“Si-Montu, if I start drinking wine today I will not stop,” he confessed, “and as to how I am, let us deal with Pharaoh’s business first and then I want to talk to you.”
Si-Montu nodded equably. Khaemwaset had always been grateful for his brother’s ready acceptance, his reluctance to pry. “Very well,” Si-Montu smiled. “Father’s request can be dealt with very quickly. The grape harvest will be enormous this year if I can control the beginnings of the blight. The fruit is coming nicely, very tiny but huge bunches. However, the leaves and some of the vines themselves are turning black. You can take a look, physician, and perhaps prescribe something I might try. Ah!” He waved at the servant who had appeared with a tray, a dusty sealed jar, and two alabaster cups. The man held the jar so that Si-Montu could inspect the seal, then broke it and poured the wine. Khaemwaset watched the rich, dark liquid, suddenly suffused with sunlight, stream into the cups. Si-Montu held up an admonitory finger. “One cup now, then you will inspect the vines and send Father the bill for your services, then another cup or the whole jar if you choose.” He grinned, and Khaemwaset, in spite of himself, smiled back. “If you wish I will have the wine removed after you have drunk two cups.” He handed Khaemwaset the wine and raised his own cup. “To Egypt! Long may she rule the only areas of the world that really matter!”
Khaemwaset drank to the toast. The wine slipped down his throat, tart-sweet and cool. A great vintage indeed. Before long it began to spread its aristocratic warmth through his veins, and for the first time that day he relaxed, talking with his brother of their families, their enemies, foreign affairs—of which Si-Montu knew little and cared less—and then various agricultural holdings.
Si-Montu finally rose, and together they went carefully through the vineyard. Khaemwaset noticed, with wry humour, that his brother had not bothered to order them a canopy. They stood together in the stunning heat fingering leaves and discussing the problem. Khaemwaset made some suggestions. Si-Montu concurred. No one knew more about the care and cultivation of grapes than he, but still, Khaemwaset was able to help.
Then they ambled back to the garden and the second cup of wine. “So,” Si-Montu invited as soon as they were settled. “You look as though you have just fought your way back from the Underworld and slain the Great Serpent to do it. What’s wrong?”
Khaemwaset told him everything Once open the wound flowed copiously, and the sun had begun to set before he at last fell silent. Si-Montu had watched him the whole time, not commenting, grunting now and then, and when Khaemwaset’s voice ceased he drained his cup and refilled for both of them, then fell to tugging absently at his beard.
Ben-Anath appeared and raised her shoulders. Si-Montu held up two fingers at her and she smiled, nodded and faded back into the still thin but lengthening shadow cast by the house. Khaemwaset envied the pair of them their perfect communication.
“When I fell in love with Ben-Anath,” Si-Montu offered, “the whole court tried to persuade me that I had gone mad. Father talked at me by the hour. Mother threw every luscious woman she could cajole or threaten at my feet. I was finally barred from the succession. But did I care?” He laughed. “Not a bit. Not for a moment. All my energies went into wooing my woman.” Khaemwaset smiled inwardly. Si-Montu’s energy was considerable and, concentrated on one thing, it was well-nigh irresistible. “She was only the daughter of a Syrian ship’s captain, but gods she was haughty! Then she was worried that I would resent her because my decision to marry her had stripped me of almost every royal privilege. But I have never regretted that decision.” He fixed his brother with a suddenly sober glare. “Do you love Nubnofret like that?”
“You know that I do not,” Khaemwaset answered truthfully. “I love her as far as I am capable of loving …”
“As far as you see love,” Si-Montu broke in, “which is only as far as you deem it safe. And who is to say which of us is happier or wiser? Look at it sensibly, Khaemwaset. You have a loving wife and good family You are feverishly desperate, probably for the first time in your life, to sleep with a woman you keep seeing on the streets. Well what of it?” Khaemwaset held his cup to be refilled and Si-Montu hesitated. Khaemwaset nodded curtly. Si-Montu sighed and filled it to the brim. Then he went on speaking. “Many men have suffered through the same affliction. It is called lust, my bookish brother. Lust. That is all. You agonize over it as though it represents the destruction of everything, including yourself, but of course it does not. You have two choices.” He wiped a few droplets of the blood-red liquid from his moustache, his blunt, calloused fingers moving thoughtfully. “You can either keep searching for her—and you know, don’t you, that you will eventually find her?—and then keep offering a variety of good things to her until you find the key to unlock her virtue, at which time you take your fill of her. Or you can push her away each time she sneaks into your vitals and in six months you will be wondering what all the fuss was about.” He cocked an eye at Khaemwaset. “Of course, you might also be wondering what you missed, but that, dear brother, is not in your nature.”
It was not at one time in my nature, Khaemwaset thought, but I am changing. I do not like it and perhaps I cannot make you understand it, Si-Montu, but I don’t think that I can control it any longer. “What would you do?” he asked aloud.
“I would tell Ben-Anath,” Si-Montu answered promptly, “and she would say, ‘Scurvy son of a dessicated pharaoh, if I am not woman enough for you go and take your fill of the street. When you come crawling back to admit to me that there is no woman like me in the world, you can sleep in the kitchens among the little female slaves who by then you will be accustomed to calling your equals.’ But then,” Si-Montu finished simply, “I still desire no other woman the way I desire my wife. Do you want my advice?” Khaemwaset nodded mutely. “Stop chasing this phantom, start giving Nubnofret her due as a beauty and a most accommodating wife, and close that tomb.”
Khaemwaset blinked. Even through the gentle wine fumes floating pleasingly in his brain he was conscious of shock. Si-Montu was staring at him steadily. “The tomb? I have told you my anxieties over it but it has nothing to do with my present dilemma.”
“No?” Si-Montu said. “I am not so sure You treat the dead very arrogantly in your polite but nonetheless ruthless quest for knowledge, Khaemwaset. You fancy yourself safe because you restore, you make offerings, but did it never occur to you that the dead might merely wish to be left alone, or that what you take is not in fact equal to what you imagine that you give? I am not easy about this latest endeavour of yours. Close it.”
Khaemwaset felt dread clutch at his heart. Si-Montu, with his usual facility for unconsciously striking the nail on the head, had voiced Khaemwaset’s own fears with a lucidity he himself had lacked. “I do not believe in any connection,” he replied, forming the words carefully because he was getting drunk, and because they were a lie.
Si-Montu shrugged. “You are probably right,” he agreed indifferently. “Now it is time for dinner. You will stay, of course? I have no boring guests tonight, unlike the many dinners at your house I am forced to yawn through!”
They got up and walked in the dusk towards the house. Khaemwaset felt a great deal better, but there was a seed of mutiny in him. Si-Montu had no right to accuse him of a kind of rape—Si-Montu, who knew nothing of history or the preciousness of rare things, and who had never held a priestly office. He, Khaemwaset, did not rape. As for the woman … He entered his brother’s dining room to BenAnath’s smile and took his place before the little table prepared for him. As for the woman, he would find her, even as his brother had said. Lust or not, she conjured in him a feeling he had never known before and he was determined to explore it. He had no intention of telling Nubnofret. She would not understand. And the gods? He succumbed at last to the inviting effects of the wine. If the gods had wished to punish him or indicate that his studies were insulting to them, they would have let him know a long time ago. For was he not their friend? He lifted his cup for more wine and fell
upon the first course of the excellent dinner Ben-Anath’s cooks had provided. A harpist began to play. Khaemwaset was enjoying the evening, enjoying himself fully, for the first time in months.
He woke late the following morning in Si-Montu’s guest room with little memory of the night before. The servant his brother sent to see to his bathing and dressing and to bring him food told him that a message had gone to his wife during dinner and his own men had been cared for.
Khaemwaset sought out Ben-Anath, thanked her for her hospitality, gathered his staff, and cast off for home. Si-Montu was already out in the vineyards. I cannot remember the last time I drank so freely, Khaemwaset thought as he sat leaning against the outer wall of the barge’s cabin, but the wine Si-Montu produced was indeed fine. I have no headache, only a feeling of lightness and a slight loss of balance.
But then he did remember. He had drunk too much, though not nearly as much as he had at his father’s feast in the palace when the old man with the scroll had accosted him. That was a curious affair. His thoughts ran on as the oars of his rowers dipped and pulled against the current, lifting dribbles of glittering river water into the bright sunlight. I lost the scroll. A pity. I feel guilty about such carelessness. Well, the matter is over, closed. I must not drink to excess again.
All the time he was thinking his eyes were on the bank, and they remained there until the river road veered sharply west and the nobles’ estates began. But today no flutter of scarlet linen increased his heartbeat and Amek stood stolidly in his customary position at the prow. Khaemwaset did not know whether he longed to see her or was afraid that she might indeed magically appear and cause him once again to lose all civilized volition. But his watersteps hove into view, one of Amek’s guards on duty by the mooring pole, and Khaemwaset had been spared another encounter.
Disembarking, he went immediately to find his wife. Nubnofret was in her quarters dictating a letter to one of her friends at court. She looked up and smiled as Khaemwaset was admitted.
“Was it good to get drunk, dear brother?” she asked. “You look well rested.”
“Yes it was,” Khaemwaset admitted, acknowledging the inclined head of Nubnofret’s scribe with a nod. “I did not intend to stay away, Nubnofret. I apologize if I have inconvenienced the household.”
“You have not.” She rose and came to him, running a sharp but gentle nail down his cheek and kissing him on his naked chest. Her mouth was soft, and Khaemwaset sensed no reproach in her attitude or in her warm gaze. By now the story of his astonishing loss of control in striking Amek would be spreading among the servants, who loved to gossip, but to Nubnofret’s credit did not dare carry family business to the staff of other households. He wondered for the first time whether Nubnofret permitted Wernuro to whisper such gossip to her, and was conscious of despair. I cannot expect my exploits to remain a secret from the rest of the family, he thought while he smiled back at his wife. Oh how wearing, how mind-consuming is deceit!
“Nothing of note has come from the Delta, or so Penbuy tells me,” Nubnofret was saying “and there were no unexpected guests. Please don’t forget, though, that May will be staying here within the week on his way back from the Assuan quarries. Excuse me now, Khaemwaset. I must finish my dictation. I have a lot to do today.” Her lustrous black eyes told him that she would hurry through her chores and be at his disposal as soon as possible. He had in fact forgotten about his father’s Chief Architect, and his heart sank. At one time he would have welcomed such a distinguished and cultivated guest, but now he wanted them all, his father, his brothers, his governmental contacts, to disappear so that he could be alone and concentrate on … He turned abruptly. “Let me know when you are free,” he replied. “We might take a swim later.”
Escaping to his office, he saw that Hori had placed yesterday’s work in a neat pile on the desk. Khaemwaset went to it briskly. Enough nonsense, he thought. The sooner I study these the sooner the tomb can be closed. I have wasted too much time and effort that should have been directed towards the work of my own architects. But before he sat he summoned Ib. “Revive the search parties,” he ordered. “I don’t care what it takes, but I want that woman.”
6
Come, songs and music are before thee.
Set behind thee all thy cares;
think only upon gladness until the day cometh whereon
thou shalt go down
to the land that loveth silence.
THE MONTH OF HATHOR slid away and Khoiak began. May proved to be an entertaining guest, as usual, and left gifts for them all before gliding away in his gilded, flower-bedecked barge. Khaemwaset cast the horoscopes for the new month and found no changes from the month before. This time, however, he was oddly detached from the task and viewed the outcome with something close to indifference. What would be would be. Egyptians were on the whole a cheerful and optimistic people, he knew, but they did not disregard the power of destiny’s fingers sometimes astir in their lives, and Khaemwaset, as time went on, felt himself more and more in the grip of fate’s implacable hand. There was almost a perverse comfort in the awareness. He saw his patients and performed his other duties, receiving the continually negative reports of Ib and Amek with equanimity. Tomorrow, next month, next year, it did not matter. He knew she would come and he waited for her.
Khoiak’s days grew increasingly hotter and the crops stood high but still green in the little fields. Hori was spending most of his time, now, in the coolness of the tomb, its mysteries fretting him, and Sheritra swam, read and withdrew into her own world. Worship went on in the house, sometimes in the temples where the family prostrated together before Ptah or Ra or Neith. Khaemwaset knew that before long he would be summoned to the palace again, for ambassador Huy must surely be on the point of returning to Egypt, but he put his father’s annoying, amusing negotiations out of his mind. Summer was coming, a time of stultifying heat, endless hours when reality always seemed to acquire different dimensions and the eternity of burning air and white light seemed to fuse mortal Egypt with the immortal paradise of Osiris.
One day, Khaemwaset had just finished a period of dictation with Penbuy, some notes he had been making on the reign of Osiris Thothmes the First, when Ib entered the office and bowed. The noon meal was over and the hour for the afternoon rest was fast approaching. Khaemwaset glanced at his steward, sensing a further duty to be performed, and was annoyed. He wanted to lie on his couch under the soft swish of the fans and doze. “Well?” he snapped. Penbuy was gathering up his pens, ink and scrolls, his own eyes heavy with the need for sleep at this warm hour. On Khaemwaset’s signal he left the room.
“Your pardon Prince,” Ib said, “but there is a young man here who requests a moment of your time. His mother needs medical attention.”
“What young man?” Khaemwaset asked testily. “The city is full of good physicians. Did you tell him that I only treat the nobility or cases that might be of particular interest to me?”
“I did,” Ib rejoined. “He says that his mother is indeed a noblewoman, and no mean person. He would be grateful for your personal consultation, and his uncle will pay you well for your trouble.”
Khaemwaset started, then recovered. “I am not interested in more gold,” he grumbled. “I already have plenty. What is wrong with this woman?”
“Apparently she somehow drove a large wooden splinter into her foot. The splinter has been removed but the foot is festering.”
“Then I do not need to go myself. I can prescribe at once.” He was relieved. “Send in the boy.”
Ib retired, and Khaemwaset waited. Presently a shadow fell across the open doorway. Khaemwaset looked up. A young man about Hori’s age was bowing profoundly from the waist, arms outstretched. Khaemwaset noted immediately that his hands were finely tapered and well cared for, the palms hennaed, the nails clipped, the skin soft. He was shod in good leather sandals with gold thongs and his kilt linen was certainly of the tenth or eleventh grade of transparency. He rose and stood tall, his gaze m
eeting Khaemwaset’s, neither subservient nor proud, but merely expectant. He wore his own hair, Khaemwaset noted. It fell black and completely straight to his square shoulders. A thick band of gold encircled his neck and one large ankh symbol of life hung from it on his slim but beautifully muscled chest. In comparison to his hair, his eyes seemed grey. They followed Khaemwaset’s assessment closely, but with detachment. There was something almost familiar about him, in his straight stance perhaps, or the way his mouth curved naturally upward at the corners. Khaemwaset decided that he was the most perfect specimen of young manhood apart from Hori that he had ever seen.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The youth inclined his head. The black hair swung forward, gleaming dully. “I am Harmin,” he answered, his voice as steady and cool as his eyes.
“My steward told me of your mother’s complaint,” Khaemwaset said. “He also told me that your family is a noble one. I thought I knew, at least by sight, every noble family in Egypt, but I have never seen you or heard of your name before. Why is that?”
The young man smiled. It was a winning, affable smile to which Khaemwaset was hard put not to respond. “My family’s modest estates are at Koptos, just north of blessed Thebes,” he said. “We are of an ancient lineage, tracing our line from the days of Prince Sekenenra, and though we are members of the minor nobility and have never held high offices, we are nevertheless proud of our blood. It is pure. No foreign flow has commingled with it. During the days of revived trade with Punt, after the great Queen Hatshepsut rediscovered that land, my ancestor was steward of her caravans along the route from Koptos to the Eastern Sea.”
Khaemwaset blinked. Few historians, let alone ordinary Egyptian citizens, knew anything of the fabled queen who was said to have ruled as a king and had built a mortuary temple of unsurpassed beauty on the west bank of Thebes. Those who had studied the site were inclined to ascribe it to the warrior pharaoh Thothmes the Third, but Khaemwaset had always disagreed. His interest was piqued. Nevertheless, he said, “I should have heard of you if you have lived in Memphis for any length of time.”
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