Scroll Of Saqqara Part 17

"I know all that," Sheritra cut her off. "I am not asking you, I am giving you a direct command, so that in the future you may not be held responsible for my behaviour. Is that understood?"

"Indeed." Bakmut gave a stiff bow.

"Furthermore, you are to say nothing of the arrangement to any other member of my staff. You are not to lie if you are asked, but neither are you to gossip."

"Highness, I do not gossip. When do I have the time? Your mother the Princess Nubnofret trained us all more strictly than that. And as for the servants of this house gossiping ..." She laughed harshly. "They are like the walking dead. I despise them."

"Good. So we understand each other."

"I have one more thing I would like to say," Bakmut said stubbornly. "Many of the changes this house has wrought in you, dear Princess, have been marvellous. You have lost the awkwardness and shyness that used to plague you, and the bitterness you used to express to me many times. You bloom like a desert flower. But in the blooming is a hardening somehow. I beg your Highness to forgive me."

"I forgive you," Sheritra said evenly. "Go back to your work, Bakmut." The servant retired and sank to the floor, picking up her rag.

Sheritra left the couch and began to wander about the room, absently touching the walls, the jumble of cosmetic pots on the dressing table, the roof of her portable shrine to Thoth. There was no going back, she knew. She thought of the self she had been with a kind of amused horror, yet Bakmut was correct. Under the changes was a new core of recklessness that threatened to turn her new-found confidence into a coa.r.s.e bravado. Well, I deserve this madness, this recklessness, she thought mutinously. I have been a prisoner of my childish self too long. Let me explore these new limits, these new emotions, even if in doing so they drag me past the white winning post, like unruly horses pulling a chariot, and I have to wheel about.

She ate a frugal lunch, still in her own room, but gathering her courage she ventured out for the evening meal, sitting demurely before her tiny table. Sisenet was as polite but uncommunicative as always. Harmin, to her great relief, treated her with his usual gentle deference mixed with teasing warmth, and it was only Tbubui who caused the girl some anxiety. She was unusually animated, her seductive, wily hands darting and weaving over the food, among the flower garlands, keeping time to the harpist's trills or emphasizing some point she was making. Yet Sheritra felt her eyes measuring, perhaps even calculating, and when their glances met she read an insulting complicity in them.

That night Harmin came to her as she had hoped and feared he would, bringing dewy blossoms to stroke across her face and a simple gold amulet for her neck. Bakmut obediently left them alone, and this time Sheritra let her sheath slip to the floor and rose to meet him freely. His lovemaking was slow and tender, his pa.s.sion a smouldering thing that flamed and died, flamed and died, as the hours wore away.

For some days she waited in trepidation for word to come from her father, some cry of outrage that would demand her return home at once, but it did not come. Perhaps the scribe, the spy, was unaware of what was happening between herself and Harmin. Perhaps he was happy here with little to do and was lying to his master. But, perhaps, Sheritra thought sadly, Father is simply too wrapped up in his own affairs and does not care any longer what happens to me. That idea gave her a spurt of contradictory anger. I will go home and find out why he is silent, she vowed. I will seek out Hori and upbraid him for ignoring me. But the spell of timelessness Sisenet's house cast over its inmates soaked her too and she dallied, unaware of how the days were slipping by.

Harmin began to invite her out onto the desert in the spurious cool of the evenings to hunt with him. He would take a guard, a runner and the hunting dog kept chained in the servants' compound. Sometimes he walked, but more often he hitched a horse to his chariot and took one of the faint tracks that led towards the dunes.

Sheritra considered refusing his request that she accompany him. Standing in a chariot could be dangerous, and she had never cared for horses. Besides, Pharaoh would not take kindly to news of a granddaughter injured or even killed through foolhardiness.

But Sheritra was like an addict with one drug, Harmin's presence, and she went with him, standing in the lurching vehicle between him and the sheltering guard while the horse struggled to pull them through the cloying sand. The yellow dog ran beside them, tongue lolling.

Harmin was always hopeful that he might sight and bring down a lion. More often than not he returned home empty-handed, but on several occasions he made a kill.

Once it was a gazelle that bounded from behind a small pile of rocks and started away, its thin, pretty legs pounding. Harmin, spear raised, rushed after it, sand spurting from his heels, and before Sheritra could recover her breath he had brought it down and was standing gleefully over its twitching body.

His l.u.s.ty enjoyment of the pastime was both repulsive and mesmerizing. It showed her a side of him she had not suspected, and she found it difficult to reconcile the civilized, well-mannered man who read her inmost thoughts with such ease and the Harmin who could scream obscenities at an escaping prey, or shout with savage triumph as an animal fell with his spear in its shoulder.

On the evenings when he had made a kill his lovemaking was always forceful and pa.s.sionate, even slightly brutal, as though she too were prey to be stalked, struggled with, gored through. More bewildering to her was her response. Something primitive in her answered his mild savagery with an equal abandonment, so that she looked back on the days of her virginity such a short time ago in amazement. Does my mother know the things that I know? she wondered. Does Father ever demand from her the acts Harmin demands from me? And even if he wants them does she respond? But the thought of her father brought shame, and she turned from it quickly.

One evening she had arranged to meet Harmin beyond the servants' compound and the wall that separated the small estate from the desert beyond. She was late, having dictated yet another letter to an undeserving Hori, and she decided to cut through the servants' domain directly to the rear gate. The wide yard was empty. Sparrows hopped about the compacted dirt, pecking at the remains of the debris that was carried from the house to be thrown onto the desert over the far wall. She and her guard quickly crossed to the gate, and Sheritra slipped through while he held it open.

She had never before taken notice of the mounds of refuse to either side. It did not lie for long. The purifying heat of the sun soon burned away odours, and the jackals and desert dogs dragged off all that was edible. But today she caught a glint of something unusual lying in the sand and paused to give it a second look. The light was glittering on a broken pen case. Sheritra picked it up. Its jagged edge was snared in a piece of coa.r.s.e linen that unrolled as she tugged, spilling numerous pieces of smashed pottery at her feet. Something else remained hidden in the folds, and with a grimace of distaste she shook it out and let the cloth flutter onto the garbage.

It was a wax figurine, crudely fashioned but with a certain primeval strength to the square shoulders and thick neck. Both arms had broken off and one foot was missing, but uneasily Sheritra saw that the head had at one time been pierced several times. Tiny holes gritty with sand felt rough under her thumb. Holes also peppered the area of the heart. Rough hieroglyphs had been incised into the soft brown beeswax and she peered closer, trying to decipher them, her unease slowly mounting to a pang of fear. She was the daughter of a magician and she knew what she was seeing. It was a hex doll. Someone had made it, cut it with the name of an enemy, then, muttering spells of evil and malediction, had driven copper pins into the head and heart. The litter under which it had lain had scored and compressed it so that she could not make out the letters. "Do not touch it, Highness!" her guard warned, and at the sound of his voice she tossed it away with a cry.

The pen case was a fine piece of work, delicately ornamented with granulated goldwork and having a cloisonneand-blue-faience likeness of the ibis-headed Thoth, G.o.d of scribes, along its length. Sheritra frowned over it for a moment. Somewhere she had seen it before, but try as she might she could not remember where or when.

In the end she laid it reverently in the sand by the refuse heap, and squatting, she fingered through the small sharp pieces of what had obviously been a large clay pot. She recognized its use also and she could even make out a few disconnected words of the death spell that would have been inked all over it before a hating hand had brought the hammer down. "His heart ... burst ... daggers ... pain ... neither day ... terror ..."

Someone in this house is harbouring a dreadful hatred, she thought. The spell has been spoken, the ritual performed, and the tools of this unknown person's destruction have been thrown away. I wonder if the curse was successful, or if the victim knew of it and made a counter-incantation in time. She shuddered, then shrieked as a shadow fell across her.

"Highness, what are you doing?"

Sheritra pushed herself to her feet to find Harmin at her back. She indicated her find. "The sun flashing on the pen case caught my attention," she explained. Inwardly she was shaking. "Someone has tried to kill someone else by this, Harmin."

He shrugged. "The servants are always squabbling and carrying grudges and becoming embroiled in petty jealousies," he replied. "They are the same everywhere, are they not? This spell must have originated in their quarters."

"So your servants do have voices?" she half teased, half baited him, and he grunted.

"I suppose they are voluble enough when they are alone. Think no more of it, Princess. Would you like to drive the horse this time?"

She nodded absently and, side by side, they walked to the waiting chariot. But the feeling of familiarity that had stolen over her when she grasped the pen case would not leave her. It returned often in the days that followed, to taunt her with a memory just out of reach. Sometimes she wondered if it had been Sisenet himself, a diligent scholar, who had made the wax figure. Sometimes she considered Tbubui, a dabbler in medicine and perhaps in magic as well, but she could not imagine either of them closeted in the darkness coercing demons to do their will.

Tbubui no longer came to the bath house in the mornings to examine the state of the Princess's skin. I suppose the visits have served their purpose, Sheritra thought, but the knowledge did not distress her. She felt as though she and Harmin had already signed a marriage contract, that by some strange alchemy she could not remember the occasion, but they were already man and wife, and she was a permanent and legitimate member of the household.

They still spent the mornings together, often crossing the river and strolling the choked streets of Memphis, a pastime they had not undertaken before Harmin became Sheritra's lover. The crowds, the noise, even the smells, increasingly bewildered the girl, and she was always relieved to step onto the barge and be poled back to the safety and quiet of the isolated house.

She was in Tbubui's room one day, sitting at the vanity table in a loose lounging robe, her face already painted but her long hair not yet dressed. She and Tbubui were examining Tbubui's jewellery as though they were sisters, or their station in Egypt's social hierarchy was similar. Sometimes this irritated Sheritra, but she was too much in awe of the mentor who had become her friend to protest and risk insulting her. The collection was one Sheritra admired, for it contained many heavy, simple pieces of ancient craftsmanship of a kind now difficult to obtain.

"My mother was very traditional in her tastes," Tbubui was explaining as Sheritra's fingers sifted through the rings, anklets, amulets and pectorals. "She had many pieces that belonged to her ancestors and she regarded them as sacred to the family, pa.s.sed down to each succeeding generation. I also value them as such. My husband gave me lovely things, but I wear my mother's jewellery almost every day." She draped a silver pendant with an onyx Eye of Horus around Sheritra's neck. "This is a light and airy thing that looks very well on you, Highness," she said approvingly. "Also it is a powerful protection against evil. Do you like it?"

Sheritra was about to express her delight when her eye caught the glow of turquoise right at the bottom of the ebony chest. Tbubui owned much turquoise, but something about the shape of the thing she was looking at caught Sheritra's fancy, and she pushed past the other trinkets and fished it out. Tbubui's hands had gone still on her shoulders. The girl held up a gold-and-turquoise earring. It swung gently in her fingers, and she bit her lip as she peered at it, then she exclaimed, "Tbubui, this is the earring Hori found in the tunnel leading out of the tomb. I would know it anywhere!" Her hand closed over it and she turned on the stool. "What are you doing with it? Oh tell me that Hori did not desecrate that woman's resting place by giving it to you!"

"Calm yourself, Highness," Tbubui said, smiling. "Of course your brother would not do such a thing. He is much too honest."

"But he is in love with you!" Sheritra blurted. "His judgment could have deserted him. Love makes us do questionable things sometimes ..." Her voice trailed away, and for the first time in weeks she blushed. "I know you are to marry my father," she finished lamely. "Forgive my tactlessness, Tbubui."

"You are forgiven, dear Sheritra," Tbubui rejoined lightly. "I am aware of Hori's infatuation with me. I have been kind to him, do not fear, and it will pa.s.s. As for the earring ..." She reached down and deftly removed the piece from Sheritra's grip. "Hori showed me the original, and loving turquoise as I do I was determined to have it copied. I drew its likeness as soon as Hori left, and my favourite jeweller made up a pair for me."

"Oh." Sheritra was covered with confusion. "But where is its mate?"

Tbubui sighed. "I have lost it. The fastening was not as secure as it should have been, but I did not want to wait for it to be fixed. I was too happy wearing it. Before I could bring myself to part with it, it parted from me. The servants have scoured the house and grounds, even the skiff and the barge, but it must have fallen from my ear somewhere in the city. One day I will have another one made." She dropped the earring carelessly back into the chest. "Would your Highness like spiced wine? A snack?"

Tbubui's explanation had been perfectly reasonable, but something in Sheritra's intuition warned her that she had not heard the truth. At one time Hori would not have dreamed of desecrating a tomb by giving away someone else's property, but that had been a free, honourable young man. Was the moody, irritable Hori, in the throes of an unreturned love, capable in fact of doing such a thing? Sheritra thought it possible. It took time, too, for a well-crafted piece of jewellery to be made, and the one Sheritra had dangled did not even seem new. The goldwork was finely scratched and pitted here and there. It was not an unusual practice for a craftsman to deliberately age a piece of furniture or jewellery, but Tbubui's turquoise had glowed with the milky greenness of genuine antiquity, and the gold had been dark, spidered through with purple. It was entirely possible that Tbubui had used a turquoise already in her possession to form a pear-shaped stone like the original. It was also possible that her jeweller was able to take the extra time to reproduce Mittanni's purple gold, but Sheritra had the uneasy feeling that none of these speculations were correct. Hori had pressed the beautiful thing into the hands of the woman he burned for and she had accepted it.

Sheritra made another uncomfortable mental connection. The discarded paraphernalia of the spell-could it have been conjured by Tbubui in an effort to avert the jealous anger of a dead woman? Yet it was the remains of a cursing spell, I am sure, Sheritra told herself as she lay sleepless on her couch or walked the garden or sat while Bakmut painted the soles of her feet with henna. One does not avert the rage of an ancient ka by insulting it yet again. I must go home for a day or two. I cannot put it off any longer.

She told Harmin that night as they lay tumbled in each other's arms, and he nuzzled her cheek, saying, "I will let you go, providing you promise to come back in two days. You bring me hunting luck, Little Sun, and besides, you have made this house a happy place." Later Tbubui quickly agreed that Sheritra's decision was a wise one. "I can understand your worry," she said sympathetically. "Scold that brother of yours for ignoring us both, and invite him for dinner when you return. Give my greetings to your ill.u.s.trious mother."

Sheritra had the few things she would need packed and said a casual farewell to Harmin and his mother. There was no need for formal leave-taking. She intended to return to the place she now considered her real home on the following afternoon.

But as she left the house and set off slowly towards the watersteps in the pale, early sunlight, a mixture of depression and reluctance fell heavily on her. She no longer carried reality with her wherever she went. Its immediacy, its focus, seemed to pale and blur the more distance she put between herself and the low, white house baking in its shield of silence. She moved up the ramp into the barge with the odd conviction that neither the outside world nor she herself had any substance.

Bakmut was clearly jubilant. Even the guards seemed to move and speak with a brisk sparkle. They are all happy but me, Sheritra thought resentfully as the vessel glided away from the bank. Well, they will not be happy for long because no matter what happens I am ordering them all back with me tomorrow. She stifled an urge to snap at Bakmut who was humming under her breath, and she stared ahead at the unfolding city with a glum determination.

Her father's watersteps looked huge and new to her as the barge b.u.mped them and the ramp was run out. The tethering poles sunk in the Nile flew spotless flags of blue and white, the imperial colours. The steps themselves, scoured daily of every stain, seemed to mount dazzlingly to infinity, and Sheritra breasted them in a kind of horror. At the top, the household guards saluted her one by one and several servants, impeccably attired, as spotless as the watersteps, came hurrying to reverence her. One of them, a herald, ran towards the house to announce her. A parasol was quickly unfolded and an escort formed.

Sheritra started along the paved path that seemed as wide as a city street. Tamed shrubs and weedless beds of exotic blooms pa.s.sed slowly by on either side. Among them three gardeners laboured, bare backs to the sky. The multicoloured pillars of the front entrance came into view, each sheltering a watchful soldier, and beyond them the customary herald, steward and scribe sat just outside the double doors in the event of visitors. Sheritra nodded to their obeisance as she pa.s.sed on her way to the rear.

Now the sound of the fountain a.s.saulted her ears, and the cultivated laughter of female body servants. Was it always like this? she wondered dazedly. Like a miniature palace, always murmurous, always so opulent? Was I always treated with so much distant respect, and simply took it for granted?

But she did not have the time to exploit her bewilderment, for Ib was coming, almost running, his face solemn. She stopped and waited and he slowed, bowed from the waist with arms outstretched, his whole body registering apprehension.

"Ib," she said.

He straightened. Why, he is not so very old after all, Sheritra thought in amazement, staring into his square, beautifully painted face framed by the short black wig. And he has a good body, compact, muscular. He is an attractive man. "Highness, it is remarkable that you should choose to return home today," he replied. "Your father the Prince was just issuing instructions for your presence."

"Why?" she said sharply. "What is it?"

"I think he had better tell you himself," the steward said apologetically. "He is with your mother. I will escort you."

At his brusque command her retinue fell away and she, Bakmut and the parasol-bearer went on, through the capacious garden, past the fountain and the blue fish-pond, between the cl.u.s.tering sycamores, to the rear entrance. From there, it was a short distance to Nubnofret's quarters, and Sheritra, her anxiety rising, fought against the sense of foreignness that threatened to bring her to a faltering halt.

Ib waved Bakmut to one of the stools in the pa.s.sage and pushed through the doors. Sheritra heard his voice announcing her, then went past him. The doors were firmly closed behind her. Khaemwaset held out a hand and she took it. Her mother was sitting on the couch. She barely acknowledged Sheritra's entrance and the girl turned to her father. He gave her a perfunctory kiss.

"What is going on?" she asked, aware of the slight echo of her voice in the high, dusky ceiling, the gleam of the blueand-white tiles stretching away beneath her feet, the cl.u.s.ter of Nubnofret's female attendants far away in one corner. Why, this room is huge, she thought. We are dwarves in it.

"Ramses' Chief Herald arrived early this morning," Khaemwaset was saying. "Your grandmother died five days ago." He did not mention the other letters, angry letters, that Ramses' herald had brought. "We are now in mourning, Little Sun."

Don't call me that! she thought indignantly. But her second thought filled her with panic. Mourning. Seventy days imprisoned here, away from Harmin, away from Tbubui, no desert sunsets feeding honeyed dates to the yellow dog, no board games played lazily under the palms, no Harmin in my bed. A return to Mother's nagging, to the constant feeling of inadequacy that used to pursue me.

Then she had the grace to feel ashamed. Grandmother is dead. She was always patient and kindly towards me and my first reaction on hearing of her death is annoyance. I am selfish.

"Oh Father, how terrible," she said, "but a good thing also. Astnofert was suffering so much, for so long, was she not? Now she is with the G.o.ds and at peace. Will we go to Thebes for the funeral?"

"Of course." The matter-of-fact voice was Nubnofret's. "And I must confess, Sheritra, that the prospect of a trip anywhere, for any reason, fills me with delight. Are you enjoying your stay with Tbubui?"

Her mother's remarks were so brittle that Sheritra turned to her, alarmed. "Yes, more than I can say," she answered, and Nubnofret lifted a blank face.

"Good," she said indifferently. "I will go and order your rooms prepared for you." She got up and glided out. Once more the doors thudded shut.

"Is Mother ill?" Sheritra enquired, and at that Khaemwaset's shoulders slumped. He sighed.

"I do not think so, but she is deeply outraged. The truth is, Sheritra ..." He hesitated. "I have decided to take a second wife, and your mother is not pleased, although of course it is within my rights. I have signed a contract with Tbubui." He searched her eyes anxiously. "I had not meant to tell you so abruptly. I am sorry. Are you surprised?"

"No," she replied, and all at once she wanted very much to sit down. "From the first moment you saw her, when we were together on the litters, do you remember, Father? I had a suspicion it would come to this." She decided not to tell him that she knew about the contract already. It did not matter anyway. "Give Mother time to become used to the idea and she will accept Tbubui," she went on. "Mother is after all a princess, and will do her duty."

"I had hoped for more than her duty," Khaemwaset said hotly. "I wanted her to befriend Tbubui, usher her into the family warmly. I cannot pierce the cold, correct mood that has held her since I gave her the news. Well, she will have plenty of time to get used to the idea."

"Why?" Sheritra allowed herself to sink onto the couch.

Khaemwaset folded his arms and began to pace "I sent Penbuy to Koptos to gather information on Tbubui's family," he said. "It has to do with a clause in the contract. I need not explain. I have been struck two blows today, Little Sun. Not only has my mother died, but my friend Penbuy also."

"What?" Sheritra was fighting to keep up with such sudden developments after weeks of placid predictability. "Old Penbuy? How did he die?"

"Not so old," her father replied with grim joviality. "Penbuy was my age. He did not want to go to Koptos at this time of the year but I sent him anyway. It was his duty to go." She opened her mouth but he held up a hand to forestall her. "The herald who came north with the news said that Penbuy fell ill shortly after he arrived in the town. He complained of pains in his head and shortness of breath, but he kept working in the library attached to the temple there. One day he walked out, took four steps into the sunlight and collapsed. He was dead by the time his a.s.sistant reached him."

Something ominous stalked along Sheritra's spine as though her father had been p.r.o.nouncing some grave and portentous edict that would change her fate forever, instead of quietly relating the events leading up the death of his servant and friend. "It was not your fault, Father," she said gently, sensing his guilt "Penbuy was doing his duty as you said. It was his time. Death would have found him whether he had been there or here at home." But is that true? she asked herself even as the words left her mouth. Oh, is it true? And that cold, nameless thing kept padding up and down her back on soft, repellent feet.

"I suppose so," Khaemwaset said slowly. "I will miss him. He is, of course, being beautified in Koptos, and then his body will be returned to Memphis for burial. We are in mourning for two people, Sheritra."

I wish I had not come here, Sheritra thought pa.s.sionately. Perhaps if the news had come to me in Sisenet's house I would have insisted on mourning there. I would have abstained from making love, I would have prayed, I would have sacrificed for the kas of my grandmother and poor Penbuy ... "Father, where is Hori?" she asked. "I want to see him and then I want to go to my rooms and absorb all this."

Khaemwaset smiled crookedly, painfully. "It has been a shock for you, hasn't it? And I think Hori will be another shock. He is not himself at all, Sheritra. No one seems to know why. He avoids us as much as he can, even Antef. But perhaps he will talk to you."

Indeed he will talk to me, Sheritra thought grimly, if I have to call the guards and have him held down until he does so. What a homecoming! "Does he know about the marriage contract?" she asked, rising.

Khaemwaset looked sheepish. "Not yet. A hundred times I have been on the point of speaking of it to him and a hundred times I have changed my mind. He has become so unapproachable."

She smiled at him faintly. "Would you like me to do it for you?" She had fought to keep the sudden scorn she felt from tinging her words. What is happening to you, Father? she wondered. This expression of shame, of hesitation, might befit a servant, not a pharaoh's son who has been used to giving commands and making decisions almost since his birth. It was as though something vital in him, something strong and n.o.ble, had softened like overripe fruit. What are you afraid of? she wanted to shout. Where is your nerve? It was said that an obsequious servant made a cruel master, and looking into her father's embarra.s.sed face she had a blinding urge to slap it. She had never felt lonelier.

"Thank you," he replied with relief. "You are closer to him than I, and his temper is so uncertain that I have dreaded broaching the subject. If you pave the way I can then sit down with him and try to explain."

"Surely no explanation is necessary," she said stiffly. "There have been few princes with only a single wife, Father. You are an exception, a curiosity. We have been living an abnormal family life here in Memphis, sufficient only unto ourselves. Perhaps Mother, Hori and I have grown arrogant."

He blinked, then scrutinized her keenly. "You have changed," he said slowly. "Not only do you look different, your eyes are surer and colder."

But I am not cold, she thought as she inclined her head and turned, walking to the door. I am hot, dear Father, oh how hot, and nothing, not Grandmother's death, not the splintering apart of our former closeness, can begin to subdue these invisible flames. You are thin and insubstantial, all of you, beside the silky feel of Harmin's skin under my questing fingers, the languorous glance of his dark eyes as he bends over me. Her hands curled into fists as she paced the corridor towards Hori's quarters, and she was oblivious to the patient soldiers' curious stares. She was enraged.

14.

Beware of a woman from strange parts, whose city is not known ...

She is as the eddy in deep water, the depth of which is unknown.

ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING Khaemwaset, walking into his office to begin the correspon dence for the day, came face to face with Penbuy's son, Ptah-Seankh. The young man's features were so like his father's that Khaemwaset's heart turned over, but then he recognized the build as slightly thinner and taller, the eyes as more close-set, though with Penbuy's watchful, almost judgmental clarity, the mouth a little less forgiving. Ptah-Seankh's eyelids were swollen and his skin sallow. He had obviously been weeping over his father, but Khaemwaset admired the determination and control that had brought him here, palette in hand and linen freshly starched, to continue the tradition of duty and loyalty that had begun many generations ago. At Khaemwaset's approach, Ptah-Seankh knelt and prostrated himself. Khaemwaset, walking into his office to begin the correspon dence for the day, came face to face with Penbuy's son, Ptah-Seankh. The young man's features were so like his father's that Khaemwaset's heart turned over, but then he recognized the build as slightly thinner and taller, the eyes as more close-set, though with Penbuy's watchful, almost judgmental clarity, the mouth a little less forgiving. Ptah-Seankh's eyelids were swollen and his skin sallow. He had obviously been weeping over his father, but Khaemwaset admired the determination and control that had brought him here, palette in hand and linen freshly starched, to continue the tradition of duty and loyalty that had begun many generations ago. At Khaemwaset's approach, Ptah-Seankh knelt and prostrated himself.

"Rise," Khaemwaset said kindly. The young man came to his feet with a fluid grace, then went to the floor again, this time in the pose of a working scribe. Khaemwaset took a chair, all at once overcome with sympathy.

"Ptah-Seankh, I loved your father and I grieve for him as you do," he said thickly. "You need not feel that you must be here ready to work when your heart is breaking. Go home and return when you are able."

Ptah-Seankh raised a stubborn face. "My father served you long and faithfully," he said, "and in the way of my family, I have been trained from my earliest years to take his place as your scribe when he died. Now he prepares for his last journey, and he would think less of me if, even at this time, I did not put my duty to you before any personal consideration. Are you ready to work, Highness?"

"No," Khaemwaset said slowly. "No, I think not. My temporary scribe is adequate for the time being. Ptah-Seankh, I want you to go and bring your father's body back to Memphis at the end of the seventy days. I will endow his tomb with gold so that priests will pray for him every day and offerings may be made on his behalf. I will also arrange his funeral with your mother so that your mind may be at rest and on other things, because I have a task for you." He leaned forward and his eyes met the young man's. They held his own without wavering. "Your father was researching the line of descent of a woman I plan to marry," he explained. "Her lineage is in Koptos. Penbuy was unable to do more than begin the task and he left no records. I want you to go to Koptos and complete the investigation before escorting your father home."

'I shall be honoured Prince," Ptah-Seankh replied with a wan smile, "and I am grateful for your tact and discretion. But I shall need to know everything about this person before I leave."

Khaemwaset laughed. The young man's response was painful but curiously healing. "You are indeed Penbuy's son!" he exclaimed. "You speak as you think, and will doubtless argue with me over many matters in the course of our relationship. Very well. See to your mother's welfare before you leave. That will give me time to explain exactly what you are to do and to draft letters of introduction for you to the dignitaries of Koptos. Here." He took up a piece of papyrus that he had already dictated. Holding a sliver of wax over the candle always burning for just such a purpose, he dribbled some onto the scroll and pressed his seal ring into it, then he handed it to Ptah-Seankh. "You are now officially in my service," he said. "Discuss anything you need with my steward, Ib. And now, go home, Ptah-Seankh. Grieve in peace today."

Ptah-Seankh's throat worked. This time he came to his feet clumsily, bowed, and hurried out, but not before Khaemwaset had seen the tears gleaming in his eyes.

There was no longer any reason to remain in the house. Khaemwaset ordered out a litter, and taking Ib and Amek he stepped into his skiff for the short ride to Tbubui's house. He had not seen Sisenet since his shameful loss of control on the day the scroll was translated, and dreaded having to try and rationalize it to the supremely self-a.s.sured man, but there was no sign of either Sisenet or his nephew as the litter-bearers padded along the narrow, winding track to the house.

It appeared deserted, as usual, the quality of its deep quiet like a lullaby sung to a fretting child. Khaemwaset, alighting and approaching the open door to the entrance hall, was suddenly and disturbingly reminded of the charm his nurse used to chant softly each night by his couch to prevent the terrible night demon, She-with-her-faceturned-backward, from flowing into the room and stealing away his breath. He would lie half-terrified, half-fascinated, his eyes fixed trustingly on the nurse's face as she swayed to the words, while the darkness in the awesomely large chamber seemed to ripple and change shape just outside the periphery of his vision. "May she flow away, she who comes in the darkness, who enters in furtively with her nose behind her, her face turned backward, failing in that for which she came. Hast thou come to kiss this child? I will not let thee kiss him! Hast thou come to injure him? I will not let thee injure him! Hast thou come to take him away? I will not let thee take him away from me!" My mother loved me with the same fierce devotion as that old nurse, he thought with genuine remorse. Her duties as queen never kept her from my side if I was ill or afraid. Yet when she needed me I was not there. In her last hours my place beside her bed was empty. I have failed her. Failed my father also, for I have abused the trust he placed in me to be his eyes and ears in government. The official missives lie piled on my desk like river flotsam because I do not recognize myself anymore. The man who would have viewed the shame of these betrayals with horror is dead, slain by the poison of a woman in his veins.

With a grimace he spoke to the black-skinned servant who had risen from the pleasant dimness and as silently glided away. Then Tbubui was coming swiftly across the plain white tiling of the floor, her pretty face solemn, her arms outstretched. Taking his hands she gazed intently into his face.