Read Online The Bull of Min by Lavender Ironside - Free Book Online

behind her bed chamber, trailed by her retinue of women, Amunhotep’s nurse, and, of course, Nehesi. The grass beneath her sandals was wet and lush, the earth still springy with the last traces of the flood. Hatshepsut waited on a blanket in the sun, a few of Amunhotep’s favorite toys scattered around her. She wore a man’s kilt and a profusion of beaded necklaces, her chest and back bare. The plucky, daring nature of the garb cheered Meryet – it seemed another small sign that some fractional part of the Pharaoh’s old self was returning.
    “There is the little king,” Hatshepsut said, smiling up at them, squinting through her kohl in the glare of the sun.
    Meryet lowered Amunhotep and herself onto the blanket. The boy at once wiggled from her arms and busied himself with a wooden deby and a wool-stuffed lion. Batiret joined them, dipping cool wine from a jar, passing cups to her mistress and to Meryet.
    “He grows so fast,” Hatshepsut said, never taking her eyes from Amunhotep. “In a blink, he’ll be as big as a horse with a deep voice and hair on his chin.”
    She shifted to take one of the cakes Batiret offered, but her outstretched hand arrested in the air. Hatshepsut’s face paled; Meryet could see from the sudden stillness of the beads on her chest that the Pharaoh held her breath.
    The pains again , Meryet thought. Hatshepsut often complained of sharp aches in her hip and thigh. Sometimes spells of weakness overtook her, too, and seemed related somehow to the mysterious, transient pain. Meryet wondered whether Hatshepsut’s condition were not due to a lack of movement. Many months had passed since Senenmut’s death. Hatshepsut’s grief had stalled her. She was sedentary; she had grown stout with her own inactivity, though even subdued as she now was, she could not put off the air of regal command that was hers by nature. Even playing gently with Amunhotep, even stilled by her long sorrow, Hatshepsut spoke and moved with authority. When she spoke or moved at all.
    “Do you suppose,” Hatshepsut said, recovering herself, toying with Amunhotep’s short side-lock, “you may have another?”
    Meryet laughed. “One day, but gods make it not too soon. This one is enough of a handful for me, even with the royal nurses caring for him most of the time.”
    Batiret plied her fan on its long golden pole, swirling the flies away. “The Lady Horus would like an entire nest full of little Horuslings to pamper and spoil.”
    Hatshepsut grinned up at her fan-bearer with great affection, showing the charming gap between her teeth. “And why not? The world could use a few more of these.” She tickled Amunhotep’s foot; he squealed and clutched at his own soft belly in merriment. “The gods know there is precious little to be glad for in this life.”
    Meryet felt the smile slip from her face. No one wanted to rush Hatshepsut through her grief. Young though she was and relatively untouched by tragedy, Meryet still sensed intuitively that sorrow found its own route through the heart, wearing a crooked path, eroding the ka like a stream of water through dark soil until at last it sank away in its own time, and healing flowered in its place. But Hatshepsut’s depression compounded Thutmose’s guilt, and Meryet was left to impel him on his path. It seemed sometimes that she drove him against Hatshepsut’s grief, goading him like a drover does his cattle. And Meryet was weary – Amun, but she was weary.
    “Where is Thutmose?” Hatshepsut asked suddenly.
    Meryet gave an involuntary jump, startled that the king had chanced so close to her private thoughts. “Drilling his soldiers. The southern circuit, I believe he told me.”
    “It’s a good army,” said Hatshepsut rather dully. “The new recruits seemed very sturdy.”
    Meryet doubted whether Hatshepsut had seen the new recruits. She nodded in agreement, careful to keep her skepticism well away from her face.
    “Maybe we ought to find a sturdy soldier