Khaemwaset had come up empty until the seventh day, when Sheritra had gone to him in much trepidation and had confessed that Hori had set sail for Koptos and the truth.
“He is determined to blacken her name,” Khaemwaset had roared. “He corrupted Ptah-Seankh and that did not work, so he is hatching another scheme. I understand how an unreturned love can blight an otherwise generous nature, but this spite …” He had controlled himself with an effort, and when he next spoke his voice was lower. “This spite is so unlike the Hori I thought I knew.”
“Perhaps it is not spite,” Sheritra had dared to argue. “Perhaps Hori has not changed at all and he is trying desperately to make you see something you very much wish to overlook, Father.”
“Are you turning against me also, Little Sun?” he had countered sadly, and she had vigorously denied the accusation.
“No, Father! And neither is Hori. Listen to him when he returns, please! He loves you, he does not want to hurt you, and he is suffering terribly because of your rejection of both of us.”
“Oh you know about that, do you?” Khaemwaset had frowned. “It was a precaution against my untimely death, Sheritra, that was all. Marry before I die and of course you shall have your dowry.”
But Hori cannot claim his inheritance, Sheritra thought. Not ever. This was not a moment to anger her father further. However, she took the opening he had provided.
“I want to marry long before that,” she said swiftly. “Grant my entreaties, Father, and give me my betrothal to Harmin. As a princess it is my place to ask him, not the other way around, and if you do not give your permission we must wait forever.”
This time he had not brushed her off. He had stared at her speculatively for some moments, then, to her surprise and delight, he had nodded brusquely. “Very well. You may go to Harmin and offer him marriage. I have lost one son, and already I have begun to think of Harmin as a replacement for Hori. I am fond of the young man, and he at least is loyal to his relatives.” He smiled thinly. “I see the disbelief on your face, Sheritra, but trust me. I mean it. Go to Harmin.”
It was not disbelief he saw, she was thinking now as the house came in sight, it was a pang of cold shock to hear him speak that way about Hori. No one can repair that damage. I feel guilty wallowing in my own pleasure while Hori, and Mother, too, in her own way, are so unhappy.
She did not have to go far to find Harmin. He was sprawled under a tree in his garden, an empty flagon of beer beside him, one of the silent black servants a short way off standing under a palm. Sheritra signalled to Bakmut to wait, and hurried over the brittle grass with an anticipatory smile. How inviting he looks, she thought. How delicious, lying supine on the mat, with his black hair spread over the cushion, his arm flung across that broad chest, his strong legs parted!
He half raised himself as she came up and knelt, and she bent and placed her mouth on his. He was flushed from the heat of the day and his lips were dry. After a moment he pulled away and sat up fully.
“Oh Harmin, I miss you so all the time!” she said. “I know we talked yesterday when you visited your mother, but the time was short and you seemed preoccupied. I am always desperate for a few minutes alone with you.”
“Well here I am,” he said without returning her smile. “I wish that you had waited to visit me until this evening, Sheritra. I did not sleep well last night and I am trying to remedy the lack.”
He did indeed took tired, she thought, disappointment at his words giving way to concern. His eyes were bleary, the delicate lids puffed. Tentatively she touched his face.
“I did not mean to be so forward,” she apologized. “It is just that I have good news for us, Harmin. Father has finally agreed to our betrothal.”
He smiled then, but it was not a free, glad expression. “If you had come to me a week ago with this information I would have been overjoyed,” he said sullenly, fumbling for the cup at his elbow. “But I am not sure that I want to be betrothed to a woman who neither trusts nor loves me.” He would not meet her eyes. Lifting the cup, he drained it to the dregs, and Sheritra watched him in a haze of bewilderment.
“Harmin!” she said after a moment. “What do you mean? You taught me trust! You taught me love! I adore you with all my heart! What are you saying?”
He threw the cup into the shrubbery, and when he answered, his tone was cold and spiteful. “Do you deny that you have been conspiring with Hori in the most despicable way to discredit me and my mother?”
“Not conspiring, Harmin! I …”
He snorted. “I can see the guilt on your face, Highness. My mother told me that Hori had gone to Koptos to try and ruin her. It was humiliating, hearing such a thing from her instead of from you. It did not occur to you to come and talk to me about it, did it? Of course not! I mean less to you than he does.”
Sheritra felt as though he had struck her. “How did she know where Hori had gone?”
“She encountered him by the watersteps on the morning he left. He told her what he was going to do and she begged him with tears, with tears! to cease his vindictive persecution, so unjust, so fruitless, but he would not listen. And you!” he sneered. “You knew that he was going and you knew why, yet you did not take me into your confidence.”
“What makes you think Hori told me anything?” she tried to challenge him, but she could not deny his accusation and her words came out weakly. It would be useless to try and explain that to take him into her confidence would have meant telling him what she thought of Tbubui, and that she had not wanted to hurt him. And that was not the only reason, she thought dismally. Hori had urged her not to press for a betrothal until he came back. He did not know whether or not Harmin was involved with his mother in deceiving Khaemwaset, and thus deceiving Sheritra also.
“He tells you everything,” Harmin said petulantly. “You share more with him than you do with me. I am deeply hurt, Sheritra, first that you chose to shut me out and second that you could even imagine that my mother or I could be capable of perpetrating such a huge lie on your family.”
But she has, Sheritra thought in despair, looking at his sulky, brooding face. I believed Hori implicitly when he told me Ptah-Seankh’s story. Oh Harmin, I pray fervently that you are hurt and angry because you know nothing of your mother’s true nature, not because you are afraid of exposure. Suddenly she realized the implications of the thought and her mouth went dry. How can I possibly doubt him? she asked herself in a rush of tenderness. He is as much a victim of Tbubui’s machinations as Father. Poor Harmin.
“My dearest brother,” she said softly, edging closer to him and putting an arm about his neck. “I did not confide in you because I did not want to hurt you. I believe, and so does Hori, that your mother has been lying to Khaemwaset. Such a truth is hard for a son to bear. Please believe me, I did not want to see you suffer!”
He was still for a long time. He did not relax against her but neither did he pull away. His face was turned so that she could not read his expression, but gradually, although he did not move, she felt him withdraw. “You had better leave me alone now, Highness,” he said dully. “I cannot in all honesty sit here and listen to my mother being maligned. I am sorry.”
Her arm dropped. “Harmin …” she began, but he rounded on her and shouted, “No!” with such ferocity that she almost lost her balance. She rose clumsily and walked away, her new-found confidence deserting her so that her shoulders slowly slumped and her hands came up to cradle her sharp elbows. Calling to Bakmut she half ran along the path to the watersteps, expecting to hear him call her back, but there was silence. He will get over it, she told herself anxiously. He will remember that I mentioned a betrothal, that his anger interfered with his hearing, and then he will hurry to me and everything will be all right. I will not cry.
Nevertheless, her vision blurred as she stepped down into the skiff. She felt like a foolish child. In a moment of blinding self-knowledge she saw how she ought to have challenged him, told him that no matter what his mot
her was like she loved him, pressed him on the issue of the betrothal they had planned together for so long. But he had dominated her from the first, perhaps even manipulated her, so that now she was too weakened to risk incurring his displeasure. He must love me, he must! she insisted hysterically as the skiff eased out into midstream and she felt Bakmut’s eyes on her inquiringly. Without him I shall die! Then her mind went very still and she began to shiver.
Word of Hori’s clandestine journey to Koptos soon spread in the household, but Nubnofret knew nothing of it until she sent a servant to request his presence in her suite. Khaemwaset had told her that their son was barred from family occasions because he had been unforgivably rude to Tbubui, and Nubnofret had wisely pursed her lips and refrained from comment. It was not a wife’s place to interfere in a disciplinary matter such as this, particularly where a second wife was concerned, and the last thing Nubnofret wanted was a disorderly house. But she worried about her son. Guiltily, she realized that she had been too involved in her own unhappiness to spend any time with him lately, and she resolved to remedy the matter at once. She was dumbfounded when the servant told her that Hori had gone to Koptos. Resisting the urge to ask the man why, she immediately sought out her husband.
Khaemwaset had just left the bathing room and was on his way back to his apartments. Nubnofret, standing facing him in the passage, had time to notice how beads of water had clung to the hollow of his throat and were glistening across his belly before he halted and smiled at her encouragingly. “What can I do for you, Nubnofret?” he asked, and unaccountably her stomach constricted. You can take me in your arms, she thought feverishly. You can tilt my head back the way you used to do, and kiss me, and press the damp coolness of your body against mine. “I wish to speak to you seriously, Prince,” she said.
“Then come and talk to me while I am massaged. Kasa!”
Obediently she followed him and his body servant back to his room, where he got onto the couch, indicating that she should sit by his head where he could see her. Kasa poured oil into the valley of his spine and began to knead the still-firm flesh, and Nubnofret looked away, clearing her throat with a polite little cough.
“Khaemwaset, where is Hori?” she asked directly.
He closed his eyes. “Hori is in Koptos.”
“And what is Hori doing in Koptos?”
Khaemwaset sighed, rubbing his cheek against his forearm. He still had not opened his eyes. “He thinks that Ptah-Seankh falsified the report on Tbubui’s ancestry that I requested before the marriage contract became valid, and he has gone to find what he considers to be the truth.”
“Did he leave with your permission?”
“He did not even leave with my knowledge.” Now he opened his eyes. They regarded Nubnofret warily. “He is being vituperative, disobedient and thoroughly reckless. I disciplined him once over this obsession with what he sees as some kind of duplicity on Tbubui’s part, and I can see that when he returns I shall have to discipline him again.”
His eyes were drooping, but not from fatigue or an unwillingness to look at her, Nubnofret realized. The massage was arousing him. How much you have changed, my husband, she thought in hot terror. You have become an unpredictable, exotic creature none of us recognizes. It is as though some demon came to you one night and stole your ka, replacing it with something else. If you made love to me now I should be frightened at your touch. “I am going away, Khaemwaset,” she said calmly. At that she saw the muscles of his back tense and he lifted his head sharply, his eyes once more brightly aware.
“What do you mean, you are going away?”
“I am going to Pi-Ramses, and I am not asking your permission. I have seen my family torn apart, my household disrupted, my authority slowly undermined, and this business of Hori is the last straw. I am highly distressed that even my servants knew of his absence before I did. Hori does nothing recklessly and you know it. Whatever prompted him to this desperate action is worthy of your attention, and his state of mind should be of great concern to you. Yet you speak only of discipline. He is your only son, your heir. You are throwing him away.”
He regarded her steadily, and now she could have sworn that she saw animosity in his gaze. “I forbid you to go,” he said. “What will Memphis think if you do? That I cannot rule my own establishment? No, Nubnofret. It is out of the question.”
Nubnofret rose. “Tbubui can order the servants, plan the feasts and entertain your guests.” She said it quietly, but she wanted to scream at him, pummel him with both fists, spit into his reddening face. “I will not come back until you send for me, and you had better be sure, Prince, that you need me before you ask a herald to bring me such a message. My only request is that you do not allow Tbubui to occupy my suite.”
“You cannot go!” he shouted, struggling up. “I refuse to allow it!”
She bowed frigidly. “You have soldiers, Khaemwaset,” she said. “Order them to detain me if you dare. I will stay under no other circumstances.”
His hands clenched and his chest heaved with emotion but he said no more. After a moment she turned on her heel and sailed out the door. She did not look back.
Khaemwaset pushed himself off the couch and stood, irresolute. His first impulse was to call for Amek and command Nubnofret’s detention, but such a radical order, once made, would be hard to rescind. “Dress me!” he barked at Kasa who hastened to comply, his fingers unusually clumsy on his master’s body. Khaemwaset endured the man’s fumbling ministrations without complaining, and when he was done, went out immediately.
Tbubui was dictating a letter in her room, one of Khaemwaset’s junior scribes scratching away industriously at her feet. She swung to him with a wide smile that he did not return. Instead he snapped at the scribe, “Get out!” The man gathered up his paraphernalia, sketched a hasty bow and withdrew. Khaemwaset slammed the door behind him and then leaned on it, breathing heavily. Tbubui was beside him in an instant.
“Khaemwaset, whatever is wrong?” she asked, and as always at the touch of her hand, the sound of her voice, the tautness went out of him.
“It is Nubnofret,” he confessed. “She is leaving me and going to Pi-Ramses. Already her servants are packing her belongings. Her life here has become insupportable, it seems.” He ruffled her hair with one absent hand. “Tbubui; I shall be the laughing-stock of the whole of Egypt.”
“No, my dearest,” she objected. “Your reputation is too entrenched. People will say that I have bewitched you and alienated Nubnofret. They will blame me, and I do not mind. Perhaps it is true. Perhaps I have not been as kind as I could have been to Nubnofret.”
“I do not want to hear your tact today, Tbubui!” he said harshly. “I do not want you to be kind! Blame Nubnofret who has been cold and distant and unwelcoming to you! Blame Hori who has run to Koptos to destroy you! Why are you always so achingly kind?”
“He is trying to destroy me?” she repeated, swinging away in the room and then turning to fix him with a suspicious stare. “I knew where he had gone, for I heard snatches of the servants’ gossip, but for an evil purpose?”
Khaemwaset pushed himself away from the door and almost staggered into the room. He got as far as her cosmetic table and sank onto the stool fronting it. “Koptos,” he repeated dully. “He has some deluded idea that the truth about you lies there and he is going to find it.” She was silent so long that he thought she had not heard him. “Tbubui?” he called. She turned slowly as though she was afraid of something behind her, and he saw that her face had gone very pale. She was twining her fingers together, oblivious to the rings digging into her flesh.
“He will bring back fabricated information,” she said dully. “He is determined to see me disgraced.”
“I do not understand any of them anymore,” Khaemwaset admitted angrily. “Nubnofret clearly knows her duty yet she deserts me without a qualm. Hori has become an insane stranger. Even Sheritra approaches me with an arrogant, abrasive stubbornness. The gods are punishing me and I do
not know what for!”
A queer little half-smile flitted across her face. “You have always been too indulgent with them, Khaemwaset,” she said. “You have made them the spoiled centre of your life. Where other men have placed their families second to their duty to Egypt, you have delighted in fulfilling their desires first and they have become unruly. Hori, in fact, has …” Her voice trailed off, and he saw an expression of anguish in her eyes.
“You know something you are not telling me,” Khaemwaset demanded. “I have never heard a word of criticism of my family pass those sensuous lips of yours, Tbubui, unless I have almost thrashed it out of you. What do you know about Hori?”
She came to him slowly, her hips swivelling in unconscious invitation, halting just out of his reach. “I do carry a dreadful thing concerning your son,” she said in a low voice. “I will tell you now, but only because I live in increasing terror for my safety and the life of my unborn child. Oh promise me, dear brother, that you will not blame me!”
“Tbubui,” he said in exasperation, “I love only you. Even your silly little faults are dear to me. Come now. What is on your mind?”
“You will not believe anything he brings back from Koptos, will you?”
“No,” Khaemwaset assured her. “I will not.”
“He is so implacable in his hatred,” she began, so softly that he had to crane to hear her. “He would kill me if he could.” She looked up and faced him, her eyes full of desperation, her mouth trembling. “He raped me, Khaemwaset. Hori raped me when he first knew I was to marry you. He had come to my house to talk, he said, but he began to make advances towards me. When I refused him and told him I was in love with you and we were going to be married he became incensed. ‘Do you not prefer young flesh, Tbubui, to some old man fighting the encroachments of time?’ he urged, and then he … he …” She covered her face with her hands. “I am so ashamed!” she burst out, and then began to weep. “Believe me, Khaemwaset, I could do nothing! I tried to summon my servants but he clapped a hand over my mouth. ‘Cry out and I will kill you!’ he threatened, and I believed him. He was insane, a wild man. I even think …”
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