Woven rush matting piled with plump cushions covered the tiled floor.
Thutmose settled down on a heap against the wall and pulled me down beside him. “Come here,” he said, positioning me on his lap so that his left arm cradled me against his shoulder. “Close your eyes and open your mouth.”
I obeyed, thinking: Whatever he wants, you must do now. He is your husband. Whatever … I steeled myself. And found myself eating a pink fig. “Oh!” I said. “My favourite!” Together we finished a small bowl of them. When he leaned forwards to kiss me gently on the lips, he tasted of figs and honey. As he continued to move his mouth stickily against mine, he began to caress my knees. The rich scent of myrrh filled the room and there was a creamy smoothness on my skin. I sniffed, inhaling the delicious perfume.
“Relax,” he murmured. “It is an unguent. Do you like it?”
“Mmmmmm.” I was feeling slightly dizzy, having drunk more wine than I was used to. I settled into his arms. My robe fell open. I wasn’t wearing anything else beneath it.
He continued to smooth the unguent rhythmically, hypnotically, over my knees and up over my thighs. I let my knees fall slightly apart. He stroked me like a cat. Up his hand moved, ever higher. Ah, he was getting close. Close to the secret place between my legs, the spot that could engender so much pleasure. I had discovered it myself some years ago, but I was not sure whether all girls had such a thing or whether it was only me. If they all did … surely he would know … he had been with concubines, they must have taught him … on and on his firm hand went, nearer but not quite there. Around and around and about and down. I think I moaned. I would scream, I thought, if he did not find the spot. Should I tell him, I wondered. Perhaps he did not … I moved my hips upon his lap. Should I guide his hand, just a little … Closer. Closer. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. He did know, after all. He knew exactly … oh, oh, oh, OH! OH! OH! AH! AHHHHHH!
As his firm touch found the perfect place, smoothed it with the unguent, stroked it hard, knuckled and kneaded it, I was overpowered with wave after wave of pleasure, such as I could not have imagined, ever. “Oh!” I gasped, at last. And opened my eyes, to find his dark eyes smiling into mine.
“Are you ready for me now, my wife?” he asked.
“Quite ready,” I whispered, and moved under him.
So I was initiated into the marriage bed without pain, and as time went by with increasing skill and pleasure. He did not call me to the royal couch very often, though, and these occasions became fewer as time went by. As my interest in such matters grew more intense, his waned; already, I think, looking back, he was more ill than he would allow anyone to know. Perhaps it was not surprising, therefore, that there were moments when I longed for … I could not have said exactly what. But sometimes instead of a partner who was slightly shorter than me, slim and somewhat fragile, and whose hip bones cut into mine, I dreamed of a lover with a body taller and stronger and more vigorous. A lover in whom the force of life ran powerfully. But I did not allow myself to see his face.
Perhaps it is not appropriate that I should write about such things. But this is the true record of my reign and it must tell more than the official one. For I have been not only the divine Pharaoh who maintains Ma’at but also a woman and a mother, and I have known great love. I do not wish that my life should disappear like water seeping away into the sand. I have achieved much and suffered much and I regret only the things I did not do, the child who never lived, and those people I have loved who have gone before me. My heart does not despise any of my days. So. I write what I write.
The very next day I moved into the women’s section of the harem palace and I made sure that I was immediately given precedence over all the women there.
“I shall move into the largest suite of rooms,” I informed the Overseer of the Royal Harem, an able manager whose sharp eyes missed neither a speck of dust nor the disappearance of a pomegranate from the royal kitchens. “See to it.”
My husband’s mother, Mutnofert, did not like that at all. She was a slim woman with a pretty enough face, but she had small breasts and big ears, and a childish voice that grated me. Since my mother, the Queen Ahmose, had passed into the Afterlife, may she live for ever, Mutnofert herself had occupied those rooms.
“I do not see why I should move,” she protested petulantly. “You are not the Great Royal Wife.”
“And you,” I pointed out, “are not the Mother of the King. Merely a minor wife.”
“But I took over many functions when the Great Queen went to the gods,” she argued. “I watch over the household of the royal children, and I am in charge of the weaving, and the Inspector of the Harem Administration reports to me.”
“You may continue with all those worthy tasks,” I said. “While I help my father the Pharaoh to reign over the Two Lands, to dispense justice, to ensure the proper order, and to maintain Ma’at. Together we guarantee the continuing existence of the world.”
She moved.
When my father passed into the Afterlife, Egypt was bereft, for Thutmose the First had been a much loved and highly respected Pharaoh who truly had maintained Ma’at and governed the Black Land well. There would now be a period of seventy days’ mourning while the Pharaoh’s body underwent a series of rituals and processes to ensure that he would attain eternal life. Previously I had not given such matters much thought, but now I found my mind dwelling on it. Senenmut had described it all to me when my brother Amenmose died; he had much knowledge of it since he had served for some time as a scribe in the House of Death, where embalming was done.
“It stinks, that place,” Senenmut had said, wrinkling his nose. “Those who work in the House of Death can be smelled from a distance. The sweetish smell of death seeps into one’s clothes, it seems to cleave to the skin. I was glad when I could leave for a different post.”
“I can understand that. I would have hated it,” I said.
I knew how important it is to prepare the body properly for when the Ka returns – especially, of course, for a member of the Royal House, since the link between the Pharaoh and the next world cannot be broken for fear of chaos descending. Yet I shuddered at the image of the Chief Surgeon approaching my royal father’s noble head and pushing a long bronze hook up through a nostril. I knew he would rotate it till the brain turned to mush and could be drawn out. I knew that the brain is a useless organ and if left in place would surely putrefy. I knew all that – but I did not like to picture it.
I found the thought of the ordeal that my father’s Ka would face even more horrifying than the imagined treatment of his body. I had been taught that Osiris, god of the dead, is the chief judge in the Hall of Judgment, where it is necessary for the Ka to make Protestations of Innocence. You must attest that you have not murdered, stolen, lied, cheated, acted unjustly to the weak, and so forth. Forty-two gods sit in a tribunal to hear these negative confessions. For a Pharaoh, the test is particularly stringent. Did he contravene Ma’at? Did he allow chaos to take over the Black Land? Did he favour the strong above the weak, did he insult the souls of the dead? Did he let the temples fall into ruin, did he counter the will of the gods? These questions would be put to my father.
What if his spirit did not prevail?
I asked this of Thutmose, my husband who would be crowned after the period of mourning was over.
“It would be a catastrophe,” said Thutmose, frowning.
“What then?”
“Then will Osiris command that he suffer eternal damnation in the Netherworld,” he said.
I shivered. I knew that it is a dread place, dismal and dark, peopled with monsters, lost spirits and defeated gods. “My father will surely satisfy the Great Tribunal,” I said. “He governed the Black Land well and he always considered the will of the gods.”
“I believe it to be so,” agreed my husband.
“He will surely also pass the crucial test,” I said hopefully. “I do not believe that there was evil in his heart, to make it weigh heavy