The Hippopotamus Marsh (36 page)

“The Mighty Bull of Ma’at, Beloved of Set, Beloved of Ptah, He Who Causes Hearts to Live, The Glorious One
of the Double Diadem, Lord of the Two Lands, Awoserra Aqenenra Apepa, Living for Ever!” The herald’s strong, vibrant voice echoed against the angles of the house and was thrown back to the river. The King had emerged from the litter and was walking towards them. The Fanbearers on the Right and Left Hands had sprung to pace beside him, the white ostrich fans, symbols of divine protection, held high over his head and quivering against the blue sky.

In the second before Kamose reluctantly bent his knee, he studied the King. Apepa was taller than most of the men who waited on him. His legs were long and shapely, his shoulders, under the white, short-sleeved, loose-fitting shirt and fan pectoral of gold and lapis lazuli, seemed broad. His neck was perhaps a trifle long for the thinness of his face, giving him a pinched and precarious look as though he might lose his balance at any moment.

Kamose did not have the time to study his face. As he went to his knees and then prostrated himself, he had one thought and the rush of one indignant feeling. The King’s foreign roots were written all over his body and he had no right, no right at all, to wear lapis lazuli. The hair of the gods was made from the precious dark blue stone with its sprinkling of glinting gold, and only the divine ones, the god Kings and their families, had the right to display it on their persons.

Sheep herder, Kamose thought viciously. It was the greatest insult an Egyptian could conjure. The stone, still damp from the holy water, was warm under his nose and gritty beneath his stomach. He heard Tani’s quick, ragged breaths beside him and he hoped that Tetisheri, doubtless
enraged at having to prostrate herself to anyone, would keep her mouth firmly closed.

A silence had fallen. Presently a shadow fell across Kamose but he did not dare to move. He could just make out the royal foot, a smudge of henna shadowing the arch that rose slightly from the gilded leather sandal, and a row of turquoise and gold beads across the toes. It was a slim foot. At last Apepa spoke. “Rise,” he said. The family scrambled up, not daring to brush the grit from their bodies. Kamose’s eyes sought the King’s face. He had not been able to remember its delineaments from the brief visit of years ago, apart from the fact that the young Apepa had worn a beard, but now he found he was gazing at someone familiar. He would have done better to keep the beard, Kamose thought, inspecting the high cheekbones and hollow cheeks that promised a firm chin but did not deliver it.

Apepa’s chin was a little too pointed, his eyes a little too close together, his eyebrows strong and black. The upper half of his face was indeed kingly, with the eyes, now meeting Kamose’s own with calm speculation, large and dark brown under a high forehead slashed by the gold band of the white-and-yellow-striped linen helmet he wore. His mouth curved like a bow, the corners downturned, making him look sullen, but the lines around it did not indicate a discontented nature. They had been carved by laughter. “Lower your gaze, Kamose Tao,” Apepa said evenly. Kamose did as he was told.

“Tetisheri!” the King exclaimed, and she came forward and bowed. “I have fond memories of my last visit to your house, in the year of my Appearing when I journeyed throughout my domain. I was comfortable here. It seemed
to me then that you and your children lived a life of perfect contentment and ease. But we were all much younger and perhaps less foolish then.”

Tetisheri smiled frostily.

“Your Majesty is kind,” she responded. “But seeing that you are still a man of only forty-one, we may pray that you have many years left in which to grow even more wise.”

He did not react to the mild rebuke. He turned to Aahotep, commiserating with her on the loss of her husband as though he had died in some local accident instead of at the hands of first his assassin and then his soldiers. He spoke briefly with Ahmose, asked Aahmesnefertari how many children she had, and took Tani by the chin, lifting her face towards his own with his deft, graceful fingers. The colour drained from Tani’s cheeks but she did not flinch. She stared resolutely straight ahead. “Lovely, quite lovely,” Apepa murmured. “I remember you as a chubby urchin of five, dear Tani, but now I can see your father’s handsomeness and your mother’s beauty in you. You are betrothed to Ramose of Khemennu, are you not?”

“Yes, Majesty,” Tani whispered. Apepa released her and there was a slight hiatus.

Kamose beckoned and a servant came bearing the platter of the greeting meal. Kamose took it and knelt, holding it aloft. Apepa inspected it curiously, stirred it with one finger, then politely selected one dried grape and put it in his mouth. “Pezedkhu!” he called. Immediately one of the chariot riders strode forward and bowed.

“Majesty?”

Kamose stared at him. He was swarthy, large-nosed, with coarse features. He was also very young, perhaps still in his
late twenties. He must be a military genius, Kamose thought dismally.

“Pezedkhu, clear out every local soldier in the house and grounds and confine them to their barracks while I am here. Set sentries out on the desert as well as along the riverbanks. Assign bodyguards to every member of this family.” He turned and smiled very sweetly at an indignant Kamose. “I would never forgive myself if something happened to any of you during my stay,” he explained. “My guards are well trained, do not fear. They will watch upon your doors at night and protect you during the day. Yku-didi!” The Chief Herald approached. “Clear my way into the house. I wish to eat and then retire for the afternoon sleep. Where is Itju?” The scribe at his heels bowed.

“Here, Majesty.”

“Take instructions for Nehmen. The Throne is to be placed in the reception hall and guarded at all times. Have my travelling couch erected immediately in whatever quarters are the best here. I want the Keeper of the Royal Regalia to sleep beside the throne, with the box in his arms. Have the Treasurer send his assistants into the town and distribute gold to the populace. Open my travelling shrine. I will pray to Sutekh before I retire.” He glanced across at his High Priest, deep in conversation with Amunmose. “Have Nehmen check the women’s quarters to see whether or not there is room for my wives. If not, pitch tents for these ladies,” he waved one languid hand at Aahotep and the others, “in the garden. All but Tetisheri. She is not to be disturbed. That is all for now.” The scribe, who had been scribbling furiously, picked up his palette and went away.

Apepa turned to Kamose. “You are right,” he said. “I do not trust you, and you need not be affronted because of it. You have an excess of pride, you Taos.” Kamose repressed a shudder. He had indeed been thinking with rage of the King’s restrictions. “I hope that I will be fed and entertained well tonight,” Apepa went on. “We will not speak of the matter that has dragged me here from the pleasant gardens of my palace until tomorrow. Then you will hear your fate.” He did not wait for a reply. Yku-didi was calling and sweeping his staff before him. Servants were already on their faces as Apepa began to move off towards the house. After him went a great procession of litters, runners and courtiers.

“Those must be his wives,” Aahmes-nefertari said in a low voice to Tani as the litters swayed past. “Or some of them, at any rate.” Kamose barely glanced at the richly hung conveyances, for in the rear, guarded by another phalanx of soldiers, came a litter on which was a shrouded form that could only be the great Horus Throne. Kamose swallowed, thinking of his father as it jerked by. The Horus Throne, upon which none could sit but the gods of Egypt. Beside it paced a little man with a huge casket in his arms. The Double Crown, Crook and Flail. Kamose bowed to it reverently and joined the rest of the family.

“What a crowd!” Aahotep marvelled. “The house will never hold them all!”

“And we cannot feed them all, the parasites,” Tetisheri snapped. “I am almost eager to hear my sentence so that they will waft back to Het-Uart before the land becomes denuded of everything. What locusts!”

“He seems to be rather fond of you, Grandmother,” Ahmose put in mildly. “He certainly treats you with respect.”

“I should hope so!” Tetisheri retorted. “For some reason we found some common ground when he was here eleven years ago. I think strong women fascinate him. Either that, or he has a proper respect for the aged.”

“It is hard to tell what he respects,” Kamose mused. “I think his haughty pride covers an insecurity, perhaps even an envy of us, that makes him doubly dangerous. Our punishment will be harsh if that is so.”

“Yet he removed his beard,” Aahotep reminded them. “He knows the Egyptian aversion to body hair. He is not as immune to the opinion of the people as a King should be.”

“That is because he is not really a King,” Ahmose said loftily. “Let’s go into the house and see what is going on. Did you hear the way they talk, those courtiers? Their words so clipped as though their tongues got tired in a hurry? We must mingle with them, Kamose, and keep our ears open. We may hear something useful.”

“I don’t want to be with them at all,” Tani said. “I hope we do get tents in the garden.”

“We must behave as though nothing is wrong,” Kamose said decidedly. “Don’t let them slight or intimidate us. The noblest families in Egypt are represented here, as well as the King’s Setiu advisers. We have no animosity towards them.”

Yet no one moved to leave the shade of the canopy. The last stragglers in the King’s entourage were wandering by. Most of them ignored the little group. Some bowed, whether mockingly or in earnest Kamose did not know. He stood on, one arm around Tani’s shoulders, and longed suddenly for the sound of his father’s voice.

Nehmen had appropriated Kamose’s suite of rooms for the King. It had been Seqenenra’s and his father’s before
him. The rooms were simply decorated with bright wall paintings of day-to-day life but large and airy. The viziers were quartered in Si-Amun’s rooms, and Ahmose found himself ousted for Nehmen and Yku-didi. He and Kamose decided to sleep in the barracks with the sequestered soldiers but an order forbidding it came from the King through Nehmen, so they found themselves squeezed into a servant’s cell. Fortunately it was not Mersu’s.

To Tani’s delight, billowing tents of coarse linen were erected by the pool in the garden for herself and her mother. Aahmes-nefertari had accepted her grandmother’s invitation to have a cot put up in her bedchamber and she went to ground there, little Ahmose-onkh beside her in his basket.

All at once the large house with its many passages became uncomfortably crowded. Kamose and his brother, venturing out in the late afternoon with their huge and silent guards padding behind them, found every corner occupied by officials and courtiers who were passing the time before the King left his bedchamber in desultory talk, board games and gambling. Their servants jostled each other as they came and went from the kitchens or the forest of tents that had mushroomed on the ground behind the house where the majority of the courtiers had been assigned space. Kamose’s nostrils were tickled by wafts of exotic perfume, hot pastries and precious oils from Rethennu. Jewels winked at him on the prettily gesturing, hennaed hands, the smooth, pampered skin of arms and necks, swung from the ears of painted men and women who glanced curiously at him as he went. Even the servants had gold rings in their ears and seemed to stare at him with a
haughty disdain as they stepped aside so that he and Ahmose could pass. “Try the office,” Ahmose whispered, but even here there was no oasis of calm. As the two young men pushed open the door they were met by a sudden silence and the regard of several pairs of eyes. Yku-didi and three heralds were there, conferring with the Treasurer, their scribes cross-legged on the floor in a welter of paint pots and scrolls. There was a scramble to rise and bow to the Princes. Kamose nodded curtly and retreated, closing the door. “The garden,” he suggested, and he and Ahmose picked their way back along the passage. On the way, scraps of tantalizing conversation followed them.

“… the tax on my date groves. My steward swears by Baal-Yam it is not true.”

“… but she caught them by the tamarisks, you know, the place that’s so nice and shady and private behind the temple wall. He says it isn’t what it seems but I know …”

“… the negotiations have taken so long. Who do the Keftiu think they are? The whole thing is producing mountains of documents and no results. The King …”

“It’s a spell to make you remember where you put it, but the cost is high, ten uten, and you might prefer to commission an identical circlet and hope it’s ready before she asks where it’s gone …”

“Oh, I have landed on the House of Spitting! Good luck and bad together! I need a throw of five, five!”

“Hush, it’s them! How handsome they are, even if their skin is so dark! If the King wants to banish them he can send them straight to my bedchamber …”

It took Kamose a moment to realize that the last speaker, a woman with alluring almond eyes and golden leaves tied
into her sleek black wig, was referring to Ahmose and himself. With a wry smile he turned into the reception hall, Ahmose at his heels.

Here there was a reverential peace. A few courtiers stood about in quiet groups, sipping wine and talking in low voices. To Kamose’s right, under a tall canopy of cloth of gold, stood the Horus Throne. With one accord the two of them approached it. It was of gold, its arms ending in the snarling muzzles of lions, its sides a beautiful sweep of turquoise and lapis wings where Isis and Neith, the sisters of Osiris, spread their arms to protect and enfold the god who sat upon it. The back was intricately tooled, the gold inlaid with jasper and carnelian showing many ankhs, symbols of life, hanging from the staff of eternity and the stool of wealth. The sides, tiny tiles of ivory alternated with ebony, depicted a King striding forth, Crook and Flail held out before him, Hapi, the god of the Nile, behind him and Ra before. On the rear a great Eye of Horus glimmered. Kamose approached the Throne, pride and a spurt of possessiveness making him blind to all else around him. “Do not touch it, Prince,” a voice warned. Kamose looked down. The Keeper of the Royal Regalia was sitting below the three steps of the dais, his charge beside him. Kamose conjured a smile.