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

so often tired. But know this: Bear it I will. I must do it for Khemet.”
    I nodded. I understood that Pharaoh was Egypt. “I will stand at your side,” I promised. “I will help you bear it. I already help my royal father.”
    “I know,” he said, smiling faintly at my stout words. “I know, and I will depend on you.”
    Shortly after the death of Amenmose, my mother the Queen Ahmose, who had been ailing for some time, fell seriously ill. I think that the shock was too much for her.
    Some dire disease took hold of her and seemed to squeeze her chest so that she could not breathe. No medications, incantations or prayers to the gods could drag her back from the brink of the Afterlife where she hovered for weeks. They would not let me near her for fear that the devils that caused her to be ill would attack me too. Then one day she called for me.
    I entered the room quietly and sat down on a little stool next to her bed. Incense hung upon the thick air in the chamber. I hoped that it would be strong enough to keep the lurking devils at bay. I waited. She did not speak at once, lying with her eyes closed. She had always had a strong face and an attractive one, but now it was drawn and looked like a mask carved from very ancient ivory. I sat quietly waiting while Her Majesty collected her thoughts.
    At length she sighed. “Four children,” she said, her voice a little creaky as though through disuse. “Four children have I carried under my heart and brought into this world with much travail. And now there is only the one.”
    This statement caused me to feel guilt – although I could not see why it should, for certainly I had had no fault in my three siblings’ deaths.
    “I am sorry, Mother,” I said.
    “First, I lost my little Neferubity. You remember your little sister, do you not?”
    “Yes, Mother. But … time has passed, since she went to the gods.”
    “Time has passed. But I miss her yet. Let me tell you how it is, to lose a child.” She stopped speaking and closed her eyes. She was silent for a long time. I thought she had fallen asleep, but then she continued. “First, it feels as if a large and heavy stone with sharp edges has been laid upon your heart. It pains you, here.” She put a closed fist to her breast. “Much like a wound, that bleeds. Then, as time passes, the sharp edges of the stone are worn away. It becomes smoother, like a boulder that has rolled down the river and the tumbling water and the other stones have ground it round. Yet it is heavy still, and there is no way to put it down. You must bear it.”
    I was too young, that day, to grasp what my mother was telling me. Yet now I know she spoke the truth. Only not the whole truth. Because from time to time that stone recovers its cutting edge. Quite suddenly. A scent can do it, such as the incense that the midwives burned on the day of the child’s birth. Or, for me, the glimpse of a slave girl who has the same slender and graceful look as my own lost child.
    “Yet at the time there were left two princes of the blood,” my mother went on. Tears were now sliding out of her closed eyes.
    I patted her hand, feeling helpless. “Do not distress yourself,” I said, but of course this had no effect.
    “It seemed … that the succession was assured. Two sons … two princes … strong and handsome. And yet, now there is not one to follow the great Pharaoh when the time comes, may he live for ever. Not one.”
    “May he live,” I echoed.
    “You are young, my daughter,” she said, opening her dark eyes and looking at me. “I hope you may not ever know what it is to lose a child, but I fear you may have to bear that sorrow as I do. Children are so …” Her voice seemed to grow faint like the wind sighing in the sycamore trees. “So fragile. Even a strong male child is but a reed and can be broken, just like that.” She dabbed her eyes with a linen kerchief. With a trembling hand, she drank some fruit juice that a slave had brought.