The Hippopotamus Marsh (34 page)

At a signal from Kamose the procession began to move. With a jerk the sleds ground through the sand followed by men from Amun’s temple carrying Seqenenra’s viscera in four alabaster jars. Kamose put his arm around his grandmother and gave himself up to his grief.

They reached the foot of the cliffs where Seqenenra had prepared his tomb many years before and gathered round
the entrance, Amunmose stepping forward to begin the funerary rite, his acolytes with smoking censers beside him. The crowd fell silent, only the little dancers whispering briefly as they took their places for the dance. Many sidelong glances were cast at Si-Amun’s plain coffin lying close by, but no one dared to draw attention to it. Amunmose behaved as though it was not there, stepping around it as Seqenenra’s was propped upright against the rock and swung open for the ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth. Kamose watched the sacred knife touch the bandaged body’s mouth, eyes, nose and ears, freeing Seqenenra’s senses to be used once again.

When the High Priest had finished he wavered, turning an enquiring face to Kamose and indicating the other box with the merest gesture. Kamose considered swiftly. How could the dead smell again, or taste the sweetness of cool water, or see the green glory of the mighty sycamore tree that guarded the entrance to the paradise of Osiris, unless the ceremony was performed? Then he shook his head. It was necessary to maintain the fiction that Si-Amun just happened to be on his way to his own resting place and his conveyance was a matter of convenience, although everyone present understood what Kamose truly intended.

Amunmose signalled for the next rite. One by one the family knelt to kiss the feet of the corpse, so stiff and unyielding in its swathe of bandages, so unrecognizable as the man whose presence had pervaded the house for so many years, and then the dancers began to weave the magic of motion around him, keeping him safe from the dangers of his journey. How fine these people are, Kamose thought as he watched a small hand brush Si-Amun’s coffin with
seeming carelessness, another lean sideways so that her perfumed hair trailed over the lid. Their loyalty is greater than their fear of breaking the laws regarding suicide, and their warm understanding would put many a fine noble to shame.

The morning became early afternoon. Canopies were erected and cushions strewn over the sand, but many preferred to stand close to the tomb as the rites drew to a close. At last servants took Seqenenra down the steps and into the cool darkness of the vault, lowering him into his stone sarcophagus and arranging his belongings around him. Kamose, watching the women of the house laying flowers on the lid and crying quietly, saw also the furniture, the jars of food, wine and oils, his father’s jewels and his cosmetic box. Carved wooden servants stood about to see to Seqenenra’s needs and his dismantled chariot had been laid reverently against a wall together with his bow and a quiver of arrows. What use is it all without us? Kamose thought angrily. All these things will only serve to remind him of his family, now divided from him by the ravine that neither he nor we can leap over. Will he finger them with pleasure any more?

Taking Tani’s hand he led her back up the steps and out into the blinding white light. For a moment he stood blinking, glorying in the sudden sweep of overpowering sky and shimmering land, then they walked towards the meal that was being laid under the shade of the canopies. Aahotep and Tetisheri were already settled, sitting knee to knee without speaking. Aahmes-nefertari sat on a reed mat as close to Si-Amun’s coffin as she dared, already eating, and Kamose did not have the heart to admonish her. She was
sharing with her husband, not her father. He, Ahmose and Tani joined the two women, and Tetisheri nodded to Uni. The servants began to serve more food.

Nothing could ever take the place of this, Kamose thought as he broke a loaf of bread apart and a slice of glistening pink melon was placed before him. Nothing in the presence of Osiris could ever compensate me for the loss of this sky, this light, this hot air smelling of desert dryness, those tired palms jerking over the shallow river. The voices of the company sounded like the rhythm of life itself, a gentle confusion that was nevertheless strongly comforting. He thought of Si-Amun, and slipped the melon into his mouth.

By early evening it was over. The temple servants had sealed the door of Seqenenra’s tomb, knotting the cords and plastering them with mud into which the imprint of the House of the Dead, the jackal and nine captives, was pressed. Amunmose intoned protective prayers. The barges heaved in the small swell a slight breeze had conjured, and family and mourners made their way finally aboard in the glow of the setting sun while servants buried the remainder of the feast as was the custom.

Si-Amun’s coffin, still on its sled, was quietly dragged away towards the small tomb that would now remain forever unfinished. Aahmes-nefertari had run after it, her control finally breaking as she saw it bumping unceremoniously over the rock-pitted ground, and had flung a sheaf of bulrushes over it before Kamose caught her, and picking her up, carried her quickly towards the river. “You must not,” he said sharply above her cries, but could not reprimand her further.

He, too, was thinking of their brother lying blind, deaf and dumb, his coffin tossed on the floor amongst the stone chips left by the masons when they obeyed the order to cease their work. So he and his infant son would lie there together with no record of their life on the walls, and Si-Amun’s deeds would never come to the attention of the gods. It was terrible, but not as terrible as a body left to rot away, plunging the soul into nothingness. “He has little Si-Amun with him,” Kamose sought to calm her as he lowered her onto the barge and into her mother’s arms. “At least he is not alone. I will have his name carved on rocks out in the desert, Aahmes-nefertari. Do not worry. The gods will find him.”

It was a cold comfort, he knew, and he took his place beside Tani and watched the water ripple in red waves as they were thrust towards the eastern bank. Beyond the welter of garden growth and trees, the house rose like a bulwark of security and sanity and farther along the bank Weset lay in an untidy jumble washed pink as Ra dipped west.

Someone was standing on the paving, arms folded, his stance patient. Tani leaned her head against Kamose. “It is over,” she whispered. “Now we can begin to live again, even if it means more pain. That is better than the peace of death, isn’t it, Kamose?”

“Even so,” Kamose agreed, hugging her, his eyes on Ramose’s waiting form. “Even so.”

Kamose had to wait for a conversation with Ramose. Tani begged him for permission to see the young noble alone and Kamose did not have the heart to refuse her. “It is not right,” Tetisheri had protested irritably when she
herself sent for Ramose and was told that he and Tani had disappeared together into the reed marshes in a skiff. Tetisheri had sought out Kamose and found him in the reception hall sitting chin in hand at the top of the steps leading into the garden. “We are not peasants,” she had gone on as he helped her down beside him. “We have strict rules governing the conduct of our young women.”

“Tani needs him,” Kamose had responded firmly. “She will not do anything foolish and you know that very well. She has been through a great deal. Besides, Grandmother, I am now the head of this household and my word is law.” She had grunted scornfully but had retreated.

“Then as the head of the household and Prince of Weset you might consider your other duties,” she had continued with asperity. “The period of mourning is over. Life resumes its normal course. It is now your responsibility to take Aahmes-nefertari as your wife and her son as your own. This blood line must be preserved without taint for the future.”

“For what future?” Kamose had retorted in exasperation, turning on the step so that the lamplight could fall on Tetisheri’s gnarled fingers glittering with rings, her thin shoulders and one side of her delicately boned face. She was resolutely not looking at him, her eyes on the darkness that swept to their feet. “In a few days I doubt if we will have a future. What is the use of pretending any more that we may one day regain the Double Crown? The dream becomes more nebulous, more ridiculous, as one generation succeeds another. I have already decided that I will not marry my sister.” He spoke to test her or perhaps himself, he did not know. He remembered the woman who haunted his sleep,
who caused him to close his eyes each night in secret anticipation mingled with anxiety and who had for the past several years kept him uninterested in any other.

She had come to him only last night, standing on a rock in the desert, clad in brilliant red, gold-shot linen. Her upraised arms were heavy with gold and the sullen red glow of jaspers, and gold-ringed jasper flowers were entwined in her windswept black hair. There had been something savagely beautiful about her sinuous back under the sheath that flowed like smoke around her and he had been almost afraid in the midst of his fascination.

But Kamose was not so thralled by a phantom, though he ached for her, as to be blinded to the daily obligations of reality. No. His refusal to marry Aahmes-nefertari came from somewhere deep inside, a violent distaste against appropriating the person his brother had loved, stealing her away, enjoying what Si-Amun could never again take pleasure from. The thought made him feel like the basest of thieves and his belief in his heritage was not strong enough to impel him to claim Si-Amun’s prize. “Kamose, you must!” Tetisheri had urged, facing him at last. “And before Apepa comes. Then it will not matter what he does to you. If exile is the sentence, Aahmes-nefertari can go with you. If you are sent to be assistant governor of some provincial backwater, she cannot be separated from you! Then no matter what, the blood of your ancestors will be still pure!” Kamose, meeting her intense, intelligent old eyes, had laughed aloud.

“Weset
is
a provincial backwater, dear Grandmother,” he pointed out. “The courtiers in Het-Uart shudder at the thought of our nomes and call them Egypt’s southern
brazier. Your own son married a commoner, don’t forget.” She sat straighter.

“That is because he had no sister. Besides, Aahotep is not a commoner. She comes of a noble and ancient family.”

“A family that produced a dishonourable man like Teti,” Kamose cut in quickly. “Let us wait and see, Grandmother. Aahmes-nefertari is entitled to whatever protection I can give her, of course. Why not ask Ahmose if he wants her?” Tetisheri leaned close, eyes narrowed in their cobweb of wrinkles.

“Because you may change your mind. You are a deep one, Kamose. It would not surprise me.”

“I have said that I would never marry.”

“And I have never believed you!”

They glared at one another until Tetisheri put a hand on his shoulder, heaved herself to her feet, and calling sharply for Isis, melted into the darkness. Kamose sat on, thinking. It has taken Grandmother’s forthright tongue to bring my own thoughts clear, he said to himself. I am no longer interested in the quality of my blood. I care only for revenge, but how that is to be accomplished, I do not know.

Ramose stayed for a week, spending most of his time with Tani, but also fitting in remarkably well with the family routine. Kamose, much to his surprise, began to enjoy his company. They saw little of each other in the mornings, for Kamose, his duties accomplished in the temple, would retire to the office with Ahmose and Ipi, but sometimes in the afternoons he and Ramose would take chariots out onto the desert to race or hunt. The heat of summer was slowly giving way to a winter pleasance as the river filled the parched fields. The two men would sit
together in the sand under the shelter of a canopy, drinking beer while their horses cooled down.

Ramose would say little about the rift that had developed between his father and himself, and his distress over Si-Amun’s suicide and Seqenenra’s untimely death was genuine. Kamose, seeing Tani’s new peace, asked him about the uncertain prospects for a wedding. Ramose squinted out past the canopy’s shade to the churned pale gold desert shaking in the sun, and did not reply for a while. Then he sighed. “I have done much in defying my father to come here,” he said. “I am ashamed of him, Prince, but he is still my father and the head of our household. The matter of a marriage is postponed until the King has decided what is to become of you.” He turned a troubled gaze on Kamose. “I love Tani,” he said with feeling, “but I cannot risk losing my inheritance or my future. If I marry her now, Father will disown me out of fear of Apepa’s displeasure. She is a Princess and whether or not she ever thinks about it, she is used to and entitled to a certain way of life. I must offer her more than simply myself. Those are the facts of my life.”

“I do understand,” Kamose admitted, surprised that he felt no resentment towards Ramose. “If I were in your place, I would feel the same. But it is a hard thing for Tani to accept. Have you discussed it with her?”

“Of course!” Ramose replied promptly. “She is no longer the starry-eyed child of Hathor I courted. She will wait for the King’s judgement, but she knows that it may not be enough for Father. To put it bluntly, you are all in disgrace. Father is already sniffing out the daughters of several courtiers in Het-Uart. I have told him not to waste his time.” He looked back at the desert. “I can wait another
five or six years if necessary before being obliged to take a wife in order to perpetuate our line. A great deal can happen in that time.”

The words made Kamose shiver involuntarily with foreboding and a despair that bordered on panic. He wanted to jump up and rush to destroy Apepa, take Egypt by storm, brutally force the future into a shape that he could control for Tani’s sake, and for Ramose, and for the members of the family who turned their eyes increasingly to him for security and for the assurances he could not possibly give. “You are a good man, Ramose,” he said huskily. “I trust you. Tell me, if the wind of chance should by some miracle begin to blow at my back, would you stand beside me?” Ramose was silent for a long time, then he said, “I respect you also, Prince, but forgive me. Bringing a warning to Seqenenra is a far cry from fighting at his side. I cannot answer your question.”