Scroll of Saqqara

by Pauline Gedge

  Nevertheless, he stood on the deck of the barge and watched his watersteps recede with a great resentment. He did not want to go, and was surprised to hear his feeling expressed aloud by a pale and moody Sheritra, who was leaning on the rail beside him. “I should be happy to perform this last duty for Grandmother,” she said, “but I hate it. Hate it! I just want it to be over so that I can come home again.” There was no shamefacedness in the words, no suggestion of selfishness in the inflection she used. She was flatly stating a fact. Khaemwaset did not reply. He glanced behind them to where Si-Montu’s barge was following, Si-Montu himself and Ben-Anath standing side by side in the prow. Seeing his look they both waved, and he reluctantly waved back. Si-Montu seemed like a stranger now. All his relatives were strangers. Did I ever know these people? he wondered as the riverbank slipped by under his unseeing gaze. Did I ever greet them familiarly as kin, perhaps as friends? When was the last time I spoke to Si-Montu? Then he remembered, and a feeling of being smothered gripped him. The family is broken, he thought. Si-Montu, Ramses, they probably believe that they have received no communications from me because I have been fearsomely busy. They do not know that everything has changed, everything is broken. That the pieces cannot be welded together again because I am a piece, Nubnofret is a piece, Hori and Sheritra are pieces, sharp, jagged, grinding against each other, because there is no one to take us and fit us one into the other again And I simply do not care. He heard Hori swear loudly at one of the sailors, then silence descended on the deck once more. Sheritra sighed beside him and fell to picking a flake of golden paint from the rail. I do not care, Khaemwaset thought lazily. I do not care.

  Dazed and quiet, they settled into their cramped quarters in the palace, for the royal residence in Thebes was smaller, too small to comfortably hold all the inhabitants of the mighty city within a city at Pi-Ramses who had come out of respect for Astnofert. “I feel as though I have been drugged,” was Sheritra’s comment as her sandals tapped an echo from the gleaming floor. Khaemwaset watched Bakmut follow her and the door close behind them. “What nonsense!” Nubnofret snapped before disappearing herself. Hori had already slipped away.

  Khaemwaset stood for a moment, listening to the soughing of the desert wind in the wind-catchers. Drugged, he thought. Yes, it is like that. The palace vibrated around him with snatches of music, formal cries of soldiers changing the guard, the high laughter of young girls, the aroma of food and flowers, the pulse of life. He himself felt as though he had been ill and was still very delicate. His bewildered senses were being assaulted by so much vitality, so much carefree energy, and he had an absurd desire to burst into tears. But he shook off the weakness and, after sending a herald to acquaint his father that he and the family had arrived, he went in search of Si-Montu. His brother, however, was nowhere to be found, and Ben-Anath greeted Khaemwaset cheerfully but absently, already surrounded by her friends. Disconsolately, Khaemwaset wandered back to the suite, through crowds that recognized him and parted for him, bowing. He hardly noticed them. Tbubui’s face was not among them, therefore they did not exist.

  He was not surprised to find a summons from his father already waiting for him when he stepped into his quarters. Pharaoh commanded his presence without delay. He was waiting in his private office behind the throne room. Khaemwaset had given little thought to Ramses’ current marriage negotiations, but their tortuous convolutions came back to him now, and as he strode unwillingly through the suffocating throngs of courtiers another memory, likewise submerged, floated whole and distastefully vivid into his mind. An old man, coughing politely, one desiccated hand grasping the amulet of Thoth that hung on his wasted chest and the other proffering a scroll. It had been oddly heavy for such a thin piece of papyrus, Khaemwaset remembered. He glanced suddenly down at his hand, feeling again its brittle fragility. He had lost it. He remembered that, too. Somewhere between the fiery torches outside the north door of the palace at Pi-Ramses and his own quarters the wretched thing had disappeared. For no reason he could fathom, his thoughts were turning of their own accord to the bogus Scroll of Thoth, once more sewn securely to the hand of an unknown man lying withered in his coffin. With an exclamation, Khaemwaset wrenched himself back to the present and Ib inquired politely, “Did your Highness speak?”

  “No,” Khaemwaset said shortly. “I did not. We have arrived, Ib. Claim a stool outside the doors and wait for me.”

  The Herald had ceased calling his titles and was bowing Khaemwaset into the room. Khaemwaset walked forward.

  Just where the floor seemed to slide away into a gleaming infinity, its flow was broken by a mighty cedar desk. Behind it Ramses sat, gold-hung arms folded across his slightly concave, equally bejewelled chest, the wings of his white-and-blue-striped linen helmet framing the fastidious, slightly disdainful face Khaemwaset knew so well. His father’s beaked nose and dark, glossy eyes had always reminded Khaemwaset of an alert Horus, but today his birdlike watchfulness had a quality of the predator about it. Khaemwaset, coming up beside the desk and kneeling to kiss the royal feet, thought that Ramses’ expression had more in common with the vulture glaring down at him from the helmet’s headband than with the hawk-son of Osiris.

  The Royal Scribe Tehuti-Emheb had risen from his position on a cushion just behind Pharaoh, and, together with a wrinkled and still blandly inscrutable Ashahebsed who was delicately balancing a silver ewer in both hands, he reverenced Khaemwaset. Brusquely he flapped a hand at them and they rose, the scribe to regain his place and Ashahebsed to pour a stream of purple wine into the chased gold cup at Ramses’ right. His glance briefly crossed Khaemwaset’s own, and Khaemwaset read the same haughty dislike they had always felt for each other in Ashahebsed’s watery old eyes.

  But he had no time to respond, for Ramses was sitting back, crossing his legs slowly, hooking one arm over the back of his chair with casual yet studied grace. He did not invite his son to take the chair that stood vacant beside him. Instead he gracefully indicated the pile of scrolls to his left. His red-hennaed lips did not smile.

  “Greetings, Khaemwaset,” he said smoothly. “I do not think that I have ever seen you looking so unhealthy.” The royal nose wrinkled slightly. The royal eyes held steadily on Khaemwaset’s face. “You are yellow and haggard,” Pharaoh went on relentlessly, “so that I am almost disposed to pity you instead of extending to you the discipline you deserve.” Now his mouth twitched in a wintry curve. “I said almost. These scrolls all contain complaints from the ministers to whom you owe your attention. Letters unanswered, estimates unapproved, vacant positions in minor ministries still unfilled, because you, Prince, have been shamefully neglecting your responsibilities.” He unhooked his arm, put his elbows on the desk, and steepling his many-ringed fingers under his chin he stared at Khaemwaset with calculated disgust. Khaemwaset dared not break his gaze in order to glance at Ashahebsed, but he sensed the man’s hidden glee. He did not mind Tehuti-Emheb’s presence, for it was his job to record the exchange and whatever its results might be, but Khaemwaset was suddenly furious with his father for not dismissing the old cupbearer. Knowing Ramses as he did, he was sure Ashahebsed’s presence was no oversight. Khaemwaset refused to be discomfited. Neither man would gossip, and the truth was that he deserved the Mighty Bull’s disapproval. Nevertheless, the fumes of anger coiled, acrid and bitter, in his throat. “But these things, though puzzling and annoying, do not merit the totality of my divine displeasure,” Ramses went on. “Twice your mother’s steward sent messages to you regarding her worsening health, yet she died without the comfort of your presence. I want to know why, Khaemwaset.”

  Wild excuses flitted rapidly through Khaemwaset’s mind. I did not receive the messages. My scribe read them to me and misinterpreted their scrawl. I was ready to come but then fell ill. You can see, Great Horus, how ill I have been. I have fallen desperately in love with a beautiful woman so that nothing and no one else exists for me, and even the suffering of my dying mother meant only an annoying inconvenience.
He spread out his hands.

  “I can offer no explanation, Divine One,” he said.

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Ramses stared at him in disbelief. “You are defying me!” he shouted, the controlled, suave voice gone under the force of his rage, and Khaemwaset realized that his father was genuinely, perhaps even dangerously, furious. He waited, saying nothing.

  Ramses began to caress the long, gold-and carnelian earring lying against his neck, stroking it between his forefinger and thumb. He was frowning. Then, abruptly, he gave the bauble a tug and snapped his fingers. “Ashahebsed, Tehuti-Emheb, you are dismissed,” he said sharply. Both men immediately bowed, the scribe as he rose with his palette balanced on both palms, and backed down the room towards the door. Ramses paid them no more attention, “You may sit, Khaemwaset,” he invited, his voice calmly dry once more, and Khaemwaset did so.

  “Thank you, Father,” he said.

  “Now you may speak,” Ramses went on. It was not a suggestion, Khaemwaset realized, it was a command. The double doors boomed closed. He was alone with this man, this god who held the fate of every Egyptian between his withered, carefully hennaed palms, and who had the power to punish his, Khaemwaset’s, laxity in any way he chose. He was waiting, head slightly tilted, eyebrows raised, those thickly kohled, all-knowing eyes harshly impatient. I have always been his favourite, Khaemwaset thought with a twinge of apprehension, but to be the favourite of an intelligent, devious and unscrupulous god—What does it mean? He took a deep breath.

  “I do have an explanation, Father,” he began, “but no excuse. I have shamefully neglected every duty to Egypt, to you and to the gods, and my treatment of Mother has been nothing short of damnable, even though I knew perfectly well that she could die at any moment. She received that warning and passed it on to me, but I paid no attention.” He swallowed, still angry, knowing that he was talking of shame but not feeling it, hoping that his father would not pierce to the truth with those preternaturally observant old eyes.

  “We know all this,” Ramses cut in laconically. “You are indulging yourself, Khaemwaset. I have an audience with a delegation from Alashia in three days’ time so you had better hurry your explanation.”

  “Very well,” he said simply. “I have fallen in love with great violence, so that for some months now I have been unable to concentrate on anything else. I have offered the woman a contract and been accepted, and only a confirmation of her noble status stands between us. That is all.”

  Ramses stared at him, dumbfounded, then all at once he began to laugh, a rich, robust burst of sound that stripped ten years from his appearance. “Khaemwaset in love? Impossible!” he gasped. “The Mighty Prince of Propriety besotted? Delicious! Tell me all about this remarkable personage, Khaemwaset. I might decide to forgive you your terrible faults after all.”

  Obediently, Khaemwaset began to describe Tbubui to his father, and as he did so a wave of homesickness overtook him, mixed with a strange impression of inner warping, as though he were not really here in thus sumptuous office listening to a voice he barely recognized as his own, forcing out hesitant and clumsy words that had little to do with the razor-sharp keenness of his emotions. The shrewd eyes of the man leaning over the desk opposite him glowed with relish. Khaemwaset’s explanation trailed away into silence and Ramses sat straight.

  “I expect to have the woman presented to me on your next visit to Pi-Ramses,” he said. “If she is half as irresistible as you say, I shall order the marriage void and put her in my harem. But I daresay she is one of those stringy, sexless, serious females who would rather open a scroll than her legs. I know your taste, my son. I have always been astounded that you chose to marry a woman as voluptuous as Nubnofret.” He lifted the golden cup at his elbow with three fastidious fingers and sipped at the wine, peering cunningly at Khaemwaset over the rim. “And speaking of Nubnofret,” he said, running his tongue carefully along his red lips, “what opinion has she expressed of your Second Wife-to-be?”

  Khaemwaset grinned weakly, still in the grip of that uncomfortable distortion. “She is not happy, Divine One.”

  “And that is because she has ruled your roost alone for far too long,” Ramses came back swiftly. “She must learn to be more humble. Arrogance in a woman is a most distasteful trait.”

  Khaemwaset blinked. His father’s harem was full of quarrelsome, fiery, self-opinionated females able to give Pharaoh the challenge he most loved.

  “What of your children?” Ramses was saying. “Hori and Sheritra? Have they an opinion?”

  “I have not yet asked them for one, Father.”

  “Oh.” All at once Ramses seemed to lose interest in the conversation. Putting a hand flat on his shrunken chest he rose, and Khaemwaset immediately came to his feet. “Tomorrow your mother will be placed in her tomb,” Ramses said. “I abhor your weakness, my son, in allowing all else in your life to drift into chaos while you pursued this creature, but I do understand. There will be no punishment, providing Egypt may once again rely on you to discharge your duties promptly.”

  Khaemwaset bowed. “I do not deserve your clemency,” he commented and Ramses agreed.

  “No, you do not,” he said, “but no one else can be trusted with the tasks I give to you, Khaemwaset. Merenptah is a bombastic idiot and my son Ramses is a drunken sot.”

  Diplomatically Khaemwaset changed the subject as the two of them began to move towards the doors. “I received no communication regarding your Majesty’s own marriage negotiations,” he said carefully. “I trust all is going well.”

  Ramses snorted disdainfully. “The Khatti princess is on her way,” he said. “She will arrive in about a month, providing she is not eaten by wild animals or raped and murdered by brigands on the desert tracks. To tell you the truth, Khaemwaset, I am tired of her already, though I have yet to meet her. It is her dowry that whets my appetite, not her soft, royal skin. You will of course be present when she piles it all before me and bends her hopefully pretty little knees.” He gave Khaemwaset a sharply hostile glare. “This is your last chance, Khaemwaset. Fail me in this and you will find yourself patrolling the Western Desert with the Medjay for the rest of your life. I mean it.”

  Ramses did not linger by the door. Kissing Khaemwaset perfunctorily on the cheek he strode regally away, his rowdy retinue falling in around him, leaving the Prince to collect Ib and make his way back to his suite. Khaemwaset suddenly found that he was exhausted. I must not let this happen again, he thought, his eyes on Ib’s sturdy, flexing spine. I must discharge my duties no matter what, I must cling to some kind of perspective. But already Tbubui’s face filled his inner vision while his father’s shrank into nothingness, and he ached with the need to be with her again.

  Astnofert’s funeral the next day emptied the palace. Her cortège straggled for more than three miles from the edge of the royal estate, across the Nile, where rafts plied to and fro for hours, ferrying mourners and courtiers, and into the rocky desolation of the valley where all queens had been buried for hundreds of years. Tents had been erected for the members of the immediate family and for the sem-priests and the High Priest performing the ceremonies. The remaining crowds fended for themselves, setting up shelters in whatever shade they could find and passing the time in sleep or gossip, while Astnofert’s linen-wound corpse in its heavy quartz sarcophagus was surrounded with spells and prepared for its final journey into the dark silence of the tomb.

  For three days Khaemwaset and his family stood or sat, prostrated themselves or danced the ritual funerary movements, while the fierce Theban sun sucked the moisture out of their skin and the sand blew in choking eddies to cling to their sweat and sift its way under their clothes. Then it was over. Khaemwaset entered the tomb with his father to lay flower wreaths on the bulky nest of coffins inside which, like the answer to some convoluted puzzle, Astnofert lay. The servants swept their footprints away as they retreated into the sunshine, and the sem-priests threaded the knotted rope through the doorseals and
stood ready with the imprint of the jackal and nine captives, the insignia of death.

  Ramses turned away without a word, shaking the sand from his feet as he got onto his litter. Khaemwaset and his family did the same, and were carried back to the sluggish river and the raft and at last into the relative coolness of the palace in a haze of fatigue. As soon as they reached the privacy of their rooms, Khaemwaset swung to his steward.

  “Ib,” he said, “order our belongings packed. We are returning to Memphis tomorrow morning.” Ib nodded and went away. Nubnofret had been standing nearby and she came up to Khaemwaset. For a moment they regarded one another. Khaemwaset saw her hand tremble, as though she had been about to reach out and touch him and had then thought better of it. Her face became closed.

  “Khaemwaset,” she said quietly, “I would like to go north with Ramses when he returns to the Delta. I need a rest. I need time away from the constant dust and noise of construction at home. It would not be for long. A month, perhaps.”

  Khaemwaset considered her. Her expression was politely neutral and her eyes gave back nothing. She wants to get away from me, he thought. From me.

  “I am sorry, Nubnofret,” he replied emphatically. “You have an estate to run, and Tbubui will be moving into the concubines’ house as soon as we are unpacked. If you are not there to welcome her officially and ease her transition you will be committing a breach of good manners, and besides, what would people say?”