Scroll of Saqqara(10)

With Penbuy and the soldiers dismissed and himself at last behind the closed and guarded doors of his own inner chamber, he allowed Kasa to remove his shoulder-length black wig, unscrew the turquoise earrings he favoured and rid his arms and hands of rings and bracelets. The kilt was unwrapped and laid aside. With a gusty sigh of weariness and pleasure, Khaemwaset lowered himself onto his couch, face down among the soft pillows, and felt the warm scented olive oil drip from Kasa’s dish onto his back. He closed his eyes. For a long time he gave himself up to the contentment of Kasa’s strong hands kneading away the muscle knots of the day’s tensions and sliding firmly over his buttocks and legs. Then Kasa said, “Your pardon, Prince, but you neither look nor feel well. Your skin has the consistency of goat’s cheese tonight. The underlying muscles are becoming flabby and unsightly. May I prescribe for you?”

With mouth buried in cushions, Khaemwaset chuckled. “The physician should take some of his own advice?” he said. “Prescribe if you wish, my friend, and then I will tell you if I have the time or the inclination to obey. I am, as you know, thirty-seven years old. Nubnofret also nags me about my aging body but truly, as long as it serves to carry me through my duties and does not interfere with my pleasures, I prefer not to inconvenience it.” Kasa’s stiff fingers suddenly dug into his muscles and Khaemwaset could feel the man’s disapproval.

“Scrambling in and out of old tombs and climbing pyramids requires a level of fitness in a man that your Highness is fast losing,” he objected sententiously. “I who love you beg you to order Amek to give you regular wrestling bouts, archery practice and swimming time. Your Highness knows that he is neglecting a fine constitution.”

Khaemwaset was about to formulate a brisk reply when his mind all at once filled with a vision of his little dancer patient. He had not consciously evaluated her body, only her complaint, but now he remembered her flat, taut belly, the smooth delineation of muscles under the skin of her thighs, the economical swell of hips over which no fat was laid. The picture made him feel old and melancholy and vaguely empty. I’m tired, he told himself. “Thank you Kasa,” he managed. “Put the oil away. Remove the paint from my face and hands and bring the night lamp. And please tell Ib that I am not to be disturbed by any sounds of packing tomorrow.” He submitted to his body servant’s quiet expert ministrations until at last he saw the door close and he was alone with the friendly flicker of the tiny flame imprisoned in its alabaster jar, and the room’s thick, slow-moving shadows.

Pushing the pillows to the floor he reached for the ebony headrest—Situ holding up the sky—and set it under his neck. He again closed his eyes and began to drift, still in the grip of the curious sadness that had come with the memory of his father’s tiny concubine and her perfect body. Why is it troubling me? he wondered dimly. What was it about that girl, seen for such a brief moment, that has tapped a well of such reflection in me tonight?

Then he knew, and was wide awake. Of course. She had somehow reminded him of the first woman he had ever had, a girl actually, no more than thirteen years old, with long, quick legs and the beginnings of firm breasts that had been at the time all dusky nipples that had hardened intriguingly under his questing tongue. He could taste her now as though he had possessed her not an hour ago. She had been one of the many little slaves employed in various easy ways by Pharaoh’s more august servants. Khaemwaset, himself barely fifteen, had walked into the palace’s reception hall to dine with some three hundred of his father’s guests. He remembered the pungent odour of the melting, perfumed head cones, the waft of massive bunches of lotus flowers everywhere, the din of laughter that overpowered the musician’s polite ripples.

The girl had approached and bowed, slipping a wreath of cornflowers over his head, standing on tiptoe to do it, and Khaemwaset had felt her naked breasts brush his chest, her warm, scentless breath envelop his face, before she retired and bowed again. Later, slightly drunk and flushed with the heat of the night and good food and his father’s especial attention, he had seen her flitting among the guests with golden party favours on a tray. He had walked up to her, taken the tray, handed it to a passing boy and ushered her impatiently into the garden.

The night had been very close and very black, like her eyes, like the triangle of coarse hair his fumbling fingers had been desperate to explore under her flimsy kilt linen. They had copulated behind a bush, just out of sound of a Shardana soldier standing guard, then she had giggled, re-tied her clothes and sprinted away.