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 laymy 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.
Chapter Eight
1486BC
THEBES,EGYPT
“A decision must be made, Thutmose. Before it is too late.”
I hear these words echo down the long corridor to the family quarters at the Theban palace on the west bank of the Nile, in a voice that sounds very much like my mother’s. But surely I have misheard. My mother would not speak to my father in such a way, using a forceful tone and a phrase suggestive of one thing only.
“I need more time, Ahmes,” my father replies to my mother in his unmistakable voice, and I realize I’d heard correctly.
Slowing my pace, I gesture for Nedjem to do so as well. I have never been privy to a frank exchange between my parents. The palace and temples and village streets have been rumbling with rumors in the months since Amenmose’s death over who Thutmose will choose as his successor, and I assume my parents are discussing the same conundrum on everyone’s mind. The solution to this puzzle will dictate the course of my own life, and I want to know my father’s mind before he announces it to the people.
“Only the gods can give us that,” my mother replies, in one of her usual phrases. Her tone, however, is mournful and a bit angry, and I imagine she’s thinking about how little time the gods granted poor Amenmose. Then, in a stronger voice, she adds, “More time for what? It isn’t as if a better candidate will emerge from the royal nursery.”
Although my mother is the pharaoh’s Great Wife, she is hardly his only consort. Thutmose’s harem contains lesser wives, concubines,and ornaments, whose sole occupation is the production of male heirs. While Queen Ahmes’s offspring have prominence in the royal lineage, my father’s other wives and the harem nursery are supposed to provide possibilities when tragedy strikes, such as with Amenmose. No rule exists requiring that my father select the eldest among the sons in his nursery to succeed him, although it has been tradition. So rumors abound over his decision, and the jockeying for position is well underway.
“You misunderstand. I do not need the time to make my choice from the nursery. I need more time to prepare Hatshepsut.”
I halt my progress altogether. Prepare me for what? Why does my father need time to prepare me? Why am I even part of this conversation? It is hardly as if I will become pharaoh.
My mother shares my thoughts. “What does Hatshepsut have to do with this? Other than to marry whomever you select so the throne will be secured?”
My father does not answer at once. Instead, I hear the sound of his sandaled footsteps pace the cool stone floor as he works out his reply. “I should think that was obvious, Ahmes,” he says.
“Obvious to one of your scribes, perhaps. But not to me,” my usually demure mother retorts, and I am, once again, surprised by this bold side.
