“Look, Princess,” said Senenmut, “there go the Keftiu. They have sailed from very far away, where few Egyptians have ever sailed.” He looked envious, as if he too would like to sail to distant lands.
I decided to allow him back into my favour. “Would you like to do that?”
“Above all things,” he said, with a sigh.
“So why are you not a sailor?”
“My father thought a scribe would have better prospects.”
“I think our sailors should be more venturesome,” I said. “There may be rich lands that we know not of, with whom we could also trade our grain and wine, our linen and pottery. When I am Pharaoh …” I bit my lip. “If I were Pharaoh,” I amended, peeping at him from under my lids. He kept his face straight, but his eyes were twinkling. I had the feeling that very little would ever escape him.
“Yes, Princess?” he prompted politely.
“I would order our sailors to explore,” I said. “To go further than they are used to.”
He nodded. “You too would like to go further than you are used to, I think,” he said.
“Indeed I would,” I said. “Indeed I would.”
Just at that moment we were approaching a bay of striking beauty on the western bank, where stark, massive rock formations reared up behind a broad plain. A white building, not very big and partially fallen in, stood against the cliffs. Yet it had graceful lines, fronted by crumbling terraces linking with the plain.
“What place is that?” I asked sharply, jumping up from the dais and moving to the side of the boat. Senenmut rose to join me.
“The bay, Princess, is Djeser-Djeseru, a holy place where Hathor resides. The building is the temple of Mentuhotep the Second, may he live. He was a great Pharaoh, a unifier and a builder.”
“I like the sound of that,” I said. “A unifier and a builder. Good things to be.”
“Yes,” agreed Senenmut. “It is a mortuary temple, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. The temple of Amen-Ra at Karnak lay at our backs on the east bank and it was a living, working community. If I turned around I could see its impressive pylons and pillars. The west bank, I knew, was the abode of the dead; many mortuary temples stood there, with shrines where offerings were made to feed the Kas of Pharaohs who had gone to the gods. “It is a pity that the temple is in such a state.”
“Mentuhotep and his successors saw to it that Egypt prospered,” said Senenmut, “but Mentuhotep the Fourth was overthrown by his chief minister, Amenemhat. Maintaining the mortuary temples of the previous dynasty was not … ah … a priority.”
“He must have been a fool to allow his throne to be usurped,” I said scornfully. “Yet the temple could be restored. Or rather … something of greater … greater magnificence … could perhaps be built beside it.”
“Djeser-Djeseru calls for a structure that dominates the plain,” observed Senenmut, staring at the soaring, rugged cliffs that glittered in the early sunlight.
“I agree,” I said, excitedly. “That would be wonderful. It would be the most wonderful temple that the world has ever seen.”
He whistled faintly. “That would demand an extraordinary design, Princess.”
“Yes, it would. But it could be done.”
The bay was slipping past as our boat sailed on.
“It could be done,” agreed Senenmut. He stared at the site as if measuring it with his eyes. “In fact it should be done. One day.”
“One day,” I echoed, trying to hold the image of those magnificent cliffs as the shore sped by.
From that moment he held a special place in my life. I think that there are few things that so bind two people as a shared dream; especially if it be somewhat outrageous and a difficult one to realise.
Together we leaned on the railing, looking back as the boat left the magnificent bay behind. I was standing downwind and suddenly noted the masculine scent of the scribe at my side. Involuntarily I leaned closer, inhaling him. Oh, I do like this man, I thought. I like him so much. I would wish … I would wish to … to dance for him as I do for the god Amen-Ra. When I looked at him sidelong, he was smiling down at me as if he knew my thoughts. I could feel my cheeks flushing hotly.
Just then there was a slight lurch. We had had to avoid a funeral boat carrying a gilded mummy case on its deck that had cut across our prow. Then the rowers recovered their rhythm and we approached a bend in the river. The temples of the living and the dead were left behind. We returned to perch upon the dais again. A slave girl began to play on a lute and sing and we sat listening companionably. Her voice was like clear water running over stones. It seemed to me that it was the very voice of Hapi, the river god who had sung to me so often, singing in my heart; singing a song of limitless possibilities. I closed my eyes, thinking: This must be what it is like in the Fields of the Blessed.
Suddenly the voice of the royal guard who rode the bow of the boat shouted a warning: “Beware, hippo!”
We had just rounded a bend in the river and were passing a small bay with a gently sloping sandy shoreline fringed with palm trees and lush green pasture. In the background white hills shimmered in the lucent sunlight. I realised with a shock that what I had taken to be a cluster of boulders in the shallow water near the shore was in truth a huddle of hippos cooling themselves. There appeared to be a number of calves, little boulders resting close to the huge bulk of their mothers.
At this moment the kitchen boat – considerably smaller, of course, than the royal barge – passed us on the shore side. Doubtless the chefs wanted to get to the place where we would stop for lunch before us so that the tables could be set out. Then a peculiar sound filled the air, a sort of honking wheeze; several of the cows in the shallow water opened their cavernous mouths as if they were yawning.
“Look out!” exclaimed Senenmut. “Here comes trouble.”
I noticed that one of the hippos was moving towards the kitchen boat with a bobbing motion, almost a gallop, blowing explosively every time it sank below the water. The boat’s rowers had now seen it too and were attempting to pull away into deeper water, but the charging monster attacked at such a speed that they could not evade it. The vast jaws opened and closed on the stern of the boat with a crunch. A high-pitched scream rent the air. The boat tilted as water streamed in through the gash, spilling rowers and other slaves into the river.
Again the huge jaws yawned and snapped together. I stared in horrified fascination as a sundered leg floated past us, colouring the water pink. Some servants still clinging to the foundering boat belaboured the hippo with oars. It roared and chomped once more. The royal barge had swung around to come to the rescue and two of the royal guards had flung their spears at the attacking animal, but to no avail as they simply bounced off its hide.
My father, who a moment before had been nodding against the cushions, had leapt to the side of the barge. Now he clambered to the bow and grabbed a spear from the hand of the lookout. Balancing on bent knees as the barge swayed, he waited for the next angry lunge. Suddenly he was once more a powerful warrior. Tautly poised, he almost seemed to shine. Into the open throat of the furious hippo he hurled the spear, straight and true as if aiming at a murderous enemy upon the battlefield. It struck home. The hippo coughed gouts of blood, emitting thunderous, gargling bellows of pain and anguish. It thrashed around in the reddening water. But it would fight no more. Pharaoh had triumphed. He had come forth as the destroyer and the danger was past.
The survivors were taken aboard our barge and we sailed onward. The physician who had of late begun to travel with the Pharaoh assisted the wounded. Someone would take care of the wreckage and salvage what they could. The other hippos would probably not attack anyone, Senenmut told me; it seemed that the kitchen boat had come between a mother and her calf, which had been sucked