“Perhaps he is not here at all.” Hori’s voice fell flat in the tiny space. With one accord, father and son turned round, and in the turning Khaemwaset felt a rush of the dread that had begun to stalk him ever since he had first seen his workmen’s pile of damp sand and ominous gap beside it. His palms became slick and he gripped the torch more tightly. “No,” he whispered. “He is here. They are both here.”
The coffins lay side by side on stone bases. Torchlight was playing on them, and the shadows within gathered densely. Hori’s happy mood had fled. Soberly he edged closer to his father. Once more Khaemwaset had to will himself to move. What is the matter with me? he thought angrily. I have gazed on the dead a hundred times and more. I am a sem-priest after all, and a physician. No, it is the malevolent magic I feel in here that is turning my blood so chill. Why in the name of Amun are these coffins open?
The first bandaged corpse lay with right arm at its side and left bent across its breast. A woman. The Princess Ahura. Khaemwaset stared down at her for a long time. Beneath the dusty windings, now brown from the embalming salts that had sucked the moisture from her body, he could see the shapes of many amulets, and he counted them off in his mind. Some would be placed on the skin itself, but he recognized the Buckle of the Girdle of Isis that protected the dead wearer from any abomination, and also on the neck the Amulet of the Tet, the spine of Osiris that gave the corpse the power to be reconstituted in body and spirit in the next world. Just below these familiar swells lay an enormous Amulet of the Collar, a plate of gold and turquoise that covered the withered breast and sparked tauntingly at Khaemwaset. He shuddered. The Amulet of the Collar gave the wearer the power to free himself from the funeral swathings that held him captive. “It’s beautiful,” Hori breathed beside him. Grim-lipped, Khaemwaset nodded.
Gingerly he passed to the second coffin, some of his fear evaporating under the mysteries they had found. The prince lay with both arms at his side in the male position. He was as simply bound as his wife. His Amulet of the Collar matched hers, gold and turquoise, and at first Khaemwaset did not see the thing by his right hand. Then he bent closer with an exclamation of surprise.
“Hori! There’s a scroll in here,” he said. Leaning over the edge of the sarcophagus he touched it gently. It resisted his fingers and was quite dry. He pushed at it a little harder and the hand itself quivered.
“It is not actually in the prince’s fist,” Hori observed. “He was well bandaged.”
“No,” Khaemwaset answered. “I do believe that the scroll has been sewn to him. See how the hand moves when I tug on it.” They straightened and stared at each other.
“A dilemma,” Hori said softly. “To take scrolls from a tomb to copy and then return is one thing, but are you willing to cut it off his hand, Father? We have never lifted anything from a coffin before, only from boxes in ante-rooms.”
“I know,” Khaemwaset snapped testily. Already the familiar lust was rising in him and he glanced back to the roll of papyrus and the hand that curled around it. “If the coffins had been decorated and inscribed with the proper spells we might have found some explanation, but they are completely bare. Not even the Eyes for the corpses to see out into the room. What could be so important that the prince ordered the thing actually sewn onto him?”
“This is a serious matter.” Penbuy had come up behind them and was peering into the coffin, his palette under his arm. “The inscriptions tell me nothing, not about baboons, not about the water depicted everywhere, and where, Highness, is the young prince, the son? Did he die elsewhere and was therefore buried elsewhere?” He paused, and when there was no reply he went on. “I humbly submit my doubts to you, Prince. Close up this place and leave the dead in peace. Do not take the scroll. I do not like the air in here.”
Khaemwaset knew his scribe was not speaking of the musty smell. He did not like the air either, but under his dislike, his disquiet, was the pulse of his eagerness. A precious scroll, so precious that the prince had made sure that it was buried with him. A large mystery in the midst of many small ones. He had found many scrolls in his digging, usually left by robbers because they had no value to any but a scholar. They were the favourite stories or poems of those who had enjoyed them in life and intended to go on enjoying them at the feet of Osiris. Sometimes they were proud lessons mastered in youth and lovingly preserved. Sometimes they were boasts—lists of the valuables some noble had amassed, the gifts he had given to some Pharaoh at the celebration of the New Year, or the number of slaves he had brought back from military campaigns.