Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  They tied up at the southern docks on the outskirts of the foreign quarter, and instead of walking back through Peru-nefer to the central city, Harmin turned her south. Sheritra felt a tremor of concern. She had never plunged into this teeming life before, let alone on foot, and she was glad of Amek and his man’s comforting bulk ahead and behind. But Harmin, tactfully guiding her with a touch on her elbow now and then and an encouraging smile, did not allow her to be jostled, and soon her fear evaporated.

  As they ambled the donkey-choked, noisy streets she began to blossom under the cloak of anonymity and was soon exclaiming over the cascade of various nationalities flowing around her. Hurrians, Canaanites, Syrians, Semites, Dwellers of the Great Green exploded myriad bewildering languages in her ears. The bazaar stalls groaned under cloth of every grade and richness, gaudy jewellery, miniatures of the gods of every nation in every type of wood and stone and household items by the hundreds.

  She and Harmin wandered through it all, fingering, laughing, bargaining for fun, until Sheritra suddenly became aware that the human traffic had thinned and the street they were on could now be seen, a short stretch of dazzling whiteness ending in a mud wall and an open gate.

  “What is that?” she asked curiously Harmin brushed a smear of dust from her temple.

  “It is a shrine to the Canaanite goddess Astarte. Would you like to go in?”

  Sheritra stared. “Is it permitted?”

  Harmin smiled. “Of course. This is a shrine, not a temple. We may watch the worshippers without having to pray ourselves. I believe Astarte has a mighty temple in Pi-Ramses with many priests and priestesses, but here she has a small staff and the shrine’s routine is fairly simple.” As he was explaining to her, Harmin was ushering her forward. Together they entered through the open gate, finding themselves in an intimate outer court, unpaved and divided from the even tinier inner court by a waist-high mud wall.

  Both courts were crowded with people praying or chanting, but as Sheritra approached the heart of the shrine the cheerful bustle died away. In the respectful space surrounding the statue of the goddess a lone priestess was dancing, finger-cymbals clicking, hair ornaments jangling. She was naked and moved sinuously with eyes closed, thighs flexed, spine arched. Just beyond her was Astarte. Curious, Sheritra looked her over, both attracted and repelled by the full, upthrust breasts, the flaunting curve of the stone belly, the strong spread of the immodest legs that seemed to invite any who dared to stand within them. Sheritra glanced at Harmin, expecting his gaze to be on the dancer, but he was watching her. “Astarte gives the pleasure of orgiastic sex,” he told her. “But she is also the goddess of all forms of pure love.”

  “One would never know it to look at her!” Sheritra responded tartly. “She reminds me of the whores infesting the Peru-nefer district. Our own Hathor is also goddess of love, but with more politeness and somehow more humanity.”

  “I agree,” Harmin answered. “Astarte really has no place in Egypt. She serves cruder, more barbaric races, which is why her shrines cluster in the foreigners’ quarters of the cities. Still, she is probably older than Hathor.”

  “Grandfather has much sympathy for the foreign gods,” Sheritra told him as they left the sacred premises. “Because he has red hair and it runs in our family and we come from the home of the god Set, Ramses has made him his chief protector. He is Egyptian, of course, but Grandfather also worships his Canaanite counterpart, Baal, and regularly goes into the foreigner’ temples. To me it is wrong.”

  “To me also,” Harmin agreed quietly. “I share your views and those of your father, that Egypt is slowly being debased by the free introduction of so many strangers, both gods and men. Soon Set himself will be confused with Baal, Hathor with Astarte. Then let Egypt beware, for her fall will be near.”

  Impulsively Sheritra stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. Behind her Amek coughed discreetly. “Thank you for one of the most lovely days I have ever had,” she said fervently.

  By the time Harmin emerged from the beer-shop with a flagon and four cups, Sheritra had found a small patch of tired grass under the shadow of a wall. Amek and the soldier bowed their thanks and drank quickly, standing up, but Harmin joined Sheritra where she had flung herself down, and for a long while they sipped and talked. The beer was strong and very dark, unlike the paler brew that appeared on her father’s table each day, and her head was soon swimming, but the sensation was most agreeable.

  Eventually Harmin returned the flagon and cups, helped her to her feet, and they made their way back to the barge and the drowsy sailors. The sun was lipping the horizon, seeping orange-yellow through the dust motes hanging in the air, tinging Sheritra’s skin with a golden hue and becoming netted in her hair. She ascended the ramp, almost staggering to the cabin, and sank onto the pile of cushions with a gusty sigh. Her legs ached pleasantly and she was beginning to be hungry. Soon Harmin joined her and the craft slipped away from its mooring and turned to the north. Sheritra sighed again. I feel almost beautiful, she thought happily. I feel carefree and frivolous and full of laughter. She turned to Harmin, who was beating the dust off his kilt and staring ruefully at his filthy feet. “This has been wonderfull!” she said.

  He agreed, half laughing, she knew, at her uncharacteristic enthusiasm, but she did not take offence. “Today we did things of my choosing,” he said. “Tomorrow I must attend to various duties at home, but the day after you may decide where we go.”

  Her eyes widened. “You want to spend yet another day with me?”

  “Don’t be foolish, Princess,” he admonished her, and she heard a mild disapproval in his voice. “If I did not want to see you again I would not have suggested it. Is there to be a return to the suspicious Sheritra of old?”

  She felt chastened but not insulted. “No, Harmin,” she said meekly. “I do not believe that you are dissembling with me. Very well.” She folded her hands primly and stared thoughtfully at the sunset-drenched water lapping by. “I know,” she said finally. “We will take Father’s barge and Amek and Bakmut and float south past the city to the first secluded stretch of river, and we will spend the day swimming and catching frogs, and then we will eat sitting on the bank and then we will hunt duck in the marshes! Yes?”

  He glanced down at his smudged kilt. “Alas no,” he said sadly. “I cannot swim, Highness. Like my mother, I am afraid of water. I do not mind being on it but no power on earth can coerce me into it.” His face came up and Sheritra saw it entirely sombre. “I would enjoy watching you swim, though, and the frogs and ducks, well, I can manage that.”

  She reached out and stroked the warm, stick-straight hair. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “Then I will plan something else, a surprise, and you will not know where we are going until I come for you. Agreed?”

  He nodded, seeming still in the grip of some cold thought, but then he smiled. “I have a confession to make to you, Sheritra,” Harmin said quietly. “I hope it will not offend you.”

  Sheritra met the steady dark eyes regarding her own. She had forgotten her self-consciousness, forgotten to remember that the face he was scrutinizing so closely was mildly repugnant to most men and therefore a thing of shame. “You will not know until you try me,” she answered and then blushed, aware of the unintended provocativeness of the words, but he either ignored or genuinely did not notice their baser meaning. With a small gesture he took her hand, running his thumb gently over her open palm.

  “When I came to beg your father to treat my mother, as I was leaving and was waiting for him, I heard you singing.”

  Sheritra gave a low exclamation and tried to pull her fingers from his grasp, but he restrained her.

  “No, do not recoil,” he went on. “I had never heard such a glorious sound. I had intended to go down to the watersteps but I lingered, unable, to move. Such sweetness filled me, Sheritra! I stood there until your father found me, wondering if the beauty of the singer’s face matched her tones.”

  “Well now you know that
they do not,” Sheritra said curtly. But in spite of her cutting words she searched his expression with a hidden desperation looking for a flicker of insincerity, the well-known, tiny falter of deceit. She did not find it. Harmin’s eyebrows descended in a frown.

  “Why do you do yourself so much injustice?” he asked. “And how do you know what I regard as beautiful? I will have you know, foolish girl, that I had imagined this singer as a woman of fire and spirit. That, to me, is beauty, and you have both, do you not, under that diffident exterior?”

  She looked at him wonderingly. Oh yes! she thought, yes. Fire and spirit I have, Harmin, but I am a long way from betraying myself to you, for I have too much …

  “You have too much pride to show yourself to anyone but your family, don’t you?” Harmin smiled. “You fear that you will be repulsed, and your gifts belittled. Will you sing that song again for me now?”

  “You ask a great deal of me!”

  “I know exactly what I am asking of you,” he insisted. “Courage. Now will you sing?”

  For answer she sat straighter and willed herself not to blush. Her first notes were hesitant, and her voice cracked once, but soon her confidence began to flow and the ancient, sensuous words carried clear and sure across the river. “‘Your love, I desire it, like butter and honey. You belong to me, like best ointment on the limbs of the nobles, like finest linen …’” She sang only the woman’s part of the song, omitting the lover’s response, and she was startled when Harmin broke in softly, “‘My companionship will be for all the days, satisfying even for old age. I shall be with you every day, that I may give you my love always.’”

  Both fell silent, then Harmin left the stool, lowered himself onto the cushion beside her and, taking her face in both his warn hands, he kissed her gently on the mouth. Her first impulse was to panic. She wanted to struggle, pull away, but his lips were so unthreatening, tasting of dust and beer, and their pressure did not increase, so that in the end the tension went out of her and she put both hands on his smooth shoulders and kissed him back. When they drew apart she saw his eyes somnolent with desire. “Little Sun,” he murmured. “I am greatly looking forward to the day after tomorrow. My horoscope told me that my luck would be phenomenally high this month and lo! here I am beside you.”

  Sheritra smiled shakily, afraid that he might kiss her again, but she was coming to recognize his almost uncanny intuition regarding her needs. He scrambled to his feet, regaining the stool and began regaling her with stories of his life in Koptos. Once at her watersteps, he thanked her with formal grace for her company, placed her in Amek’s care and disappeared into the cabin, twitching the curtains closed behind him. Sheritra had time to be bathed and to don her most feminine gown before sweeping in to dinner with her chin held high.

  8

  I am strong as Thoth,

  I am as mighty as Atum,

  I walk with my legs,

  I speak with my mouth in order to seek out my foe.

  He has been given to me and he shall not be

  taken from me.

  HORI HAD SLEPTunusually late that same morning. He had planned to rise with Ra and join Antef on the river for some fishing before going to the tomb site. His body servant had dutifully roused him an hour before the dawn, but before the man was out of the room, Hori had dropped into a bottomless pit of unconsciousness again, emerging four hours later disgruntled and out of sorts.

  He took his time eating in bed, calling for the harpist to soothe his agitation while he forced bread, butter and fresh fruit into his mouth, and by the time he stood on the raised stone of the bathing house having scented water trickled over his body, he felt almost himself again. Almost. If his father had cast the horoscopes he would have been able to consult his and thus plan a day that had undeniably begun badly, but as it was, all he could do was take some sensible precautions. I will not do my archery practice today, he thought as the servant wrapped a kilt about his waist and held his jewels for selection. Better to stay away from sharp instruments. Neither will I go out in the chariot with Antef later. I will dictate some letters, look over the latest work from the tomb and then while away the rest of the afternoon talking to Sheritra in the garden. He pointed absently at a silver-and-carnelian pectoral and a couple of plain silver bracelets chased with scarabs, and the man pushed them over his unco-operative hands. I wish I could remember what I dreamt, his thoughts ran on. Then it could be interpreted and perhaps the day salvaged. Ah well. I have neglected my prayers of late. Antef, if he has forgiven me, can open my shrine and prostrate himself beside me before I do anything else. But upon his enquiry his body servant told him that Antef had gone into the city on several errands that demanded his personal attention and would not be back for hours.

  Hori immediately gave up the idea of praying. He sat beside his couch and for a time dictated letters to various friends in the Delta, his ailing grandmother, and his fellow priests of Ptah who were doing their active service for the god in the great temple at Pi-Ramses. He then riffled through the ongoing work of the artists labouring to copy the scenes in the tomb, but the thought of the tomb made him irritable. What is the matter with me? he thought for the hundredth time. I will find Father and ask him about Sisenet’s theory, see if he wants to knock down that wall. But Khaemwaset was closeted with a patient and Ib advised Hori not to wait for him. The undercurrent of restless frustration that had been simmering under the young man’s usually sunny calm became a flood of annoyance, and he ordered out a skiff and oars. Refusing an armed escort he ran down the watersteps, flung himself into the graceful little craft and began to pull himself down river.

  The day was very hot. Summer was advancing with the inexorable tread all feared, and Hori, bent over the oars and cursing under his breath, was soon bathed in sweat that ran into his eyes and rendered his hands slippery on the wood. The river was drying up slowly. Already its level had dropped appreciably from the previous month, and the water had begun to acquire the thick, oily texture of its lowest ebb. It flowed reluctantly in the direction Hori was going, but he strained every muscle he could, trying to work away his mood.

  When he stopped briefly to mop his face and tie back the hair that was sticking to his cheeks, he was surprised to see that he had almost rowed himself past the northern suburbs. What now? he wondered. Shall I turn back? But he decided to go just a little farther, and set to again, though his shoulders ached and his legs protested. Father won’t like me to be out without a soldier, or Antef at least, he said to himself. It is rather foolish. I should at least have the royal colours flying somewhere on the skiff, so that these damned fellahin crowding the river do not shout and swear at me as I get in their way. If I pull for the eastern bank the traffic will be lighter.

  He veered in that direction, rowing grimly, and had just decided to turn around, go home and order a heket of beer to drink in the garden when he glanced automatically behind him and saw Tbubui emerge from the very small cabin of a skiff little bigger than his own and step onto the land. Immediately his foul mood began to lift. Here was someone who could take him out of himself. Quickly he manoeuvered his craft towards the bank, shipping the oars and calling out, “Tbubui! It is I, Hori, son of Khaemwaset! Is this where you live?”

  At his shout she paused and turned, seemingly not at all startled to be addressed in such a way. Hori’s skiff nudged her narrow watersteps and he scrambled to stand beside her. She was wearing a short, loose, one-shouldered sheath that left one breast bare, a fashion not favoured for many years, but after a surreptitious glance, Hori realized that the unclothed breast was hidden by a waist-length white gauzy cape. She was unshod. Gold anklets tinkled as she stepped back, smiling a greeting; “Why, it is young Hori!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing rowing in this heat? Come into the house and I will have a servant wash you. You are in a lather!”

  He grinned, feeling foolish and irrationally annoyed that she had called him “young.” He saw himself at a complete disadvantage. “Thank you,”
he answered, “but I can just as easily turn my skiff around and go home. I row often to strengthen my arms for the bow and my legs for the chariot.”

  She ran an appraising eye over his sweat-drenched thighs and calves. “The exercise is obviously most efficacious,” she commented drily. “Do come and keep me company for an hour or two. My brother is away today and Harmin is rambling the city with Sheritra.”

  Why so he is. I had forgotten, Hori thought. So I will be alone with her. Somehow I don’t think that Father would approve, but the prospect of a wash and some refreshments on this abominable day is most attractive. Besides, she will be entertaining. He bowed his acceptance and they mounted the steps together and started along the cool, palm-lined path to the white house that had so captivated Khaemwaset. I must stink, Hori thought as he tried to follow her light conversation through his embarrassment, and here she is floating beside me, her linens so pristine, her perfume like a cloud surrounding her. Myrrh, I think, and something else, something …

  “Welcome to my home,” she said, and stood back to do him a formal reverence as he went in The coolness rushed to meet him and immediately his spirits began to rise

  A servant came padding on smooth, silent feet, and Tbubui bade Hori go with him. “He is Harmin’s body servant,” she explained. “He will attend you in his room, and find you a kilt while your own is being washed. When you are ready he will escort you to the garden.” She left him without waiting for his thanks, and he followed the servant, looking curiously around the bare, whitewashed walls of hall and passage.

  He was not as addicted to peace and quiet as his father, nor did he dismiss every new fashion in furnishing and domestic decoration, but the starkness of this house appealed to the solitary in him. He unconsciously breathed more deeply as he turned in through a plain cedar door and found himself facing a large couch marked at one end by a headrest of creamy ivory, a cedar bedside table inlaid with ivory on which stood a fat alabaster lamp, a jewel box, a wooden wine cup and, flung between them, an ostrich fan with a silver handle. An empty brazier huddled in one corner, and three plain tiring chests were lined up against one wall. A closed shrine stood on a pedestal beside the incense holder.