The Bull of Min by Lavender Ironside Page A

doorway. She stared steadily up at him, and it seemed to Thutmose’s bewildered eyes that she grew in stature.
    “I set a sin to rights,” Neferure murmured, “and the gods blessed me for it.”
    “Blessed you? What are you talking about?”
    “I speak of the reason why you will not kill me, brother-husband.”
    Thutmose blinked at her.
    “Come with me, ” she said. “I will show you now.”
    With his hand on the hilt of his knife, Thutmose trailed her reluctantly. She slid through the hallways of the Temple of Min, a blur of white linen against the slowly warming colors of sandstone, swift and silent as the shadow of a cloud. He held his breath as he moved in her wake. A curious buzzing filled his ears; a rushing sensation throbbed along his limbs.
    Neferure stopped at the last door in a row of doors, all of them facing outward along the rear wall of the temple. The dawn light picked out the refuse of habitation scattered in the dusty soil of the temple’s rear courtyard: three pots stacked one inside the other beside a door, a discarded pair of sandals beside another, a child’s toy river horse lying on its side beneath a makeshift blanket of leaves. This was where the lesser priests and priestesses lived – they and their families. The dormitories.
    Nef erure pushed her door open, stepped into her room without looking round to see whether Thutmose followed. She was intent on whatever was inside, focused the way a woman only ever was in the presence of… of her child .
    From the threshold, Thutmose watched Neferure lift a bundl e to her shoulder. She cooed softly. A bit of blanket hung over the baby’s face. Thutmose reached out – the room was small enough that he could touch the child from where he stood – and lifted the corner of the blanket away.
    The baby was asleep, one fat cheek pressed against its mother’s shoulder, the lips shining with wetness. Black curls of hair, soft and still fine, covered the warm head.
    “His nurse will be here soon,” Neferure said quietly. “I went out early to do some work while he slept. He always sleeps well. He’s a perfect child. And why not? He was born of perfection.”
    Thutmose withdrew his hand. A low flame guttered in a dented lamp on a simple, well-used table. In the fitful light, he studied the baby’s face. One baby looked much like another, but it was clear already that this child would have a sharply hooked nose and small chin, the stamp of their family line. Thutmose knew precious little of babies, but he had spent enough time with his own son to tell at a glance that this child was of an age with Amunhotep. He counted the months backward. It was possible…. But he and Neferure were both grandchildren of Thutmose the First. The mark of the Thutmosides did not necessarily come from him, the present king.
    “Who is the father?”
    Neferure spun to face him, hiding the baby from Thutmose’s gaze. She stared up into his eyes with a directness that turned his stomach.
    “You dare ask me such a thing? I am your Great Royal Wife.”
    “But surely you know you’re not. You gave that all up when you left the palace.”
    “Should I have stayed imprisoned forever? I had work to do – a great work. I am not a bird, to sit singing in a cage.”
    “You a re a murderer. That’s what you are.”
    “I am a priestess. You understand nothing of it.”
    “Is the child mine?”
    Neferure scowled at him. He resolved to draw out an answer with staunch silence, and scowled back twice as hard.
    At last she said, “You remember the carvings on the walls of Hatshepsut’s temple.”
    “Ah, of course.”
    “You remember how she came t o be: Amun entering our grandfather’s body, showing his guise only to Ahmose as she lay on her bed.”
    Thutmose peered at her through narrowed eyes. She was not angry now, but solemn, almost rapturous. She believed that a god had come to her to conceive this child, believed it down to the root of her ka. He saw that truth shining