The Hippopotamus Marsh (20 page)

“I have brought the betrothal document,” he said. “It needs only your father’s name. But my father is insisting on a six-month waiting period before the marriage.” Tani threw up her hands. The sun glinted on her ringed fingers.

“Oh really!” she snorted. “As if we are all strangers! Why? Teti is such an enthusiast for protocol. I shall dictate a stinging letter to my future father-in-law, and …”

She prattled on. Tetisheri was watching her with amusement. The servants were smiling. But Seqenenra had withdrawn into himself. Teti is waiting to see what I will do, he suddenly knew without a doubt. He does not want to be allied to a family tainted by treason. Does he know I was attacked by an assassin? He has been burned by the flame of revolt in his own family and will be doubly cautious over this marriage. Somehow I must tell Tani that, unless I win through to Het-Uart and become Egypt’s King, Teti will no longer be willing to have her in his home.

“Tani, that is enough!” Ramose broke in sternly, and surprisingly Tani closed her mouth, though she managed to
shrug eloquently. “My father is willing for the betrothal contract to be signed and sealed now. He will prepare festivities in Khemennu and you and your family will come in six months for the final celebrations. I do not know his reasons for this further wait, but you and I have waited for months already so it will not make much difference. Perhaps it is the dowry?” He glanced politely at Seqenenra, who did not answer.

At that moment servants appeared, bringing wine and shat cakes. Behind them the rest of the family straggled and Ramose rose to bow to Aahotep and embrace the three young men. All settled by the pool and the conversation became general. After a while Ramose and Tani got up and Seqenenra gave them permission to leave.

Ramose put his arm across the girl’s slim shoulders and they strolled towards the river. Behek had risen and lumbered panting at their heels. The sound of voices slowly faded, to be replaced by the rustle and piping of birds in the reeds and the hum of insects in the flowering shrubs. The branches of the palms met over their heads, casting a stiff shade on the white, dusty path. Tani dug her toes into the powder as they went. “I am very angry with Teti,” she said. “And I imagine that Father is insulted. He is after all a Prince, Ramose. He deserves more deference from your father than he gets.”

“He is well aware of the honour Seqenenra is doing him in letting me have you,” Ramose replied hesitantly. “It is not second thoughts or pride or a need to try your father’s authority.” He came to a halt and she with him. Turning her, he smoothed her eyebrows with thoughtful fingers. Behind and before them the sun-dappled path twisted into
green gloom. “I must be honest with you, Tani,” he admitted. “I love you very much. There are strong rumours that Seqenenra was struck by Apepa’s hand because he was planning rebellion. Is it true? My father thinks so.”

“I care not one fig what your father thinks!” Tani flashed. “He is a fat old man with more dignity than he deserves! How dare he hesitate over me, a Princess with royal blood in her veins!” Ramose stepped away from her flushed face and furious eyes.

“I am angry also,” he said evenly. “I do not care either what your father or mine think or do. But we are obedient children, Tani, and we will remain so until our parents die. You did not answer my question. Do you not trust me?” She considered him, her head on one side.

“My loyalty belongs to my family,” she said frostily, “and you are not yet a member of that family or me of yours.” He reached out and shook her gently.

“If you tell me the truth, I shall swear by Thoth, totem of Khemennu, not to tell a living soul. Not even my father.” She took a deep breath.

“Very well, Ramose. I am angry with Father also for putting himself in the position he did and bringing down on himself the King’s wrath. I love him so much and I am so sorry for him. But you must promise to keep it to yourself. I shall utter a curse tonight that will take effect if you ever tell.” He nodded.

“I agree.”

“Then it is true. Father put up with Apepa’s insults and pricks for as long as he could, and then he got a letter telling him he had to kill the hippopotamuses. Can you imagine anything more foolish? Father is clever and he
managed to avoid such a cruel thing, but then the King wanted him to build a temple for Set here.” She bit her lip and turned troubled eyes to his. “I suppose he might have considered a small shrine, but Weset belongs to Amun. It was impossible. Father gathered a small army and was ready to start north and then someone tried to kill him. We don’t know who. We will probably never know.” Her voice shook. “We all believe that Apepa’s hand was in it.” Ramose took her waist and they began to walk again.

“I am sorry to cause you this distress,” he said, “but you do see, don’t you, that my father must be careful of his reputation? He must wait six months to make sure that Seqenenra has learned his lesson and will stay quiet from now on.”

“How tactfully you express it!” Tani blurted, stiff against his hand. “You speak as though my father were an unruly dog to be whipped into submission!”

“You have always had frankness from me,” Ramose rebuked her. “There is no point in dancing around the subject, Tani. Our future depends on it.”

“I suppose you think of my father as a deceitful traitor and an insane man too?”

They had reached the watersteps. He drew her down onto the white stone. The water lapped with tiny sucking sounds at their feet. A family of ducks broke from the reeds and arrowed smoothly towards one of the small islands between the east and west banks, their wake spreading behind them. The far cliffs wavered, hot beige against a cloudless sky. “I think that his cause is just but his method misguided,” Ramose answered, his eyes narrowed against the sun and his gaze fixed on the ducks, now waddling one
by one onto the rocky shore. “I do not share my father’s comfortable acceptance of our Setiu masters. I would like to see an Egyptian god on the Horus Throne someday. But it will not be in our lifetime.” He forced her to look at him. “Your father is a brave man, but I trust that his moment of rage is over.”

Tani did not answer. She smiled at him briefly and looked away. His rage is not over, she thought. It will never be over. As for the army, it has gone home. I can hope fervently that it will not be called back, but I do not like it when Hor-Aha and Kamose cluster around him for hours on end and Kamose and Si-Amun quarrel every time they are together. Something else is brewing and I am afraid. No one tells me anything. They think I am still a child because I am the youngest and must be spared.

All at once she grasped Ramose’s fingers. “Am I a woman to you, Ramose,” she asked him urgently, “or a pretty girl who has captured your affections and whom you treat kindly and lightly? Is this simply an advantageous marriage for you?”

“Tani,” he chided her, “there are a dozen women at home who are pretty and whom I treat kindly and lightly. I have watched you grow from a fey child into a lovely young woman with a quick mind and an equally quick temper. I love you. As for an advantageous marriage, well,” he sighed in annoyance at his thought, “you may be a Princess but your family now lives under the cloud of the King’s disapproval and my father is worried about it. Why this sudden doubt?” She rubbed her cheek against his warm upper arm.

“I want to be happy,” she whispered. “I want to live at Khemennu with you forever. I can hardly bear to look at
Father any more, to be cheerful around him, to pretend encouragement. He was so straight and graceful, Ramose, so lordly! Every time I force myself to go to him, it is with a terrible anger against the King and an ache of remembering how things used to be. Please take me away.”

He had nothing to say. Gathering her to him, he stroked her silently until he felt her relax and then they spoke of other things. But when they joined the rest of the family for the evening meal, he found that he was watching them, the proud Taos, with detachment and wariness. The night was hot, the first creeping breathlessness of summer.

Seqenenra, dressed only in a thin kilt-linen, ate little. His crutch lay discreetly behind him where Uni stood. The wrap around his head was a patch of white in the ill-lit hall. He pushed food quickly into his deformed mouth as though hoping no one would see, and his eyes roamed the company. Ramose thought of his own father, oiled and bejewelled, gesturing expansively and speaking in his low-pitched, cultured voice to each of his guests in turn as they ate at his flower-strewn ivory tables. Teti was like a huge owl, benign and wise. Seqenenra was a wounded hawk, battered yet alert, with a watchful malevolence behind the darting eyes. Ramose smiled at the drama of his image and Seqenenra, catching the stare, suddenly smiled back. Ramose nodded and looked away.

The Princess Aahotep was at Seqenenra’s elbow, a darkly beautiful woman whose every movement held voluptuous grace. There was little of his own mother in her, Ramose reflected, although they were related. His mother was comfortably middle-aged. This woman with her full lips and burnished skin was as sensuous as the King’s
concubines who gathered languidly on their cushions around the fountains of the harem on a summer afternoon. He saw her lean back to speak to Hetepet, her servant, lean sideways to put her mouth against her husband’s ear, supple and easy in her movements.

Ramose sipped his wine and let his mind wander with his eyes. The twins, Kamose and Si-Amun, sat together on mats, sharing a table littered with the remains of the meal but not speaking. The constraint between them was almost palpable. Although it seemed as though there was one man looking into a mirror when they turned to each other, black eyes, long thin faces, sharp noses, a mass of dark curls, there was a gulf between them that set them apart. What is it? Ramose wondered.

He felt Si-Amun’s gaze on him, had felt it often through the evening hours while the musicians played and danced and the servants wove to and fro with lotus garlands and perfumed oil. It made him anxious. Kamose turned often to speak to the wild-looking Medjay warrior at his elbow, a man of slow gestures and quick, cold eyes, while Si-Amun seemed to sink lower on his mat, his ringed fingers fidgeting in the food.

Ahmose, scantily clad, had finished his meal long before and was wandering through the diners, sling in hand, delving occasionally into a leather bag at his belt from which he drew small pellets. The clatter of their striking punctuated the conversations. Ahmose sang snatches of some jaunty melody as he whirled and let go. No one paid him any attention. He was obviously too good a shot with the sling to cause anxiety. The great lady Tetisheri sat a little apart, surrounded by her retinue of retainers, a straight-backed,
glittering old woman whose sharp gaze encompassed everyone and whose slightest movement resulted in a flurry of obedience around her. Ramose shuddered inwardly. She had always terrified him as a boy, and even now as a man he was in awe of her. Mersu, her steward, answered a command, the words lost in the general hubbub, bending towards her politely. Ramose considered him. He had a relative or a friend in Teti’s household, his father’s Chief Steward he thought. They were always together when the Taos came to visit. An impressively calm man.

His Tani was sitting on a mat beside her sister, knees drawn up under her filmy red linen, braceleted arms hugging them, waving hair bouncing against her neck as she talked. His heart melted. He did not know what it was about her that called forth such a response. She was so unlike the rest of her family and yet her spasm of anger today, while he had deliberately not reacted to it, had taken him aback. She, too, possessed the overwhelming Tao pride.

Her sister, Aahmes-nefertari, was a younger version of her mother, dark, well-curved, with piercing black eyes and a haughty mouth. She was pregnant, Ramose knew. Another Prince, he thought. Another Tao to spit at the King and dream their long dream of power and ancient Ma’at. By Thoth, I admire them! It would not do to let them know, for I, too, come of a venerable family and have my pride, but I am glad to be sitting here where the air is somehow cleaner and a less complicated Egypt tugs at my mind. But they are dangerous too. As unpredictable as bulls, even my Tani in her way. It is in their blood. Osiris Mentuhotep neb-hapet-Ra … I know my history.

His reverie was interrupted by a movement and a rustle beside him. He turned. Prince Si-Amun was settling himself on the floor. Ramose smiled at him warily. He was holding a goblet with great care, and to Ramose, noting his flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes, he seemed already more than a little drunk. “Prince,” Ramose nodded. Si-Amun nodded back.

“Well, Ramose,” he said. “we used to creep up on the crocodiles in the Khemennu swamps together and hunt for ibis eggs. Do you remember when Kamose and I tied you to a skiff and dragged you through the river? You nearly drowned. And now you are to be my brother-in-law. It seems fitting. Do you have any doubts?” He swilled his cup, drank, and held it out for more. The servant hovering behind them filled it and stepped back.

“Why, no, Prince,” Ramose answered. “I love Tani and she will make a fine wife. The marriage is a respectable and suitable one.”

“Even considering the trouble Father has been in?” Si-Amun’s face came close to his own. “You know people are saying that Apepa had Father attacked. We are not exactly in the King’s good graces.” Ramose tensed. Beneath Si-Amun’s wine- slurred words and glazed eyes he sensed a sober questing.

“Rumours always abound in the estates of the noble and powerful,” he said carefully, “and our god is of a suspicious nature. I do not believe either that Seqenenra has been traitorous or the King vengeful. I do not listen to gossip, Prince.” A curious expression, half relief and half disappointment, swept over Si-Amun’s eyes.

“So you know nothing of it,” he urged. Ramose spread his hands.

“Only what is passed from mouth to mouth on idle afternoons. It is all so silly, Si-Amun, but I suppose it troubles the family. The hunting accident—it is a tragedy.” He hoped that he sounded convincing. Si-Amun did not know that Tani had told him the truth and he must not betray her confidence.