The Double Crown: Secret Writings of the Female Pharaoh by Marié Heese Read Free Book Online Page B

he said, “nor you, I think. Let us go and sit upon the bank.”
    So we went down to the river’s edge, and we stared at the water surging by; it was at the time of the first rising and the Nile was green, promising a good inundation and rich harvests to come. I wept on my brother’s shoulder and his hands were gentle as he stroked my hair. The humid air was scented with damp earth and rotting leaves. I could not tell him that it was not so much my brother’s passing for which I wept, but for my broken mother with her naked suffering skull. My world was rent. Mothers did not weep. Divine royalty did not weep. I wanted somebody to tell me that the thing that had happened was not so.
    He held me till I finally became calm.
    “How do you talk to Hapi?” he enquired.
    I peered at him from between my clotted eyelashes. Was he laughing at me?
    “Is it necessary to speak aloud?” He appeared to be truly interested.
    “No,” I said. “You can just … you can just … think.”
    “Then let us think together.”
    We were quiet for a while.
    “And does Hapi ever answer you?” he asked at length.
    “Sometimes … sometimes it seems to me … that an answer comes,” I said. “Sometimes she sings to me.”
    “And today?”
    I tilted my head, listening. Today there was nothing but the wash of the water through the reeds and a croaking frog.
    “Nothing,” I said, forlornly.
    “Your question, no doubt, was why?”
    Of course he was right. I nodded.
    “And you hear nothing.”
    I agreed wordlessly.
    “Not quite nothing,” he pointed out. “I hear the water. And the water is rising. What has that meant, little sister, for many thousands of years?”
    “It has brought life,” I said. “Hapi brings life.” For every year the great river swells and floods its banks, so that the entire land looks like an enormous, turgid brown lake in which villages sit like islands and the trees seem half their size; this annual inundation deposits rich black earth all along the banks of the great river. Then when it recedes men can plant new crops, so that seeds may germinate under the sun, and harvests sprout and mature and be brought in.
    I still did not understand why our brother had had to go to the gods, but the images conjured by the rushing water comforted me. Thutmose’s understanding presence comforted me. In truth, before he was my husband and the Pharaoh, he was my friend. I put my hand in my brother’s hand and struggled to my feet. “They will be looking for us,” I said.
    “Yes. We must return. But, little sister …”
    “Yes?”
    “You have a personal slave? One who can taste your food?”
    “Yes.”
    “Eat nothing that has not been tasted,” he warned me.
    “But I … but I am only a child,” I said.
    “A child who bears the blood royal,” he reminded me.
    “And there is still Amenmose,” I argued, “and … and you.”
    “But there are power-hungry men in Egypt who would love nothing better than to rule over the land. We do not know for sure – do we? – why Wadjmose died. Should the Pharaoh – the gods forbid it – pass into the Afterlife soon, all of his children might need to have a care.” His dark eyes were very serious.
    “I see,” I said in a small voice. I had seen no more than seven risings of the Nile that day, yet it was the end of innocence for me.
    I mourned my brother the Crown Prince. But I began to entertain a secret dream. I dared to dream of greatness.
    It was the songs of the blind bard, coupled with Inet’s tales, that gave form and direction to my dream.
    He came to the harem palace when I had seen nine risings of the Nile. It was the first time that I was allowed to attend a formal banquet where the King my father presided, instead of being sent to the children’s dining room with the rest of the palace children.
    I wore a simple white linen shift and a little string of blue glass beads, but Inet had refused to let me line my eyes with black kohl and paint the lids