AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello lovelies. This be my new novel; I'm going to put it on in installments of chapter-length (20 pages if it was an actual A5 book). If you like ancient Egypt, mystery, drama, romance, history or tales of treachery and deciet, this is the thing for you - and if you don't, please please give it a go anyway. If you don't like gore, violence, chilbirth, sexuallity or anything mildy like that, I warn you that such things will be making an appearance later in the novel.
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Prologue
The Girl Who Chastised Back
This is not my story. It is the story of a girl who was born for great things. Hatshepsut did great things - not the things that were expected of her, but then, destiny is a strange force.
She was never an ordinary girl. I'd used to watch her brother Thutmose swim naked in the lotus pools with her as children and when her nurse had chastised them for this breach of modesty, rules and tradition, she'd chastise back like she was mistress of all Egypt. And her nurse would chuckle and praise her for her wrongdoings. I wonder what her father, Pharaoh Thutmose, would think if he knew his daughter's disciplining was so lax.
Now that I dwell on it, these childhood days probably account for the temper, ambition and selfishness Hatshepsut has been made of her entire life. She's still a spoiled child at heart and her egocentricity has cost us all something, whether it be our gold deben or our ka - our honesty and innocence. I must have lied far too many times for Hatshepsut's gain to have a clear conscience. Every night, I toss and turn on my pallet, dreaming nightmares of the afterlife and what would happen if my heart weighed more than the feather on the scales of Ma'at. More often the dreams would be about Hatshepsut swapping my heart for hers when it was time for it to be weighed on Ma'at's scales of truth, so that she might pass into the domain of Osiris with her guilt behind her. Essentially, she was doing this already when I covered for her misdeeds and lies.
I never knew I was to be Hatshepsut's body servant until the day before my appointment. It was all very rapid; the princess had reached her thirteenth birthday, they said. She has more need for beautician than a nurse now that her destiny as queen of all egypt was growing closer, and that was what all of my years on Amun's earth had been preparation for. I had been taught to use paints and henna by my mother, one of the royal court's finest body servants and Queen Ahmose's closest confidant, since I was old enough to hold a kohl brush. Amunet the artist, they called me in Thebes. Amunet, the girl who could turn any woman into a beauty to rival Isis.
My father was a palace scribe until he and my mother both succumbed to fever three years ago. I was twelve at the time, and all the paint in the world could not cover my grief. That day, I went to the temple of Mut and made the decision to dedicate my life and my ka to the goddess; I would have gone through with this plan if it were not for the queen. My mother had always been Ahmose's favourite, and the rumours of my fabled skill had obviously reached her.
I arrived at the temple at sunset. After exchanging my white sheath for a
"You weep. The temple of Mut is a place of joy." A regal voice said softly from somewhere behind me. I fiddled with my offering, placing it next to my incense at the feet of a statue of the goddess in her cat-headed form.
"A place to lose sorrow," I replied bitterly. "I know." Then I realised to whom I was speaking. "My lady," I stammered through tears. Her sheath blew in the summer wind that played with everything that could be moved in the faience-tiled courtyard.
"Amunet, do not lose yourself in the priestess' life. You will waste away." She held out her hand firmly. "Your mother was a better friend to me than anyone."
"My lady, she was a servant -"
"I am queen, child. I can do what I like."
"I respect that, my lady." I took her hand and she helped me up, with much clanging of heavy bangles on bangles. Her golden pectoral was level with the top of her small, hennaed breasts, and the amber embellishments gleamed in the evening shadows. I studied her beaded wig, her calculating, eagles eyes. The vulture crown of egypt glared down at me but Queen Ahmose's gaze had softened.
"This is no place for an artist," she said sadly. "Unless you consider art to be swinging a sistrum dawn to dusk. Your mother asked me to watch over you," Ahmose added quietly. "And I can't do that if you're hidden away in a temple."
"Then what is my future? I am an orphan. I have no place at court," I said sadly, panic sparking in my heart.
"Do you think that now your mother and father are dead, I have forgotten their services to Egypt? No. You will come back to Malkata with me tonight."
"And what will I do?" Tears pricked my eyes.
"Play your strengths. My oldest daughter needs a body servant." I stared at her dumbly. Why was she telling me this? "The women of court say you are skilled with paints and beads."
I blushed. "If it please you, my lady. But what of my clients?"
The queen of all egypt raised a brow. "Clients?"
"I offer my services to the women of court who do not have a body servant of their own. What will they do?"
"Learn to apply their own kohl and ochre. Only your skill is worthy of Hatshepsut." I felt a strange creeping in my stomach. I was going home, but not to my old rooms in the harem.
I was off to create an image for a princess. Not just any princess - the princess. The girl who I'd seen in the lotus pools with her brother those years ago. The girl who chastised back.
If only then I'd know the storm that was about to blow away everything I'd ever know was about to come.
