Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  “Why yes, of course,” the young man replied, going to the floor and putting the palette across his knees. “There is papyrus already rolled up here, and I think the ink is reasonably fresh.” He shook out a pen. “To whom shall I address it?”

  “To my grandfather Ramses. Put all his titles—he’s touchy about that. Then say, ‘From your loyal and obedient grandson the Prince Hori, greetings. I beg you, dear Grandfather, to concern yourself with a family matter that is causing much grief to me and to your granddaughter the Princess Sheritra. It has come to my attention that our father Prince Khaemwaset has recently and secretly removed both my sister and myself from his will in favour of the unborn child of his Second Wife, the lady Tbubui. I also have strong reasons to believe that the lady Tbubui has lied to my father regarding her noble lineage and has no right to be married to a blood prince. I am in great distress, Omnipotent One, and again beg your investigation into these matters. I wish your Majesty Life, Health and Prosperity. I am yours to command.” He gestured impatiently at Antef, who was staring at him helplessly.

  “Finish it and I will seal it,” he said. Antef recovered. The pen scraped against the papyrus and at last he rose, placed the scroll on the table and passed the pen to Hori. Hori pressed his seal ring into the hot wax Antef had prepared. He was regaining some equilibrium.

  “Is it true?” Antef demanded. “Has the Prince really done that to you?”

  “Yes.” Hon responded shortly.

  “The lady Tbubui—she is the one you are in love with, isn’t she?” Antef said, appalled.

  Hori did not apologize for his treatment of Antef over the last few months. He merely held out a hand. After a moment Antef took it. “I love her, but she is not worthy of the affection of anyone in this family,” Hori said grimly. “I will tell you everything, Antef, on our way to Koptos.”

  Antef recoiled. “Koptos?”

  “Yes. Have the servants pack a few things tonight. I need sleep desperately. We will leave in the morning.”

  Antef was clearly bewildered. “Does your father know we are going away?”

  “No, he doesn’t, and I have no intention of telling him. He never wants to see me again anyway. Do as I have asked, and I will meet you at the watersteps an hour after sunrise. Oh, and Antef …” He held out the scroll. “Give this to one of the heralds and tell him to leave for Pi-Ramses at once. Use a household servant, not one of Father’s personal messengers. Go on!” Antef shrugged, smiled tentatively at Hori and went away.

  It has begun, Hori thought, and he was all at once hungry. He reached for the bowl and began to force the food into his mouth. When I come back from Koptos with the evidence of Tbubui’s perfidy she is going to wish she had never been born. The sweet taste of revenge mingled with the tang of the leek as he bit into it, but another flavour fought for sudden prominence. It was Tbubui’s skin, salty with sweat, and he closed his eyes and whimpered.

  He did not go to the hall for the evening meal. He paced his room, hearing snatches of music floating through the passages and, now and then, Tbubui’s quick laughter. He sat with his face pressed to the wind-catcher, sucking up the marginally cooler night air, and then he called for his body servant and played a few games of sennet, which he won.

  The house gradually grew quiet, and at last Hori slipped from his quarters and made his way to Sheritra’s suite. He would have preferred not to be seen, but each passage had a guard at either end and they could not be avoided.

  Tapping on Sheritra’s door, he was admitted by Bakmut. Sheritra herself came quickly from the inner bedchamber, wrapped in her white sleeping gown. With her hair loose and her face scrubbed she looked all of twelve, Hori thought as he kissed her. Her eyes were frightened.

  “Hori!” she said. “I heard about the terrible fight you had with Father. What was it for? He told Mother tonight that he had banned you from all family gatherings, including the feasts. What on earth have you done?”

  “You are not going to like it,” he warned. “Can we go into the bedroom?”

  For answer she waved Bakmut to the stool by the door and led Hori further in, clambering onto the couch. Hori found himself perching beside her as he often used to in earlier, happier times.

  He began to speak, beginning with Ptah-Seankh’s confession and ending with his decision to go to Koptos himself. Sheritra listened, her face becoming more and more sombre. When he recounted his visit to the concubines’ house, omitting nothing, she gasped and fumbled for his hand but remained silent until he had finished. Then she shook her head.

  “If anyone else were telling me these things I would not believe it,” she said. “None of it makes any sense, though. If she married Father for his titles and his wealth, why is she risking discovery by seducing and taunting you? And Father is absolutely insanely in love with her and always has been. He would have married her even if she had been the most famous whore in Memphis. Why all the secrecy? Why did she not tell him the truth from the start?”

  “What truth?” Hori said wearily. “I have a feeling that she is exactly what she says, a noblewoman with a good lineage. But she is hiding something and it must be very bad. I will find out what it is. I want you to tell Father where I have gone and why, so that he and Mother will not worry about me, but do not do it until I have been gone a whole week.”

  She agreed. “Does Harmin know what his mother is really like?” she wondered aloud. “Oh Hori, I want my betrothal now, before you come home from Koptos with bad news for us all!”

  Hori took both her hands and shook them gently. “Listen to me,” he said urgently. “You must not press for a betrothal until I get back. Please, for your own sake, Sheritra, stop plaguing Father for just a little time. Who knows what I may uncover about all of them?”

  Sheritra pulled her fingers away. “I want Harmin,” she insisted angrily. “I have waited and waited. I deserve him. Besides,” and here she managed a wan smile, “I had better marry him while Father still lives and my dowry is intact.” Then all at once she began to cry. She folded forward and he took her in his arms. “Oh Hori!” she sobbed. “He could never have done this to us if he loved us. It hurts!”

  “I know it hurts, Little Sun,” he said in a low voice, “but it is not true that he doesn’t love us. Tbubui has bewitched him, but once he cared more for us than for anything else in the world. She is destroying him and we must save him. Come. Do not cry. I need you to be brave for me. I have written to Grandfather about it and perhaps he will intervene. In any case, you must be here waiting for me when I return, for I shall come straight to your quarters. Pray for me while I am gone.”

  She hugged him, kissing his throat and his mouth.

  “I wish I could do more than pray for you, Hori!” she blurted. “This is all so terrible.”

  “Look for a letter from Grandfather,” he reminded her, gently disengaging himself. “And try to speak up for me to Father. Do not let Tbubui poison him further against me.”

  “May the soles of your feet be firm,” she whispered, giving him a formal farewell. He smiled at her with a confidence he was far from feeling, then allowed Bakmut to escort him to the door and see him out. He returned to his own couch and fell onto it with a grunt of relief.

  Antef woke him an hour after dawn. “I presumed that you would forget to leave word with your body servant,” he explained, grinning, as Hori swung his legs off the couch, and Hori smiled back.

  “I always do, don’t I?” he replied, all at once grateful that Antef was faithful and had stood by him despite the neglect of many months. “Thank you, my friend.”

  “Everything is ready,” Antef told him, withdrawing. “Your own barge is packed and I suppose I must be your cook, steward and body servant until we return.”

  “And my scribe,” Hon added. “Leave me, Antef. I will be at the watersteps directly.”

  His body servant was now awake and was waiting to bathe him. Hori padded after the man and as he went, still sleepy and very thirsty, the enormity of w
hat he was doing struck him for the first time, together with a premonition that slowed his step and made him look about at his belovedly familiar surroundings with a spurt of affection and homesickness. Life has been good, he told himself sadly, and with that thought came the memory of Nefertkhay, pert and vital, water streaming from her young body. I wish I had made love to her, he told himself regretfully. It would have been the one wholesome saving act to take with me on this perilous journey. “Highness?” his servant said politely, and Hori came to himself and stepped up onto the bathing slab. I must not look behind me, he said firmly to himself. There is no point in that at all.

  An hour later, freshly washed and girt in clean linen, his favourite pectoral hanging on his chest with the most powerful amulet he could find as a counterweight lying between his shoulder-blades, Hori walked from the house and went quietly through the north garden towards the watersteps. The servants were about, doing the early morning sweeping and preparing the first meal of the day, but Hori knew that the members of the family would still be on their couches, their minds on the activities to come while they waited for their food. There was no sign of the gardeners. The new wing protruded into what had once been a pleasant square with a fountain, and cast an early, cool shadow over the still-raw flower beds. Several guards saluted and greeted him as he passed them.

  He had almost reached the edge of the recent construction when someone glided out of the shelter of a wall and into his path. Hori moved on, confident that it was a servant who would get out of his way, but then the figure turned and it was Tbubui, muffled in white up to her chin like a shrouded corpse. She was clearly just out of her couch and had simply pulled back her hair under a hooded summer cloak of gossamer linen. Angrily avoiding her eye, Hori began to give her a wide berth but a hand appeared out of all that whiteness and grasped him. He shook it off in a spasm of fury but came to a halt and faced her.

  “What do you want?” he snapped.

  “I do not think that you should go to Koptos,” she replied.

  He smiled cynically. “No, I daresay you do not, seeing that I intend to come home again with your ruin in my possession,” he retorted evenly.

  “Be that as it may,” she interposed gently, “I am concerned for your welfare, Hori. Koptos is not a healthy place. People sicken there. People die.”

  Now he met her eyes. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

  “Remember what happened to your father’s scribe, Penbuy,” she almost whispered. “Take care that such a thing does not happen to you.”

  He stared at her. “What do you know about that?” he said urgently. She went on looking at him with those black, fathomless eyes, and all once a chill of certainly went through him. He heard Sheritra’s voice, hesitant but firm. “Someone in Sisenet’s house conjured a death curse …” and then he knew. He knew.

  “You did it,” he faltered, weak with horror, and she raised her eyebrows.

  “I did what, Highness?”

  “You cursed Penbuy! You knew he could not be bribed or threatened, that nothing would keep him from carrying out the task my father set for him, so you used evil magic to conjure against his life!” Hori’s mouth had gone dry. He licked his lips. “What did you use, Tbubui? What did you steal from him?”

  Her eyes began to glow with an unnatural mirth. “His pen case,” she said. “A particularly apt personal belonging, don’t you think? Sisenet took it one day when Penbuy accompanied your father to my house.”

  Hori wanted to run away. Suddenly, even the ground on which he stood seemed malevolent. “Well, you will not succeed with me,” he said as steadily as he could. “My father is the greatest magician in Egypt. His spells are the strongest, and I have worked with him often enough to learn many protections. Forewarned is forearmed, Tbubui. I am not afraid of you.”

  “Indeed,” she purred. “I had not thought of that. Then I suppose if you come home from Koptos in full health I shall have to persuade your father to kill you.” She leaned into him until her mouth brushed his own. “You think such a thing is impossible, proud Hori? Think again. Khaemwaset will do anything I ask. Enjoy your journey. She bowed, gathered her linen more tightly around her and walked away.

  Hori stood stunned, the sun already hotter on his head than was comfortable. Never! he thought dazedly. Father would never do such a dreadful thing. He would be imperilling a favourable judging from the gods! But he disinherited you, another, colder voice whispered back. I would not be too confident, my dear Hori, if I were you. He swung round. Tbubui had gone.

  He did not believe he could force his legs to move but they did, heavily and reluctantly, carrying him to the water-steps and his barge, rocking imperceptibly on the oily river. Antef bowed and waved and somehow Hori managed to return the greeting and descend to the ramp. The captain shouted an order, the ramp was run in with a grinding sound, and Hori sank to the cushions on the deck beside his friend. How pale you are, Highness!” Antef observed. “Have you been drinking already this morning?” Hori shook his head, his stomach churning, then he began to speak. He talked for an hour, and Antef did not interrupt him once. He was dumbfounded.

  18

  Behold the dwellings of the dead!

  Their walls fall down;

  their place is no more;

  they are as though they never existed.

  THE JOURNEY TO KOPTOS was a nightmare for Hori. Day after day he sat hunched and tense under the deck awning, desperate to reach the town, feeling the wind of terror at his back. Loneliness and a sense of his own inadequacy plagued him. He was keenly aware that the salvation of the family might well be resting on his shoulders alone. His father had ceased to be a calm, kindly man, and had let the administration of the country slide towards a chaos that could well ruin them all. His mother was imprisoned in an icy unhappiness. Sheritra’s response to his revelations about Tbubui had been instantly selfish and defensive of Harmin, and it was clear that her world had shrunk to the lineaments of his body. But all of it could be changed, not reversed perhaps but healed, and it was up to him, Hori, to effect that change. No one else saw the truth. No one else was capable of acting, and the awesome responsibility he had chosen to carry was almost too much for him to bear.

  He was blind to the parched, brown beauty of Egypt as it slid by. Antef spent much time leaning on the rail exclaiming over the clouds of chaff cast up by a group of winnowers on the bank, or the piles of mud bricks guarded by naked boys who stared curiously at the barge, or the sudden green slash of a nobleman’s estate kept verdant by the constant action of the slaves manning the shadufs. Hori had no eyes for these things, yet he was aware of the deepening blue of the sky as they crept further south, and of a slight swelling of the Nile. Far away at the river’s source the Inundation had begun. Soon the current would grow faster, heavier, and the broadening flood would lap and spill over into the fields, drowning them, isolating the temples, washing silt and broken branches and dead animals up onto Egyptian earth.

  In a confused way Hori saw the flood as taking place within him also, an inexorable tide of fear and danger in which he might well drown. His words to Tbubui had been mere bravado. He had never concerned himself over much with his father’s magic and had no idea how he might go about protecting himself from the words muttered in the darkness, the glint of copper pins sliding into the waxen doll, his other self. The belongings he had left behind were available to anyone wishing to steal a ring, a kilt linen, even a pot of kohl his hands had held. Part of himself was in everything he wore and regularly held, and that part would be used to kill him.

  Pangs of anxiety came and went, and he wanted to stand up and shout to his captain, “Hurry! Oh hurry!” But his sailors were already labouring against the first intimations of the annual flood and could do no more. Nor would it do any good to stop at the temples and shrines along the way. It would waste precious hours, and Hori had the despairing feeling that the gods had withdrawn their favour from his family, why he did not know. All he knew was that the
words he whispered as he sat with eyes squinting against the white eternity of the southern light were pushed back into his mouth, his throat, rebounding from the deaf ears of the immortals.

  The day finally came when the barge backed clumsily towards the east bank, the ramp was out, and Hori stood on solid ground, surveying Koptos. There was not much to see. Desert traffic still began and ended here, and the markets, warehouses and bazaars were frantic with commerce, but beyond the desert track leading to the Eastern Sea the town itself dreamed, tiny, quiet and unchanged from one year to the next, sprinkled with thin palm plantations and watered by narrow, placid canals. This is where her house is, Hori thought to himself. My eyes are perhaps even now passing over it. “Antef,” he said. “Go and ask in the market where the mayor lives. Find his house and tell him to send a litter for me.”

  He retired to the barge and sat listening to the activity along the riverfront, but gradually he became aware of another sound, or the lack of sound. It was as though Koptos was in alliance with the profound, burning silences of the desert. The noise of human industry did not reach far. It was deadened, foreshortened, a bleat against the inexorable nothingness, soon snatched away.

  Before long he saw Antef returning, with four bearers carrying a folded litter at his heels. “The mayor is aghast at your coming!” the young man shouted. “He is turning his household upside down on your behalf!” Hori laughed, and for a moment the fear receded.