The room seemed cold to him. Walking to the water-clock he watched the slow drip and realized that the hour was late. Nevertheless he was restless. Snatching up a woollen cloak he went out, and, ordering the guards on his door to follow, he took the long walk through the quiet palace to the House of Books. The librarian was dozing just inside the huge double doors. He woke, and seeing who it was, made his obeisance and allowed Khaemwaset to pass.
For a further two hours Khaemwaset wandered the rows of neatly catalogued scrolls, pulling out one here, one there, exchanging brief words with the few scholars who preferred study to sleep. But the touch of old papyrus did not reassure him tonight as it usually did, and the contents seemed to him as dry and lifeless as the atmosphere in the library.
He left abruptly, intending to try and rest, for he knew tomorrow would be full, but at the door to his apartments he paused. He could hear Hori’s voice coming with a crack of yellow light further down the hallway, and Antef answering. On impulse, Khaemwaset turned left and approached his wife’s rooms. The guard at her door saluted and knocked for him, and presently Wernuro appeared, bleary-eyed and tousled, and bowed. “Is your mistress still awake?” Khaemwaset asked tersely.
“Why no, Highness,” the woman answered, suppressing a yawn. “The Princess retired over an hour ago.”
Again Khaemwaset hesitated, then he pushed into Nubnofret’s reception room. One lamp burned on a table in the corner but it was sufficient to show him the welter of cushions, cosmetic boxes, wilting flowers and discarded wine cups that told him she had spent a pleasant evening with friends and had, for once, uncharacteristically, allowed the no doubt exhausted servants to leave the mess until morning. “Thank you, Wernuro,” he said. “Go to sleep out here. I will wake you when I leave.”
Wernuro acknowledged him, but he was already picking his way to the farther door. The servant had left it ajar. Beyond, in the larger room, Nubnofret lay mounded in sheets on her couch. Khaemwaset could see the slow rise and fall of her breathing. The air was sweet with the tang of the clustered apple blossoms someone had set in a vase on the table beside her. It acted on him strangely as he moved softly to the couch and perched on the edge, conjuring every spring journey he had made to Pharaoh’s city and, mingled with that, a cascade of ancient emotions long dormant, belonging to his boyhood and youth when he had been resident in the palace “Nubnofret,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
His answer was a mutter. Nubnofret turned over, and as she did so the sheet slipped to her waist. Her sleeping robe was very thin, and Khaemwaset’s gaze became rivetted on the large, now flaccid breasts beneath with their dark aureoles and permanently raised nipples. Her warmth and the odour of her body rose to him as he sat there, shivering slightly and drawing the cloak more tightly around his shoulders. Her hair, now fingered through with grey streaks, lay in a welter upon her pillows, and in repose her face was smooth and calm.
Khaemwaset thought of the early days of their marriage when they had made love often, sometimes more in an effort to get to know each other than in passion, but it had been good. Neither of us could be called spontaneous people, he mused, but sometimes a joyfulness overtook us and we sought each other out like children rushing to play. Does she remember, I wonder, and does she wish that we were once more as close, or does she relish her many duties and look back on those days as part of a youth now thankfully gone? She knows that I rarely bother my concubines. Does she ever lie on her couch at home and long for my body? We still make love, but formally, the scratching of an occasional itch. Oh Nubnofret, ripe and stern, where has the time gone? His impulse had evaporated. As he rose she stirred and mumbled something and he turned back, but she was still asleep. He sent Wernuro back to her corner and returned to his own quarters.
In the morning he had himself dressed, jewelled and painted with care, and taking Amek, Ramose and Ib he went to visit his mother. Astnofert still retained the title of Empress bestowed on her when Ramses’ favourite for twenty years, the glorious Nefertari, had died. Nefertari had been Ramses’ full sister, and thus Khaemwaset’s aunt, but Astnofert was a half-sister. At fifty-nine years old she no longer stood beside her husband as a reigning queen for she was bedridden. Ramses had also married his daughter by her, Khaemwaset’s younger sister Bint-Anath, who had been Chief Royal Wife for the last ten years and who at thirty-six bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead Nefertari. Another queen, Meryet-amun, daughter of Nefertari, shared her father’s bed, but all Ramses’ affection went to Bint-Anath. Khaemwaset hated her Semitic name but liked her, for she was alert and intelligent as well as being ridiculously beautiful. He did not meet her often, and they did not correspond, but their few encounters were always affectionate.