Bakmut bowed but stood her ground. “I am sorry, Highness, but the Princess will see no one,” she said obstinately. Khaemwaset did not waste time arguing. He grasped her arm and pulled her aside, going to stand in the middle of the ante-room.
“Sheritra!” he called. “Come out at once. I wish to ask you a question.”
For a long time there was no answer, and Khaemwaset was preparing to force the inner door when he heard her stirring. The door was unlatched but she did not appear. Instead her voice floated to him from somewhere in the dimness beyond.
“You may ask and I will answer, Father,” she said, “but it will be the last time. I wish no more commerce with anyone, particularly with you.”
“You are disrespectful,” he began furiously, but she broke in: “Ask your question and do not tire me too far, or I may not answer you at all.” There was something dead about her tone, Khaemwaset realized, checking the flood of invective hovering on his tongue. So even, so indifferent, as though she were past caring about anything. His bluster died.
“Very well,” he said thickly. “Did you take the raft out last night?”
She responded immediately. “Yes I did.”
He waited for more but the silence went on until he was forced to continue.
“Did you bring it back?”
“Yes, I did.”
Again the silence. Khaemwaset felt his exasperation begin to build afresh.
“Well where is it now?” he growled.
She sighed. He could hear the soft gust of her breath and he thought he caught a glimpse of her linen within the shelter of the half-light within.
“Hori took the skiff and went to talk to Sisenet about your wife,” she said woodenly. “Antef and I took the raft and went after him. We brought him home. I got off, but Hori has gone north with his friend. You will not see him again.”
“He just could not let go!” Khaemwaset exploded. “He actually killed because he could not let go! Good riddance to him! I hope he stays in the Delta until he rots!”
“He will not reach the Delta,” that cold, disembodied voice came drifting. “He will be dead by tomorrow night. Sisenet told him so. Sisenet wielded the pins, Father, but you decreed that Hori should die. Think of that tomorrow night when you gaze into your mirror.”
“Well what of you?” Khaemwaset said uneasily, her tone more than her words making him suddenly chill. “What nonsense are you playing out, Sheritra? Harmin will be here this afternoon to visit his mother. Will you refuse him entry also?”
“I have decided not to marry Harmin after all,” she replied, and now her voice wavered. “In fact, Father I have decided to remain a single woman. Now go away.”
He waited for some moments after the door had been firmly closed, expostulating, swearing, even pleading, but no sound came from the other side. It was as though he stood at the sealed entrance to some tomb, and in the end he grew afraid and went away.
That afternoon Harmin did indeed come to visit Tbubui, and the three of them, Khaemwaset, his wife and her son, sat in the garden while servants passed damp cloths over their limbs and fed them fruit and beer. Harmin was unusually attentive to Tbubui, stroking her face, rearranging her pillows, meeting her glance with a warm smile when she had a joke to share. How unlike Hori he is, Khaemwaset thought nostalgically. Here is genuine concern and respect, a son knowing his place and keeping it out of love for his parent. Whatever devil has entered Sheritra, the little fool, to refuse this gracious young man?
As if in answer to his musing, Harmin rose and bowed. “With your permission, Prince, I should like to spend some time with Sheritra now,” he said. Khaemwaset looked up at him with embarrassment.
“Dear Harmin,” he said. “I am afraid that Sheritra is indisposed and is seeing no one today. She sends you her apologies and, of course, her love.”
A glance of swift understanding passed between mother and son. Harmin’s face fell. “I am devastated,” he said, “but tell her that she has my sympathy. In that case I shall go home and sleep.” He bent and kissed Tbubui, bowed again to Khaemwaset and glided away, kilt swinging against sturdy, shapely legs, his black hair bouncing on his shoulders.
“He is a fine young man,” Khaemwaset said, secretly hoping that Sheritra would soon get over her foolishness. “You have every reason to be proud of him.” He waved away a proffered dish and hitched closer to Tbubui. “I have not told you about Hori,” he said in a low voice. “He is heading for the Delta, doubtless to pour out to his mother his tale of woe. I am ashamed of my family, Tbubui. But at least you will be safe for a while.”
She smiled at him, a slow, speculative curling of her wide mouth, and her eyes narrowed. “Oh, I think I am very safe now,” she answered. “It was a pity that you were unable to feed him his gruel the other morning, but no harm has been done. I do not intend to worry about Hori anymore.”
In a rush of abject guilt he reached for her, but she lay back, signalled to a fan-bearer, and closed her eyes. Khaemwaset was left to sit, chin in hand, and brood, while the day became hotter and the rhythmic chanting of his servants treading grapes in the vat in the compound wafted to him intermittently, charged with a raucous triumph.
In spite of his theory that Hori was seeking Nubnofret’s broad bosom on which to cry out his vindictiveness, Khaemwaset spent an uneasy night. The evening had seemed to close in with an ominous grip, the hands of cataclysm, and mindful of Sheritra’s scornful words, he was unable to lift the mirror from its gilded case on his cosmetic table.
He went to his couch early, drank some wine and pressed Kasa into conversation. He thought of going to the concubines’ house and making love to Tbubui, but he was too anxious, too full of a vague presentiment of doom, to forget himself in that act.
One night lamp did not seem enough. Things moved in the shadows just out of his vision, and the small breeze became magnified into strange sighings and tiny sobbings in his room. Shouting to Kasa he ordered more light and felt reassured, but it was a long time before he could fall asleep. Even when he did, he kept waking up with a start and peering about, his dreams vivid and confusing and totally forgotten by the time he sat up on the couch.
The mood of dislocation followed him into the next day. Every word spoken to him seemed heavy with some arcane meaning he could not quite grasp, and each action took on the ponderous weight of ritual. The house was filled with an atmosphere he could not describe but that made him tense with the feeling of threat. He dreaded the night. In the afternoon he went to Tbubui, but even there he was not able to free himself of his inarticulate fear. Nor could he speak of it. It was too unformed.
Evening came, and he could not eat. He and Tbubui sat behind their small tables in the vast reception hall, waited upon by servants ranged all about the walls, entertained by the harpist whose graceful notes echoed in that empty place and reminded Khaemwaset suddenly of other evenings, of Nubnofret resplendent and formidable in blue and gold, reprimanding an indignant, squirming Sheritra while Hori grinned and looked on, Antef hovering behind him. The nights had been warm then, redolent with family closeness, with hallowed routine and blessed predictability, and on this night he missed it all with a blinding jolt of homesickness. Perhaps Harmin and Sisenet would move into the house, and sit behind their own flower-strewn dining tables, bolstered with cushions, merry with wine, talking carefully to whatever official guests graced the hall, but the air of sadness, of good times past, would never leave this gracious room. One family has disintegrated, but I am building another, he thought as a defence against that awful spasm of loneliness. There is Tbubui’s baby, after all. Sheritra can surely be talked out of her mysterious female mood and she and Harmin will fill the house with the happy chaos of my grandchildren. But the sense of the broken, of things gone that could never be mended, would not go away
“Khaemwaset, I have said the same thing to you three times,” Tbubui interrupted his musings, leaning across to kiss him perfunctorily. “Where are you?”
He gave her his attention with an effort of the will. “I am sorry, beloved,” he said. “What was it?”
“Your brother Si-Montu has sent a message wanting to know if he can come and dine next week. Is that acceptable?”
Acceptable. Khaemwaset suddenly gripped her arm. “Tbubui, sleep with me in my own quarters tonight, on my couch,” he begged. “I need you there.”
Her light-heartedness vanished and she regarded him with a worried frown. “Of course I will,” she agreed. “Whatever is the matter, Highness?”
But he could not tell her. The fragrance of the flowers, the deep mauve translucence of the wine, even the cascade of notes pouring from the harpist’s fingers, were all conspiring with the gloomy atmosphere of the house to plunge him into the past and torture him with tenors for the present. “The figs are sour,” was all he said.
She came to his suite much later, wafting to the couch on a cloud of her perfume and a ripple of loose, seductive linen. Without a word she shed the linen and spread his legs, easing herself down on him in practised motions, and with a groan he gave himself up to the exquisite sensations only she could tease from him. But long after she was asleep, breathing evenly in the crook of his arm, he lay wide awake in the grip of premonition. He dared not look at her. He had done so once, after she had slipped into unconsciousness, and there had been something about the glitter of her eyes under half-closed lids, the sight of her small, animal teeth between parted lips, that had struck him with fear.
He clung to the sounds of sanity. He heard the guard sighing outside the suite. He heard Kasa snoring in the other room. Jackals howled far away on the desert, and much closer in, an owl hooted in the garden. The lamp spat and the shadows gyrated for a moment. These things are real, he thought. These things arc comfort and sanity. Hold them close, for they are infinitely precious.
He was still awake to hear whispering outside. He lay quietly, waiting, until Ib approached the couch. The man was naked, obviously roused precipitously from his mat in the passage. “Speak,” Khaemwaset said, and at the word Tbubui stirred beside him and her cool flesh disengaged from his. She turned over.
“Highness, you had better get up,” Ib whispered. “Antef has returned with the raft and your son. Please come.”
Hori is dead, Khaemwaset said to himself as he nodded, waved Ib away and slipped carefully from the couch. That is the aura of desolation that has been slowly filling the house. Hori is dead. Wrapping a kilt around his waist and feeling for his sandals, he left the room and went through into the passage. Antef was waiting, his face pale, his whole attitude one of exhaustion, but his eyes met Khaemwaset’s with the clear, straight stare of a pure conscience. “Speak,” Khaemwaset said again, acknowledging the young man’s bow.
“Prince, your son is dead,” Antef said bluntly. “His body lies on the raft at the watersteps. He died in terrible pain but he did not rail against the gods or you. His judging will surely be favourable.”
“I do not understand,” Khaemwaset said haltingly. “Hori was ill, certainly, when I detained him, but I thought he had contracted some sickness in Koptos. He would recover … he would get well …”
“He told your Highness exactly what was wrong with him,” Antef said bluntly, “but your Highness refused to listen. Regret is vain. He wanted me to tell you that, though his end is terrible, it is not as terrible as your fate. Also that he loved you.”
For answer Khaemwaset turned on his heel and began to run along the torchlit corridor. Through the house he sped, and as he ran he was thinking, Hori! My son! My flesh! It was a game, it was a dangerous foolishness, I never meant to do you any harm, I would not really have poisoned you, I love you, oh Hori, why? Why? He heard Antef, Ib and Kasa pounding after him. Though he ran as fast as he could, he was unable to put distance between himself and the growing guilt and remorse already snapping at his heels so that by the time he almost fell down the water-steps and stood looking down onto the raft he was weeping with self-loathing.
Hori lay in a huddle under a blanket, rocking imperceptibly on the Nile’s swell. He looked like nothing better than a pile of dirty linen waiting to be laundered. Khaemwaset stepped from the stone onto the raft, and kneeling, he turned back the covering. He was a setem-priest, and his first thought on seeing the curled body was that the embalmers would have difficulty in straightening him out, for Hori was lying with his knees jammed up under his chin. But then he saw the matted hair, the beautiful face that had been the talk of the whole of Egypt loose and empty in death, one hand lying palm up in a gesture of supplication, and all thought fled. Bowing over the body Khaemwaset began to keen, great wails of love and loss that echoed from the far, unseen bank of the river and returned with a mocking hollowness. His hands moved gently, clumsily, over his son, touching the cold, already putrefying flesh, the lifeless tresses, the strong nose and unresponsive mouth. He was aware of the little group standing helplessly on the watersteps, but he did not care. “I meant you no harm!” he groaned, the knowledge of the lie sending another dagger into his heart. “I was deluded, blinded, forgive me, Hori!” But Hori did not move, did not smile his forgiveness, did not understand, and now it was too late.
Khaemwaset stood. “Ib,” he said unsteadily, “take his body to the House of the Dead. His beautification must begin at once for he is already rotting.” His voice broke and he could not go on.
Antef stepped forward. There was no pity in the young man’s gaze, only acceptance and a contempt for Khaemwaset. “I loved your son,” he said matter-of-factly. “Now that he is dead my association with this accursed house is ended. I will not attend Hori’s funeral. Farewell, Highness.” He bowed and was gone. Come back, Khaemwaset thought he shouted, but the words stayed in his mind. Come back, I want to know how he died, what he said, what he felt, oh what is the truth, Hori, what is the truth?
Slowly he left the raft, and as soon as he was standing on the warm stone that still held the heat of the previous day, Ib sprang into action. Khaemwaset left the crumpled body of his son and walked slowly back to the house. It is still night, he thought dizzily. Nothing has changed. Hori is dead and nothing has changed. The passage before his quarters loomed silent and empty but for the guard on his door and the flaring torches. The house still slumbered, all unknowing. Hori is dead, Khaemwaset wanted to shriek at the top of his lungs. Instead he blundered into his quarters and sank onto the couch.
“Hori is dead,” he said, Tbubui shifted and groaned softly. For a moment he thought that she had gone back to sleep, but then she pushed back the sheets and sat up.
“What?” she said.
“Hori is dead,” he repeated like a litany. He began to sway in his extremity.
She stared at him indifferently, her eyes swollen with sleep. “Yes, I know,” she said.
He froze. “What do you mean?” he breathed. Suddenly his heart began to gallop in his chest.
“Just what I said,” she offered, running a hand over her face and yawning broadly. “Nenefer-ka-Ptah put a spell on him. Actually the spell was put on him earlier, because he dared to go to Koptos. Not that it would have mattered. I knew you wouldn’t believe him anyway.”
Khaemwaset felt the room begin to spin and recede. “What are you saying?” he managed. “What do you mean?”
She yawned again, and passed a pink tongue over her lips. “I mean, now that Hori is dead, and you refused to help him, your degradation is complete, Khaemwaset, and my task is done. I am not obliged to play my part anymore. I am thirsty,” she went on. “Is there any wine left?” She pulled herself to the edge of the couch and poured wine into a cup. Khaemwaset watched her, incredulous, as she drained it, then set the cup back on the table with a click. She regarded him impatiently. “Hori was right,” she said, shaking back her hair and sliding from the couch. Her naked body caught the faint light, which caressed it smoothly, licking along the stretch of her long thighs, curving around her swinging breasts. “The story he brought back is true. But what does it matter? I am her
e. I give you what you need. I am your wife.”
“True?” he stammered, not understanding, everything in him whirling sickeningly, a thousand voices, a thousand emotions, all at variance with one another. He clutched at the sheets to still the waves of sick dizziness breaking over him. “What story, Tbubui? If your lineage is less than pure I do not care.”
“You do not see it, do you?” she taunted him, stretching, and he was mesmerized as always by the flexing of those inviting muscles. All at once he was consumed with lust for her, as though in possessing her body yet again he could wipe out his grief, his guilt, his bewilderment. She passed a hand over her nipples and down across her taut stomach.
“I am a corpse, Khaemwaset” she said calmly. “Sisenet is not my brother, he is my dear husband Nenefer-ka-Ptah. You yourself raised us, as we had hoped someone would. We are the legitimate owners of the Scroll of Thoth, as far as any mortals may be legitimate owners of such a magical and precious and dangerous thing.” She gave him a winning smile. “I suppose you are the owner now through your thieving, and much good may it do you. Thoth does not take kindly to humans interfering in divine matters. Nenefer-ka-Ptah and I, yes and Merhu too, my son you call Harmin, paid dearly for our claim to the Scroll, but it was worth it. Yes it was.”
She glided close to him and now he could smell her perfume. It had tantalized him from the beginning, that blend of myrrh and something else, something he could not name. But now, in his numb horror and dawning realization of what he had done, he recognized the odour that underlay the pungent, troubling scent. The myrrh was underpinned by the odour of the charnel-house, a lingering stench of death and decay he had smelled a dozen times when he had lifted the lids of coffins to find the mouldering remains of the long dead beneath. Tbubui was drenched in it beneath the heavy myrrh, her body exuding it with every movement. Khaemwaset wanted to retch.
While she slid seductively to and fro, he was sitting frozen on the couch, his mind momentarily calcified. Hori was right, he was thinking idiotically. Hori was right. The gods have mercy, Hori was right. I have loved a corpse. “Yes,” he choked.
Scroll of Saqqara Page 53
