The Hippopotamus Marsh (42 page)

“You know he did, Highness.” Kamose was feverish with haste and a fear that he did not betray.

“Then let us make our move.” He jerked his head at the soldier who drew his own knife and slipped out the door. Anxiously Kamose, Uni and Ahmose waited. There were a few noncommittal words spoken, an exclamation of surprise, then a brief scuffle. Kamose tensed. The door swung wide to reveal his guard, the other with a look of puzzlement and shock on his face, and a limp body huddled across the threshold. “Bring him in here and then go. Hurry!” Kamose urged. “Come, Ahmose.” He knew he could trust Uni to follow his instructions. His heart was beating lightly and rapidly as he and his brother ran back along the passage and plunged into the corridor leading to the guest quarters. Here they slowed to a walk, for Dudu had placed several guards outside his door, none of them local men.

“This is madness, Kamose!” Ahmose whispered across at him. “We cannot take on three of them!”

“Not at the moment,” Kamose managed, trying to will his heart and his breath to slow. “They will not refuse to let us in, and afterwards we must take a small gamble.” Suddenly he remembered the knife in his hand. He thrust it into his sleeping kilt as they rounded a corner and the three guards came to a surprised attention, saluting with spears thrust forward.

“Greetings,” Kamose said. “We must speak with the General. Let us pass.” They stared at him then one of them stepped out.

“Where are your guards, Prince?” He enquired politely but with an edge of suspicion in his voice.

“At the end of the passage,” Kamose said. “Go and look if you want to. But hurry. It will soon be dawn and our business cannot wait.” He saw the mistrust on their faces. They were not stupid men. Yet they hesitated, afraid to offend a Prince of Egypt no matter what the circumstances surrounding him. There had been a natural imperiousness in his tone that no commoner dared to defy, but had not the General given strict orders that neither of these young men should be allowed to walk anywhere unescorted? What business could a disgraced Prince under house arrest possibly have an hour before the dawn?

I have underestimated them, Kamose thought angrily. I am a fool. He glanced at Ahmose, seeing his brother’s muscles tighten, and in a lightning moment their eyes met. Ahmose nodded. Both brothers lunged. Kamose grabbed a spear and pulled it violently towards him. The guard, caught unawares, went with it, toppling forward. Kamose’s
knee struck his groin. In a reflex movement he doubled over, only to have Kamose’s fist connect with his chin. He collapsed without a sound. Kamose whirled to see Ahmose’s foot fly into one man’s stomach, then his arm hook around the straining neck. The third guard was pulling his knife, preparing to leap upon Ahmose. Kamose leaped first, clinging to his back, digging thumbs into his eyes. The man howled and dropped the knife. His fingers closed like a vise around Kamose’s wrists but then loosened. He slipped to the floor and Ahmose jumped aside, letting go the hilt of the knife he had slid into the taut chest. Ahmose was sweating profusely. “Not a bad performance for two men who have neglected their wrestling practice lately,” he said huskily. “One dead, perhaps two. I think I broke this one’s neck, Kamose.”

“I am sorry,” Kamose said. “If they had not been so obdurate …” The door opened and Dudu’s tousled head appeared.

“What is happening here?” he asked, then Kamose saw his eyes clear and widen with surprising speed. Before he could react, Kamose flung himself against the door, knocking him off balance. Dudu toppled to the floor but rolled and regained his feet with agility. Not fast enough for Ahmose, however, who ran to step behind him as he rose and pinned his arms behind his back. Kamose pushed the door closed and drew his dagger, feeling suddenly cold and drained.

Dudu had grasped the situation immediately. Kamose saw it in his eyes. But he showed no fear and Kamose found a respect for the man growing. He would have liked to offer Dudu his life in exchange for the General’s co-operation
but knew that at the first opportunity Dudu would betray him. Dudu was Setiu.

“This will only bring you a short respite,” Dudu said huskily. “It is a tiny battle. You cannot win the war, Highness.” I am tired of the word cannot, Kamose thought mutinously. A short respite, a tiny battle, as though I were a child fighting by the riverbank with reeds for knives and a bulrush for an axe.

“Not Highness, Dudu,” he said, clenching the dagger and coming closer, his eyes roving Dudu’s broad chest for the best place to strike. “Not Highness. Majesty.” He saw Dudu take a deep breath before the blade was forced home between the third and fourth ribs. All at once Kamose’s hand and wrist were drenched in warm blood. He wrenched out the dagger as Ahmose lowered Dudu and quickly stood away.

“These necessities are terrible,” Ahmose said, racing to the cot and pulling off the sheet. “Wipe yourself, Kamose.” Kamose took the linen and began to scrub at his hands, first rubbing the dagger’s blade clean. Ahmose bent and carefully closed Dudu’s glazing eyes. “We have committed ourselves now,” he went on, “and even if we wanted it, there can be no turning back. If we lose, it will mean death for us all this time.”

“I know,” Kamose replied. “But I cannot believe, I refuse to believe, that we will vanish from the flow of history without leaving a trace! We had better go, Ahmose. Ra is about to rise and we must have the soldiers in our control before the rest of the house wakes. I wish Hor-Aha were here.”

In the grey light of dawn the soldiers sleeping side by side in the barracks were woken by a sharp command.
Coming groggily to their feet they found themselves confronted by the Princes and two bodyguards, all standing with feet apart and bows drawn. “Soldiers of the house to the right,” Kamose ordered, “and those of the General Dudu to the left. Quickly!” Still half-asleep the men stumbled to obey, grouping themselves against the bare mud walls as he had commanded.

Kamose, outwardly stonyfaced, watched them anxiously. His control hung by a thread. If one Setiu officer gave the order to charge, the four of them they would be helpless in a moment. Ahmose and his escort moved imperceptibly, training their weapons to the left. Kamose’s gaze travelled his own fifty soldiers and he did not speak again until he had satisfied himself that he recognized all of them. “Sit down,” he shouted at them, and at once they sank to the floor. “Do not move,” he went on. Then he turned his attention to the rest. “Give me your name, place of birth, station and family history,” he said. “You first.” Dudu’s men stared at him as though he had gone mad, but his own guard sensed what was to come. A murmur passed through their ranks like a breath of winter breeze.

The soldier Kamose had pointed at stepped forward and saluted. “Ptahmose of Mennofer, Highness, foot soldier in the Division of Set. My father and his fathers before him were scribes in the village school just outside the city.” Kamose nodded curtly.

“Sit down. Next.”

One by one the fifty gave their details. Those with Setiu names, whose families inhabited the eastern Delta, he commanded to remain on their feet. In the end there were twenty left standing. Ahmose slipped close and muttered in
Kamose’s ear, “If you are going to do what I think you are, can you at least give them some kind of a choice? This is barbaric!”

“We cannot take the risk, not with soldiers,” Kamose hissed back. “I like it no more than you, Ahmose. If they were peasants or simple townsmen it would not matter so much, but I cannot allow trained military men to wander loose here whether they have sworn loyalty to me or not. They all believe us to be defeated before we begin.”

Swiftly he singled out twenty of his own men and told them to distribute their weapons. “Take these twenty out onto the desert and shoot them,” he said. “Bury them in the sand. Do not throw them in the river. I do not want their bodies floating downstream to tell a tale.” His soldiers obeyed, stumbling in their alacrity. The victims stared at him in dumb amazement, unable to believe the sudden fate that had fallen upon them. Some stooped to gather kilts and other personal belongings, clutching them to their chests as though they were to be transferred to some other barracks. Ahmose told them to drop everything they held. Kamose nodded to his personal bodyguard and the man sprang to take charge, ushering out the Setiu men and their executioners.

There was a short silence inside the building. The command to form ranks and then to march came clearly in the strengthening light, then the sound of bare feet pounding the packed dirt that faded away. Ahmose does not realize it yet, Kamose thought as he surveyed the remaining white faces, but this is only the beginning, and sometimes we will be unable to separate friend from foe. May Amun forgive me. He felt deathly cold. “You that are left,” he said to the thirty now stiffly at attention, only their darting eyes betraying
their uncertainty, “I have spared you because you are native Egyptians even though you serve in the army of Apepa. You must now swear loyalty to me. If you do so, you will be welcome in Weset. If you break the vow you are about to make, you will be subject to the five wounds and immediate execution as traitors. Come forward.” His fifty retainers sat watching in obvious relief as the thirty came one by one to kiss Kamose’s feet and hands in token of their new fealty.

When the last had crawled forward, Kamose spoke directly to the Captain of the fifty. “These thirty are to be paired with those whose honesty is not in question,” he ordered. “They are not to leave the confines of the estate, nor may they be given guard duty in the house. Work them hard at weapons practice and in the stables and watch them. I shall expect regular reports on their words and attitudes.” The man bowed and even before he straightened Kamose had left the vast room and was walking towards the house, filling his lungs with good, cool morning air. Ahmose ran to join him.

“You look ill,” Ahmose said. “What now?” Kamose passed a weary hand over his face. His skin felt loose and rough.

“Now we pass the same rod of testing over Dudu’s servants and impose the same restrictions on them,” he said. “I would like to kill them all. Body servants and house servants usually grow the greatest loyalty. But word must not be spread that I am so ruthless as to murder innocent native Egyptians. I must be seen as a liberator, Ahmose, an Egyptian fighting on the side of other Egyptians to free this country from foreign oppressors. Half my work will be done for me if the right gossip goes before me in the towns and villages. But not yet.”

“Is that how you see yourself?” Ahmose asked curiously. They had reached the garden. Kamose paused and turned black-ringed eyes on his brother.

“No,” he said with a twisted smile. “I am Seqenenra’s avenger and Egypt’s god.”

Before the noon meal, nine of Dudu’s staff had been taken out and killed and the rest had been placed with the kitchen staff under Uni’s omnipotent eye. Kamose’s bodyguard came back with a report of the deaths of the twenty soldiers. Ahmose had gone to the rest of the family to tell them that the house was once more their own, but Kamose refused to see Tetisheri who had come hurrying to the office as soon as Ahmose had left her.

“Keep them away from me,” he had ordered Akhtoy. “I am not ready to discuss any affair with them. I need sleep.” Akhtoy had politely but firmly sent Tetisheri back to her quarters.

Kamose had sent for Uni and sharply demanded a report on his request for information regarding boats and boat builders. When Uni had mildly reminded the Prince that there had so far been neither the time nor the opportunity to do more than brief his understeward and send servants into Weset, Kamose flew into a rage. Uni was unimpressed. “You need sleep, Prince, and you also need to wash. You still have blood on your kilt.” Kamose looked down on his crusted linen and the streaks of dry brown blood still clinging to his arms.

“You are right,” he admitted. But have I covered everything? he thought anxiously. Is the house really secure? Shall I wake to a knife in my throat?

He allowed his bath servant to wash him, then he went to his quarters and fell across his couch. Vivid pictures of
his dagger piercing the General, of the bewildered soldiers’ ashen faces flashed through his mind. Blood on my hands, he thought dimly. Too much to forget. Too much to turn back. He placed his palm beneath his cheek and slept.

Uni’s report on the boat builders was in Kamose’s hands within the next week. Most of the vessels in and around Weset were too small to convey more than a few fishermen. But Kamose appropriated several barges from merchants who traded up and down the Nile. He gave Uni the authority to commission a hundred reed ships to hold fifty men each, the construction of which was to begin immediately. Uni was aghast. “Highness, such expense! How are we to pay the builders?”

“They will be given an acre of my land each when they have completed the work.”

“But, Highness,” Uni expostulated. “You need your Weset holdings to keep the household supplied and your servants fed!”

Kamose stared between the pillars of the portico and out to where Aahotep and Tetisheri sat on mats in the garden. They were not speaking. Aahotep’s hands had fallen still over the beads she was threading. She was staring into her lap. Tetisheri was reclining on one elbow, her eyes on the blue dragonflies over the placid surface of the pool, her expression pensive and unguardedly sad. Kamose could feel their fear. “Uni,” he said wearily, his face still turned away, “the King has appropriated all my holdings in any case. If I do not give the land away, Teti will put his loathsome feet on it or else the King’s overseers will see it farmed for the court. In either case it is only mine for another four months.” He smiled grimly. “A little less than four months now. Dudu, of
course, was supposed to prevent me from doing anything foolish, but as he is no longer living, I shall have proper deeds drawn up and signed so that the builders’ claim to the acres cannot be contested by either Teti or Apepa. If I win, the whole of Egypt will pour tribute into my lap. If I lose, we all die. It does not matter any more.” Uni cleared his throat.

“Very well. You are my master and I will do as you wish. But where will you get the men to fill a hundred ships? There will be room for a division!” Kamose breathed deeply and closed his eyes, opening them again to turn back into the room. He cast himself into the chair by the desk.