Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  The room was thus crowded, but Hori received the impression of great space and stillness. He could detect nothing of Harmin’s personality in this place. Silently the servant opened a tiring box, selected a freshly starched kilt and a leather belt, laid them on the couch and came to Hori. He removed the sweat-stained garment, slipped off his leather sandals, lifted his jewels from him, then beckoned. Hori gave a nod and followed. To the bath house, I suppose, Hori thought, secretly amused at the man’s efficient muteness.

  Some time later he emerged, refreshed, and walked across the small square of lawn to where his hostess was waiting, leaning back in a chair, swathed in a voluminous white linen cloak. Hori was disappointed. He had vaguely hoped that she might be still in the short sheath but without the pleated cape. The garment she now wore was tied at the neck with a white ribbon and fell to the grass in undisciplined profusion, a startling contrast to the raven blackness of her hair and the bronze of her face and hands.

  The garden itself was remarkable in that, after the lawn and the miniature pond and a few flower beds, it was given over to the haphazard forest of tall palms. Tbubui sat beneath one of them, protected by its spindly shadow. Hori felt that if he shouted his voice might echo among the pillared trunks. Tbubui waved him over.

  “That’s better,” she observed. “You share Harmin’s build. His kilt looks well on you. I hope it is comfortable while your own is being laundered.” She patted the empty chair beside her. “Sit next to me, or on the mat if you prefer.” Her manner seemed slightly patronizing to Hori, and as he took the chair he thought, I am not your son. Neither am I a child. Don’t treat me like one! She reached to the camp table between them. “Wine or beer?” she inquired. Hori watched the cloak slide open to reveal a length of shapely brown arm adorned with one very wide, heavy silver bracelet gripping her wrist. Her palm was hennaed a brilliant orange. Hori, indeed all the nobility, hennaed his palms and the soles of his feet in either red or orange, but on this woman the practice struck him suddenly as barbaric, exotic.

  “Beer, thank you, Tbubui,” he said. “I worked up a terrible thirst on the river!”

  She poured for him, handed him the cup, then wriggled into the chair, drawing her knees up sideways. The movement was lithe and girlish without being coy. How old are you? Hori wondered to himself as he drained the cup and held it out to be refilled. Sometimes you seem merely a child and at other times your beauty is ageless.

  “You have a wonderful family, Prince,” Tbubui was saying. “The daunting formality of a blood prince’s home is tempered perfectly by the warmth and humour of its members. We have been honoured by your family’s attention.”

  “My father is less a prince of the blood than an historian and physician,” Hori answered, “and he was delighted to discover similar interests in you and your brother.”

  “Do you share them yourself?” she queried. “I know that you share his historical projects, but do you assist him with his medical cases?”

  “No. I do not really care about that,” Hori told her, somehow embarrassed to meet her eyes. His gaze travelled the S-curve of her buttocks, thighs and knees under the softly heaping linen cloak. “I do enjoy Father’s work of restoration, for I have journeyed with him all over Egypt, and I must confess I am excited over each tomb opened, but I do not regard the work as obsessively as he does. Often he will put it before his obligations to Pharaoh.” Immediately he felt disloyal, and held up a hand. “I did not mean that,” he corrected himself quickly. “Pharaoh orders and my father obeys, of course. I mean that though he obeys he sometimes does so reluctantly, particularly if he is in the middle of some crucial piece of ancient translation or about to actually penetrate a tomb.” You had better be quiet, he told himself desperately. You are digging this hole deeper and deeper. But Tbubui was smiling across at him. A bead of purple wine hung trembling on her lower lip, and as he raised his eyes to hers he saw her tongue come out and slowly lick her mouth. Her own eyes did not leave his face.

  “And the tomb he has most recently penetrated,” she prodded him encouragingly. “Is he obsessed about it also?”

  Hori spread his arms, the beer slopping perilously. “He was very excited about it at first,” he said, “but later he made many excuses not to come to the site. He would not even look at the work the artists were doing for him, copying scenes. I sometimes wonder if he has some secret fear about the place. I have been doing all the organizing.” He grimaced, deprecatingly. “This wall, the one your brother and I tapped,” he went on. “I am very curious about it, but I do not want to bring up the subject with Father for fear he will refuse to let me make a hole in it.”

  “Then why ask him?” Tbubui said, and when Hori’s eyebrows shot up she waved a dismissive hand at her words. “No no, Prince! I am not inciting you to disobey your father. But it seems to me that the project may be swallowing more time and effort than he is really willing to give, that he is stretching himself too thinly among his duties, and that is why you find it difficult to lure him to the site as often as you would wish. Think about it. If you went ahead and opened up the sealed chamber you obviously believe is there, you would be saving him the trouble of an annoying decision and the bother of overseeing the work.” She shifted, slowly extending her legs and letting them find the grass below. The cloak did not follow. Spellbound, Hori found himself staring at an expanse of golden skin that gleamed with an almost glossy patina. And was there not the suspicion of a dark triangle where her loins vanished under the bunched cloak? “As you said,” she went on kindly, “you are the one doing all the work this time, yet he is the one making all the decisions Who knows? He might be proud of a son who can take the initiative occasionally, particularly if he trusts your judgment.”

  “Oh he trusts my judgment,” Hori answered thoughtfully, wrenching his attention back to her face “I will think about what you have said, Tbubui. I would certainly be very disappointed if I sought his permission to open that chamber only to have it withheld.”

  “Then do not ask him. And if he is angry, tell him that I, Tbubui, corrupted the pure obedience a son owes his father and his wrath must fall on me!” She spoke lightly and then laughed, and he laughed also, all at once happy to be in this garden, in the heat of a dazzling afternoon, sitting beside a woman whose wit and strange beauty attracted him in a way no one had ever done before.

  He remembered his boredom with the perfect, painted beauties of his grandfather’s court, the many times he had been on the verge of falling in love only to be deflected by the discovery of a coarseness, an inappropriate sense of humour, a lack of instinctive judgment or a previously hidden ignorance on the part of the young woman who had initially caught his attention. But here, he thought deliberately, is a combination of intelligence, fine breeding, beauty and selflessness.

  The silence that had fallen between them was not awkward. Tbubui had relaxed, head thrown back, eyes momentarily closed, and Hori sipped the last of his beer and gave himself over to the contentment.

  Presently Tbubui said, “You are quite the most handsome young man I have ever seen. I knew of your reputation as the greatest male beauty in Egypt long before I met you, Hori, and it is pleasant for me to be able to concur with the general opinion.”

  Hori snorted. “I know of it too,” he replied, “but I hardly ever think about it. Such a foolish, useless thing to be recognized for! No man or woman can take credit for his or her appearance. What intelligence can produce an aristocratic nose or a pair of alluring eyes? Foolishness!”

  “Nevertheless, a magnetic physical appearance can be very useful in obtaining what one wants,” Tbubui objected quietly. “And the manipulation of it is not necessarily evil. You, of course, being of royal blood, do not need to put your beauty to any use. To you it is an annoyance. It can bring you nothing you do not already have.”

  Except your respect, Hori thought suddenly, your response. I would like to make more than a passing impression on you.

  She glanced at him side
ways and asked, “Have you no betrothed, Hori? No young woman with whom you are planning a life? Surely at your age as a prince of Egypt, you are obliged to marry.”

  Hori sighed. “You sound like my father,” he joked. “Khaemwaset worries regularly about my single state. He threatens to find me a proper young Egyptian daughter of the ancient nobility and force a betrothal if I do not hurry up and find one myself. But I must confess,” he finished, leaning over the table, “that such a thing is usually far from my mind. When I sign a marriage contract I want it to be with a woman I whole-heartedly love. I want what my parents have.”

  “Ah.” The sound was noncommittal. “What your parents have. And what do they have, my young idealist?”

  Was she mocking him? He could not tell. Thoughtfully he scrutinized the wide eyes now warmly submitting to his gaze, the thin nose, the sensuous outline of her smiling mouth. “They have mutual respect, closeness, and a firm and unshakeable love.”

  Her smile slowly faded and she stared at him. “I do not think so,” she whispered, “for your mother’s voluptuous womanhood languishes for want of recognition, and your father is still a child.”

  “You are impudent, Tbubui,” he said coldly, and for the first time they faced one another as equals. Finally she nodded.

  “Yes Prince, I am impudent. But I do not apologize for telling the truth.”

  “What truth?” he flashed back. “You have known us for so short a time. You presume too much!”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “I presume upon good manners, that is all. If I have offended you I am sorry, and I must say, Prince, that your defence of your mother and father is very pleasing to me.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” he responded stiffly, already turning over her words in his mind and realizing that the moment of her honesty had somehow begun a relationship between them, had transcended the polite to-ing and fro-ing of acquaintance that had to precede the easy unselfconsciousness of friendship.

  She stood, pulled open the cloak, then folded it about her again and resumed her seat. The artless gesture was so natural that it had not roused him, but he wanted to stroke her hand, ruffle her hair, pull teasingly at the massive silver earring swinging against her neck.

  “I should like to visit you again,” he said. “You are a fascinating woman, Tbubui, and I like your company.”

  “And I yours,” she answered. “Come whenever you like, Hori. I enjoy your conversation, but I also have relished feasting my eyes on such matchless male delights! You have done me a favour.”

  He let out a guffaw of genuine amusement and was saved from a response by a movement in the trees to his left, from the direction of the river. Harmin appeared, striding along the path under the palms whose shade had already thickened as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. The face he turned first to the house and then to them was pale and closed, but on recognizing Khaemwaset’s son he immediately set a formal smile on his lips and came up to them, kissing his mother on her proffered cheek and bowing to Hori.

  “Greetings, Harmin,” Hori said politely. “Has my sister had a pleasant day?”

  “I have done my best to make it so,” the young man replied sharply.

  “It has been a pleasant day, then, for all of us,” Tbubui interposed. “The Prince was rowing past our watersteps just as I was disembarking, Harmin, so I invited him to enliven my afternoon. But I suppose it is time to consider dinner.”

  “Before then I must rest,” Harmin said a little petulantly. “Although the day was full and very sweet, I missed the hour on my couch, and I must confess I can barely do without it, no matter how seductive the blandishments of other pursuits.” He gave them another wan smile and went into the house. Hori had the impression that his somewhat fretful words were merely the surface wisps of smoke from a smouldering inner fire. He wondered how Sheritra, obviously the blandishment today, had fared, and as he watched his twin in physical magnetism disappear he decided quite suddenly that he did not like Harmin very much. The thought alarmed him.

  He rose and stretched. “I must go,” he said, tempering his abrupt words with a smile. “I have enjoyed being here more than I can say, Tbubui, but now if my linen is ready I should row myself back.” She acquiesced by leaving the chair and together they followed Harmin into the house.

  Evening was already seeping through the bare rooms and as yet no lamps had been lit. Hori, standing in the hall entrance surrounded by painted scenes from which all colour seemed to have been sucked, and staring uncomfortably at the dim statues of Amun and Thoth, whose curved ibis beak and small beaded eyes were all at once predatory, was aware of two things. He wanted to put his hands on Tbubui, but beside his desire was a wave of sinister loneliness that was stirring to wakefulness with the impending night. He almost shrieked at the approach of a servant carrying lamps, then laughed at himself.

  Tbubui returned, his kilt over one arm, and thanking her he went into the passage and quickly exchanged Harmin’s for his own. A sullen yellow light was trickling from the crack under the door of Harmin’s bedchamber, and somewhere in the house, someone was picking out a plaintive, sad little melody on a lute. Hori shuddered.

  Hurrying back to the hall he took his leave of Tbubui, left greetings for Sisenet who still had not come home, and walked as fast as he could through the gathering gloom under the palms to the blessed flow of the river. He was amazed to see Ra still just about the horizon, a glorious, fierce splash of red and orange, with the ruins and pyramids of Saqqara black before him. Hori clambered into the skiff, dropped his oars into the fiery water and set off for home.

  By the time he got there it was quite dark, and the torch that normally illuminated the watersteps had not yet been lit. Cursing, he stumbled up the steps, but once on the path to the house his normal good humour came back. A mouth-watering aroma of roasting beef and strong onion-andgarlic soup wafted to his nostrils from the kitchens to the rear of the servants’ courtyard, and cheerful light spilled out onto the grass from the pillared terrace, through the open door of the dining hall. A servant approached carrying two blazing torches. He paused and bowed. “A good evening, Prince,” he murmured before hurrying on, and Hori returned his greeting, mentally discarding the unease Tbubui’s house had created in him.

  He entered his home and made his way to Sheritra’s suite. The guard at her door admitted him without demur and he walked into a blaze of lamplight. Sheritra sat at her cosmetic table, a place Hori knew that she seldom bothered to occupy. She was dressed in a white, gold-shot sheath of many flounces that shimmered as she breathed. Gold thongs held her sandals to her feet, twined like snakes about her arms and encircled the waist-length braids of her wig. She is sitting straight, Hori thought as he came up to her. She turned with a smile and Hori successfully hid his astonishment, for her face had been painted a fashionable yellow. Gold dust clung to her eyelids, and black kohl rimmed them flatteringly. Her mouth had been hennaed a rich red. “You look breath-taking,” he said. “Do we have official guests tonight?” He flung himself onto her couch, arms behind his head, his favourite spot during the hours they would while away together, and she gave a shriek.

  “Hori! My sheets! You are filthy and sweaty!”

  He ignored her indignation. “Well? Guests?”

  Those lips, familiar yet foreign in their new adornment, curved upwards. “No. I just felt like taking a few pains with my appearance tonight.” A hint of defensiveness crept into her tone. “What of it?”

  “Nothing,” he assured her hastily. “I like it very much. But why, Sheritra?” Even her father did not have the freedom with her to ask such a question, but Hori knew that her heart was open to him. He was her elder brother, her friend and protector against whom walls were not necessary.

  She picked up a copper mirror and stared into it intently. “My eyes are not too bad with plenty of kohl to bring them forward, are they, Hori? And my lips? Coloured, are they more acceptable?”

  “Sheritra …”

  The mirro
r hit the table with a slap. She swung round. “Because I had a wonderful day in the foreigners’ quarter with Harmin. He made me feel beautiful, Hori. No one else has been able to make me feel that way. Tonight I want to look the way I feel.”

  There was a new confidence to her, Hori noted. Not the old arrogance of defiance but a new awareness of herself as a woman that was not waiting to be challenged.

  “Then he must have made you feel like the goddess Hathor herself,” Hori observed slowly. “And how did you make him feel, Sheritra?”

  The suspicion of a blush spread under her yellow face-paint. “How do I know?” she flared. “You would have to ask him.”

  “You must at least have some idea!”

  For answer she rose and glided over to perch on the edge of the couch beside him. “Actually I believe that he is very fond of me indeed,” she admitted. “Oh Hori! He kissed me! What do you think of him?”

  “Harmin?” Hori teased her, in order to buy himself some time.

  “Who else,” Sheritra snorted. “Really, Hori!”

  I do not like him, Hori thought. And I am afraid for you, little one. Yet I realize that my assessment may be tinged with guilt, because of my sudden lust for his mother. What would Harmin think of me if he knew? Hori shifted uneasily on the couch. “Well?” Sheritra pressed.

  “I think he is a most extraordinary man if he can win your trust and your heart, dearest,” he answered as truthfully as he was able. “But do be careful. You do not yet know him very well.”