Meetings on a Golden Shore

Untitled Part 2

Summary:

Hatshepsut and Senenmut confide their growing attraction for each other to their servants, each wondering if the other is out of reach. Bill and Laura provide guidance and sweet dreams to their corporeal selves as they keep nudging, occasionally upsetting their own delicate balance with each other.

Chapter Text

The seasons of Inundation, Emergence, and Harvest had come and gone, each in its turn. A year passed as easily these days as a season had in her youth. Such was the way of growing old, she supposed.

Mandisa gently glided the ebony comb through Hatshepsut's dark curls, touching the strands with iris-scented almond oil as she worked. The queen’s locks would never be waterfall-straight like her mother’s, but Mandisa had always secretly thought that the soft curls were more perfectly suited to her delicate features.

The old woman bit her lip and mentally drew a line through “queen” as she corrected herself. Her nursery charge was “Pharaoh." Mandisa knew she’d be long in her tomb before Egypt had a queen again. And thank the Gods for it…no one she knew had lost a son or husband to war since Hatshepsut took the throne.

Her fingers ached as she began weaving the thick curls to fall in one heavy braid over the royal right shoulder. She could see jade-green eyes watching her in the bronze mirror. The painted black eyebrows drew together and slim, elegant fingers reached up to touch hers.

“Do they pain you tonight, Mandisa?”

“Not so much, Lady. No more than yesterday, or the day before.” She worked another swath of hair into the braid.

“I’ve told you a hundred times that you can find a younger attendant to do this. You’ve served me all my life, Old Mother. You’ve earned your ease.”

Mandisa’s heart swelled with affection for her milk-daughter. She might be the most powerful person in Egypt, perhaps the world, but one look in her La’ra’s unusual green eyes and the old nurse felt the years slip away. She smiled as she remembered the young royal infant with hair curly as a new lamb’s coat who had eased the loss of her birth-daughter. Her own skin had been smooth then, not wrinkled as an old quince, and her eyes had been jet black, free of the grey cataract that was beginning to cover the left one.

“I’ve earned a place in your tomb, Lady La’ra, as I’d not leave your side in this life, or the next.” She tugged lightly on the thick braid, teasing. “And there’s not any one of the young ones I’d trust to do this as well as I do.”

“At least tell me you’re taking the tincture of willow to ease the swelling.”

“Every morning, Lady. See the strength that returns.” She began the deep massage of Hatshepsut’s neck and shoulders that her charge loved so much, taking out the pain that set in after a long day in court, the Double Crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt weighty on her head.

She glanced again at the mirror. Hatshepsut had a faraway look in her eyes, and her mouth had turned down at the corners.

“Now, if a strong young man were to offer to ease my Lady’s aches”—she punctuated her remark with another light tug—“I could be persuaded to seek my couch earlier and rest my old bones.”

“I’ve not had much ease at the hands of men, Mandisa. As you would know.”

The old woman hissed between her front teeth. “Not one such as your accursed husband, may his ka wander forever, may his tomb—“

“Mandisa, that’s enough. He’s not without supporters, even in death. Nor is his son.”

Both women sighed at the same time. Hatshepsut would never be allowed to marry again without tearing Egypt apart, her factions warring with those of young Thutmose III. Only the Gods knew for sure where a new husband might place his backing. And most of the nobles and courtiers dawdling in the throne room were overgrown children anyway, not worth a bucket of mare’s piss.