“This is a difficult form of very ancient Egyptian writing,” he said. “I am not surprised that it has mystified you, Prince. Very few scrolls of this age have survived, but I have had the privilege of examining a couple of them in Koptos, where life has gone on unchanged from generation to generation, untouched by the fevers and fervours of the north.”
Khaemwaset was not tempted to smile at the man’s somewhat quaint language. He was forcibly aware that Sisenet’s odd accent had intensified, become more broad. He still could not place it. He was so used to it issuing out of Tbubui’s mouth that he had ceased to notice it, but he spoke to Sisenet much less frequently and now it rang in his ears, a pleasant, courtly lilt.
“Are you telling me that you are in fact able to translate that … that thing?” Khaemwaset jabbed one impatient finger at the smooth, beige papyrus held open between Sisenet’s quiet hands. Sisenet’s eyebrows shot up.
“But of course, Highness,” he said. “A moment, and I will write it down for you.”
Unbelieving, Khaemwaset saw him lay the palette across the scroll to prevent it from rolling shut, and begin to write, his pen scratching loudly and surely across the unblemished paper Khaemwaset’s temporary scribe had laid ready. He found it difficult to breathe. Fear and excitement had gripped him and he leaned forward tensely, hands locked between his knees, mesmerized by the columns of hieroglyphs taking shape under Sisenet’s sleek black head. The moments slid by. How can he be so calm, so uninvolved? Khaemwaset wondered hotly. Though perhaps what he is writing has no significance. Perhaps it is a love poem, a family event recorded joyously, even a list of some kind … But he remembered the curious and familiar cadence of the sentences, the light, dry feel of the bandaged hand from which he had severed the scroll, and his mind retreated and fell silent.
After what seemed a very long time, Sisenet straightened and laid the pen back in its slot on the palette. He passed the sheet of papyrus over the desk, wordlessly handing it to Khaemwaset, who was unable to still the tremor in his arm as he took it. The room was becoming hotter now, the fleeting coolness of early morning giving way to stifling, motionless air. The scroll no longer quivered, for the draughts had ceased. Sisenet had allowed it to roll up again, and now waited, his hands clasped on the desk beside it.
Khaemwaset had begun to sweat. He was aware of Sisenet’s clear, unwavering observation as he forced his eyes to begin the reading, and he cursed himself for so betraying his agitation. At first his mind did not register what his gaze was presenting and he was forced to go back and scan the lines again, but then eye and mind suddenly harmonized and the shock of it went through Khaemwaset like a galvanizing drug.
“Oh gods, I said these words even though I did not understand them,” he croaked, horror and elation coursing through him, and though he tried to hold on to the elation, the horror grew. “Gods! Gods! What have I done?”
“It was a foolish thing to do once you realized, as you must have, that the words had the cadence of a spell,” Sisenet replied, “but in this case a harmless mistake. Highness, are you ill?”
Khaemwaset was aware of him half rising from behind the desk, and managed to wave him down. “No! I am not ill!”
“Surely you do not believe in this thing, Prince?” Sisenet said slowly. “I apologize, for I seem to have given you a shock. The Scroll of Thoth is a matter of myth and legend only. The story of its existence is merely an expression of man’s longing to control both life and death. Only the gods have that power. This,” and he flicked the scroll contemptuously with a long fingernail, “this is a game. Someone fabricated a Scroll of Thoth out of his need, his desire for ultimate power, or perhaps even out of his anguish. A dead loved one, a horror of the Judgment Hall because of a life spent doing evil.” Sisenet shrugged. “Who knows? The Scroll does not exist. It has never existed, and if you consider the matter for a moment, Highness, you must admit that it simply could not exist.”
Khaemwaset was struggling for control, the papyrus clutched tightly in both hands. “I am a magician,” he responded, his voice still clogged with fear. “I know many spells that have mighty power. I know how other magicians have sought this Scroll for hentis beyond counting, and their searches have been conducted with the absolute certainty that such a thing exists and has the power to bend the dead and the living to its will.”
“And I tell you, Prince, that although magic may control many areas of our lives because the magician may coerce the gods into doing what is requested, we cannot use it to resurrect the dead or communicate with animals and birds as the legitimate owner of the Scroll of Thoth is supposed to be able to do, no matter how fervently we desire to do so. This scroll has great value, but as an historic artifact, not as a myth come to reality. Do you not think that if the scroll had any real power the tomb would be empty?”
Khaemwaset clenched his teeth. He knew that he was white and shaking, for he was consumed with the feeling that he was in fact asleep, on his couch in a blistering afternoon, in the grip of a dreadful nightmare. All he could think of while Sisenet was talking in that maddening, not-quite-recognized accent, his face full of concern and skepticism and something else, something that might have been faint amusement, was the night he had spoken the strange words and then rushed to negate the power he had felt settle around him.
He rose. “Come,” he said, and without waiting he stumbled to the doors. “Ib!” he shouted. “Order out three litters and command Hori to meet me behind the house immediately!”
His legs felt weak. Forcing them to obey him he strode through the house and out into the garden, sensing rather than hearing Sisenet gliding swiftly behind. Together they waited in silence until the litters and twelve bearers appeared, and Hori emerged, blinking and dishevelled, to join them. He greeted Sisenet amiably enough but Khaemwaset, despite his distress, recognized the marks of a night of concentrated drinking on the handsome face. Not now, he thought grimly. He flung himself onto a litter and the others followed suit.
“What is this about, Father?” Hori asked, but Khaemwaset did not reply. Curtly he instructed the bearers to hurry them to the tomb site, then he pulled the curtains closed and fell back on the pillows, trying to still the confused swirl of shrinking and haste inside him. Never had the trek through the city to Saqqara seemed so long.
He did not reopen his litter until he felt it being lowered, then he stepped out onto ground that burned through his sandals. Sisenet and Hori had already alighted and were coming towards him, eyes narrowed against the fiery afternoon sun. Khaemwaset jerked his head at them and hurried down the steps, but at the entrance, where two dozing, bored guards on either side of the doorway sprang to attention and saluted him, he paused. It required a deliberate act of courage for him to walk through, and he felt an almost physical resistance as he did so.
As always, the damp coolness was a relief, but the pleasure of the still air on his skin was transitory. Sisenet and Hori came up behind him and stood waiting, puzzled. He walked down the short passage and once more came to a halt. A shudder went through him. The bright, intricately painted wall scenes, the two statues, the ranked shawabti figures, and most of all the coffins, seethed to exude a gleeful malevolence that rushed to claim him. You stole it, the chamber shouted silently. You have sinned, you arrogant, heedless defiler and you will pay.
A hopeless anger suddenly propelled Khaemwaset forward. Striding to the coffin that held the mysterious man he leaned over the shrouded figure and drove a fist into the fragile corpse. The brittle ribcage collapsed in a shower of choking dust and tiny splinters of bone. The mummy trembled and Khaemwaset withdrew his arm.
“This man is a nobody,” he said forcefully. “Completely insignificant. He was probably a household servant, a gardener, a carrier of offal for the trash heap. The scroll was attached to his hand so that a fool like me could read it all unwittingly and raise them to life again!” He flung his dust-coated arm at the new false wall Hori’s workmen had so painstakingly erected and repainted.
He was in a cold sweat. “That’s why the scroll was sewn to a nonentity’s hand. That’s why there are no lids for the coffins in the inner chamber. That’s why there is a tunnel. The earring, Hori. The earring! A dead woman lost it while she was crawling out! Where are they now and what have they done?” He was becoming incoherent, and Hori turned to Sisenet.
“What is going on here?” he whispered. “What is Father babbling about?”
His words easily reached Khaemwaset in the enclosed space, and he laughed hysterically. “I stole it and I used it,” he shouted. “Only the legitimate owner can do that with impunity. I have condemned myself!”
“He believes that the scroll the two of you found here is the fabled Scroll of Thoth,” Sisenet explained hurriedly to a bewildered Hori. “It did indeed translate as two rather clumsy spells for re-animation and the understanding of the language of all living things, but such a thing cannot be.” He turned to Khaemwaset. “The dead do live again,” he said reasonably, “but not on this earth, Prince. There is no record of anyone coming back from the grave. The Scroll of Thoth is a grand, sad legend and you cannot believe in it literally.” Khaemwaset was staring at him intensely and he moved forward. “Give it to me, Highness, and I will take it away and burn it,” he offered, but Khaemwaset came to himself and violently shook his head.
“No,” he barked. “I will put it back immediately today. Go home, Sisenet.”
The man hesitated, opened his mouth, then closed it again and bowed himself out. Khaemwaset watched his shadow elongate in the sunshine along the wall of the tomb passage, then snap to him and disappear
Hori came quickly, and put a hand on Khaemwaset’s arm. “I am not sure I understand just what has been happening here,” he said with concern, “but you are distraught, Father. Come home and rest, and we will bring the scroll and close the tomb.”
Khaemwaset surrendered for once to the pressure of his son’s comforting grip and allowed himself to be led outside. Sisenet’s litter was just vanishing into the northern edge of the city. “Yes, home,” Khaemwaset muttered, “but I cannot rest until I have done what must be done. Let us hurry, Hori. I do not want to be here when the shadows begin to lengthen.”
They returned to the house, and while Hori waited, Khaemwaset went to his office and grabbed up the scroll, deliberately not reacting to the feel of it or allowing his mind to become entangled in the past. From Kasa he obtained a copper needle and some thread, and clutching these objects he went back to where Hori stood anxiously. “Come with me,” he begged, and Hori nodded. Together they rode the swaying litters back the way they had come, Khaemwaset’s impatience now a desperate, helpless thing.
At the tomb entrance Khaemwaset staggered from the litter and, with a shout for Hori, ran down the stairs and inside. The body he had mutilated lay at he had left it, its chest now gaping drily open. “Hold up the hand,” Khaemwaset snapped. The young man obeyed, lifting the light, stiff arm and turning it so that Khaemwaset could work.
With needle threaded and the scroll roughly bunched against the linen bandages, Khaemwaset began to sew. The papyrus was resistant, the hand so rigid that it seemed both scroll and lifeless limb were conspiring to prevent him from accomplishing the distasteful task. It is too late, the chamber whispered with cruel satisfaction. You have sinned and you are cursed, cursed, cursed … The needle slipped and Khaemwaset swore. Two large drops of his blood fell onto the dead finger he held crushed in his grasp, and spreading, sank into the greedy linen. One smeared against the scroll. Terror stalked him and this time he could not fight it. Panting he made the last stitch, jerked out the needle, and nodded at Hori, who pushed the arm back down into the musty-smelling coffin. “The lid,” Khaemwaset said hoarsely. “Call the guards and the litter-bearers to help.”
Hori seemed to have caught his father’s urgency. He dashed outside and returned shortly with ten wary men. Khaemwaset pointed to the lid still leaning against the wall, and though he did not want to touch it he took his place with his servants and his son as they dragged and heaved the solid slab of granite across the floor, up onto the pedestal, and, with a final groan, onto the coffin itself. It settled with a thud and a grind.
Thoughtfully, Khaemwaset looked at the second coffin, then nodded curtly. “That one too,” he said. This time he stood back and watched until the lid smashed down. A tiny piece of stone pulled free and clattered towards him to come to rest by his left sandal. He kicked it away. “Hori, have this accursed place closed immediately,” he said. “I don’t care if the artists have finished or not. Fill the stairway with rocks and rubble and have the largest stone you can find rolled over it. Have it done now, before night, before night, do you hear?” He was aware that his voice was rising to an uncontrollable shriek, and his servants were staring at him. He closed his mouth and, turning his back on the mystery that had terrified and enthralled him for so many months, he forced himself to go slowly outside. Hori came after him. “I will send to the Master Mason at once, Father,” he said, “but I beg you to consider Sisenet’s sensible words. He is right. Go home, sleep, and ponder them.”
Khaemwaset looked into the unhappy, drawn face of his son, then suddenly they were embracing, arms about each other, and Hori’s face was buried in Khaemwaset’s neck. “I love you,” Khaemwaset choked, near to tears, almost at the end of his control, and Hori’s muffled voice replied, “I love you also, O my father.”
The litter-bearers were sorting themselves out and bending to their loads. Khaemwaset sank with exhaustion into the haven of privacy and lay back with a sigh. He felt as though a great burden had been lifted from his heart, his body. After all, he thought, nothing has happened in all the weeks since I said the so-called spell. No one has died or been stricken with some foul disease No sudden misfortune has befallen the family. I reacted like a stupid, ignorant peasant. Sisenet was right. The thought made him smile, and before he was set down gently outside his door he had fallen into a relieved doze.
IN THE DAYS that followed, Khaemwaset became increasingly ashamed of his outburst before Sisenet and Hori. The man’s arguments against the scroll being anything other than a poor fabrication had been quietly reasonable, and Khaemwaset, going over every word and unspoken nuance of that unsettling afternoon, was forced to agree with him.
All his life he had carried the dream of one day finding the Scroll of Thoth whose two spells would give him the total knowledge of all living things through the understanding of their language, and more, the secret, ultimate power over death he had craved. He would become a god. But now he began to recognize the fantasy for what it was. Childhood had spawned it, and his own greed and ambition had fed it. It was true that the Scroll’s existence was believed by every magician who had lived in Egypt, but wherever it lay, if in fact it lay anywhere, it would be in some deep, exotic place where time and eternity met, surrounded by potent spells, watched over by Thoth himself. And if a human being had ever owned it, that person would have been a creature of more than human powers himself. Certainly it would never have been buried in a simple, shallow tomb at Saqqara.
He had reacted irrationally, he told himself as his equilibrium partially returned. He had allowed his long dream to become entangled with superstition as opposed to forthright, workable magic, and it was time to let the shadowless light of a noon reality into the darkness that had been gathering in his mind.
But first there was the matter of Tbubui’s quarters. With relief he turned to the planning and construction of a new wing on the house. He and his architect drew up a pleasing suite with large, airy rooms, a private passage giving access to the rest of the house so that the woman who prized silence and privacy so much could have both, and a small terrace leading directly onto a fountained garden. Part of the existing grounds to the north of the house would have to be dug up, the flower beds turned under, the pond moved, but Khaemwaset thought it could be done with a minimum of distress to the rest of the family. Once he had approved the addition, it was simply a matter of iss
uing an order, and gangs of fellahin appeared and began to demolish the northern grounds.
Through it all, Nubnofret remained frigidly correct. Twice Khaemwaset went to her apartment at night to hold and reassure her, even to make love to her if she had melted just a little, but she rebuffed him with icy good manners and he was forced to retreat.
No more harsh words were said, but the tension between them grew and invaded the whole house. Cheerful servants became subdued and the routine, previously imbued with heart and life, became increasingly a matter of soulless form. Khaemwaset was aware of it but did not care. Every day the plans for Tbubui’s domain grew and took coherent shape. Before long she would be there.
A report arrived from Penbuy at Koptos. He had been in the town for two days when he wrote the letter and was about to begin his investigations, but he was being hampered by a sudden illness that was slowing him down. After a few disparaging remarks to do with the sickeningly constant heat, the multitudes of giant flies and the warm, muddy water he was forced to bathe in, he finished by assuring Khaemwaset that the task would be completed soon and he was his master’s honourable and most trustworthy servant. So you are, dear Penbuy, Khaemwaset thought, standing with the scroll clasped in both hands as he gazed out over the ruin of the edge of the north garden that he could see from his office. So you are. Penbuy’s face swam before him, closed, intent, intelligent, sometimes a little prim, and a wave of strange homesickness swept over him. He wanted Penbuy at his elbow, exuding the faint odour of lotus water that seemed to float with him everywhere. He wanted the garden back. He wanted Sheritra back, now so poised and distant. He wanted it all back.
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