Scroll of Saqqara(165)
“Highness, this is most unexpected!” he said. “If you had given me some warning I could have welcomed you correctly. How many are in your train? The accommodations …”
“I have no train,” Hori explained, “just my servant Antef and two guards. I am here to do a work of investigation for my father.”
“But I do not understand,” the mayor said. “I believed from your father’s new scribe that the Prince had changed his mind and did not require the information anymore. So sad about the young man’s father.”
“Yes, it was,” Hori agreed. “And the Prince has changed his mind again, Noble One. Do not be distressed. I shall not trouble you for long.”
He was not able to be alone for some time. He was shown his quarters—a small room with an open entrance to the garden—and here he stationed one guard. Then he was obliged to take refreshments with the mayor and his family. After the conventions of polite conversation he asked the mayor if he was acquainted with all the noble families in the surrounding area.
The mayor nodded. “The Osiris One Penbuy asked me the same question,” he replied. “Koptos is a small town and our nobility, though all minor, does not travel much nor many too far afield. Their lineages vary in length from four generations to ancestors in direct line lost in the depths of time past, but I know them all.” He gave Hori an oblique look. “I have never heard of the three people whose history you seek, Highness. Nor is there an estate run by a steward whose master has moved to Memphis. I can only suggest that you consult the librarian in the Koptos House of Life.”
“You are sure that all estates are occupied by their owners?”
“Yes. The desert encroaches very quickly here, Prince, and the inhabited places are close together along the riverbank. Only one estate is unoccupied, but it has been so for many hentis. The house is little more than crumbling outlines of walls in the sand, and apart from some pieces of a stone fountain, the garden is nothing but desert. I believe that the line died out and the property. reverted to Pharaoh. I suppose he has no personal interest in it at all and hesitates to award so poor a property to any deserving minister.” He smiled, and Hori found himself warming to the man. “Koptos is hardly the paradise of the blessed!”
“All the same, a man might find peace of mind here,” Hori said slowly. “I wish to examine this derelict estate. Where is it?”
“To the north, beyond the last irrigation canal,” the mayor said. “But I humbly suggest to your Highness that you wait until the cool of the evening to inspect it.”
Hori rose and the whole family rose also and bowed. “I shall do so,” Hori said gravely. “Now I must rest.”
He and Antef escaped, Hori to the couch and Antef to a mat on the floor of the little room. Antef soon fell asleep, but Hori lay listening to that intriguing silence. Its quality seemed familiar. He heard footsteps in the garden outside, and then voices, and he recognized the lilt of the daughter of the house.
“… He is very handsome and not at all arrogant,” she was saying to some unknown friend. “Of course one may not touch him because he is Pharaoh’s grandson, but I long to do so…”
Hori smiled, turned over and fell asleep.
Several hours later, with Ra already a semicircle of shimmering red on the horizon, he and Antef stood above what had once been a set of watersteps, looking away from the river towards the eastern desert. Between them and the flat, beige plain that ended in a purple sky were the remains of what had once been a nobleman’s home.
Of the house, built originally of mud bricks, nothing was left but a few vague outlines in the sand. The watersteps had been irregular chunks of yellowed stone, warped and then pushed upward into jagged teeth through which the two of them had picked their way carefully.
From the top of the stair they felt rather than saw the short, buried path leading to what would have been the entrance hall. Their feet, as they moved tentatively forward, found the firmness of the stone, and Antef knelt briefly to brush away the encroaching granules, finding smooth sandstone lying beneath. Hori had halted and Antef came up beside him “The entrance hall, a rear passage and at least two bedchambers,” Hori said, pointing. “The compound with the storage huts and the kitchens and servants’ quarters has been entirely taken over by the desert. Now where is the fountain the mayor spoke of?”
They picked their way gingerly around the faint hills and tunnels that delineated what had once been sturdy walls, probably painted a dazzling white; now they made an intricate pattern of small shadows as the sun sank lower beyond the river.