His back had begun to ache, and he scrambled to his feet and stretched, reaching down to close the shrine. Thoth, god of the wisdom I worship, he thought angrily, why do you deny me this thing? I am the only man worthy of possessing it, yet you hide it from me as though I were an ignorant peasant who would do it harm.
The room seemed cold to him. Walking to the water-clock he watched the slow drip and realized that the hour was late. Nevertheless he was restless. Snatching up a woollen cloak he went out, and, ordering the guards on his door to follow, he took the long walk through the quiet palace to the House of Books. The librarian was dozing just inside the huge double doors. He woke, and seeing who it was, made his obeisance and allowed Khaemwaset to pass.
For a further two hours Khaemwaset wandered the rows of neatly catalogued scrolls, pulling out one here, one there, exchanging brief words with the few scholars who preferred study to sleep. But the touch of old papyrus did not reassure him tonight as it usually did, and the contents seemed to him as dry and lifeless as the atmosphere in the library.
He left abruptly, intending to try and rest, for he knew tomorrow would be full, but at the door to his apartments he paused. He could hear Hori’s voice coming with a crack of yellow light further down the hallway, and Antef answering. On impulse, Khaemwaset turned left and approached his wife’s rooms. The guard at her door saluted and knocked for him, and presently Wernuro appeared, bleary-eyed and tousled, and bowed. “Is your mistress still awake?” Khaemwaset asked tersely.
“Why no, Highness,” the woman answered, suppressing a yawn. “The Princess retired over an hour ago.”
Again Khaemwaset hesitated, then he pushed into Nubnofret’s reception room. One lamp burned on a table in the corner but it was sufficient to show him the welter of cushions, cosmetic boxes, wilting flowers and discarded wine cups that told him she had spent a pleasant evening with friends and had, for once, uncharacteristically, allowed the no doubt exhausted servants to leave the mess until morning. “Thank you, Wernuro,” he said. “Go to sleep out here. I will wake you when I leave.”
Wernuro acknowledged him, but he was already picking his way to the farther door. The servant had left it ajar. Beyond, in the larger room, Nubnofret lay mounded in sheets on her couch. Khaemwaset could see the slow rise and fall of her breathing. The air was sweet with the tang of the clustered apple blossoms someone had set in a vase on the table beside her. It acted on him strangely as he moved softly to the couch and perched on the edge, conjuring every spring journey he had made to Pharaoh’s city and, mingled with that, a cascade of ancient emotions long dormant, belonging to his boyhood and youth when he had been resident in the palace “Nubnofret,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
His answer was a mutter. Nubnofret turned over, and as she did so the sheet slipped to her waist. Her sleeping robe was very thin, and Khaemwaset’s gaze became rivetted on the large, now flaccid breasts beneath with their dark aureoles and permanently raised nipples. Her warmth and the odour of her body rose to him as he sat there, shivering slightly and drawing the cloak more tightly around his shoulders. Her hair, now fingered through with grey streaks, lay in a welter upon her pillows, and in repose her face was smooth and calm.
Khaemwaset thought of the early days of their marriage when they had made love often, sometimes more in an effort to get to know each other than in passion, but it had been good. Neither of us could be called spontaneous people, he mused, but sometimes a joyfulness overtook us and we sought each other out like children rushing to play. Does she remember, I wonder, and does she wish that we were once more as close, or does she relish her many duties and look back on those days as part of a youth now thankfully gone? She knows that I rarely bother my concubines. Does she ever lie on her couch at home and long for my body? We still make love, but formally, the scratching of an occasional itch. Oh Nubnofret, ripe and stern, where has the time gone? His impulse had evaporated. As he rose she stirred and mumbled something and he turned back, but she was still asleep. He sent Wernuro back to her corner and returned to his own quarters.
In the morning he had himself dressed, jewelled and painted with care, and taking Amek, Ramose and Ib he went to visit his mother. Astnofert still retained the title of Empress bestowed on her when Ramses’ favourite for twenty years, the glorious Nefertari, had died. Nefertari had been Ramses’ full sister, and thus Khaemwaset’s aunt, but Astnofert was a half-sister. At fifty-nine years old she no longer stood beside her husband as a reigning queen for she was bedridden. Ramses had also married his daughter by her, Khaemwaset’s younger sister Bint-Anath, who had been Chief Royal Wife for the last ten years and who at thirty-six bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead Nefertari. Another queen, Meryet-amun, daughter of Nefertari, shared her father’s bed, but all Ramses’ affection went to Bint-Anath. Khaemwaset hated her Semitic name but liked her, for she was alert and intelligent as well as being ridiculously beautiful. He did not meet her often, and they did not correspond, but their few encounters were always affectionate.
Khaemwaset watched for her as he and his retinue, with Ramose calling the warning, walked sedately through the palace to the women’s quarters where Astnofert lay in solitary splendour. Though he caught a glimpse of Meryetamun, her haughty profile gliding by surrounded by guards and twittering female courtiers, his sister was not evident. At the entrance to the women’s quarters he left Amek and Ramose and went on with Ib.
His mother’s suite was not far into the harem. It opened out beyond the customary sheltering doors of the long passage into four rooms of magnificent size and luxurious appointment. The fourth room, smaller and more intimate than the others, led straight onto a covered walk and then the harem gardens. Astnofert liked to be carried to a couch there during the day so that she could lie and watch the movement of the wind in the trees and the activity of the women who filled the grass with their pastimes, gossiped away their sometimes tedious days and held their often drunken parties in the timeless heat of summer nights.
It was here that Khaemwaset found her, a grey-haired, thin lady propped up on pillows, her yellowing, unpainted face turned to the bright flow of sunlight beside her. In a corner of the room a harpist was rippling out a plaintive melody, and at Khaemwaset’s approach a servant began to gather up the cones and spools of the sennet game she had been playing with the Empress. Astnofert’s head came round in greeting, and in spite of her physical debility the gesture was still full of the grace and regality that had made her a famous beauty in the days of her youth. She smiled with difficulty, and Khaemwaset bent to kiss first her withered hand and then her lips.
“So, Khaemwaset,” she said, the words hard and precise as she laboured to form them correctly. “I hear you have been summoned to drag Ramses out of yet another marital thorn bush. He does seem to enjoy the prickles, doesn’t he?”
Another servant had quietly placed a chair for the prince and he sank into it, leaning forward and inspecting his mother’s features intently. He did not miss the tremor of her fingers as she spoke or the increased filminess of her eyes.
“I think he flings himself into trouble for the fun of the diplomatic game afterwards, Mother,” he replied chuckling. “How are you? Is there any more pain?”
“No, but you might have a word with my physician about the poppy mash you prescribed for it.” With a slow wave of her hand she dismissed the servant, who retired carrying the sennet board, and she turned back to her son. The nasty concoction is not dulling the twinges as it used to and I’m afraid he has perhaps lost the recipe you gave him.”
Khaemwaset considered lying to her but then he changed his mind. She was dying a slow death and she knew it. “The recipe is not at fault, and neither is your physician,” he answered her steadily. “When the poppy is taken day after day it begins to lose its efficacy, or rather, the body becomes habituated to it and needs more of it to perform the same task.” She was nodding, her rheumy but sharp eyes fixed on his. “Much that comes from Syria is an abomination to
me, Empress, as you know, but the poppy is a great blessing. If you were suffering a temporary complaint or were under the power of a curse that I was in the process of lifting, I would refuse to let you take any more …” Here he hesitated, but those greying eyes, the whites brown with disease, did not flinch so he continued. “… but you are dying, dear Mother. I will order the physician to give you as much poppy as you want.”
“Thank you,” she said, her mouth quirking in a half-smile. “You and I have always been honest with one another, my dear. So now that my health has been discussed and disposed of, tell me why you are looking so haggard.”
He stared at her, unsure. Outside there was a sudden burst of shrill feminine laughter as a group of young concubines sauntered past, leading three freshly washed spider monkeys that were vainly trying to sit down and groom themselves, and as Khaemwaset took a breath to answer Astnofert a pair of bluebirds dashed, trilling, into the room, circled, and flashed away into the trees in streaks of iridescent colour. Without warning he was shaken by a violent pang of longing to be one with them, to be soaring free and heedlessly into the vast hot sky away from this room in which death crept, invisible, towards the woman who had given him life. “I really do not know,” he said at last. “The family is fine …”
“Yes. Nubnofret entertained me for a while last night.”
“… and my estates prosper. Father expects no more from me than he has always done …”
She laughed, a dry wrenching sound that was nevertheless full of humour. “Which of course means that he expects everything!”
“Even so!” Khaemwaset summoned a grin, then sobered. “But …” He was unable to finish, and in the end she attempted a shrug.
“Immerse yourself in finding a husband for little Sheritra,” she advised him. “You need a new project, and there is one right under your nose.”
He did not rise to the bait. He and his mother agreed on everything but the handling of his daughter, and here she sided most emphatically with Nubnofret. “I have a new project, waiting for me at home on the Saqqara plain,” he said ruefully, “if I am ever able to get to it. Have you seen Father recently?”
She did not pursue the matter of Sheritra. “He comes to visit me once a week,” she replied. “And we chat of inconsequential things. He tells me that the stela erected at the quarries of Silsileh, the one showing you and me, Bint-Anath and himself and Ramses as heir, has been finished. I wish that I could attend its dedication.”
You can be sure that my dear brother Ramses will attend, Khaemwaset wanted to say sourly, but he did not. Of the few pleasures left to his mother, the contemplation of one of her sons instead of Nefertari’s on the future throne of Egypt was the greatest. “Is my brother Merenptah at court?” he enquired.
“No, I do not think so. He is travelling in the south, keeping his eye on some of his building projects. He will probably call on you as he passes Memphis on his way home.”
“I suppose so.”
There was little left to say. Khaemwaset, after a few more moments of idle conversation, got up, kissed her, and took his leave. Her hand was cold and leathery as he pressed it briefly between his own, and he was all at once eager to feel hot sun on his skin, to raise his face to the sky and close his eyes against Ra’s blinding glory.
Leaving the harem he took a shortcut to the family’s private garden. It was empty. Noon was approaching and the shadows under the sycamores were thin and short. The surface of the blue-tiled fish-pond was glassily still and water splashed monotonously into the fountain’s basins. Khaemwaset held his fingers under the glittering flow and found it silky and warm. He was aware of the sun’s fire slowly burning through the crisp striped linen of his headgear and it was very good. He had the curious and illogical conviction that he had been reprieved, that like a prisoner spared from execution or a very young child sent out to play, his senses were wide open to every sweet assault of his surroundings. Yet he felt grubby, tainted after breathing in his mother’s slightly offensive dry breath, and he could still sense her icy touch. Bending he plunged both hands under the fountain’s cascade and then leaned forward until the water lapped almost to his shoulders. I love her, he thought. It is not that. I do not want to die in the knowledge that all dreams are shown to be illusion. Though he stood there for a long time, watching his hands through the distortion of the moving water, he could not feel clean again.
He ate a light midday meal with Hori and Nubnofret. Hori, after sleeping late, was on his way to the House of Life with Antef and would then take a litter into the markets of the city, and Nubnofret had been invited by Royal Wife Meryet-Amun to join her for an afternoon spent sailing up some of the smaller tributaries of the Nile. Khaemwaset listened to their plans with half an ear, his mind already on the coming meeting with his father. He ate sparingly, had Kasa change his linen and set out with his escort for Pharaoh’s private office.
The closer he came to the heart of power in the palace, the more crowded the halls and waiting rooms became. Often he had to slow while Ramose’s voice was raised a notch and minor officials and nobles, slaves, servants and foreigners, went to the floor in reverence. But eventually he stood outside the oasis of quiet that was Ramses’ place of business behind the vast throne room where he sat to receive the adulation of citizen and ambassador alike.
Khaemwaset waited while the Chief Herald announced him. He was ushered in immediately, and as he walked towards the huge, untidy desk behind which his father was already rising he took note of those present. There was Tehuti-Emheb the Royal Scribe, a man of few words but a powerful and silent personality who knew more of his master’s mind and the true state of Egypt’s health than anyone. He was already kneeling in prostration, his palette on the dark-blue gold-shot lapis tiles beside him. The Khatti ambassador Urhi Teshub, his curling black beard and conical red hat framing an impressive face, was bowing slightly in the white ray of sunlight falling from the clerestory window high above. Ashahebsed was smiling frostily as he also laid himself full-length on the floor.
With a mute gesture Khaemwaset bade them all stand. He came up to Ramses, went down to kiss the jewelled feet and the long fingers airily extended, then rose and embraced his father. The servants who had been motionless around the walls sprang to life and for a moment the men by the desk were surrounded by a flurry of quiet activity. Wine was opened, tasted by Ashahebsed, and poured. Linen napkins appeared in a pristine pile on the edge of the desk. Scented water, pink and warm for the rinsing of the fingers, was laid discreetly, well out of the way of the scrolls piled before Pharaoh, and beside it several plates of various delicacies wafted the aroma of cardamom and cinnamon to Khaemwaset’s nostrils. The servants withdrew backwards, bent double. Ramses ignored them.
“Khaemwaset, you do not look well,” he commented in his laconic, cultivated voice. “The physician is always loath to prescribe for himself, is that not so? Take some wine and sharpen your wits, Prince. I am glad to see you.”
Was there reproach in that mellifluous tone? Khaemwaset looked affectionately into the clear, bright eyes ringed in thick kohl. Pharaoh was wearing long jasper-and-gold earrings that swung against his thin neck and almost touched his gold-hung shoulders. The cobra and the vulture of supreme kingship reared over his forehead on the golden band that kept his red linen helmet in place, and his fastidiously hooked nose and delicately thin lips gave Khaemwaset a renewed impression of his father as the mighty hawk god, Horus. He was exquisitely groomed, from his hennaed and ringed hands to his well-clipped toes, and Khaemwaset, watching him seat himself, arrange his flowing linens and place his hands on the desk, admired and was amused by every calculated move.
Ramses was vain, manipulative and still, at the age of sixty-four, undeniably magnetic. “Though you did not dine with me last night,” Pharaoh went on, folding his fingers together one by one, “I know that you were able to complete the small task I requested. Sutekh will get his due again this year. I will command an offering to him in your name
, so that he will gaze only upon your deed and not the seditious thought that surely filled your heart as you sealed the subsidy order.”
Now Khaemwaset laughed, and at the sound the officials dutifully laughed also, politely and briefly. “I will dine with you tonight, Mighty Bull,” he promised, sinking into the chair Ramses was indicating, “and as for Mighty Set, well, he has no cause to vent his anger on me. Do we not communicate in the making of my spells?”
Ramses inclined his head. The cobra’s crystal eyes glittered as he did so. “Indeed. And now to work.”
Urhi-Teshub stirred behind Khaemwaset, cleared his throat and came forward. Tehuti-Emheb rattled his pens.
“What is the trouble with the latest negotiations, Father?” Khaemwaset asked.
Ramses rolled his eyes to heaven, fixed the unfortunate Khatti ambassador with a cold stare and waved at his scribe. Khaemwaset turned.
“Hattusil, king of the Khatti, is now requesting that the princess’s dowry be delivered with rather than before her arrival,” Tehuti-Entheb said. “He has been having much pain and soreness in his feet, and consequently the gathering of the dowry is slow. The drought in his land has further interfered with his good intentions.”
“Good intentions,” Ramses broke in with cool sarcasm. “First he promises me the greatest dowry ever paid in his eagerness to ally himself to the most powerful House in the world. Then months go by, and I see nothing. Then I receive a letter from Queen Pudukhepa, not from Hattusil himself mind you, telling me without a shred of apology that part of the palace was burned down”—here he sniffed delicately—“and therefore the first payment is delayed.”
“Majesty,” Urhi-Teshub protested, “I myself was present when the fire broke out. The destruction was terrible! My queen was much tried, seeing my king was away performing ceremonies for the gods, but she did not fail to write to you. Egypt was not forgotten!’ His accent was guttural, his expression pained.
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