Khaemwaset watched for her as he and his retinue, with Ramose calling the warning, walked sedately through the palace to the women’s quarters where Astnofert lay in solitary splendour. Though he caught a glimpse of Meryetamun, her haughty profile gliding by surrounded by guards and twittering female courtiers, his sister was not evident. At the entrance to the women’s quarters he left Amek and Ramose and went on with Ib.
His mother’s suite was not far into the harem. It opened out beyond the customary sheltering doors of the long passage into four rooms of magnificent size and luxurious appointment. The fourth room, smaller and more intimate than the others, led straight onto a covered walk and then the harem gardens. Astnofert liked to be carried to a couch there during the day so that she could lie and watch the movement of the wind in the trees and the activity of the women who filled the grass with their pastimes, gossiped away their sometimes tedious days and held their often drunken parties in the timeless heat of summer nights.
It was here that Khaemwaset found her, a grey-haired, thin lady propped up on pillows, her yellowing, unpainted face turned to the bright flow of sunlight beside her. In a corner of the room a harpist was rippling out a plaintive melody, and at Khaemwaset’s approach a servant began to gather up the cones and spools of the sennet game she had been playing with the Empress. Astnofert’s head came round in greeting, and in spite of her physical debility the gesture was still full of the grace and regality that had made her a famous beauty in the days of her youth. She smiled with difficulty, and Khaemwaset bent to kiss first her withered hand and then her lips.
“So, Khaemwaset,” she said, the words hard and precise as she laboured to form them correctly. “I hear you have been summoned to drag Ramses out of yet another marital thorn bush. He does seem to enjoy the prickles, doesn’t he?”
Another servant had quietly placed a chair for the prince and he sank into it, leaning forward and inspecting his mother’s features intently. He did not miss the tremor of her fingers as she spoke or the increased filminess of her eyes.
“I think he flings himself into trouble for the fun of the diplomatic game afterwards, Mother,” he replied chuckling. “How are you? Is there any more pain?”
“No, but you might have a word with my physician about the poppy mash you prescribed for it.” With a slow wave of her hand she dismissed the servant, who retired carrying the sennet board, and she turned back to her son. The nasty concoction is not dulling the twinges as it used to and I’m afraid he has perhaps lost the recipe you gave him.”
Khaemwaset considered lying to her but then he changed his mind. She was dying a slow death and she knew it. “The recipe is not at fault, and neither is your physician,” he answered her steadily. “When the poppy is taken day after day it begins to lose its efficacy, or rather, the body becomes habituated to it and needs more of it to perform the same task.” She was nodding, her rheumy but sharp eyes fixed on his. “Much that comes from Syria is an abomination to me, Empress, as you know, but the poppy is a great blessing. If you were suffering a temporary complaint or were under the power of a curse that I was in the process of lifting, I would refuse to let you take any more …” Here he hesitated, but those greying eyes, the whites brown with disease, did not flinch so he continued. “… but you are dying, dear Mother. I will order the physician to give you as much poppy as you want.”
“Thank you,” she said, her mouth quirking in a half-smile. “You and I have always been honest with one another, my dear. So now that my health has been discussed and disposed of, tell me why you are looking so haggard.”
He stared at her, unsure. Outside there was a sudden burst of shrill feminine laughter as a group of young concubines sauntered past, leading three freshly washed spider monkeys that were vainly trying to sit down and groom themselves, and as Khaemwaset took a breath to answer Astnofert a pair of bluebirds dashed, trilling, into the room, circled, and flashed away into the trees in streaks of iridescent colour. Without warning he was shaken by a violent pang of longing to be one with them, to be soaring free and heedlessly into the vast hot sky away from this room in which death crept, invisible, towards the woman who had given him life. “I really do not know,” he said at last. “The family is fine …”
“Yes. Nubnofret entertained me for a while last night.”
“… and my estates prosper. Father expects no more from me than he has always done …”
She laughed, a dry wrenching sound that was nevertheless full of humour. “Which of course means that he expects everything!”