The Double Crown: Secret Writings of the Female Pharaoh by Marié Heese

for a lost child; there was a measure of fear, for if someone had killed the prince, might they not think also of me, who was the last of Pharaoh Thutmose’s children with the pure blood royal? And there was beneath all these a shiver of excitement … and more than a touch of bitterness. Because I should be next in line for the Double Crown when my royal parents passed into the Afterlife; but since I was a girl, I knew I would be overlooked. I sighed. I should go to talk to Thutmose, my remaining half-brother, I thought. This disaster would change his life, and mine as well.
    The corridors echoed with the grief of ritual mourning, but as I walked along them towards my half-brother’s suite of rooms, I heard a different sound. A thin keening, full of such deep sorrow that the hair on my arms stood up. I pushed at the door whence it came. There I discovered Inet, huddled into a tight bundle on a low seat, hugging her knees, rocking and moaning.
    I went to kneel beside her and took her in my arms. Why, she is quite little, I thought in surprise. I had looked up to her for so long, but now she seemed to have shrunk with age and grief. “Oh, Inet, please don’t,” I said helplessly. I was yet young enough to be greatly upset by adult weeping.
    “My last prince gone,” she sobbed into my shoulder. “Gone to the gods. It isn’t right, it isn’t right for young ones to go first. The gods have got the order wrong. All wrong. Quite wrong.” She shook her head and moaned and rocked. I patted her heaving back.
    I realised that she had loved my brother Amenmose every bit as much as my mother had. She had indeed seen more of him as a small child. She had brought him up. Of course she was bereft. “There, there,” I said, as she had so often said to me. I searched for something to say to her. “He will be waiting for you in the Fields of the Blessed, and he will be young and strong, and he will always remain so,” I offered at length. “He will never grow old and have a stiff hip and painful teeth and joints that ache. Think of that.”
    She calmed a little and sniffed.
    “He will come to welcome you, Inet, when your time comes to go to the Fields of the Blessed,” I told her. “To take you by the hand, and you will row in a little boat together and he will shoot ducks and the sun will always shine.” I found it strange that I was now trying my best to comfort the one who had always comforted me.
    “But I want him to be here,” she said childishly. Then she gave a deep, tremulous sigh. “Well, well, it cannot be. We must put up with it. The older one gets, the more one must put up with.” She looked at me closely with her little swollen eyes. “Praise be to the gods that you are strong,” she said. She squeezed my hands. “Thank you, my child. I shall rest now.”
    I called for a slave to attend to her and then strode on to Thutmose’s rooms. When I reached the tall bronze doors to my half-brother’s suite of rooms, his guards knew me, of course, and stepped aside to let me through. Inside the heavy scent of incense mixed with medications hung in the air. I recognised the signs: Thutmose was ill again. I walked straight through to his bedroom, ordering fussing slaves out of the way. He lay on a day-bed piled with cushions, clad only in a light kilt. His skin shone with perspiration and he breathed shallowly. It was clear that he was having one of his attacks of fever, that also caused him to have much pain in his joints.
    “Brother,” I said.
    He opened his eyes. “Ah. Hatshepsut.” He put out his hand.
    I stepped forwards and took it. It was clammy and trembled a little in mine. “You have heard?” I asked.
    He sighed. “I have heard.”
    For a few moments we sat wordlessly. Then he said: “Now I will be Pharaoh. When the time comes. Your blood is better than mine but you are a child and a girl child to boot. The Double Crown will come to me. And I do not want it. It is a heavy burden to bear and I am