Scroll of Saqqara(89)
Lust for Tbubui inflamed him. He could not have cast the vivid visions of her body, her laugh, her gestures, from his mind if he had wanted to. Every call upon his time and attention infuriated him, and Hori’s abrupt revelation yesterday was a distraction of enormous proportions.
As soon as the evening meal was aver, Khaemwaset rose and left the hall, striding out into a far corner of the garden where he stood rigid, watching the rising of a pale, waning moon. He had made a supreme effort earlier in going to his wife’s suite and entertaining her once more at sennet, and it had been almost too much for him to bear.
He had not wanted to go to the tomb that morning. The tomb was one catastrophe in an ocean of irritations. He had wanted to stay where he was, in the event that Tbubui might call on him for some reason. In a few days he intended to visit her, with a herbal recipe as the excuse. He knew that in fact he needed no excuse. She was a widow and he a prince, entitled to as many wives and concubines as he wished, but in his heart he felt besmirched, made guilty by this passion. Its power had already swept him away so that his work, his family, his position meant nothing anymore He had already determined that nothing should stand between him and the object of his desire. Coldly he was beginning to plan his campaign of acquisition.
Sighing, he let the sensuous beauty of the night—the scented, fitful breeze that fluttered probing fingers against his naked skin, the soft black sky with its mat of stars— insinuate itself into that place already turbulent with obsession. His thoughts turned to the turquoise earring Hori had revealed with a mixture of pride and shame, but immediately he saw it resting against a tall brown neck, entangled in black hair that smelled of warmth and myrrh. It would suit her so well. “Ah Thoth,” he groaned quietly, arms coming up to cradle his pain, “if you love me then help me. Help me!” The god’s symbol now stood small and hard-rimmed above the house, its light an indifferent, alien thing.
Khaemwaset sank to the grass with his back against a tree. For a long time he watched the cheerful glow of lamps within move from room to room and eventually be extinguished. Beyond the garden wall, where the servants’ compound lay with its granaries and the huge kitchen, came the intermittent sounds of laughter and the rattle of dice and click of knucklebones, but soon these faded into the deepening lateness of the hour.
A lamp appeared, hovering just beyond the shrubbery, and Kasa’s voice called, “Prince, are you out here?”
“Yes,” Khaemwaset called back without rising. “I am too restless to retire, Kasa. Leave my couch turned down and water in the ante-room so that I may wash before bed. Then you may go to your own quarters.”
“Wash yourself, Highness?” Kasa’s indignation was clear though Khaemwaset could not see him. “Really, I …”
“Sleep well, Kasa,” Khaemwaset broke in firmly, and the lamp made an agitated sweep and disappeared beyond the invisible pillars. In truth, Khaemwaset’s eyes burned and his head felt thick with weariness, but beneath the physical symptoms he was preternaturally alert.
When the last lamp had been put out in the house he got up, intending to take a turn around his estate and perhaps watch the river for a while, but instead he found himself descending the watersteps, untethering the small skiff, clambering into it and running out the oars. This is madness, his sane self protested, aghast, but his driven, dreaming self established a rowing stroke, took note of the shrouded, deserted banks and the empty stretch of moon-glittering river, and matched Tbubui’s name to each pull.
The northern suburbs glided by, sunk in silence. Once Khaemwaset passed a large lamp-bedecked raft crowded with revellers, but their noise soon grew faint. He pulled for the eastern bank, scarcely conscious of his aching thighs and shoulders. I should not be doing this, he told himself peacefully. If anyone sees me they will think that the great Prince has taken leave of his senses. Perhaps I have. Perhaps I am in the grip of strong magic, perhaps I am even at home on my couch floating in the illusion of purpose, movement, under a spell of Thoth’s moon. Well then, let the spell continue. Let it bind me tighter, let the night dissolve time and reality so that I may stand unseen before her house as a young man in love, without cumberances. Water dribbled silver from the oars, and the surface of the river rippled away to be quietly lost in the shadows of the bank.
Her diminutive watersteps were easy to miss, crowded as they were by choking river growth, but Khaemwaset manoeuvred the skiff unerringly to bump against them. He disembarked, made his boat fast and stepped up onto the path. His feet made no sound on the sandy ground strewn with brittle fallen palm leaves. The trees themselves marched away into duskiness on either side like the pillars of a temple, and their spreading height made a canopy. Khaemwaset felt even more strongly that he was walking in a dream. One more bend in the track and the house would be before him, its white walls dimmed to a mysterious grey, its tiny windows blind. He padded on.