Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  They talked for a while of religious matters, and Khaemwaset found himself warming to Sisenet’s incisive mind, his polite method of arguing, his well-modulated, even voice that was a fitting companion to his lucid reasoning powers. Khaemwaset loved an involved discussion on some point of history, medicine or magic with someone as sophisticated in those fields as himself, and to his delight, Sisenet was proving to be just such a man. The scroll, he thought. Perhaps there is some hope after all. He did not know if he was disappointed or pleased.

  “When can you come to my home and examine the scroll I borrowed from the tomb?” he asked eventually. “I am eager, now, to have done with it. It has been in the back of my mind like a vague itch ever since I saw it.”

  “I do not have your Highness’s erudition,” Sisenet answered, “and I doubt if I will be able to help you, but I would be honoured to try at your convenience.”

  Khaemwaset pondered. There was Nubnofret to talk to, and his official duties to at last clear away. Then he had to smile at himself. I am still reluctant to handle the thing. I still want to avoid it. “Come one week from today,” he said. “I will hold the afternoon for us alone.”

  “Very well, Prince.” Sisenet gave him a brief smile and both men fell silent. He will not bring up the subject of the marriage, Khaemwaset was thinking. It is my responsibility to do so. I believe I am a little in awe of this man. The realization surprised him.

  “Tbubui tells me,” he began carefully, “that you are content to have her marry me.”

  Sisenet gave a rare, open laugh. “How tactful you are, Highness! She does not need my approval, and the thought that I might have any control over your decision, you a prince of the blood, is ridiculous. But know that I am very pleased. Many men have desired her, and she has spurned them all.”

  “And what will you do?” Khaemwaset asked curiously. “Will you return to Koptos?” The question seemed to amuse Sisenet. His eyes gleamed at some private thought.

  “I may,” he replied, “but I do not think so. I am happy here, and the Memphis library is full of marvels.”

  “Would you like a post in my household?” Khaemwaset found himself asking out of a strange need to ingratiate himself with the man. He immediately regretted the offer. It sounded like a gentle attempt at compensation, or the price of guilt. But Sisenet was not offended.

  “Thank you, Prince, but no,” he declined. Still in that same odd, self-abnegatory mood, Khaemwaset was about to ask whether Harmin wanted help in advancing, but he remembered that Harmin would obtain an automatic title if he married Sheritra. The convolutions of the arrangement he had set in motion were too complex to consider at the moment, and besides, Khaemwaset thought, they make me afraid.

  The conversation flagged. After a few innocuous pleasantries Khaemwaset took his leave, passing straight behind the hall and out into the glare of the garden. Sheritra and Harmin were no longer playing knucklebones. They were talking quietly while Bakmut trickled cool water over Sheritra’s limbs. The heat was intense. Khaemwaset talked to them briefly, promised his daughter that he would see her again soon, and gathering his staff, he returned to the river. He did not see Tbubui. Now that the contract was in her hands, now that he had taken one more step towards an irrevocable, violent revolution in his life, he was like a general who regroups his forces and rests, waiting for a new gambit. He wanted the peace of his office and the reassuring sight of Nubnofret picking daintily through her food opposite him in the deep bronze of a summer evening.

  12

  Let us praise Thoth,

  the exact plummet of the balance,

  from whom evil flees,

  who accepts him who avoids evil.

  THREE DAYS AFTER his first visit to Sheritra at Tbubui’s house, Khaemwaset knew he must share his decision with Nubnofret or die of guilt. He had woken with the now familiar lurch of apprehension in his chest at what had become his first thought of the day, and as he ate the bread and fruit Kasa had set beside him, he critically considered the gradual weakening of his will. He did not fully understand his hesitancy, or the feeling that he was somehow doing something reprehensible in marrying Tbubui.

  The food was consumed and he was bathed and dressed before he stopped to consider what he was doing, and he only came to himself as Kasa settled him on the stool before his cosmetic table and pried the seal from a new jar of kohl. The polite snap of the wax brought Khaemwaset to his senses. This is not acceptable, he told himself angrily, watching Kasa dip a brush into the jet-black powder and lean towards his face. He closed his eyes and felt the damp brush sweep pleasingly across his eyelids. “Kasa,” he said aloud quickly, before the cloud of misgiving could solidify into yet another day of cowardly procrastination, “I want you to go across to the concubines’ house and tell the Keeper of the Door to open and prepare the largest suite for another occupant. I am going to marry again.”

  The brush trembled on his temples and then resumed its slow tracking. Kasa straightened and dabbled the tool in the bowl of water on the table. He did not look at his master. “This is good news,” he said formally. “I offer you wishes of long life, health and prosperity, Highness. Please do not speak. I must now paint your mouth.”

  Khaemwaset was silent until the henna, cool and moist, was drying on his lips, then he said, “Have my architect in my office this evening. I intend to design an additional suite of rooms for Second Wife Tbubui, to be added to the house.”

  “Very good, Highness. And is this news now universal?”

  Khaemwaset chuckled at his body servant’s extreme tact. “Yes,” he answered, and sat without another word until Kasa picked up the gold-and-lapis pectoral and the gold bracelets lying on the couch and carefully completed the Prince’s dressing. “If I am needed I will be in the Princess’s rooms,” he told the man, and walked out. The die had been cast. Now he absolutely must tell Nubnofret.

  Amek and Ib left their posts outside the door and swung in behind him as he made his way through the wide passages of his domain. The morning sweeping and cleaning was almost finished and Khaemwaset moved through dancing dust motes shimmering in the frequent patches of sunlight and the deep prostrations of his house servants.

  Bidding his escort wait, he greeted Wernuro at his wife’s door, was announced, and stepped within. Nubnofret turned to him with a smile. She was wearing a full yellow sheath embroidered in gold thread that left her ample arms and statuesque neck bare. Her long hair had been braided with gold-shot ribbon, and a gold circlet, surmounted by an image of the vulture goddess Mut, cut across her brown forehead. She was still barefoot. Khaemwaset had time to think with a pang how truly voluptuous she was with the tendrils of damp hair curling out of the thick braid to lie against her painted cheeks and the outline of her large breasts showing tantalizingly through the thin, gauzy linen.

  “So you rose early also, dear brother,” she commented happily as she held up her face for his kiss. “What do you have planned for the day? I hope it includes an hour or two of dalliance with me!” She has changed since Sheritra left, he pondered, his lips brushing her scented skin. She is less heavily serious, less consumed with the correct running of the house. Sheritra reminds her of her failures, perhaps, or of the years that pass so much more quickly for a woman than for a man. Poor Nubnofret.

  “I want to talk to you privately,” he said. “Come out onto the terrace.”

  She nodded and followed him across her room to where three steps led between pillars to the draught-cooled, roofed cloister. Another couple of steps would have taken them out into the full glare of a morning already stale with heat. Thick shrubbery shielded the entrance from the rear garden. Khaemwaset indicated a chair but she shook her head. Mut’s obsidian eye glowered balefully at Khaemwaset as she did so.

  “I have been sitting for an hour getting my hair and face done,” she explained. “What is it, Khaemwaset? Am I now to know what has been troubling you?”

  He sighed inwardly. “I do not know how to put this gently,”
he said, “so I will not try. For some time now I have been increasingly attracted to another woman, Nubnofret. I viewed this involvement with annoyance, for I am a man of set habits who likes a predictable family life, but it grew in spite of my efforts to ignore it. I am now in love with her and I have decided to marry her.”

  Nubnofret made a soft exclamation but Khaemwaset, daring to glance at her, did not think she was expressing shock or even surprise. It sounded more like irritation. “Go on,” she said evenly. She was standing perfectly still, bejewelled arms at her sides, looking at him. He still could not face her squarely.

  “There is little else to say,” he admitted. “She will move into the concubines’ quarters until I can design and have built a proper suite for her in the house, and of course she will be only Second Wife. You will remain mistress of the household in every way.”

  “Naturally,” she said, still in that odd, flat tone. “It is your prerogative to take as many wives as you want, Khaemwaset, and I am only surprised that you have not done so sooner.” But she still did not sound surprised. She sounded completely indifferent. He had never seen her so composed. “When will the contract be drawn up?”

  Now he forced himself to face her. Her eyes were huge and expressionless. “It has been drawn up already. She has signed it and so have I.”

  “Then you have had this on your mind and you have planned carefully for quite some time.” A faint smile came and went on her pink mouth. “Can it be that you were afraid to tell me, dear brother? I am sorry to disappoint you. I have suspected such a thing for weeks. Who is this most fortunate woman? A princess surely, for Ramses would allow you a commoner for a concubine but not for a royal wife.”

  Khaemwaset had the uneasy feeling that she knew already. She was staring at him with what seemed like equanimity, her breath coming in slow deep movements of her breast. “Not a princess,” he was forced to admit, “but definitely a noblewoman. It is Tbubui, Nubnofret. Tbubui. I have wanted her from the first!” His last words shot from him in a desperate effort to shake her aplomb, but she merely raised one feathery eyebrow.

  “Tbubui. I did wonder about her, Khaemwaset. That day she almost fell into the water and panicked, you tensed to rush to her before she had even begun to topple. Well, I suppose I like her a little. We are friends on a superficial level, but she is not my social equal, and I do not intend to treat her as such, particularly now that I suspect she sought my company even as she was secretly inveigling to join this household. I regard such duplicity as a personal betrayal. You understand.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I am quite sure that she sealed the contract with great eagerness,” Nubnofret went on. “You are, after all, no minor princeling buried in Egypt’s backwaters. Now what of her son? Is he to live here also? Do you want me to give orders for a large celebration, and if so, when? What has your father had to say about the match?” Her questions were dutiful and clinical, but Khaemwaset at last sensed the terrible rage that he had mistaken for indifference, a rage so great that it had rendered her frozen.

  “The contract does not become valid until Penbuy returns from Koptos with verification of her noble bloodline,” he assured her hastily. “He left a few days ago and I have not yet received word that he arrived safely.”

  “No one told me.” For a moment she looked bewildered, then she leaned forward, flushing. “No one told me! All this behind my back, Prince, as though you were ashamed, as though you were afraid of me! I am insulted! How do you regard me, Khaemwaset, if you cannot come to me about something like this? How long? How long?”

  “I am sorry, Nubnofret,” he confessed. “Truly sorry. I wish that I could make you understand.” He spread his hands before her. “If I had taken another wife for dynastic reasons or because my father thought it necessary or even for a little variety, I would have come to you, discussed it with you. But this …” He put his hands on her rigid shoulders. “I am consumed with wanting her, Nubnofret. I cannot rest. I concentrate on nothing. And that makes me feel like a foolish young man, like an infatuated child before you. Therefore I hesitated to suffer your amusement, your condescension.”

  “By the gods!” She tore herself out of his tentative grasp. “She is a nobody from the south, Khaemwaset! If you want her, take her! Toss her in with the other concubines until you become tired of her or make love to her in her own house, it does not matter! But do not, do not marry her!”

  The utter contempt in her voice made Khaemwaset wince. “This is no idle craving,” he broke in. “I know that I will still want her in five, ten, fifteen years, and I intend to make sure that no one else can have her. I will marry her. It is my right!”

  “Your right!” she scoffed, and Khaemwaset saw that she was shaking all over. Her bracelets jangled with the tremors in her arms, and the hem of her gown was quivering. “Yes, it is your right, but not her, Khaemwaset! You have taken leave of your senses! Your father will never allow it!”

  “I think he will,” Khaemwaset said, trying to gentle his voice and thus calm her down. “Tbubui is a noblewoman. Her character is above reproach. Penbuy will bring me the confirmation Ramses will request.”

  “Well that is something, at least,” she said more quietly. Her gaze met his, and now he read speculation there. She began to play with her bracelets, pushing them up her arms, and letting them fall, but her eyes never left his. “Tell me,” she said. “Do you love me?”

  “Oh Nubnofret!” he cried out, reaching for her, but she deftly stepped aside and his gesture died. “I love you very much. I always will.”

  “But not as much, it seems, as an upstart from Koptos,” she murmured. “Very well. I demand to see the terms of the contract. That is my right. I must protect myself and the children. Apart from that, I shall conduct myself as befits my position as Chief Wife and Princess.” She stood taller. “Have you told Hori and Sheritra?”

  “Not yet, and I beg you to leave that task to me. I will do it in my own way.”

  Nubnofret smiled harshly. “Why?” she asked. “Are you ashamed, O my husband?”

  They fell silent and stood staring at each other The heaviness between them grew, and with it Khaemwaset’s anger, until finally he said, “That will be all, Nubnofret. You are dismissed.”

  She bowed with exaggerated reverence, stepped around him and glided back into her chamber. “The woman is not worthy of you,” her voice floated back to him. “Penbuy will bring you bad news, Khaemwaset, whether you demand that I do my duty or not. Please do not come back into the house through my rooms. I have a bad head.”

  With a grunt of exasperation, Khaemwaset spun on his heel and turned down into the bright garden. He would see to the problem of a new physician for Pharaoh’s harem. He would diligently answer the messages from the Delta. Nubnofret would get over her scorn and rage and accept Tbubui, and all would be as it should. I should feel relieved, he told himself as he left the grass and his feet found the burning paving of the path that circled the house. It is all out in the open. Hori and Sheritra will not mind. They will not be too affected. Sheritra might even be pleased, for Harmin will be as close to her as her brother. Do I want a great celebration, a city holiday for this, my second marriage after so many years? He pondered with a mixture of happiness and anxiety, a frown on his face, forcing his mind to fill with feverish thoughts so that he did not have to consider, along with Nubnofret’s scorn and rage, her hurt.

  A FEW DAYS AFTERWARDS Sisenet paid his visit to examine the scroll. Ib received him in the still-cool vastness of the reception hall that was cluttered with the foreign knickknacks Nubnofret had acquired. The steward set wine and pastries before him, and Khaemwaset soon sat down next to him.

  The time between had been strained but uneventful. Nubnofret had retired behind a rigid politeness, seeing to his needs with her usual efficiency and speaking to him mildly, but the embryo of a fragile girlishness in her was gone. Khaemwaset had seen little of Hori. That was an ordeal he still shrank from undergoing.
Sheritra could be told on the next visit to Tbubui to retrieve the sealed contract, but Hori was an increasing, worrying mystery. Khaemwaset put all of them out of his mind with a supreme effort of will and sat beside Sisenet, talking lightly of the intensifying heat of summer and the level of the Nile. The man responded in kind and once the social amenities were discharged, Khaemwaset rose and led him to the office. The room enfolded them in its purposeful atmosphere of repose. Khaemwaset indicated the chair behind the desk, and bowing, Sisenet accepted it, drawing it up to the table where Khaemwaset had already spread his notes. The scroll itself lay to one side, stirring faintly in a hidden draught.

  Khaemwaset sank onto a stool. He did not expect any real assistance from this spare, quiet man who was giving him a quick smile and reaching for the soft cylinder. Khaemwaset knew his own status in Egypt’s academic community very well, and it came to him that he was probably going through this charade to please Tbubui. He wanted to ask if Sisenet had all he required—pens, palette, something to drink—but Sisenet’s head had gone down over the gleaming surface of the desk and his immediate absorption in the task precluded interruption. Khaemwaset forced his attention back to the litter under the man’s tanned, sinewy fingers. Sisenet was wearing several thick gold-and-turquoise rings of a design Nubnofret would have disdainfully labelled crude and bulky, but Khaemwaset rather liked them. He watched their tiny movements as Sisenet read.

  Presently the man pulled Khaemwaset’s notes towards him and glanced over them. His scrutiny seemed slightly scornful to Khaemwaset, who then acknowledged to himself that his imagination was already at work, as it always was when he had anything to do with the scroll. The level of his anxiety was rising. Find nothing, he begged Sisenet dumbly. Declare the task too great and your scholarship inadequate, so that I may be cleansed of this obsession in good conscience. Sisenet cleared his throat, a small completely polite sound, and a faint smile moved his ascetic lips. He looked up, pulling the scribe’s palette forward, and took up a pen. Then he unrolled the scroll again. His handling of it was almost ritualistic, although his steady gaze remained fixed on Khaemwaset.