King and Goddess Read Online Free Page A

had nowhere to go. The House of Life was closed
to him. He had barred himself from the palace. If he went home so early, his
mother would not rest until she had discovered the reason. Then she would flay
him as royally as the queen had failed to do. And after that . . .
    What? Sell jars to the brewers of beer? Write letters for
the poor and the feckless? Talk himself into, at best, a lesser temple that
stood in need of a scribe?
    He stood in the middle of the street, the great processional
way that led from the palace into the city, and saw nothing but the magnitude
of his folly. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, gods.”
    ~~~
    He wandered till evening, not caring where he went.
Someone relieved him of his provisions, but even in abstraction he kept a grip
on his scribe’s satchel. He did not know why he should, when he stopped to
think. It was no use to him.
    He could, he thought, go back to the queen, grovel at her
feet, beg her to let him teach her.
    And be schoolmaster to a chit of a girl?
    He turned on his heel at that, and looked about him. He knew
only vaguely where he was. His feet had carried him down to the river: far down
and well away from both the palace and his father’s house.
    It was running as low as it ever ran, as it did at every
turn of the year. When the moon came round again the river would begin to
swell; in a remarkably little time it would stretch as vast as a sea, drowning
the rich farmlands that now were ripe with the harvest. When after a season it
retreated, the black earth that it left behind would grow green again, and
burgeon with the wealth of Egypt.
    Even so shrunken it was a wide and potent river, thick with barges
and with lesser boats: fishermen, ferrymen, a prince in his gilded yacht with
musicians following in a smaller vessel, and a second with a cookstove lit and
preparing his dinner, and a third laden with the flock of his concubines.
    Senenmut leaned perilously far out above the river. He
wanted what that man had. Yes, even now, when he was sunk in despair. The
prince had a harper on his yacht, a young woman with a piercingly sweet voice.
It rang clear over the water, singing of love among the reeds.
    “Truer to sing of love betrayed,” he said.
    The singer did not hear him. The little fleet passed away
down the river. A barge followed it, heavy laden with cattle; and a fisherman
hauling in a net.
    As the sun sank low over the red and barren hills beyond the
river, Senenmut turned his feet toward his father’s house. He would not lie, he
had decided. He would simply fail to inform his mother that Seti-Nakht had
dismissed him, and that he in turn had dismissed the queen. The longer he put
off the inevitable, the more likely he was to discover a way out of his
predicament.
    Or it could simply be that he was a coward. He went in as he
did every evening. The servants had water for him to wash hands and feet and
face. The aunts fluttered. The baby crowed in his nurse’s arms. Ahotep
demonstrated a new accomplishment: somersaults across the family’s gathering
room, till he came near to oversetting the table and the dinner that was laid
out on it. Their father seemed not to notice. Their mother was abed with the
headache.
    That much reprieve Senenmut was granted: not to face her stern
all-seeing eye. He ate hungrily, which spared him the aunts’ worry and fret. He
could always eat, even in the depths of adversity.
    ~~~
    That night, lying in the bed he shared with Ahotep, he dreamed
that he had returned to the palace. The queen was there, sitting on a golden
throne. Her headdress was shaped and colored like the wings of a falcon. Its
head crowned her, its eyes lambent in the dimness of the hall; one blazing
gold, one cold unseeing white. Such were the eyes of Horus, falcon-god,
protector of kings. His eye that saw clear was the sun. His blind eye was the
moon.
    He turned his sun-eye on Senenmut, and then his eye that was
the moon. He saw; he did not see. In dream it had meaning, but