King and Goddess Read Online Free PDF

Nehsi to see. “As bad as that, then? Oh, poor Nehsi! And now you’re
fretting about the scribe with the crooked nose. I know what he is. He’s also
quite intelligent when he troubles to be. Seti-Nakht speaks well of him—and
Seti-Nakht has never suffered a fool in his life.”
    “All boys are fools,” said Nehsi.
    “When did you stop being a boy yourself?” she demanded.
“Years aren’t inches, my dear, no matter what people may let you think.”
    “I’m older than you,” he said, “and older than that puppy,
too, I’ll wager.”
    “He’s not an ill teacher,” Hatshepsut mused. She wandered
over to the fishpond and sat on its rim, watching the dart of bright bodies
from sunlight into shadow.
    There was a water-lotus blooming just within reach. She
craned far out to pluck it, so far that he reached to catch her, but she came
back with the blossom before she fell. She buried her nose in it, drinking the
sweet scent. “He doesn’t like teaching,” she said. “That’s obvious. But when he
forgets how insulted he is, he does it middling well.”
    “He has no patience,” Nehsi said, “and no understanding of
those who are slower of wit than he is.”
    “Oh,” she said, “but I’m quick. Very quick. He even admitted
it.”
    “He could hardly deny the truth,” Nehsi said.
    “Of course not,” she said. She darted a glance at him, with
one of her sudden shifts of mood. “My husband wants me in his bed tonight.
Should I go, do you think? Or should I put him off again?”
    Not a shift of mood, then. A shift to the thing that was
more truly troubling her.
    Nehsi was careful in his reply. “You know you have to do it
in the end. Whether now or later.”
    “That’s what he told his messenger to say,” she said. “I was
to be reminded that I may have been married to him when I was too young a child
to do what wives do with husbands, but now I’m a woman. It’s time I did my duty
as queen.”
    “He wants a son,” Nehsi said.
    “Surely,” said Hatshepsut with a curl of the lip, “and
doesn’t every man? Isn’t there time enough and more? I’ve just begun my
courses.”
    Nehsi could find it in himself to pity her, a little. She
was very young, yes, and no man had ever touched her or come to her bed.
    She saw the pity. It made her angry, as he had expected that
it would. “I’m not afraid, Nehsi. Don’t you dare think I’m afraid. I just
don’t—his hands are clammy. And he sweats.”
    “He is the living god,” Nehsi said.
    “He is a sweaty, panting lout without the least grain of
delicacy.” She was shaking, and she seemed unable to stop, but her voice was
less difficult to control. “Whenever he tries to kiss me, he slobbers all over
my face. All the women he’s had, and all the women he’s said to have had, and
hasn’t a one of them ever taught him to do it properly?”
    “Some things a man has to learn for himself,” said Nehsi.
    “Not this one,” she said. “He needs a schoolmaster. If a
cocky boy can teach me to write, why can’t some obliging soul teach my husband
how to bed a woman?”
    “One doesn’t do that with Horus on earth,” Nehsi said dryly.
“It’s not even wise to offer.”
    “Oh, isn’t it?” Her eyes glittered. “I’ll send him a
teacher. Someone pretty. Someone skilled and willing, but not too clever.”
    He nearly groaned aloud. She was a clever child—but by no
means clever enough. “Lady,” he said. “How wise is that? If you send a woman to
him, and he falls to her charms as he can’t help but do, he might forget you
altogether. What then if he gets a son on her while you remain barren? You’d
never lose your rank, but you’d lose power and standing. And a concubine’s son
would be the next king of Egypt.”
    She heard him. He saw it in her eyes. But she did not hear
him clearly enough. “I’ll have to trust in the gods. And by the greatest of
them, old friend, I do not want to go to my husband’s bed for the first time
only to be