That night, pieces of her flesh wrapped in the luscious white belly fat were grilled upon the coals of fifty separate fires and, once again, the people feasted and danced the night through. Although they had all gorged themselves, there remained plenty to salt and smoke; it would feed them for several weeks. In addition to this, the river teemed with catfish that were stunned and disoriented by the raging waters and easily harpooned from the bank, some were heavier than a full-grown man.
They still had several tons of the dhurra they had taken from the Jarrian granaries so Taita agreed that some might be fermented to make beer.
By the time the river had dropped to a level that allowed them to take to their oars, they were all strong, rested and eager for the voyage to recommence. Even Hilto was almost recovered from his wound and able to take his place on a rowing bench.
The Nile had changed from the sullen trickle they had known on the journey towards the land of Jarri. Every bend, every shoal and reef came as a surprise, so Taita could take no chances with a night run. In the evenings they moored to the bank and built a secure stockade of thorn bushes on the shore. After a long day confined between the narrow decks, the horses were turned loose to graze until nightfall. Meren led out a hunting party to bring in what game they could find. As soon as it was dark, men and animals were brought into the safety of the stockade: lions roared and leopards sawed around the thorn-bush walls, attracted by the scent of the horses and the fresh game meat.
With so many humans and animals to provide shelter for, the stockade was crowded. However, because of the respect and affection in which they were held, there was always a small but private enclosure for Taita and Fenn. When they were alone in their haven their talk turned often to their homeland. Although in her other life Fenn had once worn the double crown of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, all she knew of Egypt now she had gleaned from Taita. She was hungry for every detail of the land and its peoples, their religion, art and customs. In particular, she longed for descriptions of the children she had borne so long ago, and their descendants who ruled now.
'Tell me about Pharaoh Nefer Seti.'
'You already know everything that there is to know,' he protested.
'Tell me again,' she insisted. 'I long for the day I meet him face to face. Do you think he will know that I was once his grandmother?'
'I will be astonished if he does. You are much less than half his age, so young and beautiful that he might even fall in love with you,' he teased her.
'That would never do,' she replied primly. 'First, it would be incest, but far more important, I belong to you.'
'Do you, Fenn? Do you truly belong to me?'
She opened her eyes wide with surprise. 'For a magus and a savant, sometimes you can be obtuse, Taita. Of course I belong to you. I promised you that in the other life. You told me so yourself.'
'What do you know of incest?' He changed the subject. 'Who told you about it?'
'Imbali,' she replied. 'She tells me the things that you don't.'
'And what did she have to say on the subject?'
'Incest is when people who are related by blood gijima each other,' she replied evenly.
He caught his breath to hear the coarse word on her innocent lips. 'GijimaV he asked cautiously. 'What does that mean?'
'You know what it means, Taita,' she said, with a long-suffering air.
'You and I gijima each other all the time.'
He caught his breath again, but this time held it. 'How do we do that?'
'You know very well. We hold hands and kiss each other. That is how people gijima.' He exhaled in a sigh of relief, at which she realized he was holding something back. 'Well, it is, isn't it?'
'I suppose so, or at least part of it.'
Now her suspicions were thoroughly aroused and she was unusually quiet for the rest of the evening. He knew that she would not easily be fobbed off.
The next night they camped above a waterfall they remembered from their journey upstream. Then the river had been almost dry, but now its position was marked by the tall column of spray that rose high above the forest. While the shore party cut the thorn bushes to build the stockade and make camp, Taita and Fenn mounted Windsmoke and Whirlwind and followed a game trail along the riverbank that was deeply scored with the tracks of buffalo and elephant and littered with piles of their dung. They carried their bows at the ready and went forward cautiously, expecting at every turn of the trail to run into a herd of one species or the other. However, although they heard elephant trumpeting and breaking branches in the forest nearby, they reached the top of the falls without glimpsing them. They hobbled the horses and let them graze, while they went forward on foot.
Taita thought of this section of the river when it had been a mere trickle in the depths of the narrow rocky gorge. Now the waters were white and foaming, leaping from rock to black rock as they flowed between the high banks. Ahead the unseen falls thundered and spray drizzled on their upturned faces.
When they came out at last on the headland above the main falls, the Nile had been compressed from a width of two hundred paces to a mere
twenty. Below, the torrent plunged through brilliant arches of rainbows hundreds of cubits down into the foaming gorge.
'This is the last waterfall before we come to the cataracts of Egypt',' he said. 'The last barrier in our path.' He lost himself in the splendour of the spectacle.
Fenn seemed equally entranced by it, but in fact she was engrossed in other thoughts. With a half-smile on her lips and a dreamy look in her eyes, she leant against his shoulder. When at last she spoke, it was in a husky whisper that was almost, but not quite, lost in the thunder of the Nile waters. 'Yesterday I spoke to Imbali again about how people gLJima each other.' She slanted those green eyes at him. 'She told me all about it. Of course I had seen horses and dogs doing it, but I'd never thought that we would do the same thing.'
