Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  She shrugged away. “Perhaps not so soon,” she answered wryly. “We have made much love, Khaemwaset, in the last two months. You should not be so surprised.”

  His hands fell into his lap. “But this is wonderful!” he insisted. “I am truly delighted. Why are you not happy also? Are you afraid? But don’t you know I am the best physician in Egypt?”

  Again that cynical smile played about her mouth. “No, I am not afraid. Not … that is …”

  His pleasure began to evaporate. “I think you had better talk to me,” he said gravely.

  For answer she slid from the couch and brushed by him. The flame in the lamp danced madly at her passing and the shadows gyrated on the walls. Khaemwaset twisted to watch her passage.

  “I am not well liked in this household,” she said slowly. “No, not at all. Nubnofret has nothing but contempt for me. Hori will not speak to me. He glowers when he thinks I cannot see him, and he makes me cold with his unwavering stares. Sheritra was happy to take my advice, to accept my friendship, until I came here. Now she avoids me.” She swung to face him, a ghostly figure in the room’s half-light, her eyes swollen and huge, her mouth trembling. “I am alone here,” she whispered. “Only your goodwill stands between me and the enmity of your family.”

  He was shocked. “But, Tbubui, I think you exaggerate!” he protested. “Remember how stable, how unchanged our life here has been. The adjustments your coming has required take time. You must give them time!”

  She took one step towards him. Her tumbled hair seemed to blend into the darkness and her eyes held the same hue. “It is not a matter of time. I have done all I can, Khaemwaset, but behind their superficial politeness is a deep animosity. They hide it from you, of course they do, but they are like vultures, waiting for my protection to be removed so that they can glide in for the kill.”

  Khaemwaset opened his mouth to object hotly, but then he remembered Nubnofret’s vicious words and was silent. He watched Tbubui intently, then he said, “I cannot imagine any member of my family doing you harm. You are speaking of generous, enlightened people, not desert brigands who are little better than animals.”

  “You do not see what I do!” she cried out in anguish. “The hateful glances behind your back, the tiny indignities, the deliberate aloofness!” She set her white hands against her belly. “For myself, I do not care. I love you and all I want to do is make you happy, Khaemwaset. But there will be a child. I am afraid for my child!” She was becoming increasingly distraught, her voice rising hysterically, her hands turning to claws against her naked abdomen. The linen had slipped to the floor and she stood before him in a panicked, unselfconscious beauty, her very wildness setting up a throb of desire in him. He tried to calm her.

  “Tbubui, pregnant women can become irrational, you must know that,” he said. “Think of what you are saying. You are in my household, not the harem of some unscrupulous foreign king. You are my wife. I rejoice over the coming of this child, and so will my family.”

  She came closer. “No, they will not,” she insisted. “You are a blood prince, Khaemwaset, and your offspring belong to Egypt. All of them, including this one,” she clutched her stomach, “are in line for the Horus Throne. Hori has more at stake than the son of a merchant whose second wife is pregnant. He, all of them, they would try to have my baby disinherited if something happened to you. A child of mine would be a threat to their future. Oh don’t you see?”

  He was beginning to see and he did not like it. Is it true? he wondered. I know that Tbubui is not popular here, but I believed that rift would be healed in time. But with this pregnancy another grievance has been added to the wounds the family is already suffering. He tried to imagine the situation if he should die, and it chilled him. Tbubui would indeed be defenceless, but would there be anything to defend herself from? All at once Nubnofret’s dislike, Hori’s sullenness, even Sheritra’s new short-temperedness, shifted to form a new pattern in his mind. He could not argue. What Tbubui was saying seemed to be the truth. She was directly in front of him now, breathing rapidly and harshly, her cheeks wet with tears.

  “Do you love me, Khaemwaset?” she asked in a strangled voice. “Do you?”

  “Tbubui! More than anything!” he said.

  “Then help me. Please. I am your wife and you owe me protection. To your unborn son you owe even more. Strike Hori and Sheritra from your will in favour of this new child. Do it before some terrible fate overtakes him. Remove that power from them so that I may live here in peace and look forward to bringing the fruit of our love into the world. Otherwise …” She bent, both hands on her knees, and peered with a mad intensity into Khaemwaset’s face. “Otherwise I must divorce you and leave.”

  He felt as though she had struck him. His chest ached and he could not get his breath. “Gods, Tbubui …” he croaked. “You do not mean it … there is no need for such a drastic measure … you are not thinking …”

  She was crying. “Believe me, dear brother, I have done nothing else but think about this since I realized I was pregnant,” she said. “Nubnofret will never accept me. She told me to my face that I have the heart of a whore. Hori …”

  “What?” he asked sharply. She shook her head.

  “Nothing. But I urge you, I beg you, to do as I wish. You are a good man, you do not smell the evil stinking directly under your nostrils. Pharaoh will take care of Hori, and Sheritra will doubtless marry some wealthy nobleman. They will not suffer! Only my son will suffer if you delay!”

  “Nubnofret, my Nubnofret, called you a whore?” he said slowly, and she nodded.

  “Yes. By all the gods I swear I am telling you the truth. Change your will, Prince. If the gods are kind you will live to see our son grow to manhood and then it will not matter. But if not …” She spread her hands. “I adore you. I always have. Do not force me to tear out my heart by leaving you.”

  Khaemwaset could not think. He wanted to be clearheaded, to argue with her rationally, but his mind was whirling and he was afraid, so very afraid, both that she was right and that she would carry out her threat. I cannot live without her, he thought. I cannot go back to the life I once knew. It would be desolation, loneliness, it would be death. She has changed me. From the first, she has been working in me. I am no longer Nubnofret’s Khaemwaset, Hori’s father, Ramses’ right hand. I am Tbubui’s lover, and that is all. With one sweep of his arm he pulled her down onto the couch, pushing her roughly into the mattress as he rolled on top of her. “Very well,” he ground out, already half-mad with the fever of wanting her. “Very well. I will remove the right of my children by Nubnofret to inherit, and give that right to our child. But I will not tell them. They would hate you even more.”

  “There is no need to tell them unless they become a danger,” she answered. “Thank you, Khaemwaset.”

  He did not reply, indeed, he had not heard her. The tide of lust had risen in him, drowning all thought, and it was a long time before he again became aware of his surroundings. By then the lamp had gone out from starvation and he could hear the jackals howling far away in the desert beyond Saqqara. The city was enveloped in the silence of deepest night.

  17

  Wilt thou go away because thou art thirsty?

  Take to thee my breast;

  what it hath overfloweth for thee.

  DAWN WAS A HINT of thinning in the darkness when Khaemwaset slipped out of the concu bines’ house and re-entered his quarters, falling onto his couch and into his dreams almost simultaneously. He woke three hours later to the gentle strumming of his harpist and the good smell of fresh bread and ripe figs and grapes. Kasa was rolling up the shutter blinds to let in the precious early sun that would be firmly excluded in two more hours.

  Khaemwaset ate without much appetite, his mind on Tbubui’s words of the night before, but it was as though the decision had been made, the ramifications of her pleading and his objections flowing scarcely coherently in the background. She is so right, he told himself, spitting a grape pip in
to his palm and staring at it stupidly. I should have considered this eventuality but I buried my head in the sand of delusion. Reality has caught up with us all and it is cold, a merciless, brute thing. Something must be done immediately, today, or I will lose her. “Kasa,” he called. “Have Ptah-Seankh wait upon me in my office. Have you selected my dress for this morning?”

  He finished the food, waved the harpist out, and, once bathed and dressed, he said his prayers before the shrine of Thoth. They would hate me if they knew what I was about to do, he thought secretly while his tongue spoke the ancient words of beseeching and worship. Outrage, betrayal, bitterness, none of them would understand. But Tbubui is my life, my youth, my final amulet against the advancing years and the long darkness. Father is rich beyond the dreams of ordinary men. Let him pick up the pieces if I die. He owes me that much.

  When he had snuffed the incense and closed the shrine he went to his office. One of his servants was already letting down the shutters against the sun’s implacable strength, and he could hear gardeners at work outside. Ptah-Seankh was sitting on a stool, reading, his palette on the floor beside him. He stood and bowed as Khaemwaset approached.

  “Greetings, Ptah-Seankh,” Khaemwaset said. “A moment, please.” Taking a small key from his belt he went into the inner room, unlocked a chest, removed a scroll and came back into the office. Passing the scroll to his scribe he took his place behind the desk. “This is my will,” he explained. “I want you to read it carefully. There are three clauses in it, dealing with the disposition of my personal wealth and hereditary estates. Be careful to differentiate between my personal holdings and those assets that accrue to me because I am a prince. Hori automatically falls heir to those, and I can do nothing about that. But I want you to strike him from my personal inheritance. My daughter Sheritra also. Leave Nubnofret’s gains alone …”

  Ptah-Seankh was clutching the scroll and staring at him, a dumbfounded expression on his face. “But Highness,” he stammered, “what has the Prince Hori done? Have you given enough thought to what you are asking me to do?”

  “Of course,” Khaemwaset replied testily. “My wife Tbubui is pregnant, and that fact necessitates a change in the will. A copy of the document is filed in the Memphis House of Life. Take my seal as authorization, remove the copy and execute the same changes in it. You will make Tbubui’s unborn child my sole beneficiary.”

  Ptah-Seankh stepped forward. “Highness, I beg you to consider well before you take this solemn initiative,” he expostulated. “If you remove Sheritra from the will you leave her without means for a marriage dowry if you die before she marries. As for Prince Hori …”

  “If I want your opinion I shall ask for it,” Khaemwaset snarled. “Shall I repeat your instructions?”

  “Yes,” Ptah-Seankh said steadily, his face pale. “I think your Highness had better say the words again.”

  He is hoping that the sound of them will be so ominous that I will frighten myself and change my mind, Khaemwaset thought. I do frighten myself, but I will not change them. He repeated himself, slowly and carefully, aware of the scribe’s unwavering, unbelieving gaze. Then he dismissed the man. Ptah-Seankh bowed, paused as though wanting to argue again, then backed from the room. The door closed with a polite click behind him. It is done, Khaemwaset thought, laying his arms across the smooth surface of the desk and listening to the muted sounds wafting in from the garden. In the space of a few hours I have betrayed my children and degraded myself, but I have kept Tbubui. Later I will concern myself with the transgression of Ma’at, but now I will go to her and watch the anxiety smooth from her face when I tell her that she and our son are safe. Her eyes will slowly light, and she will touch my face with the tips of her fingers, and I will know that I have done the right thing, the only thing.

  Yet he sat on. The gardeners’ voices slowly faded, to be replaced by quarrelling birds, a servant humming as he passed by, the strident tones of Nubnofret’s personal body servant, Wernuro, scolding some luckless slave. The right thing, he thought emotionlessly. The only thing. He could not move.

  Ptah-Seankh stood outside the closed door to the office, the scroll clutched in his hand, trying to come to terms with what had just happened. He was aware of the guard’s eyes on him in surreptitious curiosity and knew he should move, but for a moment he could not. The Prince is mad, he thought wildly. He has lost his mind. What shall I do? My first duty is to obey him in everything, but this I cannot accept. Father, what would you have done? I am an apprentice here, a learner, though a privileged one. I do not know better than my master, yet how can I do this thing? Shall I go to the Princess and confess everything? I should simply do as I am told and mind my own business. I am a newcomer to this house. I am existing on the reputation my father built. I have yet to earn my own. But he remembered the terrible thing the Prince’s Second Wife had made him do, and the guilt he carried with him everywhere. Perhaps the gods have given me this opportunity to redress the wrong I have done, he thought. I may cleanse my conscience at the same time. He had no doubt that what he had been asked to do was a wrong. The Prince had a right to include whatever details he chose in his will, but these changes had a corrupt stench to them. Oh Thoth, wise guide of the true scribe’s hand and mind, Ptah-Seankh prayed, still under the interested glances of the guard, tell me what to do.

  He began to walk along the passage, and at the far end he encountered Antef, the Prince Hori’s body servant and friend. He took it as a sign. Bowing, he inquired where the Prince might be, but Antef answered shortly that he did not know. Ptah-Seankh began to search An hour later he still had not found Hori but he met the Princess Sheritra, a bowl of milk in her hands.

  “Greetings, Ptah-Seankh,” she said. “I hope you are settling in well here, and Father is not driving you to distraction.”

  He bowed. “I am very happy to be attached to this august household, Highness,” he replied. “May I inquire if you have seen your brother? I have searched for him all over the house and I must speak with him immediately.”

  She looked thoughtful. “If he is not in the house he must be down by the watersteps,” she replied. “I know exactly where. Is it vital, Ptah-Seankh?” He nodded. “Then I will send him to you. Go and wait for him in his quarters. First, though, the house snakes need their food.” She smiled and passed on, and he turned in the direction of the Prince’s suite. The scroll was still held tightly in his hands.

  He waited for a long time, but he was patient. The hour for the afternoon sleep came and he thought with longing of his own neat couch, but he stood dutifully in the Prince’s antechamber under the steward’s eye until Hori was admitted.

  Hori approached Ptah-Seankh with a smile. His kilt was limp and smudged with what looked like river mud, and he was not wearing one piece of jewellery, not even an amulet. Even so, Ptah-Seankh thought that nothing could mar his extraordinary beauty.

  “You need to see me?” he asked brusquely.

  Ptah-Seankh bowed, eyeing the steward. “I do, Highness, but I would prefer to speak to you in private.” Hori dismissed his steward with a wave, and when the doors had closed behind him offered the scribe the wine opened on the table. Ptah-Seankh refused. Hori poured himself a generous amount and folded into a chair. “The last of a great vintage,” he commented, holding his cup so the light glittered off the wine. “My uncle may have been relegated to the status of the minor nobility but the grapes he tends produce the most royal wine in Egypt. What do you want, Ptah-Seankh?”

  The young man came closet “Prince,” he said, “I am probably jeopardizing my whole career by committing an act that your Highness may very well see as a betrayal, but I am confused and in pain and I do not know what else to do.”

  Hori sat straight in the chair. His translucent, glittering eyes became both wary and curious, and he blinked several times. Ptah-Seankh thought fleetingly how any woman might envy the Prince his long, black eyelashes.

  “You have a conflict of loyalties,” the Prince said slo
wly. “Be sure that you want to speak, Ptah-Seankh, before you do so. You are my father’s servant, not mine.”

  “I am fully aware of that, Highness,” Ptah-Seankh agreed. “Yet your father has set me a task I cannot fulfil in all honesty without your guidance. I love your father,” he went on frankly. “He has been the benefactor of my family for many years. I do not betray his trust lightly.”

  Now Hori’s eyes had narrowed to a heightened interest. The wine stood forgotten on the table, though his fingers caressed the stem of the cup. “Speak,” he ordered.

  Ptah-Seankh gulped and held up the scroll. “This is Prince Khaemwaset’s will. This morning he ordered me to alter it. You and your sister the Princess Sheritra are to be removed as beneficiaries, and the lady Tbubui’s unborn child is to be put in your place.”

  The prince’s fingers were suddenly stilled. His eyes had gone as hard as agates. “Tbubui is pregnant?” he whispered. “You are sure?”

  “His Highness said so,” Ptah-Seankh explained, “and the changes he has commanded for his will confirm it. Oh forgive me, Prince Hori, forgive me! I could not remain silent! You have been disinherited! I do not know what to do!”

  Hori fell silent. Then he unfolded himself slowly. His legs went out and crossed at the ankles. He slumped in the chair. His hand found the cup again and his fingers stroked it sensually, up and down, up and down, until Ptah-Seankh felt mesmerized by that compelling movement.

  “Disinherited,” he said musingly. “I should have expected as much. My father is completely besotted. He has become blind, deaf and insane.” He laughed harshly, and Ptah-Seankh heard more than the pain of betrayal in the sound. “As for you, scribe,” Hori went on, “if you were in my service I would dismiss you on the spot. You are unprincipled and untrustworthy.”

  “Highness,” Ptah-Seankh began, though his throat was well-nigh closed and he did not think that he could find his voice, “if it were just a matter of my master’s will I would have held my counsel and done as I was bid. But there is more.” He swallowed, and found himself sinking to his knees. “I have committed a terrible sin.”