Then what of the bodies? his thoughts ran on under the insistent throbbing of his knee. Robbers often tore corpses apart in their hunt for valuable amulets and would leave the dismembered remains strewn about the chamber, or jumbled in the coffins themselves. Had the two bodies simply dissolved in the water, so that he had been wading in diluted embalming fluid? He shuddered.
He had now stumbled his way around the sprawling ruins of Unas’s resting place and had turned towards the familiar chaos of his excavation. Two of his servants squatted under the awning of his tent, and the Overseer’s departing workmen had left a pile of jumbled tools at the foot of the debris beside the descending steps. The whole scene seemed melancholy under Ra’s pitiless late-afternoon cruelty.
When he was close enough, Hori hailed the servants. Startled, their heads came up, then one of them disappeared behind the tent. A moment later the litter and its bearers came struggling over the sand. Gratefully, Hori sank onto it and was carried the last few yards to the tent. He inspected his knee. The gash was to the bone and jagged, and he marvelled that such a small thing could inflict so much damage. But perhaps it had been wedged beside a sharp stone, he thought. I will need this stitched closed. Father will be pleased. He grimaced.
The litter stopped. “Go into the tomb and tell the men to come out,” he ordered his steward. “Tell them I am here.” He allowed the other man to help him into his chair but forbade him to wash the wound. The few minutes he had spent unprotected under the sun had made him slightly dizzy and he gulped a jar of beer and watched the Overseer and torchbearers disgorge, puzzled and uncertain, from the tomb mouth. “That tunnel leads up and out into Osiris Unas’s ruins,” he explained to the incredulous Overseer. “If you explore the outer rim of the walls you will find it, and the stone I pushed away to get out. Replace the stone. Post the guards on this entrance, and go home.”
The man nodded. “You are injured, Highness.”
Hori managed a grin. “It was an adventurous few minutes. I will see you tomorrow.” He did not wait until the men had dispersed. Still clutching the earring, he pulled himself out of the chair and back onto the litter, and gave the command to take him home. It was time to talk to Khaemwaset.
9
How pleasant is mine hour!
Might an hour only become for me eternity,
when I sleep with thee
Thou didst lift up mine heart …
when it was night.
HE WISHEDthat the ride could have been longer. He dreaded telling his father what he had done, and now that the deed was accomplished he was less sure that Tbubui had been correct in her advice. Nursing his knee, he sat brooding with the curtains closed, oblivious to the hum of the city around him and fighting the sense that his maturity was slipping away until he was a little boy again.
His hope to enter the house unobserved proved vain. As he eased himself from the litter at the rear entrance, Sheritra came out, a cup of milk in her hand, and exclaimed, “Hori! Whatever have you been doing? You are filthy and scratched from head to toe and you smell awful!” She came closer. “And how did you hurt your knee?”
For answer he uncurled his fingers. The earring lay glowing complacently on his palm. “I opened the secret chamber in the tomb,” he admitted ruefully. “And I found a tunnel. This was lying in it and it ripped my knee. Now I must confess to Father. Where is he?”
“In Mother’s rooms, playing sennet.” She traced the wound with one gentle finger. “He will be furious with you, Hori, you know that, don’t you?” Then her gaze became fixed on the jewel. Lifting it, she turned it over thoughtfully. “Ancient turquoise,” she commented. “This might mollify him a little if you are lucky. It reminds me of the turquoise Harmin was wearing yesterday. He had a fortune in ancient stone on his wrists and around his neck.”
Those in love bring up the name of the beloved at every opportunity, Hori reflected wryly. Aloud he said, “What is a member of an impoverished noble family doing with a fortune in turquoise?”
“They are not impoverished, only modestly wealthy,” she rebuked him quickly. “And besides, Harmin told me that the stones are heirlooms to be handed down to his son.” She passed him the earring. “You had better find Father. I don’t suppose you noticed the new house snake sunning himself as you came in?”
Hori shook his head and left her, making his way along the passage towards his mother’s rooms His leg was now stiffening and he forced it to bend, the pain in his body and the discomfort in his conscience rendering him entirely miserable. He did not even have Antef to put the day into a better perspective.
Khaemwaset and Nubnofret were sitting on low stools just inside the steps that led down to the cloistered terrace and the side garden beyond. Their heads were together, bent over the sennet board, and as Hori went towards them he could hear the rattle of the sticks and his mother’s low laugh. Wernuro rose from her corner and bowed to him and he smiled at her, coming up to his parents and halting selfconsciously. You are a man, he told himself sternly. You made an adult decision. Now stand by it, you fool. His father was making a move, hand stroking his chin as he pondered the board, and it was Nubnofret who looked up, the breeze from the garden momentarily fluttering her scarlet linen. Her smile of welcome faded. “Hori!” she said. “What happened to you? Wernuro, bring a chair quickly.”
Khaemwaset gave him one glance. “And wine also,” he added. “Was there an accident at the tomb?”
The young man sank back into the chair Wernuro had placed respectfully behind him, noting at the same time the lack of surprise in his father’s voice and attitude. It was almost as though Khaemwaset was waiting for something untoward. “Father, did you do the Tibi horoscopes by any chance?” he suddenly asked. Khaemwaset shook his head. “For Mekhir then? Mekhir is almost upon us.” Again Khaemwaset shook his head. He was waiting for an explanation, and again Hori had the impression that his father had steeled himself for bad news. There was an air of strain about the alert, handsome features, a tension in Khaemwaset’s thickset, muscular body. For the first time, in spite of the trouble Hori felt he was embroiled in, he found himself looking at his father objectively, as another adult male, divorced from the hazy cocoon of fatherhood, authority and long familiarity that had always blunted Hori’s perception. Khaemwaset is a man in torment, Hori thought in surprise. How good looking he is with his intelligent eyes and wide shoulders! What is happening in the secret life of his ka? With these astonishing and somehow reassuring thoughts Hori’s confidence came surging back. My father is a man just like myself, the revelation came. No more, and no less.
“Well I suppose we can do without our horoscopes for another month,” he said slowly. “It does not really matter. And in answer to your question, Father, there was no accident at the tomb. I opened a door in the false wall today.”
A dead silence fell. Wernuro’s small movements as she poured wine for Hori went almost unnoticed. Hori raised the silver cup, drank and replaced it. Khaemwaset was staring at him intently, obviously angry but also, it seemed to Hori, afraid. Nubnofret had turned towards the terrace and was gazing out at the trees now stirring against a softly reddening sky. This was none of her business.
At last Khaemwaset spoke, his voice unnaturally steady. “I do not recall giving you permission to do such a thing, my son.” His eyes remained fixed on Hori’s face. Hori found himself entirely calm.
“I did not ask it,” he replied. “I took the responsibility for the decision upon myself.”
“Why?”
Tbubui’s reasoning unwound through Hori’s mind, and all at once her arguments seemed spurious, selfish. I have been lying to myself, he thought, still in that same brilliant calm. I will tell him the truth.
“Because I wanted to,” he said. “You have shown little interest in the tomb and its findings, indeed, often you seem afraid of it. It has consumed the greater part of my time for the last three months. I chose to knock out the wall at my own convenience instead of waiting for you to
do the deed at yours.”
Khaemwaset blinked. His hand strayed to the sennet board and he picked up a gold cone, his thumb exploring its smooth surfaces absently. “The paintings?” he said. “Are they destroyed?” The anger was still there, Hori saw, simmering under this man’s rigid control.
“Yes,” he replied brusquely. “The wall is in fact mostly rock, with a wood and plaster door set approximately in the middle of it. Opening the door meant reducing the scenes to flakes of plaster. I intend to have it rebuilt and the scenes repainted later.”
There was another awkward silence. It was as though Khaemwaset longed to ask the inevitable question but dared not do so. At length he carefully replaced the cone on the House of Spitting, spread his hennaed hands palms up, and found the courage. “What was beyond the door, Hori?”
Hori sipped the wine and found himself hungry. “There is a small chamber containing two coffins, both empty. The coffins had no lids. They either never existed or they have vanished. The floor of the room is ankle deep in stagnant water. There are niches in the walls where the shawabtis ought to be standing, but they too are empty.”
Khaemwaset nodded, his eyes still on his hands. “No inscriptions? No paintwork?”
“None. But I believe that the coffins were once occupied. Thieves broke in and rifled the contents, and probably tore apart the corpses. They entered through a narrow tunnel that links the chamber with the desert. I injured my knee crawling through it and dragging myself over this.” He held out the earring. His father took it slowly and examined it, and Nubnofret came to life.
“How lovely it is, Khaemwaset!” she exclaimed. “Clean it and it would beautify any aristocratic neck!”
“I will clean it,” he said with difficulty, “but it will be replaced in the tomb.”
“No,” Hori spoke up. “I will clean it and put it back.” Khaemwaset shot him a dark glance but, to Hori’s amazement, he passed back the gem and rose.
“Come and I will dress your wound,” he said. “Nubnofret, we will finish the game later.” His tone brooked no argument. Meekly Hori stood and followed him.
Khaemwaset cleaned, stitched and bound the knee without a word. But as he was closing his herb chest he said, “You know that I am violently angry with you, don’t you, Hori?”
Hori wanted nothing more, now, than to go to sleep. “Yes I do,” he answered. “But I also know that you are afraid. Why?”
His father stood motionless for a moment, then he sighed and slumped onto one of the large scroll containers. “Something has changed between us,” he said. “Indeed the whole fabric of this family is changing and I do not know whether it is for good or ill. The scroll you saw me take—I read part of it aloud trying to translate it. And since then there has been Tbubui and this tomb. Sometimes I feel as if we have set out along a path from which we cannot turn back.”
That is not all, Hori thought, regarding his father’s shadowed features. What the rest is, I have no idea. “So you have not seriously considered the answers to the mystery of the water, the baboons, the scroll itself?” he asked.
Khaemwaset straightened. “Of course I have!” he replied sharply. “But I am not sure I want to know the answers.”
“Why? Shall we consider them now, together? Four bodies, Father, two of them hidden away behind a false wall. A tomb undesecrated, a secret but ravaged chamber, surely this is the challenge of a lifetime!”
“You should not presume that the inner chamber was robbed,” Khaemwaset said carefully. “I will come with you tomorrow and see it, but it sounds as though the place was either never finished or deliberately left crudely cut and unpainted.” He got up and offered an arm to his son. “Many times I have wished that we had left the accursed place alone. Let me help you to your couch.”
Hori gratefully leaned on him. In a rush of affection the young man was tempted to blurt out his visit to Tbubui, his growing preoccupation with her, but the touch of his father’s flesh somehow forbade it. There will be time enough, he thought painfully, drowsily. That is a fight I must be healthy to win. I wish he had offered me poppy, but perhaps the withholding of it is his way of punishing me for my arrogance today. As soon as possible I will go to Sisenet’s house and tell Tbubui what I have done.
Along the passages the servants were lighting the torches, and in his suite the lamps already glowed. Khaemwaset lowered him onto his couch, told him he might eat there later and bade him rest. Before his father had left the room, Hori was asleep.
He did not wake for dinner. A servant brought food, which after a time cooled and congealed, but Hori slumbered on. He came to himself once, sensing the lateness of the hour by the air of deep calm that suffused the house. His night lamp had gone out and his body servant lay snoring quietly beyond the bedchamber door. His knee throbbed in a relentless rhythm but he knew it was not the pain that had woken him. He had been dreaming something unsettling, something verging on nightmare, but he could not now remember what it was. Struggling up he poured himself water and drank thirstily, then lay down again and stared into the darkness
When next he formed a conscious thought, his breakfast was being placed by his feet and the doors to his private shrine were being opened. Today will be difficult, he thought, picking at the food. Father will still be in a bad humour and my wound will be at its worst. Well, at least Antef comes home soon. But the thought of his servant and best friend returning did not give him the stab of excitement it should have. Antef would wait for Hori to suggest a hunting expedition, a fishing afternoon, a jaunt to the markers or a boating party with other friends. They had always been close. Antef had never crossed the ephemeral and sometimes complicated line of deference that must forever separate him from his royal companion. Still, theirs was a warm and companionable relationship. The gossip mongers of Memphis had at one time gleefully spread the rumour that Antef was in fact Khaemwaset’s son by a concubine or, better still, a servant girl, but the story soon died. The Prince was too upright a man not to acknowledge his offspring and Memphis was full of juicier topics of conversation.
In Antef, Hori had found his equal in matters of opinion, taste and physical pursuits, and Antef could keep a royal secret as well as any well trained servant. All the same, Hori thought as he lit the incense before Ptah and hurried through his morning prayers, I do not know if I wish to divulge to him my interest in Tbubui. A woman can destroy a friendship, indeed, Tbubui is already affecting my feelings for Antef. I do not want to go hunting or roaming in the markets with him. I do not want to spend my leisure time in the garden drinking beer and teasing each other about the last wrestling bout we had. When I was younger we traded lies concerning our sexual prowess but I cannot betray Tbubui like that. If I confide in him will he understand that I want to spend most of my time with her? Guiltily, he wrenched his mind back to the smiling golden god with his gleaming blue lapis cap whom he served, and finished his obeisances with proper attention. Then he ordered out his litter, allowed his body servant to paint his face and limped out of the house.
Two hours later he stood with Khaemwaset amid the rubble left when the false wall was torn down, staring at the two newly exposed coffins. Torches had been fixed to the rock on either side of the untidy hole and they sent an unsteady red light into the chamber which did nothing to dispel its sinister atmosphere. After a while Hori retired to the camp stool his servant had brought, his now stiff leg flung out before him, and watched his father pick up a lamp and splash his way to the coffins. Khaemwaset grimaced as Hori had done at the distasteful odour and feel of the pool. After a careful examination of the sarcophagi he waded back to his son.
“You are right,” he said briskly. “They were occupied at one time. But if the bodies were dismembered by thieves in search of valuables and flung into the water, there would be some trace of them. The linen windings and mummified flesh would have dissolved but not the bones. Are you sure nothing lies under the water?”
“Nothing,” Hori replied firmly. “I hated to do it
but I slid my feet over every inch of the floor. It is slimy rock, no more. Father, is it possible that the princess Ahura and her husband were first buried there, in the small chamber, and later, when the tomb was inspected and found to be seeping water, the sem-priests had new coffins made for them out here?”
“It is possible,” Khaemwaset agreed. “But then why is the first burial room so poorly executed? Did these people have three chambers instead of the customary two, one for goods and one for bodies, and if so why? For a child, perhaps, or children? But if that is so, if the tomb was opened later by other members of the family, why the subterfuge of a false wall? What had to be hidden, Hori? There is nothing in that room. Thieves look for valuables, small things, and may destroy but ultimately leave behind anything not easily portable. Yet beneath the water there is no trace of splintered furniture, shrine pieces, statues, anything. And if the chamber was prepared for other members of the family, surely it would have been as lavishly decorated as the rest of the tomb.” He pushed his feet back into his sandals and Kasa knelt to lace them. “Only one child, a son, is depicted on these walls,” he went on. “I confess I am completely puzzled. I do not think that we shall ever unravel the answers.”
“Well what of the scroll?” Hori suggested. “Can you not look at it again, Father? And perhaps this time it will be clearer to you? It may contain some hint for us.”
“It may,” Khaemwaset said doubtfully, hesitantly. “And I know that if we repair and re-seal this place without exploring all avenues of speculation you will always be dissatisfied.”
“Will you not also wonder about it from time to time?” Hori asked diffidently, noting his father’s unease. Khaemwaset was glancing slowly around, one hand tightly gripping the Eye of Horus pectoral resting on his broad chest. He shook his head emphatically.
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