The Double Crown: Secret Writings of the Female Pharaoh (35 page)

Then, as we continued walking uphill, the shadowed crags turned to grey. We reached the lowest portico before the light had faded altogether. Senenmut set the baskets down, extracted a torch and a tinder-box, lit the torch and handed it to me.

“First, I must honour the God,” I said. “Walk with me up to the shrine.”

He picked up the baskets and followed me. We ascended the sweeping staircases together. However, when we reached the God’s dwelling deep in the heart of the rock behind the third terrace, I moved forwards alone. I unsealed the ornamental doors. I held out my hand for the basket of offerings. Then I walked on into the chill and musty darkness, alone.

Inside the shrine there was an altar for the God. I put the torch in a socket against the wall. I knelt and kissed the ground. Then I took incense from the basket, lit it and placed it on either side of the altar. I placed the dish with bread and meat and the vessels containing wine and beer upon the altar. I intoned the incantations that I knew so well, the magic words that knitted together the real and the spirit worlds, the visible and the invisible. Then I spoke a special prayer, dedicating the temple and especially the garden to the God. I concentrated hard, causing the Ka of the offering to feed the Ka of the God.

At last I felt sure that my heavenly father must be satisfied. Now Senenmut and I could share what was left. I gathered the offerings into the basket, took the torch and left the shrine, where incense mingled with the dank smell of the dark, rock-walled enclosure. I resealed the doors.

Emerging into the fresh night air, now decidedly cooler than when I went in, I felt my spirits lift. Frogs clamoured in the ponds and an owl hooted. In the distance I heard a clear, pure, singing sound: surely, I thought, the voice of the goddess Hathor, Mistress of Music, lyrical and true. I followed the wordless song. Down it led me, down the great ramp and the staircase, calling, calling.

Then I came to the northern colonnade of the middle terrace overlooking the lower courtyard, with its lovely garden. On the rear wall relief sculptures depicted ritual hunting and fishing in the sacred ponds. With his back to the wall sat Senenmut, in his old pose as a scribe, playing a flute. Numerous candles burned around him. In front of him cushions on a soft rug covered sycamore branches to make a couch. The wavering light kept the surrounding shadows at bay and illuminated the rich golden colour of the images carved into the ivory limestone walls. They seemed almost to leap into life. He did not notice me at once, but gazed out into the darkness as if he could see all manner of things that I could not.

I set the basket down and blew out the torch. I removed the crown from my head and set that down carefully also. Beneath it my hair, which I had allowed to grow, had been pinned up; I removed the pins and shook it loose. It had been washed in perfumed water, but not braided. I untied the broad gold sash made of embroidered silk from my waist, holding it in my hand, and let the thin linen robe fall free. Then, slowly, obedient to the music, I began to dance. I have ever been a good dancer, having been taught from my eleventh year when I acted for my father, may he live, as the God’s Wife of Amen. I had practised anew when I taught my darling Neferure, may she live. It is the task of the God’s Wife to maintain the God in a state of arousal. I had not forgotten those skills.

The wide, pleated sleeves of my robe fell open like wings as I spread out my arms and danced forward into the circle of light. There was a momentary catch in the music when Senenmut saw me; then it continued, with renewed rhythmic energy. And I continued to dance: twirling, whirling, backing and advancing; stretching, leaping, balancing for the space of a breath on the toes of one foot, then spinning away again; like a willow in the wind, I swayed and bent; like a bird I flew, alighted, and escaped; like a flame I reached upward and like a shadow I melted away. The golden sash in my hand flashed and rippled like a captive flame.

My robe fell from my shoulders, down to my ankles, then I snatched it up and covered myself again. I let it fly out, brought it back; swung it high and finally discarded it. Now I wore only my pleated kilt and a necklace of blue faience. The golden sash hid my breasts from view; then it was whipped aside; then brought into play again. I whirled and twirled, and then I lost the kilt. Now I had only the sinuously waving sash to hide behind; it was a ribbon of light, it was a delicate screen, it was a veil. But I did not wish to hide. No, I gloried in my nakedness. I dropped the sash.

The music stopped as Senenmut rose to his feet and took me in his arms. He too had discarded his kilt. His body was hard and warm and he smelled of lotus oil. He lifted me off my feet. Together we sank onto the couch, and when he entered me all the years of longing, of loneliness, of discipline and denial burst from me in a long howl of agony and delight. We cleaved unto each other like thirst-stricken travellers who have been lost and at long last find a deep fresh well.

When we finally came to rest, sated, breathless, and tangled in each other’s arms, as if to touch as much as possible, the moon had risen and a pale wash of silver light spilled in bands across the pillared portico. It was a place of magic, a gold and silver bower, a playground fit for the gods. And oh, how we played! In that night, I was everything to him: I was his mother, and suckled him; I was his lover, and delighted him; I was his slave, and knelt to him; I was his child, and he cradled me in his arms and crooned to me.

At last we were spent and weary. He lay back upon the cushions, holding me close as I lay beside him, my cheek pillowed on his shoulder, one arm and one leg thrown across his body. I felt his breathing slow. His free hand stroked my arm, gently, gently. Then he turned my wrist so that the tips of his fingers rested just below the base of my thumb, holding it like that for a while. His warm breath tickled my ear.

“What are you doing?” I enquired sleepily.

“Listening to the voice of your heart,” he told me. “I can sense it through my fingers. It speaks to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Here, feel my wrist,” he said. “With your fingertips, like this. Don’t press hard, just touch it.”

I did as he told me. Then I could indeed feel it: a rhythmic throbbing. “Is it truly the voice of your heart?” I asked, wondering.

“It is. It falls silent when one’s life force is spent. It stops when the heart stops,” he told me. “And it speaks of love, for close to the beloved it rushes with joy. Yours is rushing, my beloved.”

“So is yours,” I murmured against his skin.

He drew the rug over us so that we were warmly cocooned in the moonlight, listening to the frogs. Enfolded in his arms, I felt entirely safe, as if no danger could ever come near me. Briefly, we slept.

The barge from Heliopolis would arrive just after dawn, since they were expecting the consecration rites to have been carried out at sunrise. I awoke as the last stars were fading on the horizon. Senenmut slept on, sprawled on the couch he had made for us, his face pillowed on one hand. Now the portico was but a stretch of cold, grey stone. The air was crisp, but I walked down to one of the ornamental ponds to splash myself, washing away the scents and the stickiness of passion with the icy water. My nipples puckered with the cold and with remembered pleasure. But there could be no more of that. I rubbed down with a towel and dressed carefully in my robe, tying the sash tightly. I slipped on my golden sandals and fastened the clasp of the flat jewelled collar that emphasised my royal status.

I picked up my crown, the red crown of Lower Egypt that I would wear on arrival at Heliopolis, and stood turning it in my hands. I looked up: A moment before, there had been only a hulking dark mass; now the towering crags and the elegant temple were taking form as a pale light washed the sky. It was as if they were being created from nothing as I watched. Just so does the world emerge from chaos each morning thanks to the rituals that the Pharaoh observes to link the Invisible and the visible. Just so does the Pharaoh maintain the existence of Khemet.

For a single night, I had laid all that aside. I had been another person, a different woman with a different life. I had not been the King nor the God, and Senenmut had not been my servant. In that moment, standing there in the chill before the dawn, I wished that I had chosen to walk a different road. I wished that we might have lived together simply, a man and a woman, that I might have gone to his arms each night and suckled his babes at my breast.

But I was Egypt. I had desired this high destiny; I had desired to become the Pharaoh, and divine. Yet I had not known that a god could be so lonely.

I tied up my hair and fitted the crown to my head. I walked back and awoke my love. “We must be ready,” I said. “Everything must be packed away, and we must be standing on the quay to welcome the deputation from Heliopolis.”

He rose to his feet in a lithe movement and reached for me, but I evaded his arms.

“No,” I said. “No, my darling Senenmut, it is over. I am the King.”

“So easily? After such a night, no more than this?
It is over
?” he mimicked me incredulously.

“It is not easy,” I said. “The gods know that it has always been hard and it will be much harder now. But I am Pharaoh. I must reign alone. I do not have a choice.”

“How can the all-powerful Pharaoh have no choice?” Now he was furious. “The one who has but to speak and everyone obeys? Ruler over the Black Land and all its dominions? Divine offspring of Ra? No choice? No choice!”

“No, none.” I too was angry now. “I could never take a secret lover. It would not remain a secret very long. You know that I very seldom have privacy. And if such a thing about me became known, I would be laughed at. I would have become an ordinary, weak woman, seduced and mastered by a man. I could not rule.”

“But … but could we not … would it not be possible … I … I cannot believe …”

“We could never break the jar together. I have told you that before. I thought you understood.”

“I understand nothing!” In his agitation he began to stride to and fro. “If that is true, then why this night? Why plan so carefully for this, why raise my hopes, why treat me like … like a prince, and then … then simply cast me aside like a worn-out robe? Why?” There were tears in his eyes as he stopped pacing and faced me.

“I wanted … I wanted to have one perfect memory,” I said, blinking away tears myself. “For just one night, I wanted to be free … to be simply a woman, spending time with her lover. Even the God has a night of freedom. Just one night.”

“Even the God. Yes, of course, we must never forget that Pharaoh is divine,” he sneered. “And a god cannot be mated with a mere human being, especially not a common man born in a little house built of mud bricks. No, we cannot have that!”

“Well, it could not happen. Then I would be the wife of a commoner while Thutmose, who is half royal, would be married to a wife of the full blood royal. You see what a weapon that would be in their hands?”

He sighed deeply, looking around him at the superb monument he had built for me, testimony of love and devotion beyond compare. Then his gaze returned to mine, suddenly sharpened. “And if there should be … issue … from this night?”

“There will be no issue,” I said. “I have made sure of that. No, this was one precious night, and I thank you for it, but there will never be another.”

He stood there staring at me, bafflement and fury in his eyes that had been so loving but moments before. “I cannot believe this,” he said. I saw that he was shaking. He folded his arms as if to hold himself still. “I cannot believe that you could do this.”

“You should believe it,” I told him.

There was a long silence. Then: “Pharaoh has spoken,” said Senenmut with deep bitterness. I could not blame him.

“I know that you will take our secret into the Afterlife,” I said. “I depend on your discretion.”

He nodded curtly. He bent down and collected the pile of branches that had been our couch and hurled them away. He packed up the baskets and stalked down to the shore, ignoring me completely, in absolute silence. The dawn found us standing on the quay, shivering in the chill wind that blew from the bleak water.

Here endeth the nineteenth scroll.                      

I think they were observed. It is merely a suspicion that I have, yet it could be true. The reason for this suspicion is to be found upon the temple wall – the outer northern wall – low down, almost hidden behind some bushes. It is a scurrilous little drawing, crudely executed with some sharp instrument. Not done by an artist, far from it – merely a few lines scratched by some common person with dirty thoughts. Yet it has sufficient detail for one to recognise the female Pharaoh, who is depicted on her knees, being mounted like a dog by a man who could be Senenmut.