“I am going to look over the long-neglected plans for the Apis burials, and then I am going to spend some time in the temple of Ptah,” Khaemwaset told them. Nubnofret’s answer was a pair of raised eyebrows. She kissed him on the neck and drifted away. Khaemwaset noticed with amusement that Sheritra was following her dutifully.
“I will spend the day at the tomb,” Hori announced, “but this evening I have been invited to a party in the foreigners’ quarters. I shall see you at dinner, Father.”
Khaemwaset’s eyes followed his easy swing and perfectly muscled legs, then he turned away with a sigh. What it was, to be young and handsome, rich and sought-after. He was sure that Hori’s horoscope, day after day, showed every third as full of luck, while his own was becoming increasingly ambiguous.
Back in his office, Penbuy placed a load of official correspondence on the desk and went to the floor in readiness for dictation. Khaemwaset, with a regretful glance at the shaft of brilliant late spring sunlight splattering the floor from the clerestory windows high above, opened the first with a mutinous jerk. After I have made a special offering to Ptah and begged him for his beneficent protection for this house I will take a jaunt on the river, he promised himself. I will think of nothing but the wind on my skin and the birds in the thickets.
Once the correspondence had been taken care of he summoned his architect, and together they spent a couple of hours over the plans for the Apis bulls. The architect’s work had been very satisfactory, and Khaemwaset gave orders for the excavations to begin before he retired to his quarters for a light lunch, a careful wash, and a change of clothes. Then with Amek and Ib he got onto his barge and was rowed the short distance to the canal down which Ptah’s sacred boat was floated from his temple during times of festivity.
Leaving the barge at this point, Khaemwaset walked beside the canal, under Ptah’s sacred sycamores, to the god’s watersteps and from there along the hot granite paving between the two massive pylons and into the outer court, his small train of servants following behind.
The court was comfortably crowded with worshippers. Incense rose above the pillars of the inner court in a barely visible cloud, and the murmur of the singers and the rattle of their systrums could be heard. Khaemwaset removed his sandals and handed them to Ib. He had brought his favourite turquoise necklace with its Eye of Horns counterpoise as an offering to the god whom he served full-time for three months of every year. Holding it to his naked chest he walked towards the inner court, careful not to nudge the common people who were standing praying, eyes closed and arms extended. Amek and Ib had retired to the wall where there was shade.
Khaemwaset stepped through to the inner court. Here there were only priests and musicians. The worship of Ptah went on all day, from the time the sanctuary was opened at dawn and the god fed and clothed to sunset, when the small, dark secrecy of his home was closed and locked. For a moment Khaemwaset paused, caught up in the ritual of song and the praise of the dancers’ bodies, before he found a space and began his prostrations.
Both inner and outer court were unroofed, and the sun beat down upon Khaemwaset as he rose and yet again laid himself face down on the sandy floor. He prayed the words of tradition first, extolling the smiling god who had created all things, and then stood and begged Ptah to remember that he, Khaemwaset, was an honest and faithful servant who needed the eye of the god turned upon his household because of his own foolishness. He prayed long and earnestly, but reassurance did not come. Instead, he gradually began to feel that he had made a mistake, that though the god would accept his gift, Khaemwaset should be praying elsewhere. It is Thoth whom you serve in the pursuits closest to your head, the thought came. It is Thoth whom you have wronged with your greed for knowledge and more knowledge, for the power only the gods may possess. Are you afraid to bare your soul in this way before Thoth instead of Ptah? For Thoth is more understanding but less forgiving. His servants are the only ones who know the ecstasy and the terror of his wisdom.
In the end Khaemwaset capitulated. Approaching the closed sanctuary he ceremoniously passed his gift to the priest on duty there and began to thread his way back to the massive open doors that led to the outer court through the swaying, chanting dancers. He was about to pass through the gloom of shade the door cast when he saw her.
She had been standing behind a group of petitioners and was in the act of turning away towards the pylons. Khaemwaset caught a brief glimpse of her face—confident, withdrawn, straight nose, wide black-kohled eyes under a fringe of gleaming hair—before her back was towards him and she was striding away with that indolent yet purposeful tread. She was wearing a yellow sheath, still of a body-hugging, old-fashioned cut that accentuated every curve, but over it billowed a transparent white ankle-length cloak rimmed in gold.