“They would say that Nubnofret, Chief Wife of Prince Khaemwaset, does not like his Highness’s choice for a Second Wife and wishes to show her displeasure by her temporary absence,” she snapped back. “Have you so little consideration for my feelings, Khaemwaset? Do you not care that I am worried about you, that your father is worried about you, that Tbubui will bring ruin upon you?” She gave him a withering look, grunted scornfully and stalked away.
I am so tired of all this confusion, Khaemwaset thought, watching her go. Within me and without, a constant whirl of conflict, pain, desire, remorse, guilt. “Ib,” he shouted more loudly than was necessary. “Find Amek! We are going back across the river, to the ruined temple of Queen Hatshepsut. There are inscriptions I want to examine before we leave!” Work is the answer, he told himself fervently. Work will make the time pass more rapidly, and then the movement of the barge floating home, floating back to sanity, and then she will be there, on my estate, and everything will become lucid again. He left the suite, slamming the doors closed behind him.
HORI HAD LIVED his own misery in Thebes, avoiding his many relatives and trying to wear himself out by donning peasant linen and walking the river tracks, meandering through the markets, or standing for hours in the temple of Amun behind one of the forest of pillars in the outer court, watching the incense rise from the inner court and shiver in an almost invisible cloud against a blue sky, and trying to pray. But prayer was impossible. Only words of bitterness, black and angry, would come.
It was on one of these occasions, as he was striding away from the temple towards the donkey-choked traffic along the river road that his name was called. He halted and turned, shading his eyes. A litter had been lowered not ten paces away and the curtain had been twitched open. Hori glimpsed one long brown leg, its calf wound with glinting gold anklets, and a drift of snowy linen. For one moment his heart gave a lurch and he began to run towards Tbubui, but then the figure leaned out, shorter, younger than the creature of his imagination, and the daughter of Pharaoh’s Chief Architect, Nefert-khay, was smiling at him. He remembered her vaguely from his last trip to the Delta, a pretty and vivacious girl who had sat beside him at one of the feasts and who had later done her best to make him kiss her. She bowed as he came up to the litter.
“Nefert-khay,” he said heavily.
“So I was right,” she said gaily. “It is Prince Hori. I knew you would be in Thebes for your grandmother’s funeral, but I did not expect you to remember me. I am flattered, Highness!”
“How could I not remember you?” he bantered back with as much lightness as he could muster. “You are hardly the most modest and retiring lady at court! It is good to see you again, Nefert-khay. Where are you going?”
She laughed, showing even white teeth. “I was about to spend an hour saying my prayers, but to tell you the truth, Prince, I really wanted to get away from the palace. We are jammed into the available accommodations like fish in a frying pan so that I could hardly breathe. And you?”
“I have just finished my prayers,” Hori replied gravely. “I thought I might walk a little by the river.” Somehow it was good to talk to her. She was fresh-faced, uncomplicated, a healthy young animal with her four thick, lustrous braids bouncing against the unblemished skin of her near-naked breasts, her air of optimistic energy, her smiling clear eyes. Hori felt a little of his sourness lift.
She grimaced in mock horror. “Alone, Highness? No friend, no guard? I have a good idea. Let us find a secluded part of the river and go swimming. I can say my prayers this evening. Amun will not mind.”
His first impulse was to make an excuse, but he found himself almost unwillingly grinning back at her. “Thank you,” he said. “I can think of nothing more pleasurable. Do you know of such a place?”
“No, but we can have the bearers tramp here and there until we find one. Thebes is only a town after all.” She wriggled away from him and patted the dent her body had left in the cushions. “Will you ride with me, Prince?”
Again he had intended to refuse, to walk beside the litter, but he found himself sliding down beside her. The litter rose and began to sway. “A quiet spot by the river please, Simut!” she shouted to her chief bearer, then she let the curtain fall and turned to Hori, her flawless little face inches from his own. All at once he was aware of his grubby kilt, his tangled, unwashed hair, the grit seaming his skin. “If you were ten years younger I would say that you are a naughty little boy who has run away from home,” she said frankly after regarding him for a while. “You look as though you have already been through many hair-raising adventures. Does your royal father know where you are?”
Admiration for her made him smile. “I apologize, Nefert-khay,” he said humbly. “I have a hard thing on my mind and it has made me careless of all save its constant pain.” He ran a hand self-consciously through his tresses. “Meeting you was very opportune …”
“Because you knew you were in dire need of a wash,” she finished for him, giggling. “Highness, you are an annoying, frustrating, altogether unapproachable man. You appear at court, always seemingly out of nowhere. You drift about the corridors and gardens with your nose in the air and your thoughts far away, then you disappear again. You are the subject of lip-smacking gossip among my friends when the antics of those at court become boring. Someone will say, ‘I think I saw Prince Hori yesterday, down by the fountains, but I cannot be sure. Is he at court again?’ and no one will really know, and then we begin to discuss your mystery and then we berate you for our boredom and unhappiness.” She giggled again, a squirming, vitally alive, fragrantly perfumed example of the best of Egypt’s feminine nobility.
An overwhelming temptation to bare his soul came to Hori. He wanted to spill everything into those delicate, shell-like ears, to watch her frown and become solemn, but he refused the impulse. She is better for me this way, he thought. Funny, vibrant, dragging me out of myself for one afternoon. “I had no idea that so many eddies were created in my wake,” he protested honestly. She turned onto her back, her knees up, and began to twirl a thoroughly wilted pink lotus flower in her fingers.
“I expect I exaggerate,” she admitted, unrepentant. “You are probably not mysterious at all. My friends and I are probably mistaking a merely vacant expression for something exciting and exotic. Women are so foolishly romantic, aren’t they, Highness?”
Some are, he thought grimly. And some are cruel, and some care nothing for romance but only wealth and position, and some use their seductiveness to maim. “There is nothing wrong with romance,” he said firmly. “Love is wonderful, Nefert-khay.”
She sighed gustily. “Is it, Prince? Are you in love? Do men dream foolishly and stand gazing at nothing with a stupid expression on their faces? And steal a bracelet or even a piece of papyrus from the object of their desires so they can kiss it and press it to their bosoms when no one is looking?” She rolled her head and gazed at him in mock seriousness. “Do they?”
How innocent you are, he thought, looking down at her. Even with your palace sophistication, your patter, your worldliness, you are so blessedly innocent. I do not see that expression on Sheritra’s face. Not anymore.
“How old are you, Nefert-khay?” he asked suddenly.
She pouted. “Oh dear,” she said. “I am going to get an indulgent lecture. I am seventeen years old. My father has been looking for a husband for me for the last year but he has not been looking far enough afield.” She sat up. “I did suggest you as a candidate, Highness. My blood is certainly noble, though not, of course, royal. But my father says that you will have to marry royalty first, and think about nobility in a Second Wife.” Her face lit up. “So be quick, Prince Hori, and marry some boring blue-blood so that you may then turn your attention to me. Or better still, I will be the first candidate for your harem. Take me as your concubine. You can always marry me later.”
Hori burst into his first spontaneous laughter for many weeks, and as he roared helplessly, the tears trickling down his cheeks, m
aking rivulets in the grime, he felt a tiny part of the blackness around his heart crumble away. Nefertkhay was looking decidedly nettled.
“My dear girl!” he gasped. “Does anyone know when you are being serious? I assure you that when I am ready to marry, yours will be the second name put forward to my father.”
“The second?”
“After the boring blue-blood, of course!”
The litter settled to the ground with a gentle bump. Nefert-khay pulled aside the curtain and leaned out. “This will do very well,” she shouted. “Good for you, Simut! Come, Highness. I will fill your mouth with mud for not falling at my feet in immediate surrender.”
They scrambled off the litter. The river flowed with an almost imperceptible motion a short distance away where there was clean sand and two gnarled trees leaning out over the surface. The river road was nowhere in sight, but Hori could hear voices and the soft thud of donkey hooves behind him, beyond a slight rise of land.
An exultant recklessness overtook him. With one quick movement he wrenched off his kilt, dropped it beside the litter and ran for the water, sensing Nefert-khay pulling down her sheath and hearing her trinkets tinkle as she shed them. Then he was full length in the Nile, coolness loosening the grit on his body, lapping him around, fluttering against his mouth. Am I awake? he asked himself stupidly. Am I going to be allowed to live again? His body rocked as Nefert-khay broke the surface beside him, smoothing back her now slick hair, the water cascading from the satin sheen of her brown skin. Then she was gone again and he felt her nudge against his knees. In a flash he had taken a breath and was groping for her even as she slipped deeper out towards the centre of the river.
For perhaps an hour they swam and played, their shouts and laughter bringing answering sallies from the crews of passing craft, then they crawled out of the water and lay side by side in the hot sand under the thin shade of the twisted trees, naked, panting and grinning.
“Do you think your aristocratic blue-blood wife will ever unbend enough to rub river mud into your hair?” Nefertkhay asked him, eyes squinting shut against the strong light. Hori propped himself up on both elbows and she flinched in mock discomfort as his trailing hair sent rivulets of water over her neck.
“Of course not,” he answered promptly. “She will never go out under the sun for fear her skin might blacken like a peasant’s, and the only water she will permit close to her body will be pure and perfumed.” Then he kissed her, pressing his mouth gently against her mobile lips. Her arms came up to encircle his head and her body tensed and rose against his. But even as Hori felt the tip of her tongue against his own he knew it was no good. The taste of her was wrong. The contours of her face were wrong. Her body was shorter, her breasts smaller, than the body that he craved. I am being disloyal, the thought came clearly and coldly into his mind. Don’t be ridiculous, he retorted silently. You are not bound to Tbubui by any ties save those of your own making. He tried to still his thoughts, squeezing his eyes more tightly shut and kissing Nefert-khay more thoroughly, but the feeling that he was betraying Tbubui persisted, strengthened, until at last he pulled away from the girl and stood. “The afternoon is far advanced,” he said curtly. “We must get dressed and go.”
After a moment she also came to her feet, her gaze troubled. Hesitantly she touched his cheek. “What have I done, Highness?” she faltered. “Have I offended you with my damnably impulsive speech?”
Aching with regret, for himself as well as for her, he took her hand and raised it to his mouth before letting it fall. “No,” he answered vehemently. “Nefert-khay, you are beautiful and funny and intelligent and I hope with all my heart that your father betrothes you to a man who deserves such a rare prize.”
Her eyes darkened. “But it will not be you, Hori.”
“No, it will not be me. I am truly sorry.”
She managed a weak smile. “I am sorry also. There is someone else?” He nodded and she sighed. “I should have guessed. It was naïve of me to assume that the handsomest man in Egypt would not have formed an attachment. Well, let us deposit a generous amount of sand and silt onto the cushions of my litter so that my slaves will have something to do this evening.” She walked up the slope towards the untidy pile of linen and he followed awkwardly, noting with a kind of mild desperation how the muscles in her perfect buttocks flexed and how shapely was her back.
They dressed hurriedly, woke the litter-bearers who were dozing close by, and Nefert-khay gave the order that would take them back to the palace. In the confined space of the curtained cubicle she fell to industriously brushing the grit from her legs and then winding up her hair, prattling on of nothing in particular all the while. Hori answered as best he could, not able to meet her eyes.
He was set down at the main entrance, thanked her gravely for a delightful interlude, and walked away without glancing back. He had never felt such self-loathing in his life, and he could almost see the bars of the cage that surrounded him. He had built it himself, he knew, but he no longer could remember how he had done so. There was no way out.
16
Treat thy dependants as well as thou art able:
for this is the duty of those whom the God has
blessed.
FOUR DAYS AFTER the family’s return from Thebes, Ptah-Seankh was announced to Khaemwaset as he was attempting to fulfil his promise to Ramses by attending to the backlog of official correspondence that he had neglected of late. Glancing up with relief from yet another missive of protest from yet another minor minister awash in his own tangle of bureaucracy, Khaemwaset dismissed his junior scribe and strode across the office floor to welcome the young man.
Ptah-Seankh advanced and bowed. He was deeply tanned, almost black, the whites of his eyes bluish against the startling hue of his skin, and his lips were peeling. To Khaemwaset he looked tired and strained, and his first thought was for the miles that had been covered with only the dead Penbuy and a few guards and servants for company. He embraced Ptah-Seankh.
“Welcome home!” he exclaimed, drawing his Chief Scribe towards the desk and thrusting a cup of beer into his hands. “I trust all went well with your father’s beautification, Ptah-Seankh. The sem-priests and the High Priest of Ptah himself are waiting to bury him with every honour.”
Ptah-Seankh gulped down the beer and set the cup carefully on the desk. “Thank you, Highness,” he said. “My father’s body is now resting in the House of the Dead. I inspected the work of beautification myself and I am satisfied.”
That must have been hard, Khaemwaset thought with pity. He waved Ptah-Seankh to a chair, but the man hesitated. “With regard to the work you set me,” he went on shyly, “I have completed it. Here are the results of my labours.” He held out a scroll. Khaemwaset took it eagerly, then glanced at the scribe, who was standing with eyes downcast.
“What is the matter?” he asked impatiently, with a twinge of anxiety. “Is there bad news for me in this,” he tapped the papyrus against his thigh, “or has the journey made you ill?”
Ptah-Seankh appeared to rally. His head came up and he met Khaemwaset’s scrutiny with a smile. “The journey has left me dazed, Highness,” he said. “That is all.”
Khaemwaset had already broken Ptah-Seankh’s personal seal and was unrolling the scroll. “Then you had better spend the rest of the day sleeping in your quarters. I will send word to the priests that Penbuy’s funeral can now take place three days hence. Is that agreeable to you?”
Ptah-Seankh bowed his assent. Khaemwaset temporarily forgot him. He was frowning over the contents of the scroll. Then his face gradually cleared until he was beaming. “You did very well, Ptah-Seankh,” he said. “Very well indeed. You may go.”
When he was alone, Khaemwaset slumped into the chair behind the desk and closed his eyes. The last obstacle to his marriage had been removed and he was conscious of a deep relaxation. Tbubui had told the truth. Not that he had ever doubted her, but there had been a slight, a very slight suspicion that she might have e
xaggerated the age of her family’s lineage. But here it was, black and emphatic in Ptah-Seankh’s neat hand on the beige papyrus. A small estate but reasonably prosperous. A small but legitimate noble title. A small but functioning house he and she might use sometimes during the winter, when Koptos was merely a fire and not a raging furnace and he wanted to take her away from Nubnofret’s accusing gaze. No duties to engage him, no demands on his time, just he and she together in the timeless hiatus of the country of the south. She would belong there, blending in in a way that was not possible here in busy Memphis. He remembered the south very well. The silence, the sudden, not unpleasant moments of loneliness the desert wind could conjure as it whipped and gusted over sand too hot for a naked foot, the Nile wandering into infinity through an indifferent, elemental landscape of vast blue sky and shimmering dunes, “Tbubui,” he whispered. “You can come now.”
He rose, feeling light and empty, and shouted for a scribe. When the man arrived, Khaemwaset dictated a short note to Tbubui and then went in search of Nubnofret. Penbuy’s funeral was in three days’ time. Tbubui could move in on the fourth. Then it would be Pakhons, the month of the harvest, the beginning of the Inundation. The beginning, he thought happily, of my new life.
HIS OLD FRIEND, the man who had been his constant companion, his advisor and sometimes his disgruntled judge, was buried with quiet dignity in the tomb he had laboriously prepared for himself on the Saqqara plain. The walls of his resting place were bright with the best-loved scenes from his life. Here he sat, straight-backed, head bent over his palette, while his master dictated. Here he stood in his hunting skiff, Ptah-Seankh as a boy, still adorned with the youth lock, kneeling beside him as he raised the throwing stick at a flock of marsh ducks frozen forever in their flight overhead. Here he made offerings to his patron, Thoth, holding out the smoking censer while the god turned his sharp ibis beak towards him with benevolent approval. Khaemwaset, looking at these things, felt a peace and joyous satisfaction emanating from the paintings and from Penbuy’s personal belongings. The man had lived a fruitful life. He had been justly proud of his accomplishments. He had been honest, and had nothing to fear from the weighing of his heart in the Judgment Hall. It was true that he had been relatively young, not much older than Khaemwaset himself, and the circumstances of his death were most unfortunate, but Khaemwaset was positive that Penbuy had died with nothing to regret, nothing to wish changed.
Scroll of Saqqara Page 39