The Hippopotamus Marsh by Pauline Gedge Read Free Book Online

bordering them were full of the water imprisoned by mud dykes as the Nile sank after the last Inundation. In the gardens the leeks and onions, radishes, lettuce and melons were forming and flowers trembled, pink, blue and white, beside the pool. Monkeys perched in the palm trees that lined river and canal, gibbering at passersby, and in the thick papyrus beds young crocodiles lurked, watching with lazy greed the antics of the newly hatched fledglings.
    The Inundation had been generous. Isis had cried copiously, flooding Egypt with fecundity, and Seqenenra knewthat the resultant crops would pay his taxes to the One and leave his personal treasury amply filled for another year. Si-Amun and his older daughter had come to him just before they were all due to leave, both solemn and full of importance, with the news that Aahmes-nefertari was pregnant with their first child. Delighted, Seqenenra congratulated them. Aahotep gave Aahmes-nefertari a menat-amulet for special protection and the whole family burned incense before Taurt, who stood fat and smiling, her great hippopotamus’s body swollen with her own promise at the entrance to the women’s quarters. Tani had always treated the statue of the goddess with happy affection, rubbing the vast stomach as she ran to and from her room beside her mother’s, but now Aahmes-nefertari brought a flower or two daily to lay on the goddess’s feet and assiduously said her prayers there morning and evening.
    It was a cheerful group that waved farewell to Kamose and Tetisheri. Aahotep watched until the last glimpse of the tree-shrouded house and the glint of sun on the white watersteps had sunk from view. Behind her barge came the one carrying Si-Amun and Aahmes-nefertari. Ahmose and Tani shared the third craft. The servants who would set up quarters for the family on the bank each evening had gone on ahead. Aahotep signalled, going to the mats laid under the canopy against the small cabin where Seqenenra already sat, and as she went down beside him, Isis handed her a cup of water.
    Already Weset, with its clusters of whitewashed mud houses, narrow donkey-crowded streets and women squatting to slap their linen against the river’s surface, had receded and the Nile wound peacefully through reedmarshes that opened on the east to fields in which peasants bent and on the west to uncultivated tangles of papyrus and then blinding sand that covered the feet of the western cliffs.
    “I wish Tetisheri had decided to come with us,” Aahotep remarked, sipping the water. “It would have done her good to get away from Weset for a while.”
    “Khemennu is under the One’s direct control,” Seqenenra reminded her. “My mother likes to foster the illusion that we are all free, or at least she does not like to have to swallow her words or bite her tongue. She and Kamose understand one another very well. They will enjoy the opportunity to tussle over minor matters of administration.”
    “I suppose you are right. And I know she will spend much time taking offerings to your father’s shrine and praying there. She speaks of him so little, yet I know she misses him a great deal. I shall go to my parents’ tomb in Khemennu also while we are there, and eat a memorial meal. Seqenenra, could you talk to their priest and make sure the endowment is being used correctly? Kares exchanges correspondence with him, but in these times one never knows … Seqenenra?” He came to himself with a start.
    “I am sorry, Aahotep. I was wondering whether I should visit my mayors and assistant governors on the way north or as we come home. It is good for them to talk with me and not an overseer sometimes.”
    “No, you were not.” She took his hand and her fingers closed around it. “You were thinking of Si-Amun’s unborn child.”
    Seqenenra stared up at the roof of the canopy, its yellow tassels bobbing in the wind, and then beyond it. The sky was densely blue and as he squinted against the sun he saw a hawk