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of foreboding that had settled on his shoulders the night before had just rolled away. “What do you think of my solution?” he asked.
    “The One will see it as a joke at his expense,” Uni warned. “He will be angry.”
    “Oh, I do not think so,” Seqenenra disagreed. “The Setiu only laugh when donkeys fall down or old women trip in the street. Our King will close his eyes at night on visions of every one of my hippopotamuses’ noses swathed in leather thongs.”
    Uni cleared his throat. “I do not think so, Prince. He will know you have been disrespectful.”
    “But I mean him no disrespect,” Seqenenra replied emphatically. “I have tried to answer his letter in the same tone as it was addressed to me.”
    “And what tone was that, Prince?” Seqenenra sighed.
    “Uni, you are an efficient and valuable steward. Sometimes you are even the sharer of my secrets. Do not be impertinent.” Uni bowed stiffly.
    Seqenenra took his beer and went out into the garden. Seeing him come, Tetisheri gestured and Mersu stopped reading. Tetisheri waved Mersu away. He gathered up his armful of scrolls and withdrew. Seqenenra sank onto his haunches before his mother. She drew one hennaed finger down his cheek. “Well, Prince?” she urged softly. “What did you tell the servant of Sutekh?” His gaze met her lined, kohled eyes. The bones of her face were as fine and dainty as a fawn’s. At sixty, her skin had the hue of parchment. Her hair was white, the veins of her hands blue and knotted, but her voice, her movements still held an echo of the lightly graceful girl she had been.
    “I told him I would muzzle the hippopotamuses,” he said. “I think Uni was horrified at my presumption.” Tetisheri laughed.
    “Uni is an old woman,” she commented. “Well, thank the gods, that is that. A brilliant solution, as always. Aahotep and I are going to visit a friend today. What will you do?” He glanced over her head, above the trees and the sheltering wall, to the mute invitation of the old palace baking in the sun. No, he thought determinedly. Not today.
    “Tani and I will take a skiff to the marshes,” he said, “and we will tell the children of Set how fortunate they are!”
    He and his daughter, with several bodyguards striding beside the litters and Behek and the other dogs lolloping behind, rode the short distance to the edge of the marshes. There they got into a skiff, Tani hauling Behek down beside her and leaving the others in the care of the soldiers, and were poled between the whispering papyrus swamps and beds of lotus that floated, waxy and fragrant, in their smallwake. Fish flicked away just out of Tani’s reach. Frogs leaped with sudden abandon from the reed pads into the pale, cool water. A cloud of blue dragonflies settled briefly on Tani’s linen and she cried out in delight. Egrets rose beside them with a flutter of white wings and beat their way up towards the sun. Tani was soon drenched.
    Seqenenra watched her contentedly. At length she became quiet and from the shelter of the river growth they peered out at the hippopotamuses. Today only three of them were standing shoulder deep in the river, ears flicking lazily, bright eyes narrowed. One yawned, exposing a cavernous throat, water running from its nostrils, its teeth festooned with limp weeds. “I do love them so,” Tani whispered. “Even though they belong to Set. If the One could only see them thus, he would not want to kill them, I know.”
    “He has seen them,” Seqenenra reminded her. “But perhaps you were too young to remember.” He kept a careful eye on the beasts as he spoke. They were slow, their movements cumbersome, but they could also be dangerous. “You were only six. The One had just ascended the Horus Throne in Het-Uart and he wanted to visit all his governors. He came and stayed with us, or rather he stayed on the royal barge tethered at the watersteps. We had some grand feasts while he was here.” One of the hippopotamuses