An altar for the goddess Hathor stands in the desert. In the curve of Eset’s jaw are meager offerings, a patch of cloth and a marrow-filled sacrum. In the past the gods had been distant, indifferent, giving little light of a kind for those laborers watching.
Here the gods are close, they are listening. She assembles the tributes at Hathor’s feet and closes her eyes in prayer, to petition for Senmut’s exaltation.
Fears spun tighter with the arrival of every new prince, wrenching her own farther from the throne of Pharaoh.
the morning prayers.
and then their announcement of expansion.
senmut was already wearied. he had never left akashingo for such a long while, and expected weeks in the dour heat of the southlands. sloughing off his robe of state, he washed the blackened ash from the corners of his eyes. but it would need to be reapplied.
quietly, perhaps in daunting need to stay as long as he could, senmut walked the cool halls slowly and then departed into the bold light of Ra's day. he took the measure of the sun, pausing when he saw eset in reverent meditation, and he joined her before the altar in silent worship, speaking unsaid words for the protection of their queen.
The gods answer. Their will is emanant.
He falls into parallel silence beside her and she bows deeper into oblation. For the passing of much time she remains bent in this way, then lifts her eyes to look gratefully into the face of the maternal deity.
“The goddess hears me this morning, Erpa-ha.” The voice is delicate, small.
senmut too kept his eyes upon the holy countenance.
"may Her wisdom safeguard the queen while i am gone, though dream and through the loyalty of her servants, of which i am one," he added in a whisper sodden with reluctance to depart.
"i have a final task for you, eset, a pleasant one."
Together they draw out the power of the goddess.
Her eyes part from the sculpted beauty when Senmut speaks, turning to him reverently.
“Anything, your Holiness.” She lowers her head.
"our royal has not been long outside of her land, not since she was a child. this will be her longest journey and first foray. it is important that the people of the southlands see her also as a queen, therefore, when the time comes to pass that she should leave, i want —"
"i would like her drawn upon a litter. the sands must not burn her feet, and she must remain shaded in the direct eye of Ra. i want her to arrive in splendor, eset, so not one of these foreign men might ever think her below himself."
They were of two minds when it came to the definition of ‘pleasant’. Eset was no architect, anymore than she was an explorer of the shores. To build something so grand would require great strength in the jaw for whittling, for logging. Something she was certain her frail half-coy body was incapable of!
But she found the words on her lips, “of course,” even when internally she rankled with how to accomplish such a task. “It will befit our Queen and her power.”
“Verily.”
"remember the others are here to assist you, and perhaps even to listen," senmut murmured. a good collection of servants would be at the word of eset, as well as bayek and gucci to advise.
"verily," and his mouth was in a soft, small curve of pleasure. "will you assist me with anointing my eyes? wood ash, upon the corners and the lower lid helps to cut the glare of the sun. see that you and your queen are similarly veiled before you leave the palace. the desert is unforgiving."
but perhaps already she knew this.
senmut stepped away from the altar, prepared to lead eset to his rooms and the fine pile of powder waiting to be wetted and applied, on a low surface before a shaft of upward light.
She remembers what he said, when last they met. She nods and follows him from the high desert heat and into the cool limestone passageway that resolves in his Prince’s chambers. He seats himself before her and she reaches to wet the end of a pestle with the prepared mixture.
He stills and she draws slowly upon the bottom of his eyelid. The obsidian color is harsh against his red fur, beautifully so. The natural slant of his eyes are enhanced like this. He looks harsher. He looks like Pharaoh.
“I prayed to the goddess Hathor that you would come to me this morning, Erpa-ha,” the fellahin tests the reception of her words. “She made it so.”
"the Goddess shows Herself to those who are devout, eset," senmut said, blinking once and refocusing the green of his eyes upon her darkpointed face. "it serves our queen and myself well to have one so pious in devotion to this kingdom."
for he believed each word, and yet perhaps mortal interest made him wonder, "why did you ask for me today?" and why, by way of the lover's goddess, She of Two Faces, had eset chosen to call to his heart?
She draws the kohl to completion before considering.
Goddess Hathor had made it so. She had saved Eset. She had brought the fellahin to be united with Queen Toula. And when she had asked for a king, there he knelt beside her.
“So that I could look into Pharaoh’s eyes.” Intensely she searched him.
how had Amun put the word of his own divinity in eset's mouth?
senmut would not question.
pharaoh. pharaoh. she would glimpse the stricture of his throat, the widening of his eyes; he attempted to resist the deep shock and deeper pleasure that the title bestowed upon him.
pharaoh, and his heart was a sistrum; his blood a lyre.
pharaoh; and in a moment he saw he must be; he must if,
"do you see that i am worthy of it?" he asked in a tone gone smoke-rough toward its fringe, fiercely safeguarding her search into the depths of his gaze as if a rift of hierarchy did not separate them.
and in her own, senmut divined for a priestess.
The smoothness of his expression fell away into sand, to show a hundred different imprints. His face was halved, one eye blunt and dangerous, while the other remained soft, and finally with his voice there was no more lingering resignation despite its ask.
“Who better to care for our Queen, than the one she most trusts? Who better to lead Akashingo, than the man who knows it thoroughly, from fellahin to Prince? Who better to join with the Gods, than the Priest who gives his life to them?”
And to endow her own words she kneeled, recumbent before her Pharaoh.
she bowed, the first to heed him like this, the first to see him as such, and senmut knew at once that he must place eset in a high role, one that was beyond the dismissal of his post, should he lose it, and the high priesthood as well to a smoother soothsayer.
"i will be your pharaoh if your queen decrees it, eset," senmut said, proverbial hands wavering over the surface of that circlet and then falling to his sides.
eagerness did not make a king. humility had made him a prince.
and senmut remained humble through his observation of divinity's want.
When he speaks she straightens like a disciple called to recitation.
It would be Toula’s decision, they were in agreement. But after she’d lined his other eye and wished him the safety of his travels, she could not quell the feeling that it would be a very different Senmut who awaited them in the South.
<3
in silence he waited to be painted.
in silence he returned to his prayers.
in silence he left the palace in a fast, and prayed upon the choice that their queen was to make, that her hand be guided by knowledge, by wisdom, by strength, and by heart.
pharaoh could do no less.