Warrior King, page 32
Ahhotep choked back her disbelief and wondered who the woman in front of her was. Why was she speaking these lies? Weren’t they all unworthy in her eyes?
But Ahhotep swallowed down the snide remarks she could have said and asked a question that had plagued her since the day she heard the tale. “Lady Rai said you cried in the Kap’s nursery when I was a babe. Why?”
Tetisheri shuffled back, not expecting such a question. But with a quiver in her lip, she answered, “Because I knew I could never be a good mother to you. I let myself fall victim to my beliefs, and now Tep is gone from this life. My son, my grandson also . . . Do not be a victim of circumstance, Ahhotep. Do not be like me.”
Her gray eyes darkened. “To be the defender of Kemet, you must rise above the challenges, no matter what they are, and you must do so with virtue. If you lose your virtue, then who are you to rule? Without virtue, people might follow you if you wield enough power to make them cower, but they will never honor you, as you do not honor me. Their hearts will be far from you, and the day will come when they will rise against you. Do not be a victim. Do not lose your virtue. Learn from my mistakes, and be what Kemet needs in this hour.”
Ahhotep remained mute, unable to form a response. What? Did those words come from my mother?
Tetisheri grabbed her elbow again and led her to the throne room in silence.
“Who is this before me now? You are not the same woman even from yesterday,” Ahhotep whispered.
Tetisheri hung her head. “Tep was slain in the harem along with all those children. I was so focused on trying to better you, thinking you could not be strong and demonstrate a powerful front in the face of hardship, that I ignored Tetian. I failed him as his adoptive mother, and because of his actions, many have been slain for no reason other than I did not stop Tetian’s growing outrage. I ignored it. I was too blind to see. But you saw it all those years ago. Ahmose saw it, which was why he left two hundred men here. I thought it was a waste. My Tetian would never have done this.” Two tears rolled down her cheeks. “I was wrong, and others have paid the price.”
Ahhotep stared at her mother as she spoke, seeing tears fall from her stone-cold eyes for the second time in her life. Finally, she understood Tetisheri: a frightened mother and queen who hid behind a hard shell, trying her best to survive the pressure of the crown and duties to those born of her womb, yet in doing so, she had made herself an outcast in her family and a blind advisor to the king. She stood alone wearing her granddaughter’s blood on the dress she tried so hard to keep stainless and pure for the sake of her royal image. Was that why she never let anyone in, for fear of seeing who she really was? They could crack that stone facade she projected. They would see her weakness. They could allow her image to be stained.
But as they walked, Ahhotep saw her mother for the first time as the woman she could have loved all these years in all her perfect flaws. She stopped and pulled her mother into an embrace.
“What are you doing?” Tetisheri whispered, wrapping an arm around Ahhotep’s waist. “They will see.”
They had gained servants, guards, and soldiers behind her, awaiting her command. The clashes and men’s grunts and yells sounded outside the palace walls.
Ahhotep smiled. “Then let them see.” She pulled away and locked eyes with her mother. “You bore me. You raised me. You taught me. You told me not to lose my virtue. I will not be weak. I will lead, and I will be victorious.”
They came to the throne room, and the doors were wide open. The throne was empty. She gently lifted her mother’s hand away from her.
“When sound decisions need to be made to ensure victory,” Tetisheri advised as they stared at the empty seat. “When life and death depend on your decision, when there is no time for sorrow and pain—mourn the slain later. Do not let others see you struggle. Do not let those who look to you see you as weak. They need direction and confidence; they need you, who carry divine blood, to show them the gods are on their side. Lead, like I know you can do, my daughter.”
Ahhotep nodded along with the cadence of Tetisheri’s words. “You will be proud of me, Mother,” she finally said.
“I already am, Ahhotep.” Tetisheri dipped her chin to her. “Royal Commander.”
With a renewed heart free of one of the burdens it once carried, Ahhotep fought through the pain with her back upright—mouth clenched—as she walked the long hall of the throne room, came to the poorly gilded chair, and sat in it. She glanced at the body of Meret alongside the other slain guards and servants during the recent skirmish.
Her mother stood beside her. The crowd that had followed her filled the pillared room. Their eyes were hungry for her presence, spoken word, and divine link to the appointed king. The castor oil and honey crystallized on her leg’s bandage as she sat still. The clamoring and shouts of men still lay thick in the air.
“Do not fear, for we shall be victorious,” she began in an emboldened voice as Apep’s dark frame slithered into the sky. “Amun will protect his divinely appointed.”
39
A TIME OF BALANCE | AHMOSE-NEFERTARI
SEDJEFATAWY, 1551 BC
Ahmose-Nefertari’s brow furrowed. Deep hums and chants pounded in her ears. Her body drifted as if she were as light as incense and yet felt as heavy as a grain sack. Even though she could hear, she could not feel anything at all. Her eyes rolled underneath their lids. She swallowed the thick lump in her parched throat.
“Be still, Chief Wife.” The harsh command reverberated in her head. But she remembered her sons were being hunted and forced her eyes open.
Her arms felt detached, but she clenched her fists.
Where was she?
The overwhelming aroma of incense and green smoke filled the air. Her vision blurred. She rolled to her side, but the sudden, paralyzing rip of agony seared across her chest and back, sucking in the scream that begged for release.
“Be still, Chief Wife.” The command came harsher than before, and a firm hand returned her to her supine position.
She blinked and then once more.
“No,” she ground out and rolled the other way. She had to find her sons. She had to make sure they were safe. Her mother had never come back to the throne room. Maybe she was killed along with Nomarch Paser. She looked around again, wondering where she was. The pain was not as great on that side, but the floor seemed to drop off. She flung her hand out and realized she was on a table.
The firm hand came again and pushed her backward. “Be still.”
Ahmose-Nefertari’s head slung back around the other way, and she found herself locking eyes with a leopard. She froze. Her heart raced. A scream escaped. She jerked back. Her words garbled into nonsense as she attempted to scream past her swollen throat.
“Be. Still.”
She stared at the leopard’s eyes, and the more she stared, they seemed false. Her gaze wandered up the spotted body until it dawned on her: she was looking at the leopard tunic of a priest. His face was blurred, but at the sight of him, her body relaxed. She was in the hands of the royal physician-priest skilled in the god Heka’s magic.
The priest hummed and shook his head as he brought down his needle made of bone, threaded with finely woven flax. “I am almost finished, Chief Wife, but you must remain still. You pushed through my potion easily. I shall have to make it stronger for you.”
She watched the needle go up and back down. Blood ran along its bone body. She expected to feel a sting or a poke with each needle dive, but she felt nothing. The steady up-and-down motion nearly called sleep to rush upon her, but at last, it stopped right before her eyelids closed.
“Finished Chief Wife. Now, I will make you a stronger potion,” the priest said.
“No,” she sputtered, rolling the least painful way off the table. “My sons.” Her words sounded as if they had been bathed in honey. Her legs barely caught her fall as she grabbed the table’s edge with clawed fingers. She pressed her forehead to its cool mud brick to relieve the ache in her brow.
“Chief Wife, you cannot walk with the potion in the body. Heka’s magic works best when you are still.” The physician-priest grabbed her good arm and helped her stand up. “Now lay back, and I will make you a stronger potion.” He picked her petite frame up and sat her back on the table. “Please lay down,” he urged.
Her vision remained blurry as she glanced around at all the wounded that filled the small room.
“No,” she said and pressed her finger and thumb over her eyes. The room spun around her, but her bottom was planted on the table. Her heart raced as she tried to make sense of the sensations passing over her body.
“No more potion,” she said with a thick tongue. “I need my wits about me, and I feel as if I have lingered with wine all day and night.”
“As you command, Chief Wife,” the physician-priest said. “But you will be in pain, and the more you use your arm, the less likely the wound will heal.”
She scooted off the table as a snail, gingerly touching her toes to the floor to secure her bearings. The physician-priest wrapped her arm in a sling while she steadied herself beside the table. “Do not use it, Chief Wife, or it will not heal.”
She nodded and shut her eyes, regretting the movement. “I need to find my sons.”
The physician-priest’s firm hand became soft as he turned her face to his. “We have already found the Crown Prince. It was why I wanted you to lay down for a while longer.”
“Why? I need to see him. I need to know he is safe.”
Though blurred, she could see the man’s downturned lips.
“I urge you to lay down, for your own sake,” he said.
Her heart beat hard in her chest as the worst images came to her mind. First, her father, then her brother, and now, her son.
No.
She would not accept such an assumption.
“Where is he?!” Her screech stung her ears, and she wondered how that sound came out of her.
“As you wish,” he said and took her arm, guiding her to the third table where a boy—perhaps a young man—lay upon it.
She squinted to make out his face.
“Ramose!” She stumbled out of the physician-priest’s grip. She grasped his arm, but it was cool to the touch. She yelled, “He needs warmth. Why is there no blanket on him?”
A soldier and servant woman stood. They limped to her as she eyed them. “Have you brought a blanket?”
The soldier bowed his head. “My queen, Crown Prince Ramose, wanted to be like his uncle and father and lead the guards of the harem to victory against the traitors, so he left his hiding place with Prince Sapair when we fought with Ta-Seti soldiers.”
Ahmose-Nefertari’s head spun, and the need to vomit pressed at the top of her throat. Her gaze drifted back to her almost twelve-year-old son as she caressed his rigid cheek. Her fingers grazed the open wound on his neck with blood thick in the crevice. She could think of nothing—the soldier did not have to continue speaking about what became of Ramose.
She grabbed his shoulder and pressed her forehead to his chest. “Why did you not leave the fighting to those charged to protect you?” The words pushed past clenched teeth. “Ramose, why?”
The soldier must have heard her, for he said with a bowed head, “He fought bravely to defend his wife, Princess Tair, and unborn child. Although sick, he fought well with the mace. He helped us push them back away from the royal children. He did not want to sit idle. We urged him to stay back, as did Prince Sapair, but he said he was a leader and would fight with us. He gave us strength that we did not know we had. We won our victory but an arrow . . .”
His voice trailed off as her knees buckled under the weight of her sorrow. Hands came from around to support her, but she pushed them away as an unmistakable moan left her lips.
“He was an honorable prince, Chief Wife. He would have made an honorable king.”
Tears welled in her eyes before running down her cheeks. “Please, no more,” she said with hitched breath. Control fled until she was hunched over her son, weeping. It was then she noticed the stares of all in the room. She was their queen. A second time she had failed them in her show of strength and power.
“Look away,” she cried. “Close your ears,” she begged in a guttural plea before uncontrollable shrieks sent waves through her ribs. How had her mother and grandmother stood silent on the dais as their sons were laid at their feet? What mystic strength did they possess to keep their cries of agony at bay? Her body sagged against the table as tears gushed from her eyes and cries poured from her mouth. The beat of her heart pounded in her ears, contrasting the still chest of her son. Her nails dug into his chilled flesh as she pulled herself up to look into his eyes—glossy and vacant.
It was enough to entomb two of her children, taken in illness, and two more, killed by crocodile. Now she was to entomb a fifth child, slain by an enemy? Her legs wobbled, and she slipped to the floor, curled on the cool mud brick. Spent—drained by her divine appointment. If this was what she had to endure to be queen, she could not do it. Her ka sought liberation from this life.
This war had destroyed her home. The Hekka Khasut, the princes, the Kushites—they had all killed members of her family. Were Amenhotep, Mutnofret, and Meryet Amon slain as well? Her mother and grandmother? All the nomarchs? Was it all for naught? Everything done in vain? Did this divine appointment mean anything to the gods? Where were they? Did they not protect? Did they not bless? Was the true Kemet to shrink into oblivion under foreign kings?
The slur of words left her tongue in a yell, “Where are you, gods?!” She tried to pull back her words, for what would those around her think of her question? She was the divine’s appointed chief wife. She should not utter such questions. She should not cry out in agony. Show weakness? Never. Yet, she remained on the floor, her cries turning to muted whimpers.
Shame crept over her cheeks. Who was she to question Amun and Re and Hathor and Isis? Tears chased each other down her cheeks. She had no strength to continue until she looked up and saw the wounded soldiers and servants from the room had come and circled the table—their backs to her and Ramose—shielding her from any who would see her agony.
Her breath settled in her chest at this act of love from these soldiers, many of whom she did not know their names. Thoth, the god of wisdom, came to her then.
If the legends were true, even the god Osiris was murdered by his brother, Set. Even Isis mourned Osiris, her husband. Even the gods felt pain. Even the gods lost their loved ones.
Perhaps this path, although divinely appointed, was not meant to be easy. It was not intended to be devoid of agony and loss.
Even in mourning, Isis proved her love to Osiris by gathering the pieces of his body and raising him from the dead with her magic.
Perhaps then, the divinely appointed was meant to endure. For if she gave up, she would never have proved her love for the gods, for Kemet, for the people—her people. Her gaze scanned the blood-smeared tunics of the people who surrounded her, facing out.
These people.
A lump grew thick in her throat as the potion lost its effect on her sight. The incensed green air pleased her senses as a bittersweet peace fell upon her. Maybe this was what her mother and grandmother knew. Maybe that was why they could stand firm in the face of adversity and sorrow. She drew a deep breath. Ramose was gone from this life—Ahmose-Ankh, Siamun, Ahmose-Sitamun, and Ahmose-Sipair as well. But they were in the Field of Reeds living for eternity. They had brought joy, love, and laughter to an otherwise dim life. She cherished them all, even for the two moments Siamun was with her. Their lives in the land of the living had not been in vain. They had lived and endured until they could no longer endure. They were brave in their illness and challenges and met the afterlife with open eyes and open hearts. The thought was a balm to her bleeding spirit.
Pain returned to her shoulder. She had forgotten about that wound, but it seemed less than the anguish in her heart. But despite the affliction, she lifted herself, using the table as a crutch.
She would stand and be the queen her people needed. She would endure until her body could no longer sustain life in this land, just like her children, just like the gods.
Her recent weeping made her voice gruff, but still, she cleared her throat and spoke. “Your queen thanks you for your service to her in her hour of need. Send for the Anubis priests if they have not already been summoned for the Crown Prince Ramose.”
“They have been called, Chief Wife,” the physician priest said.
“Well then,” Ahmose-Nefertari said and took a deep breath. “I must find my living children. Who will come with me?”
Those, who stood, turned around and bowed their heads in service. Some, who were seated, stood, and did the same.
“Good. Then let us go,” she said and left that place of sorrow. A stone visage fell upon her face, just like her grandmother and her mother. Only one thought entered her mind: The gods mourned, but they were also vengeful. Tetian would pay with his afterlife.
40
A TIME OF THE DIVINE | AHHOTEP
SEDJEFATAWY, 1551 BC
Black smoke billowed as a dark offering to the skies from the battle outside the palace. The smoke in the distance grew darker and blocked the sun, casting a shadow over the land, but at least Per-djed-ken still stood.
Ahhotep’s stomach boiled up to the back of her throat as she looked out over the harbor. So much destruction. After three months of fighting, and finally, with the help of the small militias from Sha and Ma-Hedj and the converted traitors from Bat and Meseh, they were able to push Tetian and his Kushite allies up the Nile. Many of Tetian’s ships sat sunk in the Nile.
With her chin lowered and her eyes locked on the southern bend of the river, her jaw clamped tautly. Her leg ached. Ahmose-Nefertari’s shoulder had not healed well. Tep’s and Ramose’s bodies lay prepped, wrapped, and ready for the tomb, but the path to West of Waset had not been safe to travel. Their ka and ba were mad with waiting. Even though Lady Rai suffered wounds that would soon ensure her journey west, she had made sure three of Ahmose-Nefertari’s children had survived.
