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beside Apepa in Het-Uart and enjoying his favour. Father has too much pride.”
    “It is the pride of a Prince who would rather govern his ancetral seat with authority than lick the King’s leather boots every day in a region of Egypt where he has no friends and no roots,” Kamose shot back irritably. “I wish I had been born before you, Si-Amun, for then you would be free to go north and fawn upon our King while I prepared to take upon myself the responsibilities of a Prince of Weset.”
    “How humourless you are!” Si-Amun mocked him gently. “How sober! Don’t you ever just have fun, Kamose, make love to a few serving girls, get drunk in your skiff at midnight on the river? You are so solemn most of the time!” Kamose bit back a stinging answer.
    “I take life a little more seriously than you, Si-Amun, that is all,” he said, beginning to walk towards the gate in the wall that gave onto the rear of the courtyard. Si-Amun hurried to keep pace with him.
    “I apologize,” he said. “If we were similar in more than our looks, our lives would be simpler. Yet I love you.” Kamose smiled across at him.
    “I love you also.”
    “All the same,” Si-Amun emphasized, always needing the last word, “if Father ever took it into his headto commit treason against Ma’at and march against the King I would not join him. I worry about that.”
    “So do I,” Kamose admitted, “but not out of loyalty to the King. I worry at the dissolution of the family and the destruction of the life we lead here at Weset. But we are foolish to make ourselves even more sweaty than we are already by arguing over a puff of cloud. Let’s bathe. I want to be oiled before my muscles stiffen into soreness. In any case,” and here he graced Si-Amun with one of his rare, dazzling full smiles, “Apepa is not Ma’at in Egypt. Father is.”
    To that, Si-Amun had no reply. They pushed through the gate, crossed the courtyard beyond in the sudden shade of the granaries, and headed for the bath house together.
    No reply to Seqenenra’s letter came from the King. Men returned from the Delta several weeks later and reported that he had not personally been received by Apepa. He had handed the scroll to Itju, the King’s Chief Scribe, and had been told the next day that he could go. He had toured his master’s cattle, which were growing fat and sleek on the lush pastures watered by an abundant Nile that branched out and meandered slowly through the Delta to the Great Green, and could tell Amunmose that Amun’s cattle likewise fared excellently. He had watched the King’s charioteers practising manoeuvres outside Het-Uart. On his way home he had spent a day admiring the marvels of Saqqara, the ancient city of the dead, and had climbed one of the lesser pyramids close by, as so many other travellers did.
    Seqenenra had few questions for him. In the days that followed, his anxiety lessened and finally disappeared as he watched royal craft ply the river on their way to Kush orfrom Kush to the Delta, passing Weset with oars flashing and flags afloat. Apepa’s quixotic demand and Seqenenra’s equally irrational reply were relegated to the back of Seqenenra’s mind and often forgotten altogether.

2
    AS SPRING MOVED INTO SUMMER and the season of Shemu began, Seqenenra left Kamose to govern in his absence and took Aahotep and the rest of the family north to Khemennu where Teti, Aahotep’s relative by marriage, was governor. Tetisheri declined to go, preferring to order her time as she wished. Kamose was more than content to see to the affairs of the nomes, do a little hunting in the desert hills, and enjoy the peace of his own solitary routine. Seqenenra did not insist that Si-Amun fulfil the duties of an heir. He would get much more pleasure from the bustle of Teti’s estate than Kamose. Ahmose was content to make no choices. He was happy wherever he found himself. The crops had sprung up thick and promising in the little fields. The canals