After the funeral feast under the blue-and-white-striped awnings of Khaemwaset’s train, after the dances and the wine and the expressions of grief, Khaemwaset himself sat and watched the sem-priests seal the tomb and the necropolis workmen shovel sand and gravel over the entrance. He had already paid for guards to be posted against grave robbers. They would stand their watch for four months. Khaemwaset was aware of the irony in his deed, for did he not himself break into tombs? He could not hold the thought, and it slipped away on the barely perceptible breeze of a sweltering summer afternoon. May you live again forever, old friend, he whispered. I do not think that you would like working in my household anymore. You belonged to a domestic order that has gone, and the loyalties of your son will not be as divided as yours might have been. He did not stir until the last load of earth had been tamped down and the workmen had been dismissed. Then he rose, got onto his litter and was carried slowly home.
The following morning the whole household was at the watersteps to greet Tbubui and welcome her to her new home. Khaemwaset, Nubnofret, Hori and Sheritra formed a glum gathering. Only their physical proximity to one another gave an illusion of cohesion, though Sheritra’s hand stole into her father’s as Sisenet’s brightly beribboned barge hove into sight. Hori, clean, carefully painted and heavily jewelled, watched expressionlessly as the craft angled towards them. Nubnofret, regal but equally close-faced, nodded sharply once at the waiting priest, who immediately descended the steps and began to chant the words of blessing and purification while his acolyte sprinkled milk and bull’s blood over the warm stone.
Tbubui emerged from the cabin on her son’s arm. Harmin shot a quick glance at Sheritra, then looked away, turning to say something to Sisenet before handing his mother from the ramp to the steps.
The family waited. Nubnofret centred herself on the path, and it was to her first, as was the custom, that Tbubui prostrated herself. Nubnofret was a princess as well as the arbiter of all that went on in her house. It was obvious to Khaemwaset, tense with worry and anticipation, that his wife’s good breeding was going to win out on this crucial day. Nubnofret would behave with impeccable correctness even though a horde of Khatti warriors was ransacking her home and she had only moments to live. The thought made him smile involuntarily. Sheritra let go of his hand. She too was tense, he noticed, her homely little face pale.
“Tbubui, I welcome you to this house in the name of my husband and yours, the Prince Khaemwaset, sem-priest of Ptah, priest of Ra, and lord of your life and mine,” Nubnofret said clearly. “Rise and do him homage.”
Tbubui came to her feet with the fluid grace that had made Khaemwaset’s mouth dry up from the first moment he had seen her. She turned, the sun flowing along the plain circlet of silver crowning her forehead, and went to the stone again, this time in front of Khaemwaset. With a shock that sent colour flooding into his face, he felt her lips surreptitiously press against the arch of his foot, then she stood before him, kohled eyes sparkling under their dusting of gold eye-paint.
“A contract of marriage exists between us, Tbubui,” Khaemwaset intoned, praying that under the onslaught of that slightly parted, orange mouth, those huge, knowing eyes, he might not forget the words of ritual. “I swear before Thoth, Set and Amun, the patrons of this house, that I have dealt fairly and honestly with you, and my signature on the contract testifies to that honesty. Do you also swear?”
“Most noble Prince,” she responded, her voice rising high and emphatically, “I swear before Thoth and Osiris, the patrons of the house I once inhabited, that I have no other living husband, that I have declared the true extent of my temporal holdings, and that my signature is affixed to the contract in all honesty. This I swear.” Behind her Sisenet stirred, shifting his weight surreptitiously from one foot to the other, and Harmin grinned openly at Sheritra. The three of them, Sisenet, Tbubui and Harmin, seemed full of an odd air of frivolity, as though at any moment they might burst out laughing.
Of course they are happy, Khaemwaset thought as he held out a hand for Tbubui to take. So am I. I want to laugh also. I want to tickle her in a most unprincely fashion. At that he did smile, and she answered him with a squeeze of her cool fingers.
His servants were lined up on either side of the broad way leading to the house. Nubnofret stepped in front, signalling again to the priest, who began to sing. The acolyte walked ahead of him, and the white milk and purple blood splashed and ran together to form pink rivulets that steamed on the hot stone and ran away into the grass. As Nubnofret led the way the servants went to the ground, doing full homage to their new mistress, who was gliding past them on the Prince’s arm, her relatives behind.
Slowly the festive procession passed the main entrance where the path veered and made its way through the north garden, circumventing the still-chaotic building site. Khaemwaset saw Tbubui turn her head and give the mess a quick appraisal before looking solemnly ahead again.
Now, at the rear of the house, Khaemwaset’s harpist joined them and began to play, his pleasant tenor blending with the plangent notes of the instrument and the piping of the dozens of birds that came habitually to drink and bathe in the fountain.
Beyond the rear of the house was the huge compound containing the servants’ quarters, the kitchens, and the storehouses and granaries, but off to the right, in a pleasant circle of bushy trees, lay the concubines’ home. Here Khaemwaset’s other women were ranged in front of the building, dressed in their best linen. He addressed them briefly and informally, reminding them that Tbubui took precedence over them, and while she was quartered in their midst her word had weight. He had been about to tell them that Tbubui’s word was law, but he bit his tongue just in time, remembering that Nubnofret as Chief Wife ruled the concubines as she ruled the whole establishment. Standing aside, he beckoned her. Regally she came, took Tbubui’s hand, and led her into the house, the others following.
“You are now under the protection of the lord of this house,” she intoned. “As you expect his kindness and companionship, so he expects the faithfulness of your body, mind and ka. Do you agree to this?”
“I do.” Tbubui responded. There was a startling crash as the priest deliberately dropped the two pottery jars that had contained the milk and blood at Tbubui’s feet, signifying the beginning of joy and bounty for the marriage. Then all began to clap. Khaemwaset moved past Nubnofret and took Tbubui in his arms. “When your suite is ready we will repeat this most delightful ceremony,” he smiled, “but for now I am afraid these two little rooms must serve. Welcome home, my dearest sister.” He kissed her amid redoubled noise, then all but Tbubui withdrew.
“The troop of Nubian dancers you hired for the evening are here already,” Nubnofret remarked to Khaemwaset as they walked back to the house. “I have no idea what to do with them, but I suppose I can set up a couple of tents in the south garden. In any event, I must have a word with Ib about the placing of the tables.” She raked him with a cool, amused glance. You are a foolish man enjoying a spurious second adolescence, that look said, but I have important things to do.
She swept away, shooing the excited servants ahead of her. Sheritra rubbed her father’s arm. He turned to give her his attention, aware that the soles of his sandals were sticky with milk and blood and the aroma of the mixture was rising on the heat, an unpleasant, sweet-sick smell.
“Harmin has just told me that he will be staying on with his uncle,” Sheritra said. “I thought he would move in with us, with his mother. Can’t we find a corner for him, Father?” Please?”
Khaemwaset considered the limpid, pleading eyes in their rims of black kohl. She had parted her hair in the middle today, letting it hang in gleaming coils to her shoulders, and on her head was a princess’s crown, a slender, gold circlet with the vulture goddess Mut perched warily above her smooth forehead, and the two thin, golden plumes of Amun quivering at the back. Her gold-shot linen was semitransparent, a drift of soft material that betrayed her tiny breasts and boyish waist. Khaemwase
t thought how until recently she would have donned linen so thick that its weight would have been trying in the heat of summer, and her shoulders would have been rounded protectively over her chest. He could not be sure, but he fancied that she had painted her nipples—dark splinters of muted gold light could be seen under the sheath. A tremor of concern shook him, and he placed one finger under her chin.
“You know that there is no room for Harmin in the house until the addition is finished,” he explained, tipping her face. “That will be quite soon, Little Sun. But I think Harmin prefers to stay with his uncle. Life here is somewhat hectic.”
She pulled away with one sulky jerk. “If he is not here I must go there to visit,” she said angrily, “and I cannot go without chaperones and I must sit decorously in the garden or in the reception hall and talk to him about nothing. I shall hate that!”
“You are exaggerating,” he objected mildly. “Harmin will be coming here to see his mother almost every day until he chooses to move in with her.”
“But I want to see him whenever I choose!” she almost shouted at him. “You have your happiness, Father. I want mine!”
“You know, Sheritra, I am not sure that I like all the changes in you,” he said quietly. “You have become selfish and headstrong, and rude as well.” He expected her to falter, to blush and drop her gaze, but she continued to stare up at him out of that exquisitely painted, unusual face.
“None of us like the changes that have taken place in you either, Father. You have not cared about my welfare in the least for a very long time, so I suppose I ought not to be surprised that you show no sympathy or understanding now. I want a betrothal to Harmin. When will you approach Sisenet on the subject?”
“It is not an appropriate time,” Khaemwaset replied stiffly. “Come to me next week, when these festivities are over and Tbubui’s period of adjustment is progressing well. I do not want to throw this at her yet.”
Sheritra’s lip curled. “No, I daresay you do not,” she retorted, then she spun on her heel and stalked to where the young man was waiting in the shade of the house. Together they turned towards the south garden, their servants hurrying after.
She has simply gone from one extreme to the other, Khaemwaset told himself as he started forward. Tbubui has performed a miracle on her, and her love for the son has confirmed it. She is feeling the power of her transformation, and it is at present being translated as rudeness and arrogance. I understand, but I miss the old Sheritra.
“Will you sleep, Highness, before you change your linen for dinner?” Kasa was asking politely, and Khaemwaset followed him into the rear corridor with an inward sigh. All his relatives had been invited to the feast that was being prepared for Tbubui tonight. His father had sent a short, congratulatory excuse, and Merenptah likewise had wished his brother every happiness, in his scribe’s hand but in his own florid words. But the rest of the family was coming together with certain Memphis dignitaries and a host of musicians, dancers and other entertainers. An air of electric excitement lay over the house. The cloying fragrance of the thousands of blooms carted in that morning made him think of Tbubui—exotic, enigmatic, even now exploring her small domain and perhaps day-dreaming of him, of the coming night. He did not think that he would be able to rest.
“No, Kasa,” he told his body-servant. “I shall escape into the office and read for a while. Send for me when the guests begin to arrive.” But once in his office, safely immured behind the closed doors, the noise muted and Ptah-Seankh industriously copying a manuscript while he waited for Khaemwaset’s summons, he found that he was still restless. The heavy odour of the flowers had drifted after him. It was in his clothes, in his hair, and suddenly it reminded him of the two funerals he had just endured. His stomach heaved. He sat down behind the desk, let his head fall into his hands, and, closing his eyes, he waited.
The feast that night was the most sumptuous Memphis had seen in some time. Richly clothed guests choked Khaemwaset’s large reception hall and spilled over into the gardens, where torches flared and tables had been set out, groaning with delicacies of every kind. Troops of naked dancers, black acrobats from Nubia and Egyptian beauties of both sexes, swayed and leaped between the revellers to the music of lyre, harp and drums. Nubnofret had selected the customary gifts for everyone with care—the bead necklaces were malachite and jasper instead of painted clay, the trinket boxes Lebanon cedar, the fans tiny red ostrich feathers gathered into electrum handles. The wine had come from the Delta, resurrected dusty and grimed from the straw beds where the jars had been laid ten years before. The servants would eat for the whole of the following weeks the leftover food.
Tbubui sat in the place of honour on Khaemwaset’s right hand, raised above the crowd on a small dais, smiling graciously on those who came up to offer their good wishes. All the ingredients for a successful night were present, yet Khaemwaset could not shake off a sense of melancholy. Sheritra was laughing with Harmin. They had been inseparable all evening. Hori was eating with Antef, a wintry, rare smile coming and going on his face for the first time in many weeks as his friend talked of something that, over the general mêlée, Khaemwaset could not catch. Nubnofret and Sisenet were likewise deep in conversation, and he himself, Khaemwaset, had only to turn his head a fraction, move his hand almost imperceptibly, to make contact with the woman he adored above all else.
Yet the hall seemed a dismal place under all the gaiety. Something was missing. Or perhaps, he thought sadly, as Ib bent yet again to fill his cup, and a chorus of roars and whistles broke out as one of the Nubian dancers curved backwards until her face rested between the legs of Memphis’s mayor, perhaps I have been through so much to obtain this prize that now, having it, possessing it, I am empty of purpose for a while.
Sisenet intercepted his unfocused gaze and raised a friendly hand. Khaemwaset answered the gesture. Tbubui leaned against him and pushed a piece of ripe fig into his mouth. Yet somewhere in the room a huge, invisible mouth was open, breathing desolation over the throng, and he could not escape the gale.
Much later, while the guests still shrieked and staggered through the house and grounds and the weary musicians still played, Khaemwaset and Tbubui slipped away, walking unsteadily over the brittle summer grass to the dim peace of the concubines’ house. The place was deserted. All the women were still feasting, and no one but the Keeper of the Door, who greeted the pair respectfully and escorted them to Tbubui’s rooms, saw them enter.
Once within, the door closed and night lamp lit, Khaemwaset reached for his prize. By now they had made love many times, but her mystery had not lessened. He wanted her with the same helpless longing she had prompted in him months ago, and he was becoming resigned to the knowledge that his desire could not be sated by the act of love; it merely intensified. Yet like a moth compelled to burn itself to death against the flame of a candle, Khaemwaset returned again and again to the source of his torment. Tonight was no different, and with it was the sadness that had overtaken him in the reception hall, an undercurrent of wistfulness that followed him through the violent consummation of his marriage and into his exhausted dreams.
THE MONTH OF PAKHONS came and the heat went on, an unremitting, punishing succession of breathless days and suffocating nights when the women of Khaemwaset’s household dragged sleeping mats up onto the flat roofs of the buildings and spent the dark hours sleeping, gambling or talking. In the fields the harvest began, and Khaemwaset anxiously watched for the first reports from the men who measured the level of the Nile. The river was due to begin to rise towards the end of the month. By then the crops would be safely out of reach of the slowly gathering flood. Threshing and winnowing would go on in the compounds and the grapes would be trod. Si-Montu reported a record-breaking harvest of grapes from Pharaoh’s vineyard. Khaemwaset’s own stewards sent him ecstatic letters filled with the details of his own abundantly fertile fields, and in his household a precarious peace reigned.
The work on Tbubui’s suite was almost fi
nished. She had taken to appearing on the site every morning and would recline under a parasol until the noon meal, watching the fellahin sweat in the well-nigh unbearable heat to raise the last of the bricks and fortify the roof. Khaemwaset liked to join her. Instead of dealing with the day’s dispatches he would seek her out and discuss the interior finishing and furnishings of her new rooms, Harmin’s continuing romance with Sheritra, whom he now saw almost every day when he came to spend an hour or two with his mother, and whether or not Sisenet wanted the position of Head Scribe in the Memphis House of Life, the library of rare scrolls.
The family took the noon meal together, but it was not a comfortable arrangement though Tbubui chattered happily about nothing, doing her best to draw Nubnofret and Hori, if he was there, into the conversation. But Nubnofret merely answered the questions that were put to her directly, and Hori would eat quickly and ask to be dismissed. Khaemwaset was angry and disappointed with them all, even Sheritra, who had taken to bringing up the subject of her betrothal at every opportunity. He had expected more from the people with whom he had lived for so many years, but their behaviour, just short of being rude, was not sufficiently pointed for him to reprimand.
He would escape from the hall with relief to spend the hottest hours of the day on his couch, as they all did. But often he could not sleep. He lay tossing under the soporific rise and fall of the fans held by his servants, wondering if the day would ever come when there would be a lessening of tension in the household.
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