“And that is because she has ruled your roost alone for far too long,” Ramses came back swiftly. “She must learn to be more humble. Arrogance in a woman is a most distasteful trait.”
Khaemwaset blinked. His father’s harem was full of quarrelsome, fiery, self-opinionated females able to give Pharaoh the challenge he most loved.
“What of your children?” Ramses was saying. “Hori and Sheritra? Have they an opinion?”
“I have not yet asked them for one, Father.”
“Oh.” All at once Ramses seemed to lose interest in the conversation. Putting a hand flat on his shrunken chest he rose, and Khaemwaset immediately came to his feet. “Tomorrow your mother will be placed in her tomb,” Ramses said. “I abhor your weakness, my son, in allowing all else in your life to drift into chaos while you pursued this creature, but I do understand. There will be no punishment, providing Egypt may once again rely on you to discharge your duties promptly.”
Khaemwaset bowed. “I do not deserve your clemency,” he commented and Ramses agreed.
“No, you do not,” he said, “but no one else can be trusted with the tasks I give to you, Khaemwaset. Merenptah is a bombastic idiot and my son Ramses is a drunken sot.”
Diplomatically Khaemwaset changed the subject as the two of them began to move towards the doors. “I received no communication regarding your Majesty’s own marriage negotiations,” he said carefully. “I trust all is going well.”
Ramses snorted disdainfully. “The Khatti princess is on her way,” he said. “She will arrive in about a month, providing she is not eaten by wild animals or raped and murdered by brigands on the desert tracks. To tell you the truth, Khaemwaset, I am tired of her already, though I have yet to meet her. It is her dowry that whets my appetite, not her soft, royal skin. You will of course be present when she piles it all before me and bends her hopefully pretty little knees.” He gave Khaemwaset a sharply hostile glare. “This is your last chance, Khaemwaset. Fail me in this and you will find yourself patrolling the Western Desert with the Medjay for the rest of your life. I mean it.”
Ramses did not linger by the door. Kissing Khaemwaset perfunctorily on the cheek he strode regally away, his rowdy retinue falling in around him, leaving the Prince to collect Ib and make his way back to his suite. Khaemwaset suddenly found that he was exhausted. I must not let this happen again, he thought, his eyes on Ib’s sturdy, flexing spine. I must discharge my duties no matter what, I must cling to some kind of perspective. But already Tbubui’s face filled his inner vision while his father’s shrank into nothingness, and he ached with the need to be with her again.
Astnofert’s funeral the next day emptied the palace. Her cortège straggled for more than three miles from the edge of the royal estate, across the Nile, where rafts plied to and fro for hours, ferrying mourners and courtiers, and into the rocky desolation of the valley where all queens had been buried for hundreds of years. Tents had been erected for the members of the immediate family and for the sem-priests and the High Priest performing the ceremonies. The remaining crowds fended for themselves, setting up shelters in whatever shade they could find and passing the time in sleep or gossip, while Astnofert’s linen-wound corpse in its heavy quartz sarcophagus was surrounded with spells and prepared for its final journey into the dark silence of the tomb.
For three days Khaemwaset and his family stood or sat, prostrated themselves or danced the ritual funerary movements, while the fierce Theban sun sucked the moisture out of their skin and the sand blew in choking eddies to cling to their sweat and sift its way under their clothes. Then it was over. Khaemwaset entered the tomb with his father to lay flower wreaths on the bulky nest of coffins inside which, like the answer to some convoluted puzzle, Astnofert lay. The servants swept their footprints away as they retreated into the sunshine, and the sem-priests threaded the knotted rope through the doorseals and stood ready with the imprint of the jackal and nine captives, the insignia of death.
Ramses turned away without a word, shaking the sand from his feet as he got onto his litter. Khaemwaset and his family did the same, and were carried back to the sluggish river and the raft and at last into the relative coolness of the palace in a haze of fatigue. As soon as they reached the privacy of their rooms, Khaemwaset swung to his steward.
“Ib,” he said, “order our belongings packed. We are returning to Memphis tomorrow morning.” Ib nodded and went away. Nubnofret had been standing nearby and she came up to Khaemwaset. For a moment they regarded one another. Khaemwaset saw her hand tremble, as though she had been about to reach out and touch him and had then thought better of it. Her face became closed.