As he did so his knee scraped over something lying just within the lip of darkness he had left, and he cried out in shock, jackknifing to find what it was. His fingers scrabbled inside the tunnel and withdrew a single earring now glistening dark red with the blood that was pouring from his knee. Wiping the jewellery on his kilt, his face still contorted with pain, he examined it.
A large piece of mottled blue green turquoise shaped like a teardrop was set within a heavy lacery of purple gold. It was dull and encrusted with sand, but Hori knew it was very ancient. Turquoise like this was no longer worn and had become very expensive. He knew that Egyptian artisans now had the secret of the production of purple gold. The goldsmiths of the kingdom of Mitanni, long since absorbed into other empires, had made it and traded it to Egyptian nobility for centuries until the Egyptians themselves had learned to fire it. Modern purple gold was a more even blend that gave the precious substance a mere purple sheen. The thing Hori was turning over in his filthy hand had the distinct purple tracery of an ancient Mitanni craftsman.
Excitedly he gripped it and began to hobble down the slope. He knew where he was. The tunnel had ended in a discreet angle of part of the outer wall, now derelict, that had once surrounded the magnificent complex of Pharaoh Unas’s pyramid and funerary buildings. To any idle eye the rock blocking it would have looked no more than a small untidiness.
As he limped under the hot sun, Hori was conscious of a deep disappointment. No wonder the seals on the main entrance had been intact. The rock at the exit had been far too loose. Thieves must have found it and worked their way into the tomb through the tunnel. Anything of value in the newly opened chamber would of course now be gone, and the miscreants had dropped the earring as they hurriedly escaped.
Then what of the bodies? his thoughts ran on under the insistent throbbing of his knee. Robbers often tore corpses apart in their hunt for valuable amulets and would leave the dismembered remains strewn about the chamber, or jumbled in the coffins themselves. Had the two bodies simply dissolved in the water, so that he had been wading in diluted embalming fluid? He shuddered.
He had now stumbled his way around the sprawling ruins of Unas’s resting place and had turned towards the familiar chaos of his excavation. Two of his servants squatted under the awning of his tent, and the Overseer’s departing workmen had left a pile of jumbled tools at the foot of the debris beside the descending steps. The whole scene seemed melancholy under Ra’s pitiless late-afternoon cruelty.
When he was close enough, Hori hailed the servants. Startled, their heads came up, then one of them disappeared behind the tent. A moment later the litter and its bearers came struggling over the sand. Gratefully, Hori sank onto it and was carried the last few yards to the tent. He inspected his knee. The gash was to the bone and jagged, and he marvelled that such a small thing could inflict so much damage. But perhaps it had been wedged beside a sharp stone, he thought. I will need this stitched closed. Father will be pleased. He grimaced.
The litter stopped. “Go into the tomb and tell the men to come out,” he ordered his steward. “Tell them I am here.” He allowed the other man to help him into his chair but forbade him to wash the wound. The few minutes he had spent unprotected under the sun had made him slightly dizzy and he gulped a jar of beer and watched the Overseer and torchbearers disgorge, puzzled and uncertain, from the tomb mouth. “That tunnel leads up and out into Osiris Unas’s ruins,” he explained to the incredulous Overseer. “If you explore the outer rim of the walls you will find it, and the stone I pushed away to get out. Replace the stone. Post the guards on this entrance, and go home.”
The man nodded. “You are injured, Highness.”
Hori managed a grin. “It was an adventurous few minutes. I will see you tomorrow.” He did not wait until the men had dispersed. Still clutching the earring, he pulled himself out of the chair and back onto the litter, and gave the command to take him home. It was time to talk to Khaemwaset.
9
How pleasant is mine hour!
Might an hour only become for me eternity,
when I sleep with thee
Thou didst lift up mine heart …
when it was night.
HE WISHEDthat the ride could have been longer. He dreaded telling his father what he had done, and now that the deed was accomplished he was less sure that Tbubui had been correct in her advice. Nursing his knee, he sat brooding with the curtains closed, oblivious to the hum of the city around him and fighting the sense that his maturity was slipping away until he was a little boy again.
His hope to enter the house unobserved proved vain. As he eased himself from the litter at the rear entrance, Sheritra came out, a cup of milk in her hand, and exclaimed, “Hori! Whatever have you been doing? You are filthy and scratched from head to toe and you smell awful!” She came closer. “And how did you hurt your knee?”