Alone with Jannes, Hatshepsut let some of her fury show. “All right,” she said, “which of your priests will die tonight?”

  Jannes shut his eyes. “Me,” he said.

  “Not you,” she said. “But now I know who it is. Your son Jambres, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t believe he understood the implications of it,” said Jannes.

  “What, you raised him to be a fool?”

  “He thought he was merely elevating the best of your father’s grandsons to be Pharaoh beside you.”

  “No, he thought that by putting this boy in his father’s place, he’d be able to cut my son Moses out of his inheritance.”

  Jannes said nothing.

  “You know Moses,” said Hatshepsut. “He is a man of strength, courage, wisdom, virtue. Has there been a better man in line for the double crown?”

  “Never,” said Jannes. “And when I say that, you know that I remember your father with love and respect. But Moses has one flaw, in the eyes of some men.”

  “So he once dwelt in an Israelite’s womb. The river gave him to me.”

  “Hatshepsut,” said Jannes, “I know. I know.”

  His voice calmed her. Even though she knew that he was, in effect, pleading for the life of his own son, nevertheless she forced herself to listen to him.

  “I didn’t say my son was right to do what he did. But I know that he was not acting against you. Nor even against Moses himself. If Moses were the only Israelite in Egypt, Jambres would be his strongest supporter.”

  “What does he fear? Haven’t I kept the Israelites as slaves?”

  “With lighter burdens, and many opportunities to escape service, but yes, you have,” said Jannes. “The danger isn’t that you’ll favor the Israelites, or even that Moses will. The danger is the stories that the Israelites tell about him.”

  “What do I care what the Israelites say?”

  “Ancient prophecies, supposedly made by their ancestors. Abraham, Isaac, Israel, Joseph, stories about a messiah who will return after death, on the day of judgment, and lead his chosen people to Paradise.”

  “What danger is there in that?”

  “It makes him a god.”

  “If he succeeds me as Pharaoh, he will be.”

  “It makes him the god of the Israelites.”

  “They have only one god, and it’s not Moses. I know enough about their beliefs to know that.”

  “But that’s not the only version of the story that circulates. Some say his own sister has prophesied that—”

  “Miriam? I think the woman is mad.”

  “Oh, and no king ever fell because of the words of a madman?” Jannes smiled wanly.

  “What does she say?”

  “That her brother is not the messiah, but he’s like the messiah. And instead of leading the chosen people to Paradise after he dies, he’ll lead them out of slavery in this life.”

  Hatshepsut thought about this for a moment. “It’s possible that when he becomes Pharaoh, if he feels the time is right, he may liberate the Israelites. But he wouldn’t be foolish enough to cause dissension in his kingdom by preferring them the way the old Hyksos pharaohs did.”

  “Yes, and so it also seems to me,” said Jannes. “But Jambres thinks that these stories suggest something far more sinister. That Miriam is deliberately telling these stories because Moses has told her to, in order to prepare the Israelites for a bloody revolution in which he will kill you on your throne and seize power, ruling as Pharaoh himself and imposing Israelite rule over Egypt more ruthlessly than the Hyksos ever did.”

  “I’m sorry to learn that your son has gone mad,” said Hatshepsut.

  “Not mad,” said Jannes. “Wrong, but still prompted by a loving desire to keep you alive and your father’s dynasty on the throne.”

  “Am I supposed to forgive his anointing this impudent nephew of mine?”

  “But that anointing never happened,” said Jannes. “And if it never happened, how can you punish my son for doing it?”

  Hatshepsut smiled nastily. “Do you really think that such a weak logical trap will tie my hands?”

  Jannes said nothing. Because he knew that yes, that logical trap would bind her. That, plus several other very good reasons for inaction. It was not good to reveal dissension in the house of Pharaoh—that was why Mutnefert was still alive, and it would keep Isis and her son alive as well. That same principle also applied here, for it was plain that Jannes, whose support was vital, would not look kindly on her if she punished Jambres for his treason. Sometimes you had to sleep with crocodiles.

  “Next you’ll tell me that I should honor Jambres and Tuthmose for what they did,” she said.

  “But they did nothing,” said Jannes. “Nothing happened tonight except that your husband died. And you brought his body here to Karnak to prepare for his burial as befits a Pharaoh.”

  “I command that your son prepare his body with his own hands. Because it was your son that killed him. If he hadn’t been plotting with Isis, she would never have done it.”

  Jannes nodded gravely. He knew that his son deserved to die, and that Jannes had in a more subtle way betrayed Hatshepsut by shielding him. He could afford to be generous now and allow Hatshepsut some small punishment of Jambres. If it could be called a punishment, since it was a great honor to prepare the body of a dead Pharaoh.

  A great honor . . . and one that by right should have gone to Jannes. Hatshepsut watched his face, looking for evidence that he realized what she had just done to him, how she was preparing the ground for him to be replaced as chief priest. If he recognized her first step on that road, he showed no sign of it. But then, she was not allowing herself to show her dread that Jambres might be right, that the only way for her to remain as Pharaoh was to take that impudent boy beside her as Pharaoh. It would mean a life of constant vigilance, and in the end, her probable murder as an ambitious, hate-filled young man thrust her out of the way. And yet not to raise him up might also mean her death, and all the sooner, if people like Jambres refused to be ruled by a woman alone.

  More horses at a gallop. More clattering of chariot wheels on stone. What possible message could be arriving so urgently?

  “Come with me,” said Hatshepsut. “Let’s see together what this new crisis might be.”

  For a moment she hoped it would be news that Isis and her son had reached the palace and Mutnefert had killed them both on the spot when she heard what they had done to Tuthmose II. But the messenger was not one of her men. He came from Moses.

  “What is the word?” she demanded.

  “Victory!” he cried. “Saba has fallen, and without the loss of a single Egyptian soldier!”

  Hatshepsut thought her heart might burst with joy at the news. Just at the moment of crisis, her husband dead, the priests of the temple casting about for Egyptian heirs to the crown, and now the gods had given Moses a victory. He would be a hero. Her own rule would be legitimated, and all the more so because the news of the victory had arrived the very night of her husband’s death. For the first time, Hatshepsut would rule alone, without either her father or her weakling husband to provide a male figure beside her. Moses had made this possible. Moses was indeed a deliverer. Just as Miriam’s prophecy had promised. Miriam’s only mistake had been in the matter of who it was that Moses would save. Me, that’s who he saved, you poor mad prophetess! Me, his true mother, the woman most favored by the gods.

  Chapter 3: Triumph

  The people came in from the fields, rushed out of their houses, flooded the streets of the villages like the river in spring. They cried out Moses’ name, calling him Conqueror, Prince of Egypt, saying he was favored by this god or that. The rich were carried out in litters or lifted up to the tops of buildings, where slaves fanned and shaded them as they shouted for Moses in relative comfort. The poor sweated and stank together in the dust of the street, the roar of the crowd filling their ears and their hearts, feeling at one with each other, with the rich, with the great Moses, with the gods.

  And among them were the Israelites. Still slaves by law, in fact their lot had greatly eased since Moses was adopted as heir to Pharaoh. They worked once again as artisans, scribes, and overseers, just as they had during the reign of the Hyksos. Their slavery perhaps tempered the arrogance of those who might once have been proud, and Egyptians no longer sought to marry into the Israelite tribes or join Israelite households by adoption as they had in the old days when no Egyptian was greater than Joseph except Pharaoh himself. But the days of mobbing and massacre were over, and as for the labor required of the Israelites, many of them now hired it done, paying poorer Israelites or Egyptians or buying their own slaves to fulfill their turns at building levees, walls, and public buildings. There were Israelite children growing up who had never sloshed their feet in the wet clay in the brickyards, who had never seen or felt the lash.

  Yet the Egyptians and the Israelites were not one people; indeed, the division was clearer than ever, even though both groups cheered their throats raw as Moses and his army passed in triumph down the river to Thebes. For the Egyptians were cheering Pharaoh-to-be, a god in embryo, the future personification of the glory of their great civilization. While the Israelites were cheering the successor of Joseph, who would raise his people out of the last bits of bondage and make them once again masters of the great land of Egypt. And this time they would not be dependent on a Hyksos ruler for their position of privilege. Now Israelite blood would run in the veins of the Pharaoh himself. Indeed, now that Tuthmose II was dead, many expected that Hatshepsut would name her adopted son as co-regent with her. The double crown would sit well, they thought, on an Israelite head.

  And as Moses passed, the Egyptians looked at the Israelites, almost all of them standing in a separate group from them, and saw how the Israelites seemed to rejoice entirely among themselves rather than joining with the rest of the community, and they understood quite well what this meant. The Israelites expected soon to be liberated from slavery. The Israelites expected to be tax collectors and grain distributors as they had been during the years of the hated Hyksos overlords. And the Egyptians, in whispers, in looks, in quiet conversations in their houses after the crowds dispersed, seethed with rage at the Israelites, and vowed that if Moses gave one hint, one tiny sign that he favored the Israelites over the true Egyptians, they would look to the gods to give them an Egyptian Pharaoh.

  Some of them went further, whispering treason. Perhaps that son of Tuthmose II and Isis who, it was rumored, might already have been ordained by the son of the high priest of Karnak. Tuthmose III—that was the name that began to be whispered. Moses could not be made Pharaoh because Tuthmose had already been crowned. That woman, who should not really be called Pharaoh at all, but only the Daughter of Pharaoh, she was the one who had forced this Israelite upstart on them. Tuthmose II should have been sole Pharaoh, instead of co-Pharaoh with a woman! And as for Moses’ victory, he didn’t actually defeat the Ethiopians, did he? He had the city given him, as everything in his life had been given him, by the trickery and treachery of a woman.

  But, having said this, the whisperers looked around in fear lest anyone overheard. For the gods had clearly spoken, hadn’t they? Moses had taken Saba in the name of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and in the moment of triumph Tuthmose II had died, thus giving the triumph to Hatshepsut and Moses. If the gods had done that, then this was probably not a good time to be talking about how she shouldn’t be Pharaoh. And so the treasonous words were whispered but not spoken aloud, and Isis and Tuthmose and Mutnefert all had to listen to the cheering crowds from their rooms in the palace, loathing Moses and fearing Hatshepsut. What would she do now? With this victory she could afford to have a few inconvenient relatives strangled or poisoned and mourn their deaths with a great show of grief. Mutnefert and Isis both were fasting. Only Tuthmose laughed at death and ate whatever was placed before him.

  Arise, Moses, Conqueror! Rejoice! Moses! Victory! Praise the Prince of Egypt! The Gods are great! Glory to Pharaoh and Moses!

  * * *

  Hatshepsut waited for Moses at the head of the stairs leading up from the river. She wore her full regalia as Pharaoh, though the headdress alone overbalanced her so much she wore it in constant dread of toppling over. That’s an omen the people would not need to have interpreted for them! She saw with annoyance that there were many Israelites gathered near the palace—that was the last thing she needed, to remind people that Moses wasn’t really Egyptian, just when she needed them to see him as her true son and the chosen of the gods. She recognized his former kin: Jochabed, who bore him, true, and nursed him, but who was definitely not his mother, since any son she had borne was given to the river. Miriam, his half-mad sister with her prophecies and gnomic sayings.

  And Aaron, that climber, who, instead of becoming a decently sycophantic courtier and capitalizing on his brother’s position to become wealthy through graft and influence peddling, had decided to become the most obnoxiously Israelite of all the Israelites, wearing that uncouth wool-and-leather desert garb even though most Israelites dressed in the white linen of Egypt. Would he harangue Moses once again about how he ought to use his influence to free the Israelites so they could go back out to the desert and make their obscene animal sacrifices? Of course he would. Anything to spoil the festivities.

  Hatshepsut thought briefly of having him arrested, but that was dangerous, too. It would weaken Moses’ position precisely at the time when she needed him to seem strong. Worse, it might be taken as license by the people who hated and resented the Israelites more than ever. The last thing she needed was for Moses’ victory over the Ethiopians to be remembered as the occasion for mobbings and massacres of Israelites. If only Aaron could understand that it was Hatshepsut’s own desire for peace and decency in her kingdom that kept her from letting the Israelites’ enemies destroy them. Instead, he was convinced it was Moses’ influence over her that kept him safe. What a joke! If only he knew the disdain that Moses had for him.

  The boats came into view, and the cries rose from thousands of throats. Hatshepsut watched as Aaron and Miriam and Jochabed wept and embraced each other at the sight of Moses, as if he belonged to them and not to the whole kingdom of Egypt. Would Moses even exist if Hatshepsut had not chosen to adopt him?

  Though to be fair, it was adopting Moses that helped her secure her position at court all those years ago. Having a son and heir who was adopted by her father as well, that had been the key to everything. Hatshepsut saved Moses, and Moses, even as a baby, had saved her in return. And in the years since then he had been a true son, the joy of her heart. Hatshepsut had been the most avid student of her father’s life and teachings, but in all the years of his life Moses had been a far better student, determined to learn, if it were possible, everything about everything. He studied with the priests as if he intended to become a priest; he studied with scribes as if he intended to become a scribe. The soldiers praised him as the finest of officers and the finest of fighters. And Hatshepsut herself knew that no one was a better master of statesmanship than Moses. Never mind his tendency to be a little tenderhearted sometimes when he should be ruthless, and other times too impulsive and tempestuous when he should be patient. That was to be expected of one so young and inexperienced; he would learn. No mother could ask for a better son; no ruler for a better heir. If the price for that was having to look at Aaron’s and Miriam’s smug, self-important faces even at her greatest moments of triumph, well, Hatshepsut would bear that small burden.

  At least this time she didn’t have to have that repulsive son of Mutnefert beside him, that donkey who wore the double crown only because his mother poisoned Hatshepsut’s beautiful brothers.

  But then she remembered how close she had come to having to share this moment with that cow-brained Isis and her snake of a son and she shuddered.

  The royal boat came to the steps and the rivermen secured it. Moses descended from his high platform and stepped from the Nile to the land. The cheering doubled in volume. Other boats were brought up to the steps, and Ethiopian prizes were brought to shore. Chests filled with gold ornaments, jewelry, and figurines were brought up the steps and held high before the people. Strange animals taken from the gardens of Saba were displayed. And who was that overdecorated woman? Not a slave—this must be the daughter of the Ethiopian king, who betrayed her city in order to become Moses’ wife. Hatshepsut watched with amusement as her fastidious son nodded to his beloved bride but did not touch her and certainly did not bring her forward to stand beside him. Rather she was forced to trail many paces behind him, like a captive—no, like a concubine!—as he climbed the stairs to present all his gifts to Pharaoh.

  To his mother.

  Hatshepsut raised her arms for silence. In other families, a son who came home from the wars would be embraced by his mother, covered with tears and kisses. But Hatshepsut was Pharaoh, and the scene had to be played out differently.

  “Pharaoh, god of Egypt!” cried Moses. At last the crowd was still, hanging on his words. “Your ancestors stood beside me as the armies of Ethiopia melted in fear before me! Thoth entered the city before me. By magic, Thoth captured the heart of the daughter of the king. He taught her that the place of Ethiopia was in the bed of Egypt!”

  Not likely that she’ll ever get into the bed of Moses, though, Hatshepsut thought wryly. Sometimes she worried about him, the way he took no concubines and even seemed not to take possession of the perfectly willing slaves in the palace. When she confronted him about this, he said to her, Should I put my sons and daughters into the bodies of slaves and concubines? How could she argue with that? One thing was certain: This Ethiopian princess might be his wife in title, and to keep his word, but Moses would not let a traitor be the mother of his children.

  “And when the gates of Saba fell open before me, it was Pharaoh, god of Egypt, whom I carried in my heart as I entered the city!”

  A lovely speech. Unorthodox and theologically difficult, but it played well at the moment, and Hatshepsut especially enjoyed the way Aaron and Miriam were frowning. They didn’t like hearing their brother talk about gods. They wanted him to believe that the only god was their unseen what’s-his-name. As if one god should be god of river, sky, rain, and the land of the dead. As if one god would raise up different nations and have them fight each other, so that no matter which side won, the same god won, and no matter which side lost, that same god was the loser! What sort of god would fight on both sides of a battle? It was a childish, ludicrous, tribal sort of religion, invented by herdsmen so lonely that they came to believe they were the only people in the world, and so wilfully ignorant that they continued to believe it even when surrounded by the glories of Egypt and the obvious godhood of Pharaoh.