The Hippopotamus Marsh

by Pauline Gedge

  As he paced the darkening passage to his own quarters, a thousand concerns fought for his attention, but he denied them all. Not now, he told the inner clamour. Now is the time for hot water and royal linen, for eye paint and hennaed palms, for a final embrace that will encompass past and present before the future unfolds its murky wings.

  Standing on the bathing slab under his body servant’s ministrations, he forced his mind to sink beneath the messages of his senses: the gurgle of the scented water as it coursed down his limbs and disappeared into the drain in the floor, the friction of a towel wielded vigorously between his shoulder blades, the sudden heavy odour of lotus as the man unstoppered a jar of oil.

  At a murmured request, Kamose lowered himself onto a bench and deliberately luxuriated in the tingling of his skin before relaxing under the soothing coolness of his servant’s oiled hands. But a thought came to him unbidden, sharp and painful as the cut of a knife. That is where the demons strike, there between the shoulder blades. Assassins also, unless a man is completely unaware of his danger, sleeping perhaps, or pondering deeply. Oh my father, surely even now sitting in peace under the sacred sycamore tree where Osiris rules, pray for me! And you, Si-Amun my brother, dead by your own hand, where are you? Would a plea to the gods from your ka bring me a blessing or a curse? He groaned and the man’s fingers were stilled. “Did I hurt you, Prince?” he asked solicitously. Kamose moved his head against the narrow pillow, a denial. It is my heart that hurts me, he replied soundlessly, and try as I might I cannot banish that distress. May the wine tonight be rich and strong!

  The dining hall was almost full that night, for Kamose had invited not only the five Princes but his officers, the mayor of Weset and his administrators and their wives, and the priests of Amun. Flowers littered the tiny dining tables scattered over the tiled floor, trembling in the drafts from floating linen and sending their perfume gusting into the room. Every lamp Aahotep could muster had turned the dim expanse into a golden day. There were no shadows. The stewards bent with brimming wine jugs over guests who held up their cups eagerly. Servants threaded their way through the chattering throng, holding high the trays laden with the last of the family’s delicacies. Duck, fish and gazelle meat smoked under fresh leaves of pungent cilantro. Stalks of celery, sprigs of parsley and round brown chick peas nestled on beds of crisp lettuce. Sycamore figs soaked in honey from the persea trees and little crumbling sweet cakes were offered, and the beer was flavoured with pomegranates and mint. Kamose’s musicians plucked and tapped valiantly, the melodies almost lost under the clamour around them.

  The family sat on the dais above the throng. The women and the two brothers also had donned their most colourful linens and adorned themselves in such jewellery as remained to them. Eyes black-kohled, lips and palms hennaed orange, their braided wigs glistening with the melting saffron oil, they seemed detached from the revellers. In spite of their smiles, their warm glances, their gestures as they ate or raised the blooms to their faces, there was an invisible rift between them and the noisy crowd at their sandalled feet. They were marked for death or for glory, not the anonymous death of a common soldier or the glory of mere temporal success, but a formal execution or the confirmation of divinity. All knew it, and the knowledge wove a thread of gravity through the increasing din.

  Ahmose had his arm around his sister as they ate, and when they had finished, they talked quietly together. Tetisheri had both hands around her cup, but she was not drinking. Her calm gaze remained fixed above the heads of the people. Aahotep was bent over the table, one cheek resting in her palm, still frowning. But Kamose drank steadily, no longer tasting the fine vintage regularly replenished in his goblet. The seductive aroma of the wax cone on his head filled his nostrils. The air in the hall was warm and redolent with life. The wine slipped down his throat, cool and comforting, but he was not consoled. In the flushed faces below him he fancied that he caught his father’s glance, the swift tossing of his dead brother’s head, but when he looked again there were no ghosts, only Intef smiling up at him briefly and Ankhmahor turning to answer his neighbour’s question.

  Before the feasting had begun, he had instructed the Princes to return to their nomes at dawn so as to prepare their stores and conscripts for his arrival. One day will not be enough, he thought hazily. I should not have taken them to Pi-Hathor. Now the army will have to linger at Kift and perhaps also at Aabtu while the ranks are swelled and the food replenished. I only have four months before the next Inundation. Four months to take Egypt back and bottle up Apepa in the Delta. Oh, for Set’s sake, Kamose! he berated himself inwardly. You will go insane before you set foot in your boat if you do not control this pointless gnawing at what cannot now be changed. Get drunk and sleep. He drained his cup and held it out unsteadily to be refilled.

  He woke at noon the following day to a pounding headache and the news that the Princes had gone north in obedience to his instructions. Pushing aside the food Uni had placed beside him on the couch, he gulped down several cups of water before making his way to the bath house to have the poisons of his last excess massaged from his pores. The air was stale with the atmosphere of silent exhaustion that often followed a night of carousal. Servants moved with quiet purpose, clearing away the debris of a feast that had spilled from the hall into the passages of the public area and out to the garden. The smell of baking bread gave Kamose a wave of nausea before he entered the humid dampness of the bath house and acknowledged his body servant’s bow, but by the time he emerged, washed, kneaded and ready to be dressed, his appetite was returning and he ate a few mouthfuls of bread and goat cheese while his kilt was wrapped about his waist and his face was painted. For once, his mind, as drained as his body felt, was still.

  Ipi was waiting for him in the office. “The family expects your summons, Highness,” he said in answer to Kamose’s question. “The Prince and Princess are ready. The contract is before you.”

  “Bring them then,” Kamose ordered, “and have the litters ready outside.” He went to sit behind the desk, the scroll under his fingers, but he did not unroll it. It was a simple, standard marriage agreement with Ahmose and Aahmes-nefertari’s names inserted. He felt a twinge of doubt as he looked down at it. Is this the right thing to do? he wondered. Give her to Ahmose instead of taking her myself? What if Ahmose is killed in the coming battles but I survive to rule? Would I serve as regent for whatever child results from this union? Or would I then marry her in my turn? Where is she, the beloved of my dreams? I have not seen her now for a long time. Has she deserted me because I am set on the right path or because I have wandered unknowingly into error? No, he decided. She is near, but no other sign is needed. I am in the will of Ma’at.

  They entered mutely and came to stand before him, their mother on their left, Tetisheri on their right. All looked pale and tired, even Ahmose, who was usually alert and cheerful no matter how he had spent his nights. Ipi placed his palette before them and uncapped the ink. “Are you still willing to do this thing?” Kamose asked them. The question was a formality, couched in his own terse words. They nodded. “Then sign your name and titles. Mother, Grandmother, you will witness the signatures together with me.” Solemnly, in a silence broken only by the almost imperceptible abrasion of brush against papyrus, they bent and complied. Kamose wrote last, and it was over. He passed the scroll to Ipi. “Lock it away in the archives,” he said, rising. “Now come. The litters are waiting to take us to the temple.”

  The early afternoon was a dazzle of bright sunlight with a hint of the greater heat Shemu would bring in a few weeks, and Kamose found his mood lightening as his bearers paced the path that ran from the estate to Amun’s home. The Nile, glimpsed between the lushness of growth along its bank, sparkled. An intermittent breeze lifted the edge of the litter’s curtain and fluttered it against his naked calf. To right and left the family’s bodyguards, the Followers of His Majesty, strode easily, their sturdy leather sandals kicking up little puffs of dust.

  All
at once Kamose heard his sister exclaim. Leaning out he saw her peering up at the sky. “Oh look, Ahmose!” she called out. “Look up! Horus gives us his benediction! It is a favourable omen!” Kamose scanned the blue vastness above him and drew in his breath. A great hawk was hovering over the cavalcade, its red-tipped wings outspread. It was so close that Kamose could see the sun reflected in its shiny black eyes and the tiny slits of its nostrils. Its beak was open, and even as he gazed, it gave a raucous shriek and dropped further towards them. Kamose flinched involuntarily, but with an audible rustle of feathers and another harsh cry it swooped over him, paused above Ahmose’s conveyance, then rose straight up to be lost in the brilliance of the day. Kamose found himself trembling as a babble of exhilarated chatter broke out among the bearers. A mighty omen indeed, he thought as they moved on. The God of the Horizon has spoken. But his holy sanction was not for me. Not for me.

  Leaving the litter bearers to squat in the shade of the trees that lined Amun’s canal, the family crossed the outer court, removed their sandals, and entered the inner court. Amunmose was waiting for them before the open doors of the sanctuary, his acolytes holding lighted censers whose smoke curled almost invisibly into the limpid air. Bowing, he preceded them to where the god sat in the cool gloom of the Holiest of Holiest, golden hands on golden knees, his feet surrounded by the flowers and food presented to him that morning by his servants. Ahmose had brought him the gift of an amulet and Aahmes-nefertari a necklet of electrum, as well as the offerings of wine, food and oil prescribed by custom. Poor trinkets indeed, Kamose thought as he watched his brother and sister pass their burdens to Amunmose and kneel to prostrate themselves. But Amun knows that there is little left to bring to him until such time as I may fill this sanctuary with the riches of the whole of Egypt. He listened attentively to the prayers and responses of thanksgiving, the requests for happiness and the added blessing of children, his spirit calmed under the steady golden regard of his god.

  When the appointed rites were over, they returned to the house where a meal had been set out for them in the garden. Relief had replaced the mood of heavy soberness in which they had signed the marriage contract, and Ahmose and his new wife were toasted with laughter and many gentle jokes. They sat close together under the sheltering canopy, holding hands and smiling into each other’s eyes over the rims of their cups while Ahmose-onkh, released from his nurse’s care, crawled over them, prattling delightedly in his own unintelligible language. Their happiness soothed Kamose. I have done the right thing, he told himself, whether or not the future will bring them divinity. They were born for one another.

  As the afternoon slipped away, Tetisheri and Aahotep sought their couches and Ahmose-onkh, protesting volubly, was retrieved and carried into the house. Kamose rose also. “If I eat at all this evening, it will be in the office,” he said, looking down on their flushed faces. “Do not worry about tomorrow, Ahmose. I will take care of the last details before we set sail. I will see you at the watersteps at dawn.” He hesitated, wanting to say more, to tell them to treasure the moments remaining to them, to assure his sister that he would do everything in his power to return her husband to her safely, for he sensed that the sad shadow of Si-Amun’s fate lay over her, but he could not. His words would have held only a hollow promise. Smiling briefly, he left them.

  Inside his own quarters he summoned Akhtoy. “I want to see the Scribe of Recruits, the Scribe of Assemblage and General Hor-Aha in the office as soon as possible,” he ordered his steward. “Have my body servant bring hot water and fresh linen. I will wash and change my clothes.” By the time he had finished his ablutions and had walked through the house, the men he had summoned were already in attendance. All three were weary. Kamose noted their dusty kilts and drawn features without comment, and bade them sit. “This will not take long,” he said. “General, I want the Medjay on board the boats and settled by dawn. Is that possible?” Hor-Aha nodded.

  “They are ready,” he answered. “All I have left to do is to assign a boat to each five hundred under the appropriate officers.”

  “Have the mayor of Nekheb and his townsmen been of any use to you?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Hor-Aha leaned forward. “Paheri and Baba Abana have organized the men into shifts of rowers and appointed the junior officers as those who call the strokes. It was something I had not considered fully. The desert men are not pleased to be travelling on water. Both men of Nekheb have been invaluable in making them more familiar with the boats and explaining to them how best to cope with the experience.”

  “Good.” Kamose turned his attention to the others. “Scribe of Recruits, are my conscripts ready?” The man inclined his head.

  “Yes, Highness. There has been some unruliness among the younger boys and many of the conscripts are grumbling because they must march while the Medjay sit in the boats, but the General has done his utmost to explain to them why this is necessary.” A difficult task indeed, Kamose mused. A Medjay general trying to inform Egyptian farmers and artisans why foreigners may travel in comfort while they sweat under the sun. I should have seen to that myself. The doubts regarding Hor-Aha’s supreme authority he had so lately endeavoured to put to rest returned to him and he glanced across to find the General’s black eyes fixed on him. Was it a challenge he saw there? Hor-Aha smiled without humour.

  “I did not do the explaining myself,” he said, and Kamose was convinced that the man had read his thought. “I seconded a native Egyptian officer to the task. He made it clear to the nome troops that it was merely a matter of good tactics, not a slur against their blood. The Medjay are primarily archers and they have keen eyesight. They need the long view they will have from the boats. I made sure that the officer pointed out the superiority of Egyptians in the business of hand-to-hand combat.” His smile widened. “Of course, for the majority of the nome troops, well-trained as they are, it is not true. Only those of them who fought with your illustrious father, Majesty, have seen any action at all. But the officer’s tact seemed to mollify them.”

  “It was a wise thing to do,” Kamose replied. “Once battle is joined and the army works as one, these foolish divisions will fade.” To that, Hor-Aha had no response. Uneasily Kamose returned his gaze to the Scribe of Recruits. “Then get them across the river,” he ordered. “They can sleep on their mats by the road. The boats will move faster than they can march in any case, so they will have a chance to become real soldiers in the wake of the first onslaughts, before any pitched battle is likely. Scribe of Assemblage, are the stores divided and stowed?”

  “Everything, Highness. The custodians and cooks are ready. Tonight the donkeys accompanying the foot soldiers will be loaded.”

  “Good,” Kamose repeated. “Very good. Then that is all. I will not be available for the rest of the night, but I will be down by the river at dawn. If there are any problems, take them to the General. You are dismissed.” They rose as one, bowed, and left him.

  For a moment Kamose sat on, drumming his fingers on the desk. I should go to Mother and Grandmother, he thought. I should spend a portion of this night reassuring them, reiterating their instructions, telling them what I intend. I should use up the rest of the hours remaining in the temple, in prayer. But when he left the office and greeted Akhtoy who had risen from his stool and was waiting for instructions, Kamose found words other than those he had planned to say leaving his mouth. “Tell the women that I cannot be with them tonight,” he said. “Send to the temple and bid the High Priest come to the river to bless the troops at dawn. But first bring me a warm cloak and a lamp full of oil, Akhtoy. I want to go to the old palace. Tell no one where I am unless it be a matter of extreme emergency.” He did not know where such a quixotic impulse had come from, but as he crossed the lawns towards the crumbling cleft in the ancient wall that separated his estate from that of his ancestors, the cloak over his arm and the lamp he carried casting a tiny circle of wavering light in the increasing dimness, he knew it was right.

  Althou
gh a vestige of the day lingered in the wide courtyard across whose rubble-strewn stone flags he cautiously picked his way, it was already night inside the palace. Cold, musty air greeted him as he stood for a moment just within the lofty entrance to what had once been the mighty reception hall, a breath out of the past from the lungs of the dead. He shook off the fancy, allowing himself to gradually become aware of the rows of pillars marching away into the gloom, the patch of paler air far to his left where part of the roof and a wall had fallen in hentis ago and scattered bricks and deep dust over the chipped tiling of the floor.

  He had intended to go straight to the stairs leading to the roof above the women’s quarters, but his feet seemed to have a mind of their own and he began to wander the huge, dilapidated rooms where his lamp cast no more than a feeble glow against a weight of silence and lofty space. Here and there a remnant of life sprang out at him; the baleful glare of a Wadjet Eye that regarded him with hostility before sinking into obscurity as he moved quietly on, a splash of dull yellow, all that was left from some painted scene of a happier age, a seated likeness of some god or King that seemed to emerge from its corner as though it were about to rise, its serene features gazing steadily into the motionless decay around it. Kamose had the uneasy notion that if he spoke to it, it would reply, that to address it would unleash some force that had lain dormant in this, the sacred home of his forebears. He shook his head at his foolishness, but he was careful to make no sound until he had left its vicinity.

  He had not been allowed to play here in the old palace. Seqenenra had forbidden it as being too dangerous, and as he grew, Kamose had not often been tempted to explore its secrets. It was stark and cold, a place of tumbled masonry, a home for bats and rodents. Yet now as he paced like a ghost himself through rooms that opened out into other rooms, along corridors whose uneven floors led to doorless black pits or cracked terraces or yet another series of empty, half-ruined apartments, it came to him that its greatest danger did not lie in loose bricks or sagging walls. With his senses heightened, he seemed to catch errant whispers, soft laughter, the flicker of jewelled linen just beyond the periphery of his vision. The true danger was more subtle, more seductive, a siren call of past glories that had conspired with Apepa’s constant jibes to lure Seqenenra into the rebellion that had cast him, maimed and broken, into his tomb. Kamose felt the intoxication himself, stealing through his veins like a gentle elixir, the promise of purification, restoration, restitution. It was not a trap. The cause was just, it was right. The palace did not hold an evil magic. Its spell was redolent with Ma’at, the Ma’at of an Egypt gone, an Egypt that the ancestors who invisibly crowded this place waited for him to revive.