Harmin’s smile broadened. “My mother, my uncle and I took up residence here about two months ago. There is little to do in Koptos anymore, Highness, and we have a good steward to care for our small farm there.”
Khaemwaset was still not satisfied, but to pry further would have breached good manners. He was, however, convinced of the young man’s noble breeding. “I do not need to see your mother,” he objected kindly. “I will prescribe for her though.”
Harmin took one swift step forward. “Forgive me, Prince, but we have applied the per-baibait-bird with honey and that drew out the splinter, and then we dressed the wound with a poultice of human excrement crushed in sweet beer yeast, sefet oil and honey, but the infection increases.”
“So you have consulted another physician?”
Harmin looked surprised. “Why no. My mother is well versed herself in remedies, but this time she is no longer able to treat herself. She would be more than honoured if you would examine her foot.”
Perhaps I had better, Khaemwaset thought reluctantly. The poultice applied was a common one for open wounds but he put no faith in it himself. It often seemed to make the problem worse. Sighing inwardly he dismissed the youth. “I will come,” he said. “Please wait in the outer hall.”
Harmin did not thank him. He did not even look satisfied. He bowed again, turned on his heel and disappeared, his sandals shushing softly on the tiled floor, his stride slow and easy.
Khaemwaset went into his library, unlocked the box where he kept his medicaments and drew out a leather satchel containing dressings and other things he often needed for his patients. His head buzzed with the demand to be laid on a pillow and his eyes were scratchy. Quickly he re-locked the box and followed Harmin.
Ib was sitting on his stool in the passage. He rose. “Shall I come with you, Prince?” he asked.
“No,” Khaemwaset answered. “I do not need you for this one, Ib. But I will take Amek.”
There was no sign of Harmin in the hallway. Khaemwaset found him waiting just within the shade cast by the row of coloured-splashed pillars at the front entrance to the house. He was standing motionless, arms loose at his sides, head slightly inclined towards the sound that was floating over the rows of thick shrubbery that helped to separate the paved pathway from the rear gardens.
Khaemwaset halted in shock. The voice of Sheritra, high and pure, was filling the hot air. She seldom sang and when she did it was almost always children’s verses, but today the words of an ancient love song pierced Khaemwaset to the heart. “Your love, I desire it like butter and honey. You belong to me like best ointment on the limbs of nobles, like finest linen on the limbs of the gods, like incense before the Lord of All …”
Harmin half turned towards Khaemwaset. “That is a beautiful voice,” he commented.
“Yes it is,” Khaemwaset responded shortly. Sheritra would have been embarrassed and ashamed if she had known of her audience. He jerked his head at Harmin and began to walk towards the river. “From which direction did you come?” he asked. “Where is your house?”
“Beyond the northern suburbs,” Harmin replied, now at Khaemwaset’s side. “I took a skiff across the river and then walked, Highness. It was a fine morning.”
Nothing more was said. Khaemwaset invited the young man aboard his barge, Amek and a soldier following, and the captain gave the order to cast off. At this time of the day the Nile traffic was sparse. Those who could were taking the afternoon rest and the watersteps of the nobles were deserted. He had presumed for some reason that his patient would live in one of them, although he knew the majority of their inhabitants personally. But Harmin gave no sign that they should veer towards the bank.
The river road appeared, almost empty of travellers. Those compelled to be on it were quiet in the heat, and the barge drifted beside it like a mote of dust falling along a sunbeam. The river’s surface was glassy and almost still.
They passed the bridged canal near where Khaemwaset had seen that damnable flash of scarlet, but the scuffed road was now empty. There were a few respectable homes, modest but neat, fronting the west side of the road and surrounded by fields of tall grain, then there was nothing but crops, drooping in the heat, and the water poured rhythmically into the thin, hacked irrigation canals that fed them as the fellahin lowered the shaduf buckets on their long wooden arms into the Nile and hauled on the ropes to raise them to the level of the canals that criss-crossed the fields.
Khaemwaset thought of his daughter and the secret, painful places of her soul. If anyone deserves to be loved it is she, he thought sadly. She must have been alone in the garden, for even Bakmut is not allowed to hear her sing.
Just then Harmin stirred and pointed. “Prince, please tell your captain to begin to tack towards the bank,” he said. “Those watersteps, there.” He was indicating the east bank, not the west, where there was little human habitation and the vegetation clung to a miserably small strip of land before the desert took over. Khaemwaset had never paid it much attention. But indeed a set of very small watersteps led up from the river into a grove of palm trees, and Khaemwaset glimpsed a smudge of white wall far beyond. He shouted a command and the barge began its ponderous sweep.
The house was indeed isolated. Between it and the mud sprawl of homes where the managers of the fields lived and worked for their aristocratic masters there must have been half a mile in each direction. Palms straggled along the bank, it was true, and one could easily miss their sudden cluster if one was not looking for it.
The watersteps had one mooring pole from which white paint was peeling. The barge nudged it, a sailor jumped out to secure the trailing ropes and Khaemwaset rose. Signalling to Amek, he invited Harmin to precede them, and without another word Harmin led them up the steps and along a dirt path that meandered happily through the dappling shade of the trees whose tall, smooth trunks smelled sweet and whose stiff fronds whispered high overhead.
The house was nestled in a small clearing. Khaemwaset noted at once that it had been fashioned of mud bricks, and seemed to lean into its environment with perfect harmony. The white-painted plaster with which it had been surfaced was missing in places. Five or six workmen were busy with fresh plaster and whitewash. Harmin apologized. “The house had been vacant and uncared for before we moved in,” he explained. “Mud is a good substance for the construction of a house, but it needs constant maintenance.”
I know of no nobles who would dare to live in a mud home like a peasant, Khaemwaset thought, intrigued. Not nowadays. If any of my friends or family had bought this property they would have torn down the construction immediately and ordered cedar from Lebanon, sandstone and granite from Assuan, gold from Nubia, to build something they considered suitable There is mystery here.
But he liked what he saw as they approached the entrance. He knew how cool mud bricks kept a house, and sure enough a slight draught of refreshing air came funnelling out to greet him from the small reception hall.
Harmin turned and bowed. “Welcome, Great Prince,” he said. He clapped his hands and a servant appeared, barefoot and clad only in a loincloth. “Would you like some wine or beer and perhaps a shat cake before you see my mother?”
Khaemwaset was quickly surveying the hall—the square, doorless opening to the passage beyond, the large, plain tiling under his feet. He was aware, as though a healing balm was stealing over him, that a comfortable silence reigned. The constant dull rumble of life that burgeoned on the west bank could not be heard. No neighbours disturbed this blessed peace with music or laughter. Even the low, light voice of the palms did not seem to penetrate. He felt himself loosening, all tension leaving his stomach, his shoulders.
Harmin had not missed Khaemwaset’s appraisal. He gestured around the room. “As you can see, we follow the old ways,” he told him, “and we do not apologize to anyone for doing so, Prince.”
It was as though he had read Khaemwaset’s mind. The walls were white but painted carefully with Nile scenes, desert animals and r
epresentations of the gods. Each scene was divided from the others by a painted date palm running from floor to blue-tinged ceiling. Cushions were piled in the corners. Three chairs of aromatic cedar, spindle-legged and delicate, ribbed in gold, stood about, and one long, low table of the same design on which stood a plain alabaster unguent jar for the anointing of guests and a clay vase that held thickly bunched late spring blooms. Two incense stands, stern in their rising simplicity, had been placed to either side of the inner doorway, and in niches beside them Amun and Thoth resided, the gold of their bodies gleaming dully in the pleasing, cool dimness.
Here there was no fussiness, nothing overly ornate, nothing imported. Even the air, carrying faintly the mixed odour of lotus flowers and myrrh, seemed completely Egyptian. Khaemwaset drew it into his nostrils with a deep breath. “No thank you, Harmin,” he smiled. “I will see your mother first. Amek, come with me as far as her chamber. Set your guard at this door.”
He saw Harmin’s glance flick over Amek’s bulk before the young man turned to the rear. Khaemwaset followed, his satchel in hand. I could live in this place forever, he thought as the feeling of well-being in him expanded. What work I could do! What dreams I could dream! But it might be dangerous. Oh yes, it might. I would gradually discard my duties to my father, to my Egypt, and sink into the past like a flower cast upon the bosom of the Nile. What kind of people are these?
The passage was narrow, dark and utterly plain. But at the farther end the brilliance of the afternoon cut the darkness in shafts like knives, and Khaemwaset could see a small rectangle of lawn, a few flowerbeds in a busy array of colours, and a pond choked with waxy white and pink lotus over which bees hovered. Harmin turned abruptly to his left, stood aside and bowed. “Mother, the Prince Khaemwaset,” he said. “Highness, this is my mother Tbubui.”
Khaemwaset entered the room with the usual words of reassurance ready on his lips. She had injured her foot. She would not be able to rise and reverence him, as the little dancer had tried to do. Strange, he thought, strange that she should come to mind just now. He was about to speak, to tell this woman not to try and move, when he heard Amek draw a quick breath behind him. It was a tiny sound, come and gone in a second, but Khaemwaset simultaneously halted. He felt the blood leave his face. The white walls of the pleasant room wavered and he fought to keep his control. He was aware of Amek’s comforting presence at his rear, Harmin’s grey eyes on him with what was surely bewilderment, his own fingers gripping the satchel as though he would die if he dropped it, then he recovered and managed to move forward.
“Greetings, Tbubui,” he said, and marvelled that he could sound so sane.
The woman was sitting in a large chair beside a couch draped in glistening sheets, her leg propped up on cushions above a stool. Both bare, languid arms were draped loosely over the wooden rests, and heavy silver rings winked at him from her slender fingers. She was smiling at him above a jumble of white linen—sheet or cloak he did not know which—her hennaed mouth curving, her black, kohled eyes regarding him steadily. Black, black, he thought dazedly, and her hair black as night, black as soot against those exquisite collar-bones, black as the anger she conjured in me the last time I saw her on the Memphis river road, striding scarlet through the crowd. I have found her. No wonder my servants could not, with her living on the east bank!
But no. He moved towards her cautiously, as though at a sharp movement her image might shiver and disappear. I did not find her. Fate found her for me and cast me on her shore like a drowning sailor vomited onto a stretch of sand. Does she recognize me? Amek? Surely Amek! He saw her level gaze transferred to the Captain of his Bodyguard then back to him. The smile widened, and Khaemwaset was suddenly terrified to hear the sound of her voice.
“Greetings, Prince, and welcome to my home,” she said. “I am honoured indeed that you should choose to come and examine me in person, and I apologize for any inconvenience I may be causing you.” The voice was cultured, well-modulated, a voice accustomed to giving orders, greeting guests and entertaining visitors. Khaemwaset wondered what it would sound like throaty with passion. Setting down his satchel and bending over her foot, he clenched his jaw and forced himself to reply. She had a very faint accent. So did her son, now he came to think about it, but it was not any of the accents of foreigners he knew.
“I am not inconvenienced,” he said. “Harmin told me of your efforts to cure yourself, and I could then do no more than come and assist you.” He began to unwrap the bandages around the foot, willing his hands not to tremble. In a moment I shall touch her flesh, he thought. Control yourself, physician! This is a patient! His lungs were full of her perfume, a light but musky hint of myrrh blended with something he could not identify. He kept his gaze on the unwinding.
At last the bandage fell to the floor and Khaemwaset forced himself not to hesitate. Gently he pressed the swollen, purple flesh around a mound that did not in fact appear to be infected but that certainly, though dry, had not closed. Her skin was cool, almost cold. “There is no infection here,” he announced, looking up at her from his squatting position. “You have no burning in the groin?”
“None. Harmin was perhaps overzealous in his efforts to persuade you to come, Highness. I am sorry. But the wound will not in fact close.”
She pushed her hair behind her small ears with both hands, and Khaemwaset saw that she was wearing a pair of heavy silver-and-turquoise earrings fashioned into the shape of two ankhs and hung with tiny scarabs. The sight of the scarabs reminded him of the trouble he had gone to in order to avert the spell of the nonsensical scroll, and the night he had spent in Nubnofret’s bed, negating his protection without a second thought.
“How long has it been like this?” he asked. She shrugged, and the linen slipped down her breasts, revealing the tantalizing shadow of a cleavage.
“For about two weeks. I soak the foot twice a day and have it poulticed in a mixture of milk, honey and ground incense to dry it up, but as you can see …” She gestured along her leg, and Khaemwaset felt the tips of her fingers brush his helmet. “… my treatment is not efficacious.”
That state of the flesh puzzled Khaemwaset. Its colour suggested tissue that no longer lived. “I think I must take needle and thread and sew this,” he said at last, rising. “It will hurt, Tbubui, but I can give you an infusion of poppy to help quell the pain.”
“Very well,” she said almost indifferently. “It is my own fault, of course. I go barefoot too much.”
Bare heels, Khaemwaset thought again. Nubnofret walking ahead of me in the passage on the night Sheritra had her bad dream. You, Tbubui, barefoot in your white, old-fashioned sheath, taunting… Surely you recognized Amek!
He had brought with him everything he needed. He asked for fire, and when it was brought in a tiny burner he prepared the poppy infusion. Tbubui watched him in silence as he worked in the odd, enveloping stillness of this extraordinary house.
When it was ready he handed it to her and she drank it obediently. He waited for it to take effect, and selected needle and thread.
Harmin had long since gone, and Amek had taken his position by the doorway. Khaemwaset sensed his resentment though he did not move. This was the woman for whom his master had struck him.
Khaemwaset forced himself to concentrate on the task in hand. Carefully and neatly he sewed the gash closed. Tbubui neither flinched nor groaned. Once he looked up from his artistry to find her eyes on him, not dazed from the poppy but alert and full of something he thought he read as humour, but of course it could not be. He continued, in the end wrapping fresh linen about her foot and instructing her to go on applying the poultice. “I will return in a few days to inspect it, and then we will see,” he said. She nodded, quite composed. “I have a great resistance to pain,” she replied, “and also, unfortunately, to the poppy. Now, Prince. Will you take wine with me?” He nodded and she clapped her hands sharply once. A servant glided into the room, and while she was ordering a chair brought forward and jar o
f wine opened, Khaemwaset for the first time looked about her chamber.
It was small and cool, the walls unadorned. One table supporting a lamp stood by the couch, which in contrast to the rest of the surroundings was high and lavishly gilded. It was piled with pillows and a-tumble with sheets. Khaemwaset looked away, a dozen questions beginning to reel through his head. Is your husband here? What are you doing in Memphis? Did you know that it was I who sent Amek after you? And did you in turn send Harmin after me? Why? The wine and the chair arrived. He sank into it gratefully and picked up his cup, wondering how he might bring up these things, but she forestalled him.
“I have a confession to make to you, Prince,” she said. “I recognized your bodyguard the moment he stepped into the room, and then of course I knew who it was who had sent me such an impudent invitation through his mouth.” Khaemwaset flushed and forced himself to meet her now mocking smile. Impudent. He felt like a chastised child.
“I refused it, naturally,” she went on, sobering, “and although I was momentarily complimented, I thought no more about it. Then I injured myself. You are the best physician in Egypt …” She shrugged as though admitting an embarrassing foolishness. “I remembered the incident only when your man walked into my room. I am sorry for my rudeness.”
Khaemwaset immediately protested. “Your rudeness! It is I who must apologize to you. I have never before done such an impulsive thing but, you see, I had caught glimpses of you in the market, in the temple of Ptah. I set up a search but could not find you. My intentions …”
She raised a hand, palm out. “The intentions of a son of Pharaoh and the mightiest prince of the land are above reproach,” she finished for him. “I have heard that you are not only a student of history, Highness, but an admirer of the ancient moral codes. If the guard had identified you I should have turned aside to greet you. I too am a wistful dweller in Egypt’s past and I would have been delighted to talk with you on certain matters. As it is, I can only thank you for your forbearance today.”
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