The royal visitors spent their days hunting or hawking, visiting the numerous temples on both banks of the river dedicated to all the gods of Egypt, or in tournaments between the regiments of the northern and southern kingdom. There were chariot races, archery contests, and foot races. There were even swimming races, in which the chosen champions swam the full width of the Nile for a prize of a golden statue of Horus.
Out in the desert they hunted gazelle and oryx from speeding chariots, or hawked for the great bustards with the swift Sakers. No royal falcons remained in the palace mews, for they had been released into the wild during the funeral rites of Nefer's father. Along the riverbank the guests hawked for herons and duck, and speared the huge whiskered catfish in the shallows. They hunted the river horse, the mighty hippopotamus, from the fleet war galleys, with Nefer at the tiller of his own galley named the Eye of Horus. Princess Mintaka stood beside him and shrieked with excitement as the great beasts broke the surface, their backs studded with spears, and the waters turned pink with their blood.
During these days Mintaka was often at Nefer's side. She rode in his chariot when they hunted and handed him the lance when they drove up alongside a galloping oryx. She carried her own falcon on her arm as they quartered the reed beds for heron. At the hunting picnics in the desert, she sat beside him and prepared little treats for him. She selected the sweetest grapes for him and peeled them with her long, tapered fingers and then popped them into his mouth.
Every evening there were banquets in the palace and there also she sat at his left side, the traditional place for a woman so that she never blocked her man's sword arm. She made him laugh with her wry wit and she was a marvellous mimic: she imitated Heseret to perfection, simpering and rolling her eyes, and speaking of 'my husband, the Regent of Egypt' in the portentous tones as Heseret now employed.
Though they tried, they could never be completely alone. Naja and Apepi saw to that. When Nefer appealed to Taita for assistance, not even he could manoeuvre a secret meeting for them. It never occurred to Nefer that Taita did not exert himself to do so, or that he was as set on keeping them innocent as the others were. Long ago Taita had engineered a tryst for Tanus and his beloved Lostris, and the consequences still echoed like thunder down the years. When Nefer and Mintaka played bao there was always an audience of slave girls, while courtiers and the ubiquitous Lord Asmor hovered nearby. Nefer had learned his lesson well, and no longer underrated Mintaka's skill on the board. He played against her as if he were matched against Taita. He came to learn her strengths, and to recognize her few weaknesses: she was always overprotective of her home castle, and if he pressed her hard in that quadrant she might sometimes offer an opening in her flanks. Twice he exploited this and broke up her defence, but the third time he discovered too late that had anticipated his tactic and had laid a trap. When he had exposed his west castle she rammed a phalanx through the gap, and laughed so deliciously when he was forced to capitulate that he almost, but not quite, forgave her. Their bouts became ever more keenly contested and in the end were of epic proportions, so that even Taita spent hours watching them and occasionally nodding in approval or smiling his thin, ancient smile.
Their love was so apparent that it cast a glow upon all those around them, and wherever they went together there were smiles and laughter. As Nefer's chariot sped through the streets of Thebes with Mintaka on the footplate as his lance-bearer, her dark hair flowing in the wind like a banner, the goodwives ran out of their houses and the men paused from their labours to shout greetings and good wishes. Even Naja smiled benignly upon them, and none would have believed that he fiercely resented the attention of the populace having been diverted from his own nuptials and brides.
Lord Trok was the only sombre presence at the hunting parties, the picnics in the countryside and the banquets in the palace.
Their time together sped by too fast.
There are always so many people around us,' Nefer whispered over the bao board. 'I long to be alone with you even for just a few minutes. There are only three more days before you have to return to Avaris with your father. It might be months, even years, before we meet again, and there is so much I want to tell you, but not with all these eyes and ears pointed at us like nocked arrows.'
She nodded, then reached across and moved a stone that in his preoccupation he had overlooked. He glanced down and almost discounted it, until he realized that his west castle was now under a forked attack. Three moves later she had broken his front. He kept up the losing battle for a while longer, but his forces were in disarray and the outcome was inevitable. 'You caught me when I was distracted by other things,' he groused. 'So much like a woman.'
'Your Majesty, I make no claims to being anything else than a woman.' She used his title with an irony that bit like the jewelled dagger she wore on her belt. Then she leaned close and whispered, 'If I were alone with you, would you promise to respect my chastity?'
'I swear by the wounded eye of the great god Horus that I will never, as long as I live, cause you shame,' he told her earnestly.
She smiled at him. 'My brothers will not be overpleased to hear that. They would welcome an excuse to slit your throat.' She slanted those magnificent dark eyes at him. 'Or, failing your throat, some other part of you might satisfy them.'
Their chance came the next day. One of the royal huntsmen came in from the hills above the village of Dabba to report that a lion had come out of the eastern wilderness and raided the cattle pens during the night. It had jumped the stockade and killed eight of the terrified beasts. In the dawn a horde of villagers, brandishing burning torches, blowing horns, beating drums and screaming wildly, had driven it off.
'When did this happen?' asked Naja.
'Three nights ago, Your Grace.' The man was prostrate before the throne. 'I came upriver as soon as I could, but the current runs strongly and the winds were flukey.'
'What has happened to the beast?' King Apepi interrupted eagerly.
'It has gone back into the hills, but I have sent two of my best Nubian trackers to follow it.'
'Did any man see it? What size is it? Lion or lioness?'
'The villagers say that it is a large male, with a full mane, thick and black.'
Up until the last sixty years lions had been almost unheard-of in the lands along the river. They were royal game, and had been hunted ruthlessly by successive pharaohs, not only because of the damage they inflicted on the livestock of the peasant farmers but also because they were the most sought-after trophy of the royal hunt.
During the long, bitter struggle of the Hyksos wars the pharaohs of both kingdoms had been preoccupied and the lions had been hunted seldom. In addition the human corpses left on the battlefields had provided an easy source of food for the lion prides. In the last few decades they had flourished, their numbers had increased many-
