The Hippopotamus Marsh (40 page)

“What is to become of my son?” Aahmes-nefertari said urgently. “What man already smarting from the King’s order to marry me will want a dead and disgraced noble’s son for his own? Ahmose-onkh is an innocent child. He does not deserve this.”

“It depends how you look at it,” Ahmose said reasonably. “From one point of view we are all traitors and we have been let off lightly. I can see that.”

“So can I,” Kamose agreed. “Recriminations are vain. Perhaps we are not within the true Ma’at after all and have been deluding ourselves.” With one accord they looked at him suspiciously. He spoke brightly, with a smile. “We must not waste the night digging over such old and acrid soil,” he went on. “We will be joyful. We will drink and laugh, we will share our memories, hold one another. Aahmes-nefertari, the gods expect that Princes as well as peasants will do good and behave with an honest courage. Let us not fail them.” Tetisheri grunted.

“You sound like your father,” she said caustically. “Too much pride, too much by half.”

Such a comment coming from the proudest Tao of them all cut the tension. They burst out laughing. Tetisheri, after an affronted stare, managed a small chuckle.

The evening became night. The wine passed from hand to hand, the reminiscences and ancient family jokes from mouth to mouth. Our cohesiveness cannot really be assailed by separation, Kamose reflected, watching Tani giggle at something Ahmose had said. It is a matter of the soul. We are all mourning under these gales of mirth, all frightened and lonely, all longing for what used to be, but we know that we are simply pieces of a larger body that will endure and that cannot be dissolved by exile or death.

Much later as they clung half-drunk to each other with nothing left to say, Kamose knew he was right. Seqenenra and Si-Amun were with them also, perhaps hovering unseen in the tent but certainly pouring warm through their veins and being renewed in the red darkness of their hearts where Osiris Mentuhotep-neb-hapet-Ra and the other ancestors also lingered. It was a slim comfort but it was all they had.

After much hugging and tearful kisses they slipped away. Ahmose headed for the river for his customary walk along the bank. Aahmes-nefertari wanted to hold her son. Aahotep would spend the night with Tani. Tetisheri and Kamose walked through the scented darkness towards her quarters, the ever-present guards, sleepy and bored, pacing behind them. “I cannot believe that you are letting her go without a fight, without remonstrance, without a public objection,” Tetisheri accused Kamose. “It is almost as though you want to see her taken away! And what of Aahmes-nefertari? Marry her quickly, Kamose, so that at least her fate may be kinder. What is the matter with you?” Kamose fought down his rage.

“I did make a public objection, Grandmother, remember?”

“Yes, but hardly a forceful one!” she hissed back. “Stall him, speak to him of a dowry, anything …”

Kamose rounded on her, and thrusting his face close he hissed back, “Are you entirely mad? I will tell you once, Tetisheri, and then not again. I need time. Tani must go north, the reparation must be paid, we must be docile and accepting. Apepa must be lulled into thinking that we at last will lie quiet. I need time!”

“She is sacrificed?”

“If you care to put it like that—yes. She knows.” His grandmother paused. He could sense her thinking furiously in the darkness though he could barely see her face.

“When we take Het-Uart, we can get her back,” she whispered. “What of General Dudu?”

Kamose suppressed a burst of wild laughter. Take Het-Uart? Get Tani back? It was fruitless to be angry with Tetisheri, to reproach her, to scorn her grand schemes. She was who she was.

“Dudu is my first order of business once the King has left,” he replied, resuming his walk. “You realize it is all hopeless anyway?”

“What I think is not important,” she answered more loudly. “What any of us thinks does not matter. It is what we do and what we say. We must always behave as though certain things were going to happen. Good night, Kamose.”

“Good night, Grandmother.” She is a little mad, he thought as he plunged into the torchlit silence of the sleeping house. I envy her.

Ahmose came to bed an hour later. “There is much activity beyond the walls,” he told a drowsy Kamose. “Tents
are already being struck and the donkeys loaded. The King wants an early start.”

“Good,” Kamose murmured before turning over. “I can have my rooms back if they are not too full of the stink of Setiu incense.”

Two hours after dawn the family gathered at the rear of the house to watch Tani leave. Heket had volunteered to go with her and now busied herself in pulling the warm cloak higher on her mistress’s shoulders and making sure there were enough cushions in the litter already waiting on the sand, the bearers standing silently beside it. General Pezedkhu himself had been detailed to guard Tani’s progress and he watched the family embrace her once more, his soldiers shuffling into rank around him. The plain beyond them was a churned mess where the majority of the courtiers’ tents had been pitched. Dead flowers, cracked jars, a broken tent pole, a few scraps of coloured linen that flapped forlornly in the faint breeze of morning, flowed right up to the edge of the training ground. The barracks were devoid of life.

The caravan stretched out towards the north. Donkeys stood patiently with heads lowered. Dogs ran between their hoofs and sniffed at the already shrouded litters. Soldiers and servants checked their gear and exchanged short comments. There was no sign of the King or his immediate entourage. No one had taken leave of the family or thanked them formally for their hospitality. Now that the sentence had been passed they were already forgotten.

Pezedkhu motioned and Tani’s bearers straightened and prepared to lift the litter. One by one, her relatives held her, kissing the cold lips and smiling with a feigned encouragement
into the dull eyes, giving her the age-old farewell, “May the soles of your feet be firm.” Her goods had been hurriedly packed onto the donkeys but each person thrust gifts into her hands before she finally turned and clambered among the cushions of the litter. Heket made as if to join her, but Pezedkhu barred her way. “Not you,” he said roughly. “You walk.” Tani leaned out.

“She rides in here with me,” she said emphatically, “or I shall scream and make such a fuss that you will have to chain me to the litter.” Tight-lipped, the General stood back, and Heket scrambled up beside Tani. The bearers stooped, the conveyance was raised, and the soldiers ran to push a place for it in the already moving cavalcade. Tani’s hand appeared, twitching the curtains closed, and the last they saw of her was a pale, grim little face and the early sun winking on her rings.

“Pray, Tani!” Ahmose shouted after her. “Pray to Amun every day for our deliverance!” The rest of them were silent. Dust already billowed from the hoofs of the animals and the feet of the walkers, causing Aahotep to lift her cloak over her nose. Tani had disappeared into the murk.

Tetisheri made a soft noise, half-moan, half-exclamation, and turned towards the rear gate. The other followed. Kamose saw Dudu approaching across the practice ground and quickly turned away. Not today, he vowed, seeing Ahmose’s arm go around his sister’s shoulders. Today we grieve. “Uni,” he said as the steward came to meet him. “Keep the General away from me until tomorrow.” He strode into the empty, echoing house.

All that day the members of the family kept to their rooms while the servants swept and scoured the house of
the remnants of the King’s occupation. Kamose lay on his couch, hands behind his head, listening to the industry going on around him and thinking of the coming four months with dread. Capitulation was out of the question, yet where was he to find more men, horses, chariots, weapons, food?

At noon Akhtoy brought a light meal but Kamose was unable to force it down. He wondered how Tani was, where the caravan had stopped for the noon meal, what Apepa was thinking. I am going to have to kill General Dudu, he said to himself, and forge my own dispatches to go north. I don’t want to kill him. He is only doing his duty. But he cannot be allowed to live, with the chance that he might find a way to let the King know what I am planning. I will let one dispatch through. I will watch how he seals it, how he addresses Apepa.

But Kamose’s thoughts did not stay long on General Dudu. Wearily they once more began to circle the problem of fresh troops and gold with which to equip them, yet under his pondering was the relief that comes after long tension. Apepa had gone. The noises and voices in the house were familiar. Much could be accomplished in four months. Kamose slept.

He had not dreamed of the woman who so often had begun to haunt his waking hours for a long time, but in the hot, slow-moving hours of afternoon, his mind still unconsciously engaged in possible troop tallies, his emotions dark with the loss of Tani and his grandmother’s accusations, he found himself walking behind her along the path that ran from Weset, past Amun’s temple, and towards the water-steps of his house. It was summer. The river beside him ran
with a slow deliberation and the sun was beating on his bare head but he barely noticed his surroundings for she was there, perhaps ten paces ahead and almost abreast of the temple pylon, her long legs moving with supple sureness over the dusty, pitted ground. Light and shadow dappled her from the branches overhead.

She was dressed in nothing but a short, coarse linen kilt that swirled about her thighs. Her feet were bare, her heels grey with dust. Beads of sweat glittered on her spine and her straight shoulders were hidden under a shower of swinging black hair. Such a spasm of desire and longing shook Kamose that he cried out in his dream, but he knew better now than to try and catch up with her. If he ran, she would simply glide faster and the dream would end all the sooner. He wished to prolong this glorious pain. He padded after her. The shadow of the pylon began to engulf her.

All at once she slowed and glanced towards the temple and Kamose, unprepared, missed a glance at her profile. Cursing himself he tried to keep walking but found he could not. She also had come to a halt, waiting easily, one brown, oil-bedewed leg flexed.

Then Kamose’s breath caught in his throat, for between the solid, soaring stones of the pylon a tall figure was emerging. Kamose’s attention was riveted on two things. The figure had a garland of fresh winter flowers around its neck, lotus, persea, tamarisk blooms, all damp and quivering although it was high summer. It also wore a coronet of purple gold, that most precious and rare amalgam, surmounted by two white, gently trembling plumes.

Kamose was suddenly afraid. With bated breath, terrified and yet hoping that the figure might turn and pierce him
with his mild, searching eyes, he stood still, captivated by the easy ripple of every perfect muscle in that regal body as it moved towards the woman. Will she turn and bow? Kamose wondered. Will I see her face? The god halted. The woman inclined her head, a reverent yet proud gesture, and held out her hands to the side. Only then did Kamose notice that the god held a bow and a dagger in his hennaed fingers, Kamose’s own bow, the one he had drawn in Seqenenra’s defence, and his gold-hilted dagger that had already drawn Setiu blood.

The woman took them, slinging the bow across her back, and began to move on. Kamose, released, stumbled after her, but by the time he too came abreast of the temple pylon, the god had gone. Glancing enthralled into the outer court, Kamose thought he glimpsed a flutter of goldtissued kilt and one gold-shod heel disappearing between the pillars leading to the inner court, but he had no time to follow. The woman held his dagger in her right hand. Sun glinted on it as she strode purposefully on. They were almost at the watersteps. The end of the grape trellis appeared on Kamose’s right, still with a few shrivelled leaves clinging to the vines.

The woman stopped. Her left arm rose in the direction of the river and Kamose noticed with a thrill that silver commander’s armbands shone on her upper arms. He followed her gesture. The river was crowded with craft of every kind—heralds’ skiffs, hunting skiffs, fishermen’s tiny boats, barges, all empty and gliding gently past on the current. The woman began to turn and Kamose’s knees became water. He felt himself buckling, falling towards her, unable to breathe. Then he was sitting up on his couch
drenched in sweat, his legs tangled in the damp sheet. He was panting. Someone was rapping on his door and Akhtoy’s voice called politely, “Prince, General Dudu wishes to see you as soon as possible. He has been waiting all afternoon.” Kamose wanted to pound the door into slivers. If Akhtoy had not knocked and woken him he might have seen her. Seen her!

“Tell the General I will be in my office in one hour,” he managed thickly. “Send me drinking water, Akhtoy, and a bath servant.”

“Yes, Highness.”

Kamose pulled the sheets away from his legs and left the couch, standing unsteadily in the middle of the floor. He felt dazed, his body sticky and odorous, his mind drugged. Another knock came on the door and he said, “Enter,” his tongue obeying him reluctantly. His body servant bowed his way in holding an earthen jug and a cup. The water in the jug was cool. It had just been drawn from the huge jar always standing in the passage to catch the draughts passing through the house. Kamose could tell by the way the jug was sweating. He stared at it blankly.

“Water, Highness,” the servant said. “Shall I pour it for you?” He went to the low table and set it down. Kamose watched the transparent liquid slosh to and fro and at once it became more important than anything else in the world. He tensed, praying that for one moment the servant would not move, a bird would not cry, no sound would disturb the revelation he knew was about to burst into his consciousness. Water. Water. His bow, his dagger. The river. Boats, many boats, and a gesture as graceful and provocative as a dancer’s. The river and boats. Boats boats …

He began to shake. Of course! Boats! “Amun!” he said aloud, his voice a croak. “You have opened the door. Who is she then that scarcely bows to you? Hathor? Your wife Mut? An aspect of Sekhmet? She who takes my bow, my dagger … Boats!”