter nobles would get their eyes poked out from staring so hard at your nipples.”

Mutnofret burst into perfect laughter. “Oh, Ahmose. You are always so clever. I think our husband liked it, though. He wasted no time in coming to see me. I barely had time to bathe. I think I kept him happy. I might have worn him out.” She dipped her finger into the jar of honey and sucked it.

Ahmose made a disgusted noise. “What if the servants see you sticking your fingers into the honey?”

“
Let them see. I’m the queen
. Second Queen
, anyway.”

Ahmose’s sandal flap-flap-flapped. “About that dress. I thought you planned to be understated.”

“
Oh, I intended to at first, but I changed my mind.” She gazed across the table at Ahmose for a moment, all innocence, then her mouth opened in shock. “You can’t think – but Ahmose, I would never
mislead
you! Oh, by Hathor, I didn’t even remember I’d told you how to dress. I feel so silly now. I should have told you the plan had changed, shouldn’t I? Anyway, it’s all for the best. You didn’t want our husband and all the whole world besides to see that you still have a girl’s body, did you?”

Flap-flap-flap.

“
Well anyway,” Mutnofret went on, helping herself to Ahmose’s pitcher of juice, “you looked perfectly lovely. Really. Like a queen.”

Ahmose rolled her eyes. She couldn’t have looked less like a queen if she’d rolled in mud before the feast.
How to get rid of this buzzing fly?

Mutnofret propped her elbows on the table. “So, did he…?”

“
Did he what?”

“
Did he…
visit you?
”

Ahmose considered lying, but no doubt the Second Queen would just ask Thutmose about it the very next time she saw him. “No. He did not. I fell asleep early anyhow.”

“
Oh, that’s a shame. He really is wonderful, you know.” Her eyes shifted about the courtyard. “I mean, up until the pain and the bleeding starts. Did you know he’s going off on a campaign soon? Oh, of course you didn’t know; you were asleep last night. He told me all about it while we bathed. He’s going south all the way to Buhen to check on the fortress and the outposts. He said there might be a battle with the Kushites. I expect he’ll be gone for weeks. I’m going to try to conceive a son before he leaves. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful surprise for our husband when he returns from battle? An heir already on the way.”

While they bathed? Together?
Flap-flap-flap.

“
How soon is he leaving? He can’t go anywhere until the Opening of the Mouth.” Thutmose would not truly be the Pharaoh until he had performed the ritual to raise his predecessor from death. And Amunhotep’s embalming was still not complete. Ahmose guessed her dead father’s body had been no more than twelve days under the salt. There was nearly another month to wait until Amunhotep could be raised to his afterlife.

“
Just after that, I expect. I should have just enough time to conceive. If we lay together every night, it’s as good as certain.”

“
You’d best pray to Hathor for fertility. And Hathor doesn’t like liars.”

Mutnofret sighed. “Ahmose, darling, I didn’t lie to you. It was a very simple mistake.”

“
Whatever it was, you made me look like a fool.” She was proud that her voice didn’t shake. She was cool as night wind.

“
Never! Thutmose adores you. I heard him call you Ahmoset that day on the barge.”

“
And the nobles, and the priests? Have you heard them call me Ahmoset as well? There’s more to being a queen than being loved by your husband.”

Mutnofret’s smile was brittle. “Do you think I don’t know that? I, who was raised to be the Great Royal Wife?”

Ahmose stood and clapped for her servants. “Clear this away,” she said, waving toward breakfast and Mutnofret without looking at either.

“
Where are you going?” Mutnofret asked, standing and stepping aside from the servants’ work as if she had ordered it herself, as if Ahmose hadn’t even spoken a word.

“
To pray for your fertility. Perhaps Hathor will listen to
me
.”

***

She did not pray to Hathor, of course. She found the cool, shadowed corridor that led out to the palace lake and made her way there, needing peace and privacy. Mutnofret’s deception weighed on her heart, dragged at her ka as a quarryman’s sledge drags through deep mud. Between the Hyksos and the Kushites, Egypt’s freedom was at stake. Couldn’t Mutnofret see that? Did nothing matter to her but which throne she sat upon? More than anything else, couldn’t she see how this whole sorry arrangement pained Ahmose?

On the stone-lipped shore of the lake, Ahmose picked pebbles from the cracks in the wall and tossed them into the water, watching the ripples spread, break and reflect the day’s light, converging and merging and shattering like the shifting flash-and-dim dance of the river. The sweep of each ring of tiny waves soothed her; she followed one ripple, then the next with her eyes; they sailed smooth as barques, pushing outward, growing, at last flattening into nothing but an echo of a wave. She threw two pebbles together; then one out of each hand, plunk-plunk, noting the different patterns they made, the way their ripples shivered together and rebounded away to chase each other across the face of the lake. Finally she gathered a whole handful of stone chips and sent them flying. They pattered into the water all haphazard, a splash like a fisherman’s cast net. The water’s surface scattered in disarray. As the ripples began to calm, settling into their familiar spread-and-rebound, the turquoise and lapis of sky’s light and water’s shade were replaced with an ever-shifting tumult of brown, black, linen-white. The lake grew calm. A man’s shape beside her own broke and reformed, broke and reformed.

Thutmose.

She turned to face him. Her face was hot with shame. To be caught at such a child-like game!

He didn’t say a word, just smiled at her, then searched through the stone chips at the base of the retaining wall. He found one he liked, tossed it a few times in his hand, then whipped it hard out over the lake. It sailed the length of six men’s bodies, then hep-hep-hep, jumped across the water’s surface. Ahmose, wide-eyed, stared at her husband.

“
Not bad, eh?”

She shook her head, smiling.

“
Do you know how it’s done?”

“
No, I’ve never.”

“
Let me show you.” He found the right kind of rock and guided it into her hand, set it just so. With words and gestures, he told her how to make the rock jump. She pulled her arm back, hesitated, then threw. The rock plunked into the water with a single disappointing splash.

“
It’s all right. It takes some practice, that’s all. Like anything else.” Thutmose laughed lightly. He sat down on the lake’s stone wall. Ahmose sat, too.

“
I heard you’re going to Buhen soon,” she said, disguising the bitterness in her voice by scuffing up half-buried pebbles with the toe of her sandal. Puffs of yellow dust rose around her feet to glitter in the sunlight.

“
I’m leaving just after the Opening of the Mouth. Whenever a new Pharaoh comes to the throne, Egypt’s enemies like to test her borders. I pray that word of Amunhotep’s death won’t reach them until after I arrive in Buhen.”

Ahmose nodded, unwilling to say the words that gnawed at her heart.

“
I’ll leave good stewards in charge here,” he went on. “You likely won’t have to do anything but sit on your throne during court and try not to fall asleep while the nobles bicker. I’ll instruct the stewards to filter out all but the most extreme cases so you aren’t taxed by holding court.”

“
I can do it fine,” Ahmose said. She cringed inside at how young she sounded, like a child protesting that she could climb any tree the bigger children could climb.

“
I have no doubt of it. You’re a strong girl, and very clever.”

“
I’m a
woman
.”

Thutmose cleared his throat. “Mutnofret can help you, I suppose, if you need help with court.”

“
I have no need of
her
help.” Ahmose filled her voice with as much scorn as she could muster.

It was perhaps too much scorn; Thutmose’s eyebrows rose and he looked at her sideways. “Trouble?”

The sorrow inside Ahmose rose to the surface. She could keep it bridled no longer. “You spent all night with her. You didn’t come to me once.”

“
Oh,” he breathed, looking down, then away; anywhere but at his first wife. “Ahmose, you must believe me. I meant no offense. It’s just that you’re so young, and I thought….”

“
I’ve had my blood. Many times!”

Thutmose pulled off his wig and scratched at his scalp with both hands, as if it might buy him some time in answering.

“
Do you have lice?” Ahmose said.

“
Of course not.”

“
Then don’t take your wig off where servants can see! What will they think of you? You’re supposed to be acting like a king.”