King and Goddess by Judith Tarr Page A

waited,
handsome enough but not nearly as magnificent as the state chariots that
Senenmut had seen. This was meant for use.
    The horses set themselves in place for the yoke, opened
mouths for the bits. They were eager: one pawed lightly as the chariot was
hitched behind.
    The queen sprang into the chariot and took the reins from
the groom. “You,” she said, flashing a glance at Senenmut. “Ride with me.”
    He stood flatfooted. Of course she would be asking for him,
since she had had him brought here. But why in the world . . . ?
    ~~~
    The horses backed against the traces, dancing with
impatience. The queen reined them in. “Come!” she commanded him.
    He hardly knew which foot to lift first. The Nubian seized
him with effortless strength and tossed him into the chariot behind the queen.
He staggered, clutched at the first thing that presented itself: the queen’s
body.
    She most graciously declined to cry sacrilege. He pried his
arms from their panic-lock about her middle and found a more permissible thing
to cling to: the side of the chariot, with its rim rolled by design or by
accident into the most useful shape for gripping hard to keep one’s balance.
    Once he had recovered from the shock of being thrust into a
swift-moving, sharp-turning chariot, Senenmut began to take a keen and still
half-terrified pleasure in it. He saw how the queen stood, light, poised, firm
yet supple, riding with the lift and sway of the chariot-floor under her feet.
She held the reins lightly, not strained back against them as he had seen
others do, battling the horses’ will to run. She rode with them, coaxing rather
than compelling.
    She did not, as he had expected, ride among the rest in the
court of the chariots. She directed her horses toward the gate and out along
the palace wall. A second chariot followed, with the Nubian for charioteer. He
had no companion, nor seemed to need any. If there were an attack—as if such a
thing could happen in the heart of royal Thebes—Senenmut supposed that he would
bind the reins about his waist and fight as kings fought in the histories,
strong-armed against thousands.
    He still could not imagine what the queen could want of him.
He was a scribe. He knew nothing of horses or of chariotry.
    As if she had plucked the thought from his mind, she thrust
the reins into his hands. They trembled like living things.
    The right-hand horse tossed its head. Senenmut willed his
fingers to unclench. “Lady,” he said. “What am I supposed to—”
    “Steady,” she said. “Light and soft. No, not loose! Feel the
horses always.”
    He fought the rigidity of shock and awe. He—he, Senenmut,
whose father was a seller of pots—was a charioteer. A poor and vastly nervous
one, as the queen pointed out with acid precision; but he held the reins and
the horses obeyed him.
    It grew easier, the longer he did it. He declined to commit
the error of cockiness; but he felt magnificent, like a prince, driving fee
queen’s chariot around the walls of the palace.
    It was glorious. Yet he had to ask. When he was surer of
himself, when the horses seemed in hand and the road’s curve not too taxing, he
spoke the word. “Why?”
    The queen could have pretended not to understand. It rather
pleased him that she did not. “Because,” she said.
    He tensed. The horses jibbed. He made himself ease, for
their sake. “You thought you could mock me. Didn’t you? You expected me to be
run away with.”
    “If I had wanted that,” she said mildly, “I would have
called for the new mare, and had her yoked with a stranger. These are my best,
my queens. No one else has ever driven them, except on occasion my Nubian.”
    “Then why?” Senenmut demanded.
    She shrugged, maddening as a woman can be, and a young one
worst of all. “I thought you might like it.” She paused. “Do you?”
    No. He would not believe it. That she would give him a gift
simply for the sake of giving it. She was a queen. Queens gave nothing of