“We prefer to walk when we can,” she replied, her kohled eyes half-shut against the brilliant light. “Walking is a constant pleasure and delight, Prince. The heat here is as nothing to the heat at Koptos and besides, Koptos is barren. We walk, we smell the river, we enjoy the movement of the shade. Our skiff is moored at the Peru-nefer docks.”
“You walked all this way?” Khaemwaset said unbelievingly, and she nodded. “I will send a servant to order your skiff to our watersteps,” he offered, and stepping back, signalled to the bearers.
He spent the time on the journey back to his house reliving his moments beside Tbubui in the tomb and pondering Sisenet’s words regarding the water. Either explanation would be satisfactory, he reflected, unseeing eyes fixed on the closed and light-suffused curtains of the conveyance. But I prefer the latter. That tomb is not a peaceful resting place. Something awful sleeps there, and I can well believe it is a family’s doom.
It was then that he remembered Sisenet’s comment about the coffin lids and he leaned forward, frowning. How had the man known that they were standing against the wall when Hori and I first penetrated the inner room? Hori must have told him. All the same, Khaemwaset thought again as the litter swayed and lurched into the noise of the city, I will ask.
Lunch was a cheerful affair, taken outside under a large awning. After he had eaten, Khaemwaset sat hugging his obsession to himself like some invisible cloak, pretending to drowse while his slitted eyes followed Tbubui’s every move. To his chagrin she had few words for him. She was dividing her attention between Nubnofret and Hori, who lay sprawled in the grass at her feet, speaking rapidly and seriously to the one, laughing fetchingly with the other, and Khaemwaset, vaguely annoyed, thought that he had never seen Hori so animated and entertained.
Sisenet was sitting a little apart, both hands around his wine cup, watching the monkeys caper and gibber by the pool. He seemed content enough, with the self-sufficient coolness Khaemwaset was beginning to recognize as uniquely his. Khaemwaset had talked to him while the food was being served and had managed to ask him how he had known about the coffin lids. He had looked bewildered for a moment and then said, “I don’t remember, Prince. Hori must have told me last time we dined. He and I talked at great length about the tomb.” Khaemwaset was satisfied. They had chatted for a few more minutes but Sisenet had seemed disinclined to carry a conversation and had retired to the wine, leaving his host to give Tbubui his undivided, though clandestine, attention.
Sheritra had run out to greet the guests without a trace of the bashfulness that was her curse. She had answered all questions freely, eaten whole-heartedly, and was now perched on a pile of cushions under one of the sycamores with Harmin, both of them drowned in the tree’s deep shade. Khaemwaset took a moment to appreciate the young man’s classical good looks, his glossy, straight black hair, his long, ringed fingers, before thinking, very well, very well. It would surprise me, for surely Harmin, once known, could have his pick of any Memphis beauty, but perhaps he is as rare a bird as Hori and will understand my daughter’s hidden qualities. I must investigate this family’s lineage. He turned his hidden gaze back to Tbubui. Presently he rose. “Tbubui,” he said, “I believe that you are interested in medicine.”
She glanced up at him lazily, obviously somnolent with the heat. “Yes, Prince, I am. I suppose Harmin told you.”
“Would you like to inspect my remedies?”
For answer she rose. Nubnofret glanced their way but Khaemwaset, reading her absent expression, knew that she did not mind. He started for the house.
“Do you treat your own staff?” he asked Tbubui as they passed into the welcome gloom of the hall and made their way to Khaemwaset’s office. “Or have you your own physician in residence?”
“I prefer to treat them myself,” she answered behind him, and Khaemwaset could have sworn that he felt her warm breath between his naked shoulder-blades. “That way I am learning all the time. They do not seem to mind my mistakes.”
She stood looking about the orderly room, now filled with the deep, drugged stillness of the later afternoon. Khaemwaset unlocked the library and beckoned her within, closing the door behind her. Without pause he opened the chest that contained his herbs and philtres, not marvelling at how he was breaking his own usually rigid rule regarding whose hands disturbed them, and Tbubui became immediately brisk and curious.
She examined them carefully and questioned him fully on their cost and use, the seductive, magnetic woman gone, replaced by one whose intelligence and concentration inflamed him in a new way.
He forced himself to answer her rationally, to make his voice obey him, but he was trembling as her heavily ringed hands caressed his pots and jars, and her hair fell forward as she bent over the chests.
Handing the collection back to him her fingers brushed his, her inadvertent touch cool although beads of sweat had collected in the hollow of her throat and the skin between her breasts glistened with moisture.
At last he locked his medicines away, then stood, intending to usher her out. He found her with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, one hand working the back of her neck. “It is so quiet in here,” she murmured. “Almost as quiet as my home. This room has an atmosphere that banishes the outside world as though it did not exist.”
Khaemwaset’s control deserted him. Sliding his own hand behind her neck he forced her back until the wall stopped them, then he leaned into her and brought his mouth down on her own. A stab of pleasure such as he had never known lanced his abdomen and he groaned, preternaturally aware of the soft underside of her lips as his tongue flicked over them, the cold resistance of her teeth before they parted. Her breath was in his mouth Then it was over. He withdrew shakily, his own breath coming hard, and she lifted a hand to her face, brushing against his penis lightly, briefly, as she did so.
“What ails you, Prince?” she said in a low voice, her eyes all at once heavy-lidded, her nostrils flaring. “Why this?”
You ail me, he wanted to blurt. I sicken from you like a love-hungry youth. Your mouth is not enough, Tbubui. I must have all of you, my tongue in the valleys I can imagine so painfully but not yet see, my hands gauging the texture, the temperature of your skin, my body ceasing to obey my mind and for once knowing only its driving need. For once … He did not apologize.
“I sought you for a long time,” he said huskily. “My servants grew exhausted. I was robbed of sleep, my food was as the sand, dry and tasteless. That kiss was compensation for it all.”
“And was it compensation enough, Prince?” she asked, her smile gently mocking; “Or will you demand a full recompense? It will not be easy. No, it will not. For I am of noble birth and no mean person.”
Immediately an urge to violence mingled with his lust. He wanted to bruise her lips with his teeth, knead her breasts until she cried out. For one blinding moment he hated her constant poise. The words of desire died on his tongue, and with a curt gesture he ushered her from the room.
The guests left at sunset, though Nubnofret had invited them to stay for the evening meal. “We have another commitment, unfortunately,” Sisenet explained, “but we thank you for your boundless kindness. Remember to send me word about that wall in the tomb,” he added, turning to Hori. “I am very interested. Indeed the whole day has been intriguing. I have enjoyed myself enormously, standing alive in the presence of the dead.”
They took their leave, and began to file up the shadowed ramp at the foot of the watersteps. Their skiff waited motionless on the red-splashed, smooth mirror the Nile had become at that hour.
All at once Tbubui stumbled. With a cry she slipped towards the unguarded edge of the ramp, arms flung out to catch a non-existent rail, and Khaemwaset jumped forward, but before he could reach her Harmin had pulled her back.
“Are you all right?” Khaemwaset called, hurrying up to her. She nodded, trembling in every limb, her face chalk white. Harmin, an arm across her shoulders, turned her and she walked unsteadily into the skif
f. Sisenet followed without speaking a word, and the tiny boat cast off and glided away. Khaemwaset returned to his family.
“She is not harmed,” he replied to Nubnofret’s silently raised eyebrows.
“Her reaction to the prospect of a tumble in the mud was rather extreme,” Nubnofret commented, and Hori shook his head.
“Not really,” he said. “Her husband drowned, and ever since she has been mortally afraid of water. Apparently he fell from a raft during a boating party at Koptos. He had had too much wine, and the Nile was in full flood. His body was recovered miles downstream four days later.”
“How do you know?” Khaemwaset asked sharply, with resentment.
“She told me,” Hori answered simply, “because I asked her.”
Sheritra shuddered. “How dreadful” she exclaimed “Poor Tbubui!”
Khaemwaset gently took her wrist. “So you are going into the city with Harmin tomorrow,” he said. The young man had taken him aside earlier and had coolly requested his permission. Khaemwaset had gladly given it. “You must of course take Amek and a soldier with you,” he insisted to Sheritra, “and be home in time for dinner.”
“Of course I will!” she replied impatiently. “Do not fuss so, Father. Now I will change my linens before we eat.” She disengaged herself, shouting for Bakmut, and went into the house. Hori had already wandered off, Antef appearing from the rear garden to meet him. Khaemwaset and Nubnofret looked at each other.
“She is going to fall hard,” Khaemwaset said slowly. “I don’t know what that young man has said to her, but already she has changed.”
“I see it too,” Nubnofret agreed. “But I am full of fear for her, my husband. What can he possibly see in her? He is new to Memphis. She is the first girl he has met here. He will discard her when his social life becomes more varied. Sheritra is too sensitive to handle such a crushing rejection.”
“As usual, you give her no credit,” Khaemwaset responded angrily, feeling as though his wife had attacked Tbubui herself. “Why is it not possible for Harmin to appreciate all the qualities in Sheritra that are not visible? And why do you immediately presume that he is merely dallying and will desert her? Let us at least give both of them the compliment of optimism.”
“You always were blind to everyone’s faults but mine!” Nubnofret snapped back bitterly, and turning on her heel she stalked away across the darkening lawn, her linen floating wraithlike behind her in the gloom.
By the time they sat down together for the final meal of the day, her anger had lessened to a stiff formality. Khaemwaset deliberately set himself to making her smile, and in the end succeeded. They drank their last cups of wine sitting side by side on the watersteps that still held the warmth of day, knee to knee, watching the barely perceptible flow of the quiet water. In the end, Nubnofret put her head on his shoulder.
For a while he let it rest there, inhaling the aroma of her tumultous hair, loosely holding her hand, but then a mild desire woke in him. “Come,” he whispered, and rising he led her in under the tangled shrubbery beside the steps and made love to her.
But as he did so a distaste for his wife began to rise under his sexual urgency, a repugnance for her large, soft breasts, the spread of her ample, pliant hips, the wideness of her generous mouth now parted in pleasure. There was nothing hard, spare, driving about Nubnofret, and by the time Khaemwaset rolled from her and felt the dry grasses and twigs dig into his back, he knew that he would rather have been making love with Tbubui.
SHERITRA TRIED not to break into a run as she saw Harmin smile a greeting from his vantage point in the bow of his barge. For a fleeting moment her defences came up and she wished with all her heart to be safely in her room talking with Bakmut, far away from this sudden complication, this enormous risk. But soon the shrinking was replaced by a feeling of happy recklessness new to her. Forcing her shoulders back she walked towards him with all the grace she could muster, Amek and his soldier behind. Harmin bowed as she negotiated the ramp and she bid him a good morning, thus giving him the freedom to speak.
“Good morning, Princess,” he answered her gravely, signalling for the ramp to be drawn inboard. Amek and the other man took up their stations at either end of the craft, and Harmin drew Sheritra towards the cabin.
His family’s barge was not as large nor as sumptuous as Khaemwaset’s, but it was hung with pennants cut from a cloth of gold on which black Eyes of Horus had been painted. The curtains, tied back, were also cloth of gold, tasselled in silver. Sheritra took the upholstered stool Harmin indicated, watching him covertly as he arranged cushions for himself on the floor, then turned to offer her fresh water and slivers of cold beef marinated in garlic and wine.
He was dressed as simply as his barge, with a plain white kilt hugging his long thighs and stern leather sandals on his feet, but his belt was set with turquoise, as were his thick silver bracelets and the lightly linked pectoral lying against his brown chest. The amulet counterpoise nestled between his flexing shoulder-blades was a row of tiny gold baboons, symbols of Thoth, protecting the wearer from certain spells designed to pierce the victim from behind.
“I have seen the Nile reflecting exactly the colours of your turquoise,” Sheritra remarked hesitantly, a shyness on her with the ritual of accepting food and drink. “Those are very old, are they not? So often now the stones available are inferior. They are all blue, not the ancient greenish-blue Father finds so attractive.”
Harmin went into a crouch on the cushions and grinned up at her, his kohled eyes glittering. “You are right. They have been in my family for many hentis and they are supremely valuable. They will be passed down to my oldest son.”
Sheritra felt her cheeks grow hot. “I thought we were going to walk today,” she put in hurriedly, “although drifting on the Nile is a great pleasure.” She took a gulp of water and the fire in her face began to ebb.
“We will indeed walk, and perhaps by the end of the day you will beg to be returned to the barge,” Harmin teased her. “But I decided to save you the dust and heat of the river road into Memphis. Also, if we find the bazaars overcrowded or boring we can be back on board in a matter of minutes. Look! We are already passing the canal to the old palace of Thothmes the First. I suppose you have been within it many times when your grandfather is in residence at Memphis.”
“Why yes, I have,” Sheritra began, and before she realized it, she was chatting about Ramses and his court, her father’s political contacts, life as a princess. “It is not as wonderful as you might think,” she said ruefully. “My daily routine and my education were far more rigidly controlled than that of a daughter of the nobility, and now that I have finished being tortured and you might think I am free, I face the prospect of being eventually betrothed to some hereditary erpa-ha to preserve Ramses family dynasty. I don’t mind the idea of being married, of course, but I do mind the certainty that my future husband will not love me. How could he? I look more like a peasant’s daughter than a princess!”
Her voice had gradually risen and she had become more and more agitated without realizing it, until Harmin put out a protesting hand and, coming to herself, she understood what she had said. Her hands flew to her face.
“Oh Harmin!” she cried out. “I am so sorry. I have no idea why I am talking to you like this.”
“I know why,” he said calmly. “There is something about me that made you trust me from the first, isn’t there, Little Sun?”
“Only my father calls me that,” she said faintly.
“Do you mind if I do?”
She shook her head mutely.
“Good. For I feel that I have known you since my own school-days. I am easy with you, and you with me. I am your friend, Sheritra, and I could wish to be nowhere else today than here beside you with the sun beating on the water and the crowds kicking up sand on the bank.”
She was silent, her gaze ostensibly on the things he described while her thoughts played with his words. So far the only man she trusted was her fath
er, and that was because he had earned her respect. The male faces who had appeared and as quickly disappeared from her life had earned nothing but her self-conscious scorn for their vapidity, their refusal to recognize her intelligence, their notquite-hidden contempt for her homeliness. She knew that she was perilously close to such strength of feeling for Harmin that her whole life would be engulfed, and she herself changed. She already respected him for his frankness, the genuine way he had casually dismissed her ex terior as of no account and had touched those chords in her that had so far vibrated only for Khaemwaset.
But friend. What did he mean by friend? Was his interest truly one of sharing minds? Well, it us all you can really hope for, she told herself sadly. But his next words caused her heart to pound.
“Your skin has the translucence of a pearl,” he whispered, and she turned abruptly to find his black eyes fixed on her. “Your eyes. are full of life, Princess, full of vitality when you allow your ka to shine through. Please hide no more.”
I capitulate, she thought, panic-stricken. My judgment is even now deserting me. But oh Harmin! For Hathor’s sake stand steady on the rope! I am giving birth to the self I have fiercely protected all my life, and it is still half-blind and helpless under your strange gaze.
“Thank you, Harmin,” she replied steadily, and suddenly flashed him a bright grin. “I will hide no more from you. I care nothing about the rest of Egypt.” He laughed and began to wolf down the cold beef, spearing it on a tiny silver-hafted dagger, occasionally holding bites to her mouth, and she, all at once ravenous, could not eat quickly enough.
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