Scroll Of Saqqara Part 4

"Highness, the door is ready to be forced," he said. "Do you wish me to open it?" Khaemwaset nodded. The man went away, and soon the grind of crowbars on stone could be heard.

Hori came and squatted before his father. Silently they watched the huge square inch outwards, revealing a widening gulf of blackness. Presently Hori stirred.

"Here it comes," he said quietly, and Khaemwaset tensed.

A thin plume of air began to pour from the aperture and billow upward into the limpid sky. It was very faintly grey. Khaemwaset, watching the horizon shake through it, fancied that its odour reached him, dank, unbearably stale, with an almost indiscernible hint of the charnel-house. The smell was familiar to him, having a.s.saulted his nostrils on numerous similar occasions, but he thought that this time the steady stream had a particularly virulent edge.

"Look!" Hori said, pointing. "It seems to be spiralling!" Indeed, as the gush reached its zenith it was forming odd shapes. Khaemwaset thought he might have made pictures of them if they had not dissipated so quickly. Then the moment was over. The column of foetid air blew away and he got out of his chair, Hori at his heels.

"Be careful of traps, Father," he reminded Khaemwaset, who nodded brusquely. Sometimes the tombs held cunningly concealed shafts that dropped straight into bedrock, or false doors to lure the unwary into dark pits.

Khaemwaset came to the stairs, hesitated, took a deep breath, and plunged down and through the crack the masons had managed to force. Servants with lit torches hurried behind, and Khaemwaset paused just inside the short pa.s.sage to allow them time to illuminate the interior. They were obviously reluctant to do so. But then, he thought in the few seconds while they fanned out, they always are. So am I, this time. The orange flames wavered, sending streamers of shadow racing for the corners. Penbuy rattled his palette as he extracted a pen. Hori was panting lightly. Khaemwaset took his son's arm without realizing that he did so, and together they moved into the tomb.

Although the ancient air was gone, the smell of damp and decay was very strong. Penbuy began to cough, and Hori wrinkled his nose. Khaemwaset ignored it. The anteroom, though very small, was exquisitely decorated and scrupulously tidy. It was also undisturbed. With a thrill of sheer excitement Khaemwaset saw the tiring boxes neatly stacked, the furniture in place and without so much as a scratch, the st.u.r.dy clay jars with their precious contents of oil, wine and perfume still sealed. Six stern-faced shawabtis stood motionless in their niches, waiting for the summons of their master to work in the fields or at the loom, and around them the walls gleamed with life. Vivid scenes were laid upon the white plaster.

Walking slowly, Khaemwaset marvelled at the delicacy and vibrancy the dead artists had achieved. Here the dead man and his wife sat at meal, pink lotus blooms in one hand and wine cups in the other, leaning towards each other and smiling. A young man, obviously a son, in short white kilt and with many necklaces entwined over his red chest, was offering a piece of fruit to the baboon perched at his feet. Baboons were depicted everywhere- gambolling in the painted garden where the little family reclined at their ease by the fish-pond, running behind the man as he held his spear and chased a lion across the desert, sitting with tails curled around their furry hips as the three humans had their skiff poled through a riotous green marsh in search of ducks. There was even a baboon sprawled asleep at the foot of the couch where a bilious sun was sending its early rays to wake the two who slept. Interspersed with the friezes and unfolding delights of the family's earthly existence were black hieroglyphs exhorting the G.o.ds to welcome their wors.h.i.+ppers into paradise, to grant them every blessing and reward in the next life, and to watch over their tomb. Hori, who had been talking to Penbuy as the Scribe began the work of copying what inscriptions he could, came over to Khaemwaset. "Have you noticed something strange about all these pictures?" he remarked.

Khaemwaset glanced at him. "The baboons?"

Hori shook his head. "No, not the baboons, although they are indeed extraordinary. The man who lies in the other chamber must have been a great devotee of Thoth. No, I mean the water. Look closely."

Khaemwaset did so, and was soon intrigued. Wherever the man, his wife and their son appeared, their feet were in water. Sometimes it rippled in little white wavelets. Sometimes it flowed over several different kinds of fish, and once it was contained in bowls around the figures' ankles, but whatever they were doing they did in water. "These people must have loved the Nile pa.s.sionately to have decorated their tomb with so much of its blessing," Khaemwaset whispered, the sibilance rus.h.i.+ng in a small echo around the room. "And there is something else, Hori. This man was, I think, a physician like myself. Look." He pointed to where several surgical instruments were shown beside a long panel of hieroglyphs. "The script is a prescription for the unconquerable AAA scourge, and beside it is a catalogue of spells for the subduing of disease demons."

Together they wandered around the walls while Penbuy followed more slowly, his pen busy. Then Khaemwaset paused with a cry of satisfaction. In a tall recess, just before the gaping door that led to the burial chamber, stood two statues. The woman was tall and graceful, her eyes smiling out into Khaemwaset's own under her short, old-fas.h.i.+oned granite wig and blue-painted headband. One arm was at her side. The other embraced the waist of her husband, a lean, also smiling man with a square face and mild expression, dressed only in a short kilt and sandals. One leg was outstretched in a stride, and in one hand he held a stone scroll. As in the rest of the tomb, the artistic work was of a fineness Khaemwaset had rarely seen. The eyes of the statues glowed darkly. The jewels around the woman's neck were picked out in blue and red and the ta.s.sels of her sheath glinted with gold paint.

Khaemwaset bent to the plinth. "So," he said after a moment. "We have found a princess, and presumably a prince, although I cannot read his name. The stone is scored through where it should be."

Hori's fingers stroked the gash. "This is not the work of vandals," he said presently. "I think the plinth was damaged when it was being set up in here, and the workmen did not have time to repair it." He stood straight. "Still, his name will be on his coffin."

"I agree," Khaemwaset affirmed. "She has a haunting name, the princess. Ahura. Very unusual. Now, Hori, can we date this find?"

Hori laughed. The sound slammed against the walls and the shadows seemed to convulse at its force. One of the servants cried out in fear and Khaemwaset, his momentary absorption forgotten, wanted to clap a hand over his son's mouth. "Why are you asking me?" Hori chuckled. "I can merely a.s.sist you, O wise one. I think the dating will be almost impossible. The furniture is severe and simple, perhaps belonging to the age of the Great Pyramids, but the decorations resemble closely the beautifying that was done during the reign of my great-grandfather Seti. The coffins may give us more clues."

Khaemwaset did not want to go into the other room and neither did the servants. They were cl.u.s.tered silently close together. Penbuy was lost in his work. "The statue of the prince has a scroll in its hand," Khaemwaset said to Hori. "At least it looks like the symbol of pharaonic authority. That is very odd and might even be considered blasphemous, seeing that only kings may be represented with the sign of temporal power."

But Hori merely nodded and gestured to the servants to proceed into the burial room. They hung back, their eyes wide, their faces pale under the flaring lights they carried. Khaemwaset, picking his way towards them, wondered if his expression held the same nervous tension. "It's all right," he said to them kindly. "Am I not the greatest magician in Egypt? Is my power not mightier than the powers of the dead? Give me a torch." He swept one out of a shaking hand and with a conscious stiffening of his will strode through into the other room.

He almost dropped the torch, and had to stifle a cry. Directly before him, huge, as the flame revealed it, was Thoth himself, his ibis beak curved towards Khaemwaset, his wise bird's eyes twinkling. In his right hand he held a pen and in his left rested a scribe's palette. The whole life-size statue glowed with the warmth of animation, and as Khaemwaset's pulse slowed he realized that it was plated over in solid gold. "Thoth," he whispered, and stepping towards the G.o.d he knelt and prostrated himself, kissing the s.h.i.+ning feet. Behind him an awed Hori was also performing his obeisance and the servants were standing in the doorway exclaiming, their fear temporarily gone.

Khaemwaset rose shakily, and it was then that he saw the coffin lids. They were leaning against the plain whitewashed wall to either side of the G.o.d, two slabs of solid, palely polished quartzite, and Khaemwaset stared at them stupidly. "But it is not possible!" he blurted. "No robber has been here. Why did the prince choose to lie uncovered?"

"Perhaps he is not here at all." Hori's voice fell flat in the tiny s.p.a.ce. With one accord, father and son turned round, and in the turning Khaemwaset felt a rush of the dread that had begun to stalk him ever since he had first seen his workmen's pile of damp sand and ominous gap beside it. His palms became slick and he gripped the torch more tightly. "No," he whispered. "He is here. They are both here."

The coffins lay side by side on stone bases. Torchlight was playing on them, and the shadows within gathered densely. Hori's happy mood had fled. Soberly he edged closer to his father. Once more Khaemwaset had to will himself to move. What is the matter with me? he thought angrily. I have gazed on the dead a hundred times and more. I am a sem-priest after all, and a physician. No, it is the malevolent magic I feel in here that is turning my blood so chill. Why in the name of Amun are these coffins open?

The first bandaged corpse lay with right arm at its side and left bent across its breast. A woman. The Princess Ahura. Khaemwaset stared down at her for a long time. Beneath the dusty windings, now brown from the embalming salts that had sucked the moisture from her body, he could see the shapes of many amulets, and he counted them off in his mind. Some would be placed on the skin itself, but he recognized the Buckle of the Girdle of Isis that protected the dead wearer from any abomination, and also on the neck the Amulet of the Tet, the spine of Osiris that gave the corpse the power to be reconst.i.tuted in body and spirit in the next world. Just below these familiar swells lay an enormous Amulet of the Collar, a plate of gold and turquoise that covered the withered breast and sparked tauntingly at Khaemwaset. He shuddered. The Amulet of the Collar gave the wearer the power to free himself from the funeral swathings that held him captive. "It's beautiful," Hori breathed beside him. Grim-lipped, Khaemwaset nodded.

Gingerly he pa.s.sed to the second coffin, some of his fear evaporating under the mysteries they had found. The prince lay with both arms at his side in the male position. He was as simply bound as his wife. His Amulet of the Collar matched hers, gold and turquoise, and at first Khaemwaset did not see the thing by his right hand. Then he bent closer with an exclamation of surprise.

"Hori! There's a scroll in here," he said. Leaning over the edge of the sarcophagus he touched it gently. It resisted his fingers and was quite dry. He pushed at it a little harder and the hand itself quivered.

"It is not actually in the prince's fist," Hori observed. "He was well bandaged."

"No," Khaemwaset answered. "I do believe that the scroll has been sewn to him. See how the hand moves when I tug on it." They straightened and stared at each other.

"A dilemma," Hori said softly. "To take scrolls from a tomb to copy and then return is one thing, but are you willing to cut it off his hand, Father? We have never lifted anything from a coffin before, only from boxes in ante-rooms."

"I know," Khaemwaset snapped testily. Already the familiar l.u.s.t was rising in him and he glanced back to the roll of papyrus and the hand that curled around it. "If the coffins had been decorated and inscribed with the proper spells we might have found some explanation, but they are completely bare. Not even the Eyes for the corpses to see out into the room. What could be so important that the prince ordered the thing actually sewn onto him?"

"This is a serious matter." Penbuy had come up behind them and was peering into the coffin, his palette under his arm. "The inscriptions tell me nothing, not about baboons, not about the water depicted everywhere, and where, Highness, is the young prince, the son? Did he die elsewhere and was therefore buried elsewhere?" He paused, and when there was no reply he went on. "I humbly submit my doubts to you, Prince. Close up this place and leave the dead in peace. Do not take the scroll. I do not like the air in here."

Khaemwaset knew his scribe was not speaking of the musty smell. He did not like the air either, but under his dislike, his disquiet, was the pulse of his eagerness. A precious scroll, so precious that the prince had made sure that it was buried with him. A large mystery in the midst of many small ones. He had found many scrolls in his digging, usually left by robbers because they had no value to any but a scholar. They were the favourite stories or poems of those who had enjoyed them in life and intended to go on enjoying them at the feet of Osiris. Sometimes they were proud lessons mastered in youth and lovingly preserved. Sometimes they were boasts-lists of the valuables some n.o.ble had ama.s.sed, the gifts he had given to some Pharaoh at the celebration of the New Year, or the number of slaves he had brought back from military campaigns.

But this ... Khaemwaset stroked the scroll thoughtfully. This belonged to the realm of the urgent, the sacred, the vitally important to the prince whose brittle bones and withered skin clutched at it so possessively. I deserve at least a look at it, Khaemwaset thought, with a flash of mutiny against his innate virtue. I honour the dead with my restorations. Let this dead man for once honour me in my search for knowledge.

"Osiris Neuser-Ra's temple awaits your expert hand," Penbuy put in hopefully. "You surely do not wish to anger him, Highness."

Khaemwaset ignored his scribe's clumsy plea. "Hori, give me a knife," he ordered.

There was an outbreak of whispering from the servants pressed together by the doorway. Hori pulled a short copper blade from his kilt belt and pa.s.sed it to his father. Khaemwaset bent. For a moment he hesitated, his eyes on the prince's face, aware of his own amulets-the Eye of Horus for happiness and vigour that swung from his chest and the Amulet of Isis's Buckle that lay between his shoulder-blades to protect him from demonic attacks from behind. Then, holding his breath, he reached into the coffin and, taking the scroll carefully, pulled it taut so that he could see the st.i.tches attaching it to the hand. The copper blade was very sharp. One by one Khaemwaset slit the threads, marvelling that they were so strong. The hand jerked stiffly. Penbuy had backed away, but Hori was watching his father's actions intently.

Khaemwaset gave a sigh of satisfaction and drew up his prize. It was not very thick. He handed it to Penbuy. "Roll it gently in linen," he said, "and carry it home yourself, Penbuy. Do not give it to one of your a.s.sistants. Put it on my desk in the office and tell whoever is guarding the door today not to let anyone near it. I will read it, you can copy it, and then I will replace it." Unless it is very valuable, his mind ran on silently. Then I will keep it, put it in my own library, or perhaps even donate it to the House of Books at Pi-Ramses. This prince has no need of it now.

"I do not approve," Penbuy said forthrightly, holding the scroll with distaste, and Khaemwaset rounded on him.

"Your approval or disapproval is as nothing to me!" he said coldly. "You are my servant, nothing more. Remember that, Penbuy, or you may lose your position in my household!" Penbuy whitened, bowed and left the room without another word. Hori looked solemn.

"You were somewhat hard on him, weren't you, Father?" he protested. Khaemwaset glared at him.

"That is not your business, Hori," was all he said.

It was a shock to emerge into the red drenching of sunset. Khaemwaset and Hori stood at the head of the stairs, breathing the pure desert air in grateful gulps. The evening breeze had sprung up, warm and rea.s.suring, stirring their filthy kilts and drying the cold sweat from their bodies. Hori spoke for both of them when he said, "How fine life is! I am not ready to lie in my tomb yet, Father, in the dark and cold. Egypt is too winsomely lovely!"

"No one is ever ready," Khaemwaset answered slowly. He felt light-headed, dislocated, as though an age instead of a mere afternoon had gone by while he was in the tomb. "Let us finish whatever food and beer is left, Hori, while the tents are being struck, and then we will go home and make our peace with your mother and Sheritra." They walked away from the gathering gloom of the hole behind them. "Ib!" Khaemwaset called to his waiting servant. "Leave the organizing here to the under-steward. Go home and tell Amek I want two soldiers to guard this site. I will remain until they come."

Hori looked at him curiously. "Two soldiers, Father?" he said as they reached the table and sank into the chairs beside it. "You usually don't bother with soldiers at all, only a couple of workmen."

"But this tomb is untouched," Khaemwaset pointed out. "We did not examine the chests and boxes. Who knows what wealth they contain? We will leave them alone, but if word of our find gets out we may have all kinds of rabble trying to force a way in and steal. Better to stand Amek's men with spears and knives at the entrance."

But it was not robbers that he feared. No, not at all. He drank the beer that had been placed before him, watched the shadows of night begin to creep across the desert and wished that Amek's men would hurry.

Full night had fallen by the time he and Hori alighted from their litters and walked into the house. Khaemwaset did so with a vast relief. The chatter and pattering feet of his servants, the aroma of the evening meal, the gentle flicker of the lamps being lit, all served to restore to him a sense of security and normality. Hori went off to his quarters, and Khaemwaset was just entering his private dining room where Nubnofret was already seated when Sheritra and Bakmut came in. The servant retired to the wall and waited to serve her mistress. Sheritra gave her father a hug. "You are back in time to tell me a story tonight," she said. "You will, won't you? How grubby you are!"

Khaemwaset good-humouredly returned her embrace, kissed Nubnofret and, going to his low table, called for water to wash his hands. "I have not had time to change my clothes," he apologized to his wife. "I did not want to hold you up while I did so."

She did not appear to be annoyed. "I have had plenty to do while you were gone," was all she said on the subject. "Did you find anything interesting, Khaemwaset?"

At that moment Hori entered, Khaemwaset signalled for the meal to be served and a general conversation began. The family's musicians, a harpist, lute player and drummer, accompanied the desultory to and fro of the talk. Nubnofret had not really wanted an answer to her question, and Khaemwaset was relieved when she did not pursue the matter. He was afraid that Hori might prattle of the thing his father had done, but Hori and Sheritra, their tables touching, were engaged in some private discussion of their own.

Khaemwaset, though hungry, found that he could not eat. As night deepened and a sweet wind blew through the windows whose flax mats were still raised, his thoughts revolved around the scroll, surely even now resting on his desk, waiting for him. With an effort he tried to concentrate on Nubnofret's words.

"Your brother Si-Montu came today while you were out," she was saying, her ample arms across her table, beringed hands clasped around a wine cup. "He was disappointed to find you gone. I gave him beer and honey cakes and then he left."

Khaemwaset suppressed a sigh. He knew that she did not approve of Si-Montu, considering him loud and rude, but her true criticism was that he had married beneath him. "What did he want?" he asked mildly. "I hope you made him welcome, Nubnofret."

There was a small silence. Nubnofret removed her rings, considered them, and replaced them with deliberation. Hori signalled for more bread.

"I am not ill-mannered, Khaemwaset," she rebuked him. "Your brother wanted an afternoon with you, drinking in the garden. That was all."

Khaemwaset felt a rare rebellion flare in him. "He may have married the daughter of a Syrian s.h.i.+p's captain and thus disqualified himself as a prince in line for the throne," he said evenly, "but he is a good and honest man and I love him. I would have enjoyed his company."

"I like Uncle Si-Montu," Sheritra's light voice broke in with uncharacteristic defiance. She was looking directly at her mother, her colour high, her hands working in her linens. "He always brings me something strange when he comes and he talks to me as though I had some intelligence. Ben-Anath is beautiful, and shy like me. I think the story of their meeting and falling in love and marrying against Grandfather's wishes is wonderful."

"Well if you expect to meet someone and have him fall in love with you, my girl, you will have to take yourself in hand!" Nubnofret retorted, cruelly but rightly interpreting the longing in her daughter's tone. "Men are not attracted to plain women, no matter how clever they are."

Sheritra's flush deepened. Her hand stole into Hori's and she looked down. Khaemwaset gestured, and the servants began to clear away the debris of the meal.

"Send Bakmut to me when you retire," he said to his daughter, "and I will come and talk. Why don't you and Hori take a walk around the garden?"

"Thank you, Father," she replied, and rising, her hand still clutching Hori's, she turned to Nubnofret. "I apologize for displeasing you yet again, Mother," she said stiffly. "If you wish I will eat dinner alone in my rooms tomorrow so that I may not interfere with your digestion." She and Hori were gone before Nubnofret could make a comment.

Khaemwaset smiled inwardly in spite of his sympathy. Sheritra had a streak of stubbornness in her, and had managed the last word. Nevertheless, he reprimanded Nubnofret. "If you cannot accept Sheritra as she is," he said coldly, "I will consider sending her to our estate at Ninsu for a while. You hurt her more than she will admit. In the Fayum she will be near Pharaoh's harem, which doubtless contains women with more sympathy than her own mother. Sunero is a good agent. His family would be happy to keep Sheritra for a while."

Nubnofret's shoulders slumped. "I am sorry, my brother," she said. "There is something about her that raises my ire no matter how I try to conceal it. I want her to be beautiful, to be sought after ..." She slapped her palms against the table and stood, drawing her floating yellow linens around her. "I may not like Si-Montu for his uncouth ways but I agree with my daughter. His romance with Ben-Anath set my heart fluttering as well. Why am I never able to admit my agreement?" She hesitated, and Khaemwaset had the feeling that she wished to kneel and put her arms about him, but she only smiled faintly, clicked her fingers at a servant girl who had dropped some sc.r.a.ps, and sailed out of the room, Khaemwaset sat on briefly, unaware for a time that the musicians had stopped playing and were waiting to be dismissed. I will not examine the scroll until I have visited Sheritra, he thought. I do not want to begin what will surely be a painstaking investigation only to be interrupted. Perhaps a turn around the fountain would be in order, and then a quick glance at the messages from the Delta. There is no point in bathing now. He got up, and his harpist coughed quietly. Startled, Khaemwaset let them go, then walked through into his public reception room on his way to the garden. But somehow, instead, his feet took him to the side door, the pa.s.sage that ran behind the main rooms to the sleeping quarters and from there to his own rooms.

The scroll lay alone on the polished sheen of the desk, a safe distance from the alabaster lamp that customarily illuminated Khaemwaset's night work. Penbuy was thorough and careful. At a word, the guard on the door closed it, and Khaemwaset was alone with his find.

Folding his arms he approached the desk, paused, began to pace around it, his eyes never leaving the delicate thing in its shroud of fresh white linen. Would it unroll easily, or break as he tried to flatten it? His fingers itched, yet a reluctance was on him, a shrinking from whatever the moment when he sat and touched it might bring. The night was quiet. An occasional burst of laughter floated to him very faintly from his neighbour's garden where, he presumed, they were entertaining guests. A brief impurity in the oil of the larger lamp in its stand by the far corner made the flame spit and crackle before settling to a steady cone once more. If I wait any longer I will still be here at dawn, Khaemwaset told himself irritably. Sit, you fool! But for a few seconds more he hovered, fighting the fear of disappointment if the scroll should prove mundane, fighting the fear of something else, something unnameable. Then he pulled out his chair and removed Penbuy's protecting linen.

He was struck again by the scroll's pristine appearance. No mark of age or dust was on it. It had obviously been handled with exemplary care, both by the prince himself and by his embalmers. Khaemwaset touched it with the same reverence. Slowly he eased it open. It moved resiliently, with no sign of a tendency to crack. Indeed, Khaemwaset came to the end of it unexpectedly, let it go, and watched it roll up again with bated breath lest his mistake should cost him the contents. But it simply rustled on the desk then lay still.

So short! Khaemwaset thought, and the writing still so black. He pulled the lamp closer. I need Penbuy and his palette to take down my reading as I go. I will use him tomorrow. Tonight I just want to read it over.

He began to unroll it once more, both hands under the jet black characters, and was soon mystified. The hieroglyphs were like nothing he had ever seen before. They seemed to be the primitive forerunners of the present formal Egyptian script, but so ancient that their vague familiarity was a deception. The wording was in two halves, and when he had perused the first half he returned to the beginning, first getting up to go into his library and bring back a palette, pen and ink. Painstakingly he copied each character, and underneath he placed a possible meaning. The work was laborious and his concentration sharpened until he was unaware of his surroundings, the frown on his face, even the presence of his body. Not for a long time had he been so challenged, and excitement flowed through him like fine wine.

Someone knocked on the door. He did not hear. The knock came again and he shouted "Go away!" without lifting his head. Bakmut opened and bowed.

"Many apologies, Prince," she said, "but the Princess is now on her couch and begs you to come and say goodnight."

Surprised, Khaemwaset looked at the waterclock beside his chair. It showed him that two hours had gone by since he had begun work.

"I cannot come immediately, Bakmut," he replied. "In half an hour I will be there. Tell Sheritra to wait."

Bakmut bowed again and withdrew. The door clicked shut, but Khaemwaset did not notice. His head was down.

Soon he had several sentences roughed out, even though their meaning still eluded him. A hieroglyphic symbol could represent the syllable of a word or a complete word in itself, or a whole concept encapsulated in the one sign, and the signs themselves, though superficially recognizable, were ambiguous. He played with combinations, covering the papyrus on his palette with his own thin sure script, but when he had exhausted all the possibilities he still had no idea what he was seeing.

He began to whisper the words, pointing with the end of the pen as he went, thinking that they might as well have been ancient a.s.syrian for all the sense they made. But they did have a familiar cadence that puzzled him. He started again, this time half chanting. There was definitely a rhythm inherent in the sentences. He had done all he could on the first half of the scroll, where there was a break before the fine black lettering began again.

Falling silent, it occurred to him suddenly that the rhythm was familiar because the words were the building blocks of a spell, and as every magician knew, spells had a particular flow to them, when chanted, that poetry did not have. I have been singing a spell of some kind, he thought, sitting back with a shudder of apprehension. That was stupid of me, to voice and thus give power to something that I do not understand. I have no idea what just came out of my mouth.

He waited a moment while he came fully to himself, his gaze travelling the quiet room. The small lamp on his desk was guttering, its oil almost gone. The larger one still sent a steady flame upward, but it would not for long if the wick was not trimmed. The deep, restful silence of night had thickened throughout the house and Khaemwaset once again consulted the waterclock and was shocked. In three hours it would be dawn.

Hurriedly wrapping the scroll in the clean linen he rushed out, making his way quickly to Sheritra's suite. The door was ajar and a lamp still burned within, casting a pale light into the pa.s.sage. Khaemwaset eased the door fully open. Bakmut had fallen asleep waiting for him on a cus.h.i.+on just inside the threshold. Stepping over her he crept to the further room. Sheritra lay curled in a bundle of disordered sheets, breathing lightly. The scroll she had been reading while she waited for him had fallen to the floor. Khaemwaset stood over her, ashamed. This is the second time lately that I have let you down, my Little Sun, he thought sadly. For all my talk, I am little better than your mother. I am so sorry.

He made his way back to the office. The scroll still lay where he had left it, an innocuous beige cylinder amid the turmoil of his attempts at translation. Nothing in the room had changed. Well, whatever the spell I inadvertently chanted, it has had no effect on me or my surroundings, he told himself with relief. It is probably nothing more than a recipe for the relief of constipation, sewn to the hand of a man who suffered that malady all his life and feared that he might go on suffering it in the world to come if he did not have his precious panacea with him.

Khaemwaset smiled to himself, but the unspoken joke did not touch the sense of depression and guilt lying like a weight around his heart. I am the greatest historian in Egypt, he thought, sobering. If I cannot translate this scroll, no one can. It is no use showing it to any of my colleagues, though I may try, for their knowledge is not as wide as mine. Besides ... He picked up the scroll and moved through into the library, carrying the lamp with him. Besides, they would want to know where I got it. Penbuy was right. I am a thief, albeit a well-intentioned one. Let him copy it swiftly and then I will sew it back on the prince's fingers. I will leave the work on the second half of it until the copy is complete. I am too tired and too frustrated to attempt it now. And too afraid? his mind mocked as he closed the lid of the chest where he had laid the scroll. You were lucky, chanting a spell you did not understand. The second half might bring a demon, or a death in the family, if you are so stupid again.

He desperately needed sleep, but he had one ch.o.r.e to perform before he could fall onto his couch and take refuge in unconsciousness. The spell he had sung haunted him with its unknown consequences, and he knew he must protect himself from any damage he might have done. Locking the library door behind him, he opened the chest where he kept his medicines. It was full of carefully labelled boxes and jars. He withdrew a box, and out of it he took a dry scarab beetle. The dark scarabs were useful for certain common maladies and he had dozens of them stored, but for his purpose tonight he needed the glittering, irridescent golden scarab that lay on his palm refracting the light.

Taking a knife, he gently removed its head and pried off its wings, putting the body in a small copper urn. Clumsily, for usually he had an a.s.sistant present to do such things, he lit a piece of charcoal in the portable grate, covered the dried corpse with a little water from the jug that was always kept filled by Ib, and, while it came to the boil, he unlocked another chest and drew forth a small sealed jar, breaking the hard red wax with reluctance The oil of the apnent serpent was fearsomely expensive and hard to acquire.

Getting down an alabaster cup he laid in it the wings and head, and murmuring the proper incantations, covered them with the oil. The water was now boiling. For a few moments he watched the almost weightless body of the insect bob and churn, then he lifted it out with a pair of tongs, his mouth forming the continuation of the spell, and laid it in a bath of olive oil. Carefully he tipped the water over the charcoal, which hissed and steamed. In the morning he would complete the spell that would drive away any sorcery or evil incantation by combining the two oils with their contents and drinking the resulting mixture. He would have done so at once, so immediate was his anxiety, but the segments of the scarab had to steep for the required number of hours before being ingested, in order to provide the proper guard.

Khaemwaset was by now so fatigued that he re-locked the chests and at last the library door in a haze, and was almost staggering as he made his way through into his sleeping quarters. They were in darkness. He knew that the night slave lay just outside the door, on a straw palette in the pa.s.sage, but he did not bother to rouse him. Feeling his way, Khaemwaset reached the couch, pulled off his kilt, kicked off his sandals and collapsed under the sheets that smelled faintly of the lotus water in which they were rinsed. He was asleep immediately.

In the morning, after his ablutions, prayers and a breakfast eaten in the blessed privacy of his own quarters, he made his way to the library. Taking new charcoal he once more lit a small fire and, continuing by memory the spell he had begun the night before, he poured the scarab's body in its bath of oil into the cup that held the head and wings. He no longer felt hounded or afraid. Setting the cup above the charcoal, he waited for the oils to boil. He knew that in order for the spell to achieve its maximum protection he must abstain from s.e.xual intercourse for seven days. The practice of magic often required such strictures, and many of his fellows found them irksome, but a week without s.e.x meant little to Khaemwaset.

The oils were now boiling, sending the slightly bitter aroma of the apnent serpent into the air. Taking the tongs, he removed the cup and placed it on a ledge to cool a little, leaving the charcoal to burn itself out The concoction had to be drunk very hot and he kept a close watch on it to make sure it did not lose its heat too far.

Then, after chanting aloud the last of the spell, he took the cup and rapidly drank, feeling the now heavy body of the scarab slide on the oil down his throat. I have undone my foolishness of last night, he thought with a light heart as he went back into the office and began to gather up the pile of papyrus sheets on which he had worked. Penbuy can file these scribblings with his copy of the scroll but I will not give up my attempt to translate it. No ancient writings have beaten me yet and this one will be no exception. "Penbuy!" he called, knowing his scribe would by now be waiting outside the door to conduct the day's business. "You can come in. What letters have arrived from the Delta?"

When he had finished dictating the necessary replies, Khaemwaset remembered that he must make his peace with his daughter and went in search of her. He found her in the small antechamber that led to the rear entrance to the house, watching the house snake drinking the milk that was always placed ready for it. She greeted him with a smile.

"I think he is grateful," she commented. "When he is finished he pauses and looks about, if someone is near. If not he merely slithers away. I know, because I sometimes hide to observe him."

Khaemwaset kissed her smooth forehead. "I must apologize for last night, Sheritra," he said contritely. "I became absorbed in some work and forgot all about you. I am not the most reliable of fathers, am I?"

"I forgive you," she said with a teasing solemnity, shaking a finger at him, "but to make up for it you will have to read to me tonight for twice as long. Oh Father," she went on. "I am not a child anymore, to fly into a rage or cry myself to sleep if I am sometimes overlooked. I understand perfectly."

But you do cry yourself to sleep sometimes, he thought, looking at her as her attention returned to the snake, still motionless with its muzzle in the white froth. Bakmut told me so during one of her reports to me on your progress. You cry at your own inadequacy, in anger at yourself. I understand you perfectly also. "I am planning a little escape today," he said. "I intend to steal away for a few hours and return just in time to swallow the first course of dinner. Will you join me?"

She grinned conspiratorially at him. "Mother will expect me to play her my lute lesson," she answered. "If I am not to be found she will have several choice things to say to me tomorrow." She pursed her lips. "Well, I am used to that. I would love to come with you, Father."

"Good. Meet me after the noon sleep, at the rear of the garden."

She nodded and squatted, for the snake had now raised its head and was lazily regarding her with its black, unblinking stare. Khaemwaset left them.

He and Sheritra got onto their litters at the garden gate a little after the noon sleep and, accompanied by Amek and four soldiers, set off for the site of the tomb. As they swayed through the northern districts of the city they talked of inconsequential things, happy to be in each other's company. Guiltily they smiled and laughed, and Khaemwaset thought how Sheritra looked almost pretty with her tinkling carnelian bracelets hugging the brown of her gesticulating arms and the black braids of her wig stirring against her graceful neck as she spoke.

Before long they were being dappled in the grey shade of the date palms whose tiny green fruit was just beginning to appear, and then Saqqara opened out before them above the short hill that gave the ruins such a lofty isolation.

As they came up to the tomb and alighted, Hori saw them and waved. Khaemwaset ordered the litter-bearers into the shade of the canopies and he and his children descended the steps and entered the welcome gloom of the first chamber. Penbuy, his duties in the office concluded, was already at work copying inscriptions. Khaemwaset's artists had set up their easels and were reproducing the beautiful paintings that covered almost every inch of the walls. Others were seated on the sandy floor, open chests beside them, laboriously making lists of the contents. At the door three men, with copper mirrors angled to catch the sunlight and direct it within, were standing patiently.

Sheritra drew in her breath. "But this is lovely!" she exclaimed. "Such detail! Grandfather should come and see!"

"It would only remind him of the crudity of his own artists," Hori rightly pointed out. "You will send him copies of the work being done, won't you, Father?"