The scroll lay alone on the polished sheen of the desk, a safe distance from the alabaster lamp that customarily illuminated Khaemwaset’s night work. Penbuy was thorough and careful. At a word, the guard on the door closed it, and Khaemwaset was alone with his find.
Folding his arms he approached the desk, paused, began to pace around it, his eyes never leaving the delicate thing in its shroud of fresh white linen. Would it unroll easily, or break as he tried to flatten it? His fingers itched, yet a reluctance was on him, a shrinking from whatever the moment when he sat and touched it might bring. The night was quiet. An occasional burst of laughter floated to him very faintly from his neighbour’s garden where, he presumed, they were entertaining guests. A brief impurity in the oil of the larger lamp in its stand by the far corner made the flame spit and crackle before settling to a steady cone once more. If I wait any longer I will still be here at dawn, Khaemwaset told himself irritably. Sit, you fool! But for a few seconds more he hovered, fighting the fear of disappointment if the scroll should prove mundane, fighting the fear of something else, something unnameable. Then he pulled out his chair and removed Penbuy’s protecting linen.
He was struck again by the scroll’s pristine appearance. No mark of age or dust was on it. It had obviously been handled with exemplary care, both by the prince himself and by his embalmers. Khaemwaset touched it with the same reverence. Slowly he eased it open. It moved resiliently, with no sign of a tendency to crack. Indeed, Khaemwaset came to the end of it unexpectedly, let it go, and watched it roll up again with bated breath lest his mistake should cost him the contents. But it simply rustled on the desk then lay still.
So short! Khaemwaset thought, and the writing still so black. He pulled the lamp closer. I need Penbuy and his palette to take down my reading as I go. I will use him tomorrow. Tonight I just want to read it over.
He began to unroll it once more, both hands under the jet black characters, and was soon mystified. The hieroglyphs were like nothing he had ever seen before. They seemed to be the primitive forerunners of the present formal Egyptian script, but so ancient that their vague familiarity was a deception. The wording was in two halves, and when he had perused the first half he returned to the beginning, first getting up to go into his library and bring back a palette, pen and ink. Painstakingly he copied each character, and underneath he placed a possible meaning. The work was laborious and his concentration sharpened until he was unaware of his surroundings, the frown on his face, even the presence of his body. Not for a long time had he been so challenged, and excitement flowed through him like fine wine.
Someone knocked on the door. He did not hear. The knock came again and he shouted “Go away!” without lifting his head. Bakmut opened and bowed.
“Many apologies, Prince,” she said, “but the Princess is now on her couch and begs you to come and say goodnight.”
Surprised, Khaemwaset looked at the waterclock beside his chair. It showed him that two hours had gone by since he had begun work.
“I cannot come immediately, Bakmut,” he replied. “In half an hour I will be there. Tell Sheritra to wait.”
Bakmut bowed again and withdrew. The door clicked shut, but Khaemwaset did not notice. His head was down.
Soon he had several sentences roughed out, even though their meaning still eluded him. A hieroglyphic symbol could represent the syllable of a word or a complete word in itself, or a whole concept encapsulated in the one sign, and the signs themselves, though superficially recognizable, were ambiguous. He played with combinations, covering the papyrus on his palette with his own thin sure script, but when he had exhausted all the possibilities he still had no idea what he was seeing.
He began to whisper the words, pointing with the end of the pen as he went, thinking that they might as well have been ancient Assyrian for all the sense they made. But they did have a familiar cadence that puzzled him. He started again, this time half chanting. There was definitely a rhythm inherent in the sentences. He had done all he could on the first half of the scroll, where there was a break before the fine black lettering began again.
Falling silent, it occurred to him suddenly that the rhythm was familiar because the words were the building blocks of a spell, and as every magician knew, spells had a particular flow to them, when chanted, that poetry did not have. I have been singing a spell of some kind, he thought, sitting back with a shudder of apprehension. That was stupid of me, to voice and thus give power to something that I do not understand. I have no idea what just came out of my mouth.
He waited a moment while he came fully to himself, his gaze travelling the quiet room. The small lamp on his desk was guttering, its oil almost gone. The larger one still sent a steady flame upward, but it would not for long if the wick was not trimmed. The deep, restful silence of night had thickened throughout the house and Khaemwaset once again consulted the waterclock and was shocked. In three hours it would be dawn.
Hurriedly wrapping the scroll in the clean linen he rushed out, making his way quickly to Sheritra’s suite. The door was ajar and a lamp still burned within, casting a pale light into the passage. Khaemwaset eased the door fully open. Bakmut had fallen asleep waiting for him on a cushion just inside the threshold. Stepping over her he crept to the further room. Sheritra lay curled in a bundle of disordered sheets, breathing lightly. The scroll she had been reading while she waited for him had fallen to the floor. Khaemwaset stood over her, ashamed. This is the second time lately that I have let you down, my Little Sun, he thought sadly. For all my talk, I am little better than your mother. I am so sorry.
He made his way back to the office. The scroll still lay where he had left it, an innocuous beige cylinder amid the turmoil of his attempts at translation. Nothing in the room had changed. Well, whatever the spell I inadvertently chanted, it has had no effect on me or my surroundings, he told himself with relief. It is probably nothing more than a recipe for the relief of constipation, sewn to the hand of a man who suffered that malady all his life and feared that he might go on suffering it in the world to come if he did not have his precious panacea with him.
Khaemwaset smiled to himself, but the unspoken joke did not touch the sense of depression and guilt lying like a weight around his heart. I am the greatest historian in Egypt, he thought, sobering. If I cannot translate this scroll, no one can. It is no use showing it to any of my colleagues, though I may try, for their knowledge is not as wide as mine. Besides … He picked up the scroll and moved through into the library, carrying the lamp with him. Besides, they would want to know where I got it. Penbuy was right. I am a thief, albeit a well-intentioned one. Let him copy it swiftly and then I will sew it back on the prince’s fingers. I will leave the work on the second half of it until the copy is complete. I am too tired and too frustrated to attempt it now. And too afraid? his mind mocked as he closed the lid of the chest where he had laid the scroll. You were lucky, chanting a spell you did not understand. The second half might bring a demon, or a death in the family, if you are so stupid again.
He desperately needed sleep, but he had one chore to perform before he could fall onto his couch and take refuge in unconsciousness. The spell he had sung haunted him with its unknown consequences, and he knew he must protect himself from any damage he might have done. Locking the library door behind him, he opened the chest where he kept his medicines. It was full of carefully labelled boxes and jars. He withdrew a box, and out of it he took a dry scarab beetle. The dark scarabs were useful for certain common maladies and he had dozens of them stored, but for his purpose tonight he needed the glittering, irridescent golden scarab that lay on his palm refracting the light.
Taking a knife, he gently removed its head and pried off its wings, putting the body in a small copper urn. Clumsily, for usually he had an assistant present to do such things, he lit a piece of charcoal in the portable grate, covered the dried corpse with a little water from the jug that was always kept filled by Ib, and, while it came to the boil, he unlocked another
chest and drew forth a small sealed jar, breaking the hard red wax with reluctance The oil of the apnent serpent was fearsomely expensive and hard to acquire.
Getting down an alabaster cup he laid in it the wings and head, and murmuring the proper incantations, covered them with the oil. The water was now boiling. For a few moments he watched the almost weightless body of the insect bob and churn, then he lifted it out with a pair of tongs, his mouth forming the continuation of the spell, and laid it in a bath of olive oil. Carefully he tipped the water over the charcoal, which hissed and steamed. In the morning he would complete the spell that would drive away any sorcery or evil incantation by combining the two oils with their contents and drinking the resulting mixture. He would have done so at once, so immediate was his anxiety, but the segments of the scarab had to steep for the required number of hours before being ingested, in order to provide the proper guard.
Khaemwaset was by now so fatigued that he re-locked the chests and at last the library door in a haze, and was almost staggering as he made his way through into his sleeping quarters. They were in darkness. He knew that the night slave lay just outside the door, on a straw palette in the passage, but he did not bother to rouse him. Feeling his way, Khaemwaset reached the couch, pulled off his kilt, kicked off his sandals and collapsed under the sheets that smelled faintly of the lotus water in which they were rinsed. He was asleep immediately.
In the morning, after his ablutions, prayers and a breakfast eaten in the blessed privacy of his own quarters, he made his way to the library. Taking new charcoal he once more lit a small fire and, continuing by memory the spell he had begun the night before, he poured the scarab’s body in its bath of oil into the cup that held the head and wings. He no longer felt hounded or afraid. Setting the cup above the charcoal, he waited for the oils to boil. He knew that in order for the spell to achieve its maximum protection he must abstain from sexual intercourse for seven days. The practice of magic often required such strictures, and many of his fellows found them irksome, but a week without sex meant little to Khaemwaset.
The oils were now boiling, sending the slightly bitter aroma of the apnent serpent into the air. Taking the tongs, he removed the cup and placed it on a ledge to cool a little, leaving the charcoal to burn itself out The concoction had to be drunk very hot and he kept a close watch on it to make sure it did not lose its heat too far.
Then, after chanting aloud the last of the spell, he took the cup and rapidly drank, feeling the now heavy body of the scarab slide on the oil down his throat. I have undone my foolishness of last night, he thought with a light heart as he went back into the office and began to gather up the pile of papyrus sheets on which he had worked. Penbuy can file these scribblings with his copy of the scroll but I will not give up my attempt to translate it. No ancient writings have beaten me yet and this one will be no exception. “Penbuy!” he called, knowing his scribe would by now be waiting outside the door to conduct the day’s business. “You can come in. What letters have arrived from the Delta?”
When he had finished dictating the necessary replies, Khaemwaset remembered that he must make his peace with his daughter and went in search of her. He found her in the small antechamber that led to the rear entrance to the house, watching the house snake drinking the milk that was always placed ready for it. She greeted him with a smile.
“I think he is grateful,” she commented. “When he is finished he pauses and looks about, if someone is near. If not he merely slithers away. I know, because I sometimes hide to observe him.”
Khaemwaset kissed her smooth forehead. “I must apologize for last night, Sheritra,” he said contritely. “I became absorbed in some work and forgot all about you. I am not the most reliable of fathers, am I?”
“I forgive you,” she said with a teasing solemnity, shaking a finger at him, “but to make up for it you will have to read to me tonight for twice as long. Oh Father,” she went on. “I am not a child anymore, to fly into a rage or cry myself to sleep if I am sometimes overlooked. I understand perfectly.”
But you do cry yourself to sleep sometimes, he thought, looking at her as her attention returned to the snake, still motionless with its muzzle in the white froth. Bakmut told me so during one of her reports to me on your progress. You cry at your own inadequacy, in anger at yourself. I understand you perfectly also. “I am planning a little escape today,” he said. “I intend to steal away for a few hours and return just in time to swallow the first course of dinner. Will you join me?”
She grinned conspiratorially at him. “Mother will expect me to play her my lute lesson,” she answered. “If I am not to be found she will have several choice things to say to me tomorrow.” She pursed her lips. “Well, I am used to that. I would love to come with you, Father.”
“Good. Meet me after the noon sleep, at the rear of the garden.”
She nodded and squatted, for the snake had now raised its head and was lazily regarding her with its black, unblinking stare. Khaemwaset left them.
He and Sheritra got onto their litters at the garden gate a little after the noon sleep and, accompanied by Amek and four soldiers, set off for the site of the tomb. As they swayed through the northern districts of the city they talked of inconsequential things, happy to be in each other’s company. Guiltily they smiled and laughed, and Khaemwaset thought how Sheritra looked almost pretty with her tinkling carnelian bracelets hugging the brown of her gesticulating arms and the black braids of her wig stirring against her graceful neck as she spoke.
Before long they were being dappled in the grey shade of the date palms whose tiny green fruit was just beginning to appear, and then Saqqara opened out before them above the short hill that gave the ruins such a lofty isolation.
As they came up to the tomb and alighted, Hori saw them and waved. Khaemwaset ordered the litter-bearers into the shade of the canopies and he and his children descended the steps and entered the welcome gloom of the first chamber. Penbuy, his duties in the office concluded, was already at work copying inscriptions. Khaemwaset’s artists had set up their easels and were reproducing the beautiful paintings that covered almost every inch of the walls. Others were seated on the sandy floor, open chests beside them, laboriously making lists of the contents. At the door three men, with copper mirrors angled to catch the sunlight and direct it within, were standing patiently.
Sheritra drew in her breath. “But this is lovely!” she exclaimed. “Such detail! Grandfather should come and see!”
“It would only remind him of the crudity of his own artists,” Hori rightly pointed out. “You will send him copies of the work being done, won’t you, Father?”
“I always do.” Khaemwaset took Sheritra’s elbow. “Would you like to see the dead, my dearest?”
Sheritra was not squeamish. She nodded eagerly and, with her father on one side and Hori on the other, bent her head under the low lintel of the farther doorway.
Inside the light was softer, more diffused. The two sarcophagi bulked dimly, and Thoth was a dusky authoritarian presence. The three approached the bodies. Sheritra said nothing. She merely leaned over each one and studied it.
“She is the Princess Ahura,” Khaemwaset told her. “We do not know the Prince’s name. Their son is not here, obviously. Perhaps when all the work is done we will know better.”
“Poor things,” Sheritra said softly. “Undoubtedly it is a wonderful thing, to sit under the sacred sycamore tree with the blessed dead in Osiris’s kingdom, but, Father, I am more than glad that soon we will get on our litters and go home to Mother’s superlative feast.”
“Sheritra, you are such a greedy little thing!” Hori teased her. She replied lightly, and Khaemwaset listened to their banter without paying much attention to the words. His own glance had passed very carefully over the corpses. Nothing had changed. Even the ends of the threads that had bound the scroll to the prince’s hand were curled as he remembered them yesterday. He was aware of a relief pooling through him like warm water, and
was at a loss to explain it. He felt happy, boyish, full of fun.
“How long before the work is completed and the tomb can be re-sealed?” he asked Hori.
The young man considered. “It is hard to say,” he replied. “It depends on the artists, of course. No repairs are necessary, so all should be ready for the offerings very soon.”
“I think we should put the lids on the coffins,” Khaemwaset said slowly. “It is not right for these two to lie open to the dust like this, and besides, if in the future thieves do get in, the lids will discourage them from pillaging the bodies for precious amulets.”
Hori looked at him curiously, and Khaemwaset wondered if something strange was showing on his face or betraying itself in his voice.
“Very well,” Hori agreed. “We take a risk, seeing that we do not know why they were not put in place originally, but our intentions are pure and will doubtless absolve us from any retribution from the dead.”
Khaemwaset’s bright mood began to fade. “We will leave you to your labour,” he said to his son. “Remind Amek’s men that the guard is to be maintained until the tomb is finally closed, will you, Hori? And make sure the fellahin get plenty of beer and vegetables. Their jobs are the hardest.” He moved back towards the stronger light of the antechamber and the blessed, living white light of the direct sun shafting down the steps. “Sheritra,” he called over his shoulder. “It is still too early to go home. Would you like a jaunt through the city? We can see what new baubles are on display in the markets.”
“I suppose we might as well sin fully,” she called back, and together they walked to the litters.
Scroll of Saqqara Page 11
