Scroll of Saqqara(83)
“Because I wanted to,” he said. “You have shown little interest in the tomb and its findings, indeed, often you seem afraid of it. It has consumed the greater part of my time for the last three months. I chose to knock out the wall at my own convenience instead of waiting for you to do the deed at yours.”
Khaemwaset blinked. His hand strayed to the sennet board and he picked up a gold cone, his thumb exploring its smooth surfaces absently. “The paintings?” he said. “Are they destroyed?” The anger was still there, Hori saw, simmering under this man’s rigid control.
“Yes,” he replied brusquely. “The wall is in fact mostly rock, with a wood and plaster door set approximately in the middle of it. Opening the door meant reducing the scenes to flakes of plaster. I intend to have it rebuilt and the scenes repainted later.”
There was another awkward silence. It was as though Khaemwaset longed to ask the inevitable question but dared not do so. At length he carefully replaced the cone on the House of Spitting, spread his hennaed hands palms up, and found the courage. “What was beyond the door, Hori?”
Hori sipped the wine and found himself hungry. “There is a small chamber containing two coffins, both empty. The coffins had no lids. They either never existed or they have vanished. The floor of the room is ankle deep in stagnant water. There are niches in the walls where the shawabtis ought to be standing, but they too are empty.”
Khaemwaset nodded, his eyes still on his hands. “No inscriptions? No paintwork?”
“None. But I believe that the coffins were once occupied. Thieves broke in and rifled the contents, and probably tore apart the corpses. They entered through a narrow tunnel that links the chamber with the desert. I injured my knee crawling through it and dragging myself over this.” He held out the earring. His father took it slowly and examined it, and Nubnofret came to life.
“How lovely it is, Khaemwaset!” she exclaimed. “Clean it and it would beautify any aristocratic neck!”
“I will clean it,” he said with difficulty, “but it will be replaced in the tomb.”
“No,” Hori spoke up. “I will clean it and put it back.” Khaemwaset shot him a dark glance but, to Hori’s amazement, he passed back the gem and rose.
“Come and I will dress your wound,” he said. “Nubnofret, we will finish the game later.” His tone brooked no argument. Meekly Hori stood and followed him.
Khaemwaset cleaned, stitched and bound the knee without a word. But as he was closing his herb chest he said, “You know that I am violently angry with you, don’t you, Hori?”
Hori wanted nothing more, now, than to go to sleep. “Yes I do,” he answered. “But I also know that you are afraid. Why?”
His father stood motionless for a moment, then he sighed and slumped onto one of the large scroll containers. “Something has changed between us,” he said. “Indeed the whole fabric of this family is changing and I do not know whether it is for good or ill. The scroll you saw me take—I read part of it aloud trying to translate it. And since then there has been Tbubui and this tomb. Sometimes I feel as if we have set out along a path from which we cannot turn back.”
That is not all, Hori thought, regarding his father’s shadowed features. What the rest is, I have no idea. “So you have not seriously considered the answers to the mystery of the water, the baboons, the scroll itself?” he asked.
Khaemwaset straightened. “Of course I have!” he replied sharply. “But I am not sure I want to know the answers.”
“Why? Shall we consider them now, together? Four bodies, Father, two of them hidden away behind a false wall. A tomb undesecrated, a secret but ravaged chamber, surely this is the challenge of a lifetime!”
“You should not presume that the inner chamber was robbed,” Khaemwaset said carefully. “I will come with you tomorrow and see it, but it sounds as though the place was either never finished or deliberately left crudely cut and unpainted.” He got up and offered an arm to his son. “Many times I have wished that we had left the accursed place alone. Let me help you to your couch.”
Hori gratefully leaned on him. In a rush of affection the young man was tempted to blurt out his visit to Tbubui, his growing preoccupation with her, but the touch of his father’s flesh somehow forbade it. There will be time enough, he thought painfully, drowsily. That is a fight I must be healthy to win. I wish he had offered me poppy, but perhaps the withholding of it is his way of punishing me for my arrogance today. As soon as possible I will go to Sisenet’s house and tell Tbubui what I have done.