Scroll of Saqqara(119)

Waking Bakmut, she asked for cooling water to be rubbed into her skin. But Bakmut, who had massaged and washed her mistress for years, seemed clumsy and inexperienced after Tbubui’s touch, and in the end Sheritra told her to go back to her sleeping mat. I will drink a lot of wine tonight, she told herself pettishly, and I will bring the harpist into my chamber and I will dance to his music, all alone. I wonder how Hori is faring? Why has he not been to see me? I will write him a message tomorrow.

She and Harmin went on the river in the red sunset, floating north for several miles. Contentedly they stood by the barge’s rail, watching the northern outskirts give way rapidly to ripening fields and the pink mirrors of palm-lined irrigation canals. When torches began to spring up on the watersteps of the estates they passed and the vegetation lining the Nile became indistinct, Harmin gave the order to turn about, and he and Sheritra retired to the small cabin. Bakmut sat outside it, her back to the heavy curtains that had not been closed. Silently, in the dusk of the approaching night, Sheritra and Harmin lay on the cushions and embraced, breath hot, mouths eager, hands roving in an agony of need.

“Oh Harmin,” Sheritra murmured. “I did not know that I could be so happy. How scornful I was of love! How wrongly pitying of those who had found it, out of my own refusal to admit that I yearned for it too.”

He placed his fingers over her lips. “Hush,” he whispered. “Do not look back, dearest sister. That Sheritra no longer exists. I love you, and the future will be full of nights like this.”

“No, not like this,” she said, struggling up and pushing back her hair, “for this is torment. To have and not have you …” Her voice trailed away and she was very glad that the dimness hid her sudden shyness.

“You will have me soon enough,” he replied. “We will marry, Sheritra. Do you doubt it?”

“No,” she answered, still in such a low voice that Bakmut could not hear. “But when, Harmin? I am a princess, and for a princess such things take time.”

He was silent. She could feel him pondering, and as the moments ticked by she began to cool, and then to shiver with dismay. He needs to form an answer, she thought unhappily. He is choosing what best to say. But when he did speak he took her by surprise.

“I know it takes time,” he said, “and if it were only a matter of royal protocol I would stick out my tongue at it and run away with you.” She smiled in the darkness, relieved. “But there is something else,” he went on. “Are you aware, Sheritra, that your father intends to marry my mother?”

Shock made her speechless, yet under it there was a dull recognition of the inevitability of the event. Her father was completely infatuated with Tbubui, that was clear. Sheritra had seen it, had chewed upon it, but had refused to consider the natural result of his obsession. I warned him many weeks ago, she thought. Tbubui is dangerous to men. I feel it. Yet he is entitled to as many wives as he wants. This marriage will make him happy. Oh Hori, my dear, dear Hori. What will this do to you? To Mother? Yet the idea titillated her, why she did not know. It seemed to add fuel to the fire of her physical need for Harmin, and the longing for his body surged back like nausea.

“No,” she said breathlessly. “I had no idea. Are you sure? How do you know?”

“I was looking through some scrolls on my uncle’s desk, trying to find the story he had read to us the night before,” Harmin explained. “The marriage contract was with them and I unrolled it by mistake. Your father has placed his seal on it, and so has my mother.”

“Have you approached her about it?” And has Father approached Mother, and Hori? If so, why has he not approached me?

“No,” Harmin replied. “She will tell me in due time, I expect. I am sorry, Sheritra. I believed that if things had gone so far as to produce a contract, your father must have told you all. I waited for you to mention it, but you said nothing.”

For one blind moment Sheritra trembled with pure rage. Until Tbubui was lodged in the new suite Khaemwaset would undoubtedly build for her, until all legal affairs regarding the marriage had been settled, she and Harmin must remain friends. He has jeopardized my happiness, the happiness he has always seemed to care so much about, she shouted in her mind. Damn you, Father, you and your stupid infatuation. Why couldn’t you just sleep with her until the fire is out of your system?

The intensity of her emotion appalled her, and she must have made some sound, for she heard Harmin light the lamp and all at once the cabin filled with a soft yellow glow.

“Are you all right?” he asked sharply. “You have gone white, Highness.”