of training has increased. He has ordered many horses.”
“I have given no such instructions,” I said furiously.
As Pharaoh I am the absolute head of the armed forces and they may undertake no campaign that I have not decreed should take place. The upstart is angering me seriously. He is assuming powers that he does not have. Of course, it is true that he was crowned. I cannot deny that fact, but it should never have happened.
The young Thutmose, child of my husband Thutmose the Second and Isis, a mere concubine, had been given to the priests to learn the rites, to become himself a priest of Amen and to serve the God. He was no more than a little-regarded juvenile. But when my husband passed into the Afterlife, may he live for ever, the priests suddenly realised that they had an opportunity to control all Egypt. With a little boy they could use as a puppet on the throne, they would have power over the Two Lands such as the priesthood had never had before.
There have always been factions in Egypt, but a single faction had never yet gained overall control. One faction that traditionally opposes the priesthood is the military. Since the Pharaoh is also the Ultimate Commander of the army and usually sides with them, they are extremely powerful. At this moment, the priests of Amen saw their chance to tilt the balance of power in their own favour, and they took it.
So, when one fine day in the temple of Amen-Ra it appeared for all the world as if the choice of the God fell on the child as he stood among the priests who had the care of him, there was a simple explanation for that event and it was not a supernatural one. That much should be obvious to anyone with half an understanding. It was not the child’s doing, of course. He had seen only ten risings of the Nile when my husband died and he did not have the wit to plan and execute such a drama at that age. But the priests did.
During a ceremonial procession in the temple of Amen-Ra that day the gilded barque bearing the God, its carrying poles shouldered by eight strapping priests, paused in its stately circling of the enormous hall. It hesitated, reversed and bowed down in front of the surprised small figure of the child Thutmose, seeming to indicate that the God wanted him to ascend the Double Throne. But there was no truth in that pivotal moment. No mystery. No magic. It was a spectacle thought up and carefully executed by the priesthood. But the country believed the lie. So they crowned him.
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
