Scroll Of Saqqara Part 27

A thin stream of dull yellow light was illuminating the other end of the corridor. Hori paused, thunderstruck. He was absolutely positive that the narrow s.p.a.ce had been completely dark before, but now someone had lit a lamp and its sullen glow was showing under a door. Whose door? Hori thought, gripping the knife and shambling towards it. He re-pa.s.sed the entrance to the hall on his left and caught one glimpse of the motionless servant propped against the wall before he moved on. Whose door? It was Sisenet's, and it was suddenly ajar. A strange calmness fell upon Hori. He pushed it all the way open and walked in.

The first thing that struck him was the smell. He had been in enough places of burial to recognize it at once-a musty, earthy odour of sun-starved rock and undisturbed soil with a hint of human decay-but here the stink of corruption was dominant. He felt it immediately in his throat and swallowed, his nostrils constricting. He had not been in this room before. It was small and unadorned, the walls grey mud, the floor untiled. A couch stood against the far wall, holding nothing but a stone headrest, and in the middle of the floor there was a table supporting a plain lamp and a box. Whatever else the table held was obscured by the man rising and turning with a cold smile. This place reminds me of something, Hori thought, standing in the doorway and looking about. It reminds me of ... of a tomb.

But he had no time to become afraid, not then, for Sisenet was bowing coolly. He was clad in a short linen kilt. The rest of his spare, whipcord body was naked and as dusty as the earthen floor, the simple table. Dusty.

"So it is young Hori," Sisenet said, still grinning. "I heard someone fumbling along the pa.s.sage. I thought it might be you. You do not look so well, young Prince. One might even say you have the stamp of death on you. Now why is that?"

Hori stepped further into the room, all at once very aware of the paring knife held loosely in his fingers. Sisenet moved slightly, his dry fingers trailing along the table, leaving marks on its surface. The husk of a dead scorpion appeared, its brown carapace gleaming in the lamplight. Hori did not answer. He waited. He had never given much thought to Tbubui's so-called brother. Sisenet had been nothing more than a quiet, self-contained man who came and went occasionally on the periphery of Hori's vision, on the outskirts of his life, seemingly content with his scholarly pursuits and the privacy of his little room. But now Hori, watching him carefully, wondered just what those scholarly pursuits had been. Sisenet's smile was broadening. It was not a pleasant sight, and Hori all at once recognized the self-possession as supreme arrogance, the self-effacement as the kind of amused confidence that observed and coldly dissected everyone. Sisenet was power. Hori's whole spine contracted.

"It was you!" he cried out. "All the time. You conjured against Penbuy. You conspired with Tbubui to seduce my father. You are killing me!"

For answer the man stepped right away from the table and there, sitting like some fat, malevolent, primitive G.o.d, was the wax doll Hori sought. The flickering light danced along the wicked copper pins, one driven through the scarcely formed head from temple to temple and one canting down through the squat abdomen. Beside it Hori recognized his gold-and-jasper earrings. Earrings, he thought. How apt. How accursedly right.

"Is this what you are looking for, Highness?" Sisenet asked politely. "Yes? I rather thought so. But it is too late. You will be dead in two days."

Faintness swirled around Hori and he planted his feet apart and fought it off. "But why?" he croaked, that dreadful stench intensifying so that he felt as though it was seeping into all his pores and his flesh itself recoiled. "Why? It is true that you are her husband, isn't it. You are the wizard-prince Nenefer-ka-Ptah and she the princess Ahura. Father resurrected you all, you are the walking dead, but why us?"

"Poor Hori," Nenefer-ka-Ptah said with mock concern. "Perhaps you should sit. Here. Take my chair. Shall I call a servant and order wine for you?" His black eyes twinkled with ghoulish humour. He knows what I am thinking, Hori told himself, the terror beginning. I am in the presence of something hundreds of years old, something that has no right to be walking and talking, smiling and gesturing, something that should by rights be wound in linen and lying in darkness, rotting. "I can wake them with a word," Nenefer-ka-Ptah went on "They do not mind They are perfectly obedient, my servants."

"No wine," Hori whispered, though he longed for something to wash away the taste of coffins in his mouth. His earrings winked jauntily up at him and the grotesque doll grinned its knowing smile.

"She was the talk of the south, my wife," Nenefer-ka-Ptah said conversationally. He had begun to pace in a leisurely fas.h.i.+on, his feet making no sound. "High-born, beautiful, with that seductive magnetism men cannot resist. Her s.e.xual prowess was legendary. She clung to me when we were drowning, clung like a lover, her legs wrapped around mine, her body convulsing against me in fear. She has wrapped her legs around you, hasn't she, Highness?" Hori nodded, spellbound and repulsed. "I was not afraid. I thought of the Scroll, my Scroll, the thing I had laboured long and hard to acquire, and I was comforted. The sem-priests had their orders. We were to be buried in coffins without lids and immured behind a false wall. The Scroll itself was to be sewn to the corpse of one of my servants. I actually commanded two of them to be killed in the event of my death so that they could be buried in my tomb. But Merhu ..." He came to a halt, pa.s.sing a hand over his shaven skull. "Merhu. My son. The flower of Egyptian youth in those days. Handsome, in demand, accomplished, spoiled, and wilful. He knew about the Scroll. Both of them did. He agreed to my preparations for his burial also, and it was just as well, for he himself drowned not long after Ahura and I were beautified and laid in the tomb your father so cheerfully desecrated. All of us dead by water," he said. "That surely was a cosmic joke, for we loved the Nile inordinately. We swam in it and fished from it, glided on it in long red evenings, often made love on its verge with our feet kissed by its waves, held parties on its mysterious bosom and ached for it as we watched it falter and recede every year. We decorated our tomb at Saqqara with it, Merhu's also at Koptos, the city he loved, and all the while the G.o.d was waiting to end our lives with the thing that had given us the highest pleasure. Of such interesting ironies is life composed." He came to Hori. "I knew that possessing the Scroll brought its own dangers," he said, "but I was a great magician, the greatest in Egypt, and I chose to take the risk. It was mine. I earned it. The price I and my family paid was an early death after five years of power and prosperity."

"You have not answered my question." Hori faltered, although if he had been strong enough he would have fled in screaming horror from that place. I have been inside a corpse, he was thinking. I have made love to dead flesh like one of those madmen who loiter about the House of the Dead. And what of Father? His life has shrunk to a single force, the ecstasy of possessing Tbubui. Even Sheritra is defiled. All of us, we have committed unnameable sins no one else in Egypt could understand. Were these three always like this? he wondered. So predatory, so utterly without scruple? Or has the mysterious alchemy of a forced resurrection taken something human from them, some component necessary for a blameless life, a good judging, and then peace in the paradise of Osiris? Is the price of such a resurrection also a rejection by the G.o.ds? Have we also, all of us, been rejected? Nenefer-ka-Ptah had begun to pace again.

"Your question?" he said. "Oh yes. Why you. We were grateful to your father for rousing us, and if it had been left to us we would simply have retrieved the Scroll and gone on living quietly in Memphis. But Thoth ..." He seemed to be searching for words. "Thoth had become my master. The Scroll was his creation, and in acquiring it I came under his direct domination. It is not a good thing, to come under the unblinking contemplation of a G.o.d. Much more than mere adoration is required. Oh much more. His beak is sharp, young Hori, his s.h.i.+ning eye remorseless. One becomes a slave. 'Khaemwaset has sinned,' he said. 'He no longer serves any G.o.d but himself. He must be destroyed. Your ka is forfeit to me in exchange for the Scroll, and Khaemwaset's for his arrogant plundering, his continued desecration of hallowed places. See to it.' One does not disobey a G.o.d, and I must confess, Prince, that I have enjoyed tearing your complacent, haughty little family apart. We all have. For me it has been a chance to practise magic again, and for Tbubui, an opportunity to play the game at which she is most accomplished."

He looked directly at Hori, and at once desire for Tbubui flared in him, hot and immediate in spite of his pain. "You are abominations, all of you," he cried. "Give me back my life!"

"But you are tainted too," Nenefer-ka-Ptah pointed out, grinning. "You have been inside her. There is no salvation for you."

Hori felt the knife in his hand, solid and somehow comforting. "I do not deserve this!" he shouted. "I refuse to die! I refuse!" In a frenzy that lent a superhuman strength to his arm he launched himself at Nenefer-ka-Ptah, knife held low. Nenefer-ka-Ptah stood impa.s.sively, his face completely blank. Screaming, Hori jabbed the paring knife up under the man's chin, pus.h.i.+ng it with a grunt until the hilt met flesh. Nenefer-ka-Ptah did not even flinch. Hori doubled over, weeping and trembling, then looked up. Nenefer-ka-Ptah was watching him, and all at once he yawned. With a despairing horror Hori saw the blade caught in the back of the man's throat, clean and dry. Impatiently Nenefer-ka-Ptah reached up and pulled it out. It came with a slight sucking sound. He tossed it onto the table. "I am already dead," he said equably. "I thought you understood that, Hori. I cannot die a second time."

Weakness swept over Hori and he cowered on the rough floor, weeping with impotence and pain. He was about to pull himself upright when there was a convulsive movement by the open door. Through eyes blurred by tears of agony he caught a glimpse of Sheritra, open-mouthed, frozen in shock. Antef was behind her. "I saw!" she screamed. "O G.o.ds, Hori, you were right! I saw!" Hori began to struggle up. He sensed Nenefer-ka-Ptah bowing.

"It is the delectable little Princess Sheritra," he said. "Welcome, my dear. Would you care to join our modest feast? I have little to tempt you but scorpion husks and dead mice, but perhaps you would prefer to dine on your brother Hori's ka? Very fresh and juicy it is."

"Hori!" Sheritra cried out. He was on his feet now, shocked almost beyond bearing, but still capable of coherent thought.

"Get out of here!" he ordered. "Antef ..." But it was too late. With a shriek of terror Sheritra had turned and fled along the pa.s.sage. Hori struggled to follow, and as he came to the door Antef rushed to support him. Together they emerged into the corridor in time to see the further door open, flooding more light into the darkness, and Sheritra cannon into Merhu, who had stepped out and was standing in the way. Sheritra threw herself into his arms.

"Tell me it isn't true!" she was screaming hysterically, clutching him, burying her face in his neck, her body pressed rigidly against him. "Tell me that you love me, you adore me, we will marry as soon as the contract is drawn up." She raised a terror-stricken face to his. "Tell me that you did not know about your mother, about Sisenet, any of it! Tell me, Harmin!"

His father had come out of his room and was standing nonchalantly, watching. Hori, leaning heavily on Antef, saw a glance of mutual conspiracy flash between the two of them, a gloating moment of triumph before Merhu pushed her roughly away.

"You?" he said loudly, looking her up and down with feigned surprise. "Me marry you?" He was stepping back, contempt in every regal line of him, and Sheritra was momentarily dumbfounded. "You were an a.s.signment I was asked to undertake, and not even a particularly interesting one at that. Virgins bore me. It was boring to possess your scrawny body and even more tedious to pretend I loved you. I want no more to do with you. The game has palled."

"Sheritra ..." Hori gasped, but she whirled and pushed past him, such shame and unbelief on her face that he shrank back.

He began to hobble after her, with Antef's arm around his waist, and behind them Nenefer-ka-Ptah started to laugh. The coa.r.s.e, inhuman sound followed them along the pa.s.sage and out into the garden, a rising cacophony of insane delight that woke the shadows and pursued them like the gleeful demons of the underworld, until the path began and the palms gradually m.u.f.fled that hysterical shrieking.

Sheritra was huddled at the foot of the watersteps, her breath coming in shuddering gasps, too shocked to cry. The skiff had vanished, Hori noticed as he and Antef made their halting way towards her, but the raft was tethered securely to the one pole at the foot. "How did you know I was here?" Hori managed.

"The Princess knew," Antef said. "The alarm was raised two hours ago when your guard was found dead at your door and you were gone. We had spent most of the day trying to devise a way to get you out. She said that the only place left for you to try was Sisenet's house. We crept away in all the hue and cry and I doubt if we were missed."

They had come up to Sheritra but she gave no sign of having seen them. She continued to hug her knees, her face buried, her whole body shaking with suppressed sobs.

"Sheritra," Hori said urgently. "You cannot stay here. You must go home. Sheritra!" At length she lifted her head. Her face was disfigured in its grief but it was dry, and under the impact of shock and betrayal, Hori thought he saw something terrible, a cold implacability he did not like. "Antef and I will take you home," he said, "and then we will drift towards the Delta. I must find a priest of Thoth or of Set to take this curse from me." She rallied with an obvious effort and came to her feet unsteadily.

"Forgive me for not believing you, Hori," she said in a strangled whisper. "I saw you strike Sisenet. I saw the knife in his throat. I still cannot accept ..."

"I know," he said swiftly. "Get onto the raft, Sheritra. Antef, you will have to row."

They tumbled onto the craft and Antef pushed off. Hori sat with his arm flung over Sheritra, his head nodding against her breast as Antef panted, fighting the current. Hori closed his eyes. Two days, he thought. I have two days if that demon spoke correctly. Sheritra stirred and he heard her whimper.

The raft b.u.mped and Antef said, "Your Highness, we are home. Do you want to disembark?"

Hori pulled himself away from his sister. Dimly he felt her take his face between her hands, and her kiss was like dark petals on his lips. "I love you, Hori," she said urgently, her voice breaking. "I will never forget you. Go in peace."

So she knows that I will not survive, he thought dimly. He rubbed his cheek against hers but he was incapable of words. His burst of energy was over and he wanted nothing more, now, than to curl up on the floor of the raft and lapse into unconsciousness. He felt her rise and heard her footsteps crossing the craft, then there was only the river's secret sucking noises and Antef's regular panting. "Take me north, Antef," he murmured, and gave himself up to the blessed painless spiral into oblivion.

Sheritra walked calmly up the steps. Behind her she heard Antef grunt as he poled the raft away, but she did not turn. She was cold and calm, she was in control of herself. With an absent word of greeting to the guard by the water she reached the path and started along it, still encased in that brittle unnatural peace.

Dawn was not far off. She felt it. The torches were guttering and the darkness in the garden had a quality of restlessness about it. A servant rushed by, giving her a cursory reverence, and further on a guard was fruitlessly searching the bushes. They will not find him, she thought coldly. Already he is a possession of the G.o.ds. No one can touch him now.

She swung into the house by the main entrance, ignoring the flurry of frenetic activity going on, and made her way unimpeded to her own quarters. Bakmut was asleep, sprawled across the doorway, but Sheritra stepped over her and continued on into her bedchamber. The night lamp still burned by her couch, casting a friendly, limpid glow.

Going to her cosmetic table she opened a box and drew out the copper razor Bakmut used to shave her body hair. It was very sharp, and she drew the blade across her thumb reflectively. What was it Father said so long ago? she wondered. If you want to slit your wrists, do not pull the blade across the flesh. You will not damage the arteries sufficiently. Dig the knife lengthwise for a full and copious flow of blood. That way you will be beyond help. Beyond help ... It was all a game, she thought dully, the razor poised. He pretended to understand me, pretended to love me, and all the times we made love he was laughing at me, forcing himself, repulsed by my body. Oh curse him, curse him! And curse me for a simpering fool. I should have known that no man as beautiful as he would be attracted to such a homely girl as I am.

She longed to be able to plunge the innocuous, gleaming blade into her flesh, to feel the moment of pain, to see her blood spurt, but she could not make the savage, self-destructive movement required. No one will care, that is the thing, she thought coldly. Not Father, not Mother, and Hori is battling his own death. No one will be hurt by my dying, and Tbubui would simply smile. I brought this on myself. I never did deserve to be happy and I will spend the rest of my life reminding myself of that fact. These four walls will be my witnesses.

"Bakmut!" she called, tossing the razor onto the couch. After a moment her servant appeared, blinking sleepily. "Bring me the scroll from Pharaoh." Bakmut nodded and shuffled away, and a moment later she returned, holding out the tightly wound message. Sheritra took it and, breaking the seal, unrolled it. "To my dear grandson, Hori, greetings and fond felicitations," she read. "Having taken your news under advis.e.m.e.nt and having consulted my Minister for Hereditary Ent.i.tlements, I have decided to investigate your allegations. Expect a person of authority to arrive in Memphis within two weeks. Know also that I am most displeased with the antics of your family and I will take the necessary steps to ensure peace in Memphis and on your father's estate. I am your august grandfather, Ramses the Second, etc., etc." Sheritra let the scroll roll up with a strangled laugh. None of it mattered anymore. "Bakmut," she said to the patiently waiting servant, "from now on I do not intend to leave my suite. No one is to enter. I do not wish to speak to anyone. Is that understood?" The girl nodded warily and Sheritra dismissed her. Very good, she thought as she lowered herself onto the couch and drew the sheet up over her shoulders. Bakmut will believe it is a whim until the time goes by, and the time goes by ... She relaxed into her pillow and closed her eyes. Gullible, she thought. Scrawny. Virgins bore me ...

With a m.u.f.fled cry she squeezed her eyes shut and drew her knees up to her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. No one will ever hurt me again, she vowed against the agonizing mental images flooding her brain. No one. Overcome with grief, she slept.

22.

Behold me as a dog of the street, as a sign unto G.o.ds and men am I: struck down by his hand, for I had wrought evil in his sight.

KHAEMWASET EXISTED KHAEMWASET EXISTED in a state of shock as servant after servant came to him to admit that Hori could not be found. The estate was extensive, and searching every nook and cranny took a long time. Nevertheless Khaemwaset was mystified. Hori had been obviously near collapse when escorted to his quarters. He could not imagine that the weak, exhausted youth would have been able to kill one soldier and wound another so grievously that he was not expected to live. Khaemwaset himself had attended the man, but there had been little he could do, and as he worked he had marvelled at the damage inflicted. Hori must have been desperate, he thought, but to do what? Not to burst into Tbubui's suite with whatever knife he used on the first guard, for no one had caught so much as a glimpse of him near the concubines' house. In fact, no one had seen him at all. in a state of shock as servant after servant came to him to admit that Hori could not be found. The estate was extensive, and searching every nook and cranny took a long time. Nevertheless Khaemwaset was mystified. Hori had been obviously near collapse when escorted to his quarters. He could not imagine that the weak, exhausted youth would have been able to kill one soldier and wound another so grievously that he was not expected to live. Khaemwaset himself had attended the man, but there had been little he could do, and as he worked he had marvelled at the damage inflicted. Hori must have been desperate, he thought, but to do what? Not to burst into Tbubui's suite with whatever knife he used on the first guard, for no one had caught so much as a glimpse of him near the concubines' house. In fact, no one had seen him at all.

Khaemwaset had gone to Sheritra's rooms himself, reasoning that Hori might be hiding there, but the girl's body servant a.s.sured him his daughter was sleeping and there had been no sign of the Prince. Antef likewise had been no help. He had seemed genuinely alarmed and puzzled at the news of his friend's disappearance, and when Khaemwaset had wanted to interrogate him an hour later, he himself was nowhere to be found.

Then a report came to him that the skiff was missing. He had the watersteps guard brought to him and the terrified man confessed that, having imbibed too much wine before taking his duty, he had fallen asleep. The Prince could indeed have crept past him. Khaemwaset dismissed him on the spot. I cannot have the whole city searched, he thought wearily. Perhaps Hori has gone north to Nubnofret. That idea gave Khaemwaset some relief. It was good to imagine Hori safely tucked away in the Delta, at least for the time being. Until Tbubui's baby is born, he thought darkly. Then I will have to act. If Sheritra had not been so clumsy the problem would already be solved, but it does not matter. Father's court is a populous place, full of intrigue and activity. A poisoning will not be so noticeable there. In the meantime I am free to enjoy my darling in peace. Both the troublemakers have gone. Sheritra will marry Harmin and he will come and occupy Hori's old quarters. Perhaps Sisenet will decide to move in also, and the eyes of the people around me will no longer be hostile with accusations.

Later that morning, Ib came to tell him that the raft was also missing, and this time his daughter had been seen making her way along the path from the watersteps. Irritably Khaemwaset sent for her. Shortly after, Ib returned with the message the Princess was refusing to leave her quarters. He merely stood politely waiting, and with a loud oath Khaemwaset swung out of the office where he had been trying to dictate and, with a guard and a herald trotting at his heels, strode to Sheritra's suite. At the herald's persistent knocking, Bakmut opened the door.

"Get out of my way," Khaemwaset ordered brusquely. "I must talk with my daughter."

Bakmut bowed but stood her ground. "I am sorry, Highness, but the Princess will see no one," she said obstinately. Khaemwaset did not waste time arguing. He grasped her arm and pulled her aside, going to stand in the middle of the ante-room.

"Sheritra!" he called. "Come out at once. I wish to ask you a question."

For a long time there was no answer, and Khaemwaset was preparing to force the inner door when he heard her stirring. The door was unlatched but she did not appear. Instead her voice floated to him from somewhere in the dimness beyond.

"You may ask and I will answer, Father," she said, "but it will be the last time. I wish no more commerce with anyone, particularly with you."

"You are disrespectful," he began furiously, but she broke in: "Ask your question and do not tire me too far, or I may not answer you at all." There was something dead about her tone, Khaemwaset realized, checking the flood of invective hovering on his tongue. So even, so indifferent, as though she were past caring about anything. His bl.u.s.ter died.

"Very well," he said thickly. "Did you take the raft out last night?"

She responded immediately. "Yes I did."

He waited for more but the silence went on until he was forced to continue.

"Did you bring it back?"

"Yes, I did."

Again the silence. Khaemwaset felt his exasperation begin to build afresh.

"Well where is it now?" he growled.

She sighed. He could hear the soft gust of her breath and he thought he caught a glimpse of her linen within the shelter of the half-light within.

"Hori took the skiff and went to talk to Sisenet about your wife," she said woodenly. "Antef and I took the raft and went after him. We brought him home. I got off, but Hori has gone north with his friend. You will not see him again."

"He just could not let go!" Khaemwaset exploded. "He actually killed because he could not let go! Good riddance to him! I hope he stays in the Delta until he rots!"

"He will not reach the Delta," that cold, disembodied voice came drifting. "He will be dead by tomorrow night. Sisenet told him so. Sisenet wielded the pins, Father, but you decreed that Hori should die. Think of that tomorrow night when you gaze into your mirror."

"Well what of you?" Khaemwaset said uneasily, her tone more than her words making him suddenly chill. "What nonsense are you playing out, Sheritra? Harmin will be here this afternoon to visit his mother. Will you refuse him entry also?"

"I have decided not to marry Harmin after all," she replied, and now her voice wavered. "In fact, Father I have decided to remain a single woman. Now go away."

He waited for some moments after the door had been firmly closed, expostulating, swearing, even pleading, but no sound came from the other side. It was as though he stood at the sealed entrance to some tomb, and in the end he grew afraid and went away.

That afternoon Harmin did indeed come to visit Tbubui, and the three of them, Khaemwaset, his wife and her son, sat in the garden while servants pa.s.sed damp cloths over their limbs and fed them fruit and beer. Harmin was unusually attentive to Tbubui, stroking her face, rearranging her pillows, meeting her glance with a warm smile when she had a joke to share. How unlike Hori he is, Khaemwaset thought nostalgically. Here is genuine concern and respect, a son knowing his place and keeping it out of love for his parent. Whatever devil has entered Sheritra, the little fool, to refuse this gracious young man?

As if in answer to his musing, Harmin rose and bowed. "With your permission, Prince, I should like to spend some time with Sheritra now," he said. Khaemwaset looked up at him with embarra.s.sment.

"Dear Harmin," he said. "I am afraid that Sheritra is indisposed and is seeing no one today. She sends you her apologies and, of course, her love."

A glance of swift understanding pa.s.sed between mother and son. Harmin's face fell. "I am devastated," he said, "but tell her that she has my sympathy. In that case I shall go home and sleep." He bent and kissed Tbubui, bowed again to Khaemwaset and glided away, kilt swinging against st.u.r.dy, shapely legs, his black hair bouncing on his shoulders.

"He is a fine young man," Khaemwaset said, secretly hoping that Sheritra would soon get over her foolishness. "You have every reason to be proud of him." He waved away a proffered dish and hitched closer to Tbubui. "I have not told you about Hori," he said in a low voice. "He is heading for the Delta, doubtless to pour out to his mother his tale of woe. I am ashamed of my family, Tbubui. But at least you will be safe for a while."

She smiled at him, a slow, speculative curling of her wide mouth, and her eyes narrowed. "Oh, I think I am very safe now," she answered. "It was a pity that you were unable to feed him his gruel the other morning, but no harm has been done. I do not intend to worry about Hori anymore."

In a rush of abject guilt he reached for her, but she lay back, signalled to a fan-bearer, and closed her eyes. Khaemwaset was left to sit, chin in hand, and brood, while the day became hotter and the rhythmic chanting of his servants treading grapes in the vat in the compound wafted to him intermittently, charged with a raucous triumph.

In spite of his theory that Hori was seeking Nubnofret's broad bosom on which to cry out his vindictiveness, Khaemwaset spent an uneasy night. The evening had seemed to close in with an ominous grip, the hands of cataclysm, and mindful of Sheritra's scornful words, he was unable to lift the mirror from its gilded case on his cosmetic table.

He went to his couch early, drank some wine and pressed Kasa into conversation. He thought of going to the concubines' house and making love to Tbubui, but he was too anxious, too full of a vague presentiment of doom, to forget himself in that act.

One night lamp did not seem enough. Things moved in the shadows just out of his vision, and the small breeze became magnified into strange sighings and tiny sobbings in his room. Shouting to Kasa he ordered more light and felt rea.s.sured, but it was a long time before he could fall asleep. Even when he did, he kept waking up with a start and peering about, his dreams vivid and confusing and totally forgotten by the time he sat up on the couch.

The mood of dislocation followed him into the next day. Every word spoken to him seemed heavy with some arcane meaning he could not quite grasp, and each action took on the ponderous weight of ritual. The house was filled with an atmosphere he could not describe but that made him tense with the feeling of threat. He dreaded the night. In the afternoon he went to Tbubui, but even there he was not able to free himself of his inarticulate fear. Nor could he speak of it. It was too unformed.

Evening came, and he could not eat. He and Tbubui sat behind their small tables in the vast reception hall, waited upon by servants ranged all about the walls, entertained by the harpist whose graceful notes echoed in that empty place and reminded Khaemwaset suddenly of other evenings, of Nubnofret resplendent and formidable in blue and gold, reprimanding an indignant, squirming Sheritra while Hori grinned and looked on, Antef hovering behind him. The nights had been warm then, redolent with family closeness, with hallowed routine and blessed predictability, and on this night he missed it all with a blinding jolt of homesickness. Perhaps Harmin and Sisenet would move into the house, and sit behind their own flower-strewn dining tables, bolstered with cus.h.i.+ons, merry with wine, talking carefully to whatever official guests graced the hall, but the air of sadness, of good times past, would never leave this gracious room. One family has disintegrated, but I am building another, he thought as a defence against that awful spasm of loneliness. There is Tbubui's baby, after all. Sheritra can surely be talked out of her mysterious female mood and she and Harmin will fill the house with the happy chaos of my grandchildren. But the sense of the broken, of things gone that could never be mended, would not go away "Khaemwaset, I have said the same thing to you three times," Tbubui interrupted his musings, leaning across to kiss him perfunctorily. "Where are you?"

He gave her his attention with an effort of the will. "I am sorry, beloved," he said. "What was it?"

"Your brother Si-Montu has sent a message wanting to know if he can come and dine next week. Is that acceptable?"

Acceptable. Khaemwaset suddenly gripped her arm. "Tbubui, sleep with me in my own quarters tonight, on my couch," he begged. "I need you there."

Her light-heartedness vanished and she regarded him with a worried frown. "Of course I will," she agreed. "Whatever is the matter, Highness?"

But he could not tell her. The fragrance of the flowers, the deep mauve translucence of the wine, even the cascade of notes pouring from the harpist's fingers, were all conspiring with the gloomy atmosphere of the house to plunge him into the past and torture him with tenors for the present. "The figs are sour," was all he said.

She came to his suite much later, wafting to the couch on a cloud of her perfume and a ripple of loose, seductive linen. Without a word she shed the linen and spread his legs, easing herself down on him in practised motions, and with a groan he gave himself up to the exquisite sensations only she could tease from him. But long after she was asleep, breathing evenly in the crook of his arm, he lay wide awake in the grip of premonition. He dared not look at her. He had done so once, after she had slipped into unconsciousness, and there had been something about the glitter of her eyes under half-closed lids, the sight of her small, animal teeth between parted lips, that had struck him with fear.

He clung to the sounds of sanity. He heard the guard sighing outside the suite. He heard Kasa snoring in the other room. Jackals howled far away on the desert, and much closer in, an owl hooted in the garden. The lamp spat and the shadows gyrated for a moment. These things are real, he thought. These things arc comfort and sanity. Hold them close, for they are infinitely precious.

He was still awake to hear whispering outside. He lay quietly, waiting, until Ib approached the couch. The man was naked, obviously roused precipitously from his mat in the pa.s.sage. "Speak," Khaemwaset said, and at the word Tbubui stirred beside him and her cool flesh disengaged from his. She turned over.

"Highness, you had better get up," Ib whispered. "Antef has returned with the raft and your son. Please come."

Hori is dead, Khaemwaset said to himself as he nodded, waved Ib away and slipped carefully from the couch. That is the aura of desolation that has been slowly filling the house. Hori is dead. Wrapping a kilt around his waist and feeling for his sandals, he left the room and went through into the pa.s.sage. Antef was waiting, his face pale, his whole att.i.tude one of exhaustion, but his eyes met Khaemwaset's with the clear, straight stare of a pure conscience. "Speak," Khaemwaset said again, acknowledging the young man's bow.

"Prince, your son is dead," Antef said bluntly. "His body lies on the raft at the watersteps. He died in terrible pain but he did not rail against the G.o.ds or you. His judging will surely be favourable."

"I do not understand," Khaemwaset said haltingly. "Hori was ill, certainly, when I detained him, but I thought he had contracted some sickness in Koptos. He would recover ... he would get well ..."

"He told your Highness exactly what was wrong with him," Antef said bluntly, "but your Highness refused to listen. Regret is vain. He wanted me to tell you that, though his end is terrible, it is not as terrible as your fate. Also that he loved you."

For answer Khaemwaset turned on his heel and began to run along the torchlit corridor. Through the house he sped, and as he ran he was thinking, Hori! My son! My fles.h.!.+ It was a game, it was a dangerous foolishness, I never meant to do you any harm, I would not really have poisoned you, I love you, oh Hori, why? Why? He heard Antef, Ib and Kasa pounding after him. Though he ran as fast as he could, he was unable to put distance between himself and the growing guilt and remorse already snapping at his heels so that by the time he almost fell down the water-steps and stood looking down onto the raft he was weeping with self-loathing.

Hori lay in a huddle under a blanket, rocking imperceptibly on the Nile's swell. He looked like nothing better than a pile of dirty linen waiting to be laundered. Khaemwaset stepped from the stone onto the raft, and kneeling, he turned back the covering. He was a setem-priest, and his first thought on seeing the curled body was that the embalmers would have difficulty in straightening him out, for Hori was lying with his knees jammed up under his chin. But then he saw the matted hair, the beautiful face that had been the talk of the whole of Egypt loose and empty in death, one hand lying palm up in a gesture of supplication, and all thought fled. Bowing over the body Khaemwaset began to keen, great wails of love and loss that echoed from the far, unseen bank of the river and returned with a mocking hollowness. His hands moved gently, clumsily, over his son, touching the cold, already putrefying flesh, the lifeless tresses, the strong nose and unresponsive mouth. He was aware of the little group standing helplessly on the watersteps, but he did not care. "I meant you no harm!" he groaned, the knowledge of the lie sending another dagger into his heart. "I was deluded, blinded, forgive me, Hori!" But Hori did not move, did not smile his forgiveness, did not understand, and now it was too late.

Khaemwaset stood. "Ib," he said unsteadily, "take his body to the House of the Dead. His beautification must begin at once for he is already rotting." His voice broke and he could not go on.