King and Goddess Read Online Free Page B

Senenmut was
slow in the wits. He did not understand.
    He woke still groping for understanding. Ahotep for once was
up before him. He felt heavy. His head ached. So: he was ill. He had dreamed
it, all of it, even to his meeting with the queen.
    A small figure hurtled out of air onto his middle. He
grunted. Ahotep bounced with bruising enthusiasm. “Senenmut! Senenmut, do you
know who’s here? Guess who’s here!”
    Senenmut growled and heaved the brat off him and shut his
eyes tight. But there was no getting rid of Ahotep.
    “Mother’s up and dressed and acting civil. Father’s beside
himself. Senenmut, he’s asking for you! ”
    “Who in the world—” Senenmut’s mind woke more slowly than
his tongue. Mother not only awake but dressed and being civil. Father
flustered, who never noticed enough to be perturbed by it.
    Gods. The queen had done it. She had sent her soldiers to
seize him and carry him away, no doubt to a terrible and too richly deserved
fate.
    It was not courage that brought Senenmut out of the dubious
safety of his sleeping-room. He was too practical to imagine that he could
escape. If he went over the wall and disappeared into the city, the queen’s men
would simply assuage her wrath with the blood of his family.
    He would happily have seen his brother muzzled and chained
in a kennel like the yapping pup he was, but never in the world would Senenmut
have wished him dead. Nor Mother, sharp-tongued ungentle creature that she was,
nor Father who was all that his wife was not. The baby, the servants . . .
    He took time to bathe first and to make himself properly
tidy: head new shaved, kilt his best and cleanest. He brought his satchel,
because if he was to die, he wanted to do it as a scribe should: with pen and
brush close to hand.
    ~~~
    Bes must have had his bread and beer early this morning.
There was no one near the shrine. They were all in the room the family gathered
in to eat. It was no more splendid than Senenmut remembered, but his kinsfolk
were on their best behavior. They were almost quiet. No one clamored for attention.
Even the baby sucked peacefully at the nurse’s breast.
    A personage sat in the best chair, where Father usually sat.
He had been offered date wine and new bread: both lay on the table beside him.
He did not seem to have touched either.
    He might be a soldier. Senenmut had not thought to inquire
when he was in attendance on the queen. His height and breadth and his ebon
darkness were impossibly exotic in that small and common room with its middling
bad wall-painting of palm trees and crocodiles. He did not seem discommoded by
it, but neither was he at his ease. He simply sat, still as a stone panther,
waiting as he must have been ordered to wait.
    Senenmut’s coming brought him alert. It was a subtle thing:
a light in his eyes, expression in his face where had been none before.
Senenmut did not see death there. Maybe it was only that he could not read a
Nubian face as he might an Egyptian.
    Nehsi the queen’s servant rose to greet Senenmut. He did not
have to rise quite so high, Senenmut thought nastily, or loom quite so huge.
His head brushed the ceiling. He spoke in good Egyptian, in a voice as deep as
a drum beating. “You are summoned to the queen,” he said.
    Senenmut bit his tongue. No way in the world could he ask
what he wanted to ask, not here in front of his mother. She was simpering—she
of all people. It shamed him. If she knew what he expected, which was to be fed
to the crocodiles, she would be appalled.
    “Imagine,” she said with a lilt in her voice such as
Senenmut had never heard. “Our boy is going to be the queen’s own teacher and
scribe. Who’d ever have thought it? I would have been content to see him
settled in the House of Life.”
    The Nubian bowed gravely.
    “And will he be needing his belongings?” she asked. “Will we
be bidding farewell to the eldest and best of our sons?”
    Senenmut opened his mouth, but the Nubian spoke before