Then she was hustled down the bank to the waiting felucca, and back to her locked and guarded cabin on board Lord Trok's galley.
--
Mintaka sat with her slave girls in the crowded little cabin and waited to learn what was to be her fate when the new Pharaoh returned on board. Her girls were terrified and as confused as she was. However, she tried to comfort them. When they had calmed a little she started them playing their favourite games. These soon palled so she called for a lute. Her own had been lost on her father's barge, but they borrowed one from a guard.
Mintaka held a competition, making each girl dance in turn in the confined space of the little cabin. They were laughing and clapping when they heard the new Pharaoh returning on board. The girls fell silent but she urged them to continue, and soon they were as rowdy as before.
Mintaka did not join in the merriment. Previously she had carefully explored her surroundings. Attached to her main cabin was a much smaller one, little more than a cupboard, which served as a latrine. It contained a large pottery toilet bowl with a lid and, beside it, a pitcher of water for washing. The bulkhead dividing it from the next cabin was thin and flimsy. The boat-builders had been concerned to save weight. Mintaka had been on board this galley in happier times, when she and her father had been guests of Lord Trok. She knew that the main cabin lay on the other side of this bulkhead.
Mintaka slipped into the latrine. Even above the noise her girls were making, she heard men's voices from beyond the partition. She recognized Naja's clear, commanding tones, and Trok's gruff replies. Carefully she laid her ear against the planking of the bulkhead and immediately the voices were clearer, the words intelligible.
Naja was dismissing the guards who had accompanied them on board. She heard them stump away, and there was a long silence. So long that she thought Naja might be alone in the saloon. She heard the gurgle of wine being poured into a drinking bowl, and Naja's voice, heavy with sarcasm. 'Your Majesty, have you not over-refreshed yourself already?'
Then Trok's unmistakable laugh, and Mintaka could hear from the impediment to his speech that he was indeed already in his cups as he replied to Naja's jibe, 'Come, cousin, be not so severe. Take a bowl with me. Let us drink to the successful outcome of all our endeavours. Drink to the crown on my head, and the one that will soon bless yours.' Naja's tone mellowed a little. 'A year ago, when we first began to plan, it all seemed so impossible, so remote. Then we were disparaged and overlooked, as far from the throne as the moon is from the sun, and yet here we are, two pharaohs holding between us the whole of Egypt.'
'And two pharaohs gone on ahead of us,' Trok joined in, 'Tamose with your arrow through his heart and Apepi, the great hog, fried in his own lard along with all his piglets.' He shouted with triumphant laughter.
Tray, not so loud. You are indiscreet, even if we are alone,' Naja rebuked him gently. 'It would be best if we never repeated those things.
Let our little secrets go with Tamose to his tomb in the Valley of the
Kings, and with Apepi to the bottom of the river.'
'Come!' Trok insisted. 'Drink with me to all that we have achieved.'
'To what we have achieved,' Naja agreed. 'And to all that is to follow.'
'Today Egypt, and tomorrow the treasures and riches of Assyria, Babylon and the rest of the world! Nothing can stand in our way.'
Mintaka heard Trok gulp noisily. Then there was a crash against the bulkhead at the level of her ear. It startled her and she jumped back, then realized that Trok had hurled the empty wine bowl against the panel smashing it to shards. He belched loudly, and went on, 'Yet there is one detail that remains. Tamose's puppy has your crown upon his head still.'
As she listened Mintaka was in a whirlpool of emotion that tugged her one way then the other, and spun her until her senses reeled. She had listened in horror as, dispassionately, they discussed the murders of her father, her brothers and Pharaoh Tamose, but she was ill-prepared for what they had to say about Nefer.
'Not for much longer,' Naja said. 'That will be taken care of as soon as I return to Thebes. It is all arranged.'
Mintaka clamped her hands across her mouth to prevent herself crying out. They were going to murder Nefer as coldly as they had all the others. Her heart seemed to shrivel within her, and she felt helpless. She was a prisoner and without friends. She tried to think of some way in which she could send a warning to Nefer, for only in that moment did she know the full extent of her love for him: she would do anything in her power to save him.
''Tis a pity the lion did not do your work for you,' said Trok, 'instead of only scratching him a little.'
'The beast set the stage nicely. Nefer needs just a little push, and I will give him a funeral even more splendid than I gave his father.'
'You were always a generous man.' Trok chuckled drunkenly.
'While we speak of Tamose's brat, let us also speak of what remains of Apepi's brood,' Naja suggested silkily. 'The little princess was meant to burn with the rest of them, was that not what we agreed?'
'I decided to change that.' Trok's tone had become sulky. She heard him fill another wine bowl.
'It is dangerous to leave any seed of Apepi unreaped,' Naja warned him. 'Mintaka might easily become a figurehead in the years ahead, a rallying point for rebellion and insurrection. Get rid of her, cousin, and that soon.'
'Why did you not do the same with Tamose's girls? Why do they still live?' Trok challenged him defensively.
'I married them,' Naja pointed out, 'and Heseret dotes on me already. She would do anything I ask of her. We share the same ambitions. She is as hot to see her brother Nefer buried as I am. She lusts for the crown almost as much as for my royal sceptre.'
'Once she has felt my honey bee in her little pink lotus flower, Mintaka will be the same,' Trok declared.
Mintaka's flesh crawled. Once again she was thrown into the maelstrom. She was so appalled at the picture that Trok's boast conjured up that she almost missed Naja's next remark.
