The Apprentice Queen by Nel Havas

Author:Nel Havas [Havas, Nel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nel Havas
Published: 2015-01-08T16:00:00+00:00

The Regent Council

I was sleeping in my apartments when I was wakened to the news. In the dead of night pounding came to my chamber door, a servant calling my name. I opened the door and found my servant with Mamtuk himself standing beside her. His presence startled me. I could think of no reason for him to be here unless the news he bore was most important.

“Your – your Highness,” he said, and bowed.

He had hesitated before calling me Highness. In all the years I had known him, Mamtuk had never hesitated in anything. I instantly surmised the reason for his visit.

“The King!” I said.

Mamtuk did not acknowledge my guess.

“The Queen summons you to her apartments at once,” he said. “She commanded me to deliver the summons myself.”

I remembered I was naked and would need to put something on before walking with Mamtuk to the Queen’s apartments.

“Enter, please, Mamtuk, and give me a moment to clothe myself,” I said. He walked into my chamber and stood silently, watching me as I pulled on a robe and found sandals for my feet. I asked my servant to inform Tasima of my summons and to check on Rahotep. I also asked her to find a bodyguard to escort me to the Queen’s apartments. But Mamtuk cleared his throat.

“Your Highness, you will not need a guard,” he said.

Knowing Mamtuk, and knowing the Queen, it would be futile for me to argue the point, so I cancelled my summons and left with Mamtuk for the Queen’s apartments.

We walked in silence. It had been his hesitation for a bare instant that spoke volumes, that told me everything. Before he said the word “Highness” he had been in doubt. This was Mamtuk. Only extraordinary circumstances would have caused him to come to me in his own person in the dead of night. Since he had hesitated to call me “Highness” there could be no other explanation than that he had debated in his mind if it were the correct honorific to use. If the Queen had decided I should die, Mamtuk would have simply brought a sufficient number of guards with him to overpower my own bodyguard, then he would have entered my chamber and slashed my throat while I slept. If I were to be removed, stripped of my title and power and banished – doubtful because the Queen seldom indulged in half-measures – he would have had the guard enter my chamber and pinion me. That did not happen, so his hesitation could only mean that he did not know whether to call me “Highness” or “Majesty”, which would mean old King Amun had died and I was now, by right, Queen. It was a mere instant for me to reason this out, yet I knew better than to ask Mamtuk to confirm my guess – he would call me Highness and pretend the old king lived until the Queen announced otherwise.

The Queen sat upon her upholstered bench. She had a disheveled appearance,

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