Scroll of Saqqara(27)

“I know,” he answered, clenching his teeth against the shivering. “I am a fool. Goodnight, Nubnofret.”

“Goodnight, Prince.” She sailed out of the room without another word. “Is there anything you require, Highness?” Kasa asked uncertainly.

Khaemwaset lifted his cheek from the pillow and peered up at the anxious face of his servant. The effort was almost too much. A great heaviness was on him now, so that his eyelids drooped and closed of their own accord. “No,” he managed in a whisper. “Do not wake me early, Kasa.” The man bowed and left quietly, at least, Khaemwaset thought that he did. If Ptah had decreed the end of the world at that moment, Khaemwaset would not have been able to force his eyes open. He heard the pause for Kasa’s bow, the light sound of his footsteps across the floor, the polite click as the door closed, but those things came to him from far away, from the other side of the city, from another world. He fell into sleep like a man who loses his footing and goes sliding down the edge of a dark pit, and immediately he began to dream.

It was noon, a summer noon of intense, merciless heat that stung his nostrils and rendered him almost blind. He was walking, head downcast, along a road of white dust that reflected up at him the sun’s cruel bite. Just ahead of him a woman strode. He could see no more of her than her naked ankles powdered with little puffs of the fine sand her progress stirred, and the rhythmic revealing and concealing of her strong brown calves as the scarlet linen she wore flowed with her stride.

For a while, in spite of his growing exhaustion and the sweat that continually ran into his eyes, he was content to watch the slow, almost relentless way her muscles flexed and loosened and her toes gripped, splayed, then flung back tiny showers of dust, but soon a need to see the rest of her took hold. He tried to lift his head, and found that he could not. Straining, he contracted the muscles of his neck, pushing, compelling, but his gaze remained fixed on the road gliding ponderously beneath that graceful tread.

He began to wish that she would stop. He was gasping from the heat and began to stumble with fatigue. He called out, but his words were nothing more than tiny wisps of burning air on his lips. Stop! he thought desperately, please stop! But her pace did not vary. In spite of the sense of hypnotic compulsion growing around him, he attempted to veer into the grass he dimly knew lay to either side of the track, there where trees cast a shade for which he would have died, but his legs kept marching, marching, drawn into the woman’s oblivious confidence.

Khaemwaset finally woke with the first hesitant light of dawn and the early chorus of birds. His room was shrouded, calm. His night lamp had long since gone out, and he smelled the faint, stale odour of the used-up wick mingled with the rank smell of his own body. He was trembling with the aftermath of his nightmare and his sheets were sticky. Fever dream, he thought, as he struggled to sit up. Nothing more. He reached for his night table, the frame of his couch, the delineations of his face, in an unconscious need to reassure himself that he was now awake, in a world of substance and sanity. As he did so he realized that his penis was engorged and fully erect, and he was overflowing with a kind of sexual excitement he had not felt in years.

He lay quietly, stilling his breath and his mind, then he called softly for Kasa and ordered his morning bath and food. Already the palace was stirring around him, but distantly. His suite was always relatively silent.

Kasa was tying Khaemwaset’s sandals when Ramose was admitted. Khaemwaset bade him speak, his heart suddenly tripping, but the Herald had no news. “My assistants report that no one approached has seen or heard of the scroll, Highness,” he admitted. “But we will keep spreading your request and the promise of a reward. I am sorry.”

“It is not your fault, Ramose.” Khaemwaset stood and waved him out, sending for Amek at the same time. While he waited for his bodyguard he could not resist a rapid search of his floor, his reception room, the entrance hall of his suite, but he came up empty. Amek appeared and saluted. “Get out my litter,” Khaemwaset ordered. “This morning I want to go in person to the House of Ra and say my prayers with the other priests.” He did not know what he wanted to say, or why he felt such a strong urge to stand in the temple and breathe the incense; the aura of power and peace, but he knew he would regret any change of mind.

He spent his remaining few days in Pi-Ramses in discussions with the Viziers of the North and South, several foreign ambassadors, temple administrators and his father. He visited his mother once more, took an afternoon stroll, suitably guarded, through the colorful markets of the city in search of the perfect gift for Sheritra, and went hunting in the marshes with the Khatti ambassador, whose feathers turned out to be less ruffled than the hapless ducks he brought down with the throwing stick.