them.
They sat in silence, and through the linen walls listened to Heseret's wailing, entreaties and blandishments. Then there was a sudden silence and they steeled themselves. They heard a high, piercing shriek that ended as abruptly as it had started.
Mintaka covered her face with both hands and Nefer made the sign against evil with his right hand. The others coughed, and moved restlessly.
Then the curtains at the entrance parted and Meren stepped back into the tent. In his right hand he carried the naked sword and in the other a dreadful object. 'Your Majesty,' he said, 'justice has been done.' By its dense hair- tresses he held high the severed head of Heseret, the wife of Naja Kiafan, the false pharaoh.
--
It was five more days before Mintaka had recovered sufficiently to begin the long journey back to Avaris. Even then Taita and Nefer insisted that she be carried in a litter to ease the jolting and lurching over the rough road that lay ahead. They travelled slowly, and it was fifteen days later that they reached the escarpment and looked down from the arid wastes upon the wide green valley of the Nile.
Nefer helped Mintaka from the litter, and together they walked a short way from the road, so that they could be alone and savour to the full this joyous moment of homecoming. They had not been there long when Nefer stood up and shaded his eyes.
'What is it, my heart?' Mintaka asked.
'We have visitors,' he said, but when she exclaimed with annoyance at the intrusion he went on, 'These visitors are always welcome.'
She smiled then as she recognized the two mismatched figures approaching them. Taita. And Meren! But what strange attire is this?'
They were both dressed in simple robes and sandals, and slung on their backs they carried the leather satchels of holy men on a pilgrimage.
'We have come to say our farewells, and to take our leave of you,' Taita explained.
'You will not leave me now.' Nefer was dismayed. 'Will you not attend my coronation?'
'You were crowned upon the field of Ismatliya,' Taita told him gently.
'Our wedding!' Mintaka cried. 'You must stay for our wedding.'
'You were married long since,' Taita smiled, 'perhaps on the day of your birth, for the gods intended you for each other.'
'But you, my brother of the Red Road and my dearest friend,' Nefer turned to Meren, 'what about you?'
'There is nothing more for me here, now that Merykara is gone. I must go with Taita.'
Nefer knew that there was nothing further to say, that more words would degrade this moment. He did not even ask where they were going. Perhaps they did not know themselves.
He embraced them and kissed them, and he and Mintaka stood and watched them walk away, and their distant shapes slowly dwindle in size in the shimmering wastes of the desert wilderness, and they shared the same deep ache of regret and bereavement.
'They have not really gone,' Mintaka whispered, when at last they had disappeared from view.
'No,' Nefer agreed. 'They will always be with us.'
--
With the high priestess and fifty acolytes from the temple of Hathor preceding her, the Princess Mintaka Apepi came for her marriage to Pharaoh Nefer Seti.
They stood together on the terrace of the palace of Thebes that overlooked the broad brown flow of the Nile in flood, in the season most propitious to all living things in the land of this very Egypt.
Mintaka had long since recovered from her injuries and her ordeal. Her beauty was fully restored, and in this joyous moment seemed to be enhanced ten-fold.
It seemed that all of Egypt had come to bear witness to the nuptials. The crowds stretched back along both banks of the river as far as the eye could see. When the couple embraced and broke the jars of Nile water, the shout that went up to heaven must have startled the gods themselves. Then Nefer Seti led his new queen out by the hand and showed her beauty to the populace, who fell to their knees, and wept and cried aloud their loyalty and their love.
Suddenly a silence fell over this vast congregation and slowly every eye turned upwards to the tiny speck in the vaulted sky above the palace.
In the silence there was the wild lonely cry of a royal falcon and the bird began its stoop out of the high blue. In the end, just as it seemed it must come into violent collision, the falcon flared its wings wide and hovered over the tall figure of Pharaoh. Nefer lifted his right arm and held it out, and softly as a feather the magnificent bird alighted upon his fist.
A sound like the sea on a stormy day rose from ten thousand throats as they greeted the miracle. But Nefer's eyes fell on the thin loop of pure gold that was fastened about the bird's right foot above the great hooked talons. Engraved into the precious metal was a symbol that made Nefer's heart race as he recognized it.
The royal cartouche!' he whispered. 'This was never a wild bird. This is Nefertem, my father's falcon. That is why it came to me so often in times of greatest danger, to warn and guide me. It was always my father's spirit.
'And now Nefertem has come to affirm before all the world that you are king indeed.' Mintaka stood closer to him and gazed into his face with eyes that glowed with pride and love.
--
