Sheritra gulped. “Our own plans will have to wait,” she managed. “I am angry, Harmin, that is all. Father is doing nothing wrong.”
A sailor called a polite warning and Harmin scrambled up, pulling her with him. “We are home,” he said. “I am sorry to have given you this shock. Forgive me. Say nothing to your family, I beg. I have made a grave mistake.”
No, you have not, she thought grimly as she preceded him out of the cabin. This is my home now, beside you. I will marry you and live here and I will never return to the apartments in my father’s house. I long to talk to Hori. Oh why hasn’t he come?
She did not sleep well again that night. She dreamed of the House of the Water as a vast, dark lake on whose verge she stood. It was twilight, a dreary expanse of colourless sky meeting and misting the still surface of the water. There were things moving out there just beneath the top and she did not want to look at them, but she was unable to tear herself away. The shapes drifted closer as though drawn to her.
She woke at dawn with her heart thumping and her limbs aching, lying for some minutes weak with relief at the sound of the birds’ morning chorus in the palms. Then she slept again, to return to consciousness when Bakmut bowed her breakfast tray onto her lap.
She was inexpressibly relieved to see Tbubui, vibrant and lovely as ever, enter the bath house and stand with bare feet in the water cascading from Sheritra’s body to swirl down the drain. “I had a terrible dream last night,” she blurted, and Tbubui smiled.
“Perhaps your Highness ate heavy food too late in the day,” she said kindly. “I am sorry you were distressed.” Her critical eye scanned the girl’s nakedness: “You are tense from neck to knees,” she went on disapprovingly. “Come to my room and I will give you a full massage.” She picked up a tall alabaster jar and left. Sheritra followed, wringing the moisture out of her hair, and Bakmut trotted behind.
No guard watched outside Tbubui’s quarters, and as she went through the doorway Sheritra wondered fleetingly if she ought to summon the one that waited on her own door. Then she mentally shrugged. There was no danger to her here, and the house was so compact that one shout would bring a soldier running.
Bakmut slid into the room after her, closed the door and squatted to one side. Tbubui indicated the couch. “This is the oil I like to have massaged into my skin when I am tense,” she said, pulling the stopper on the alabaster container as Sheritra lowered herself onto her stomach with a sigh. “Your Highness will feel better in no time.”
Although her head was turned away, Sheritra could sense Bakmut’s disapproval. “Thank you, Tbubui,” she said. “Massaging is very hard work. Are you sure you would not prefer to let my body servant do it?”
“Nonsense, Highness,” Tbubui said briskly. “I would have to stand beside her and tell her exactly what to do, and that would be boring. Now close your eyes and please lower your elbows a trifle so that your shoulders are relaxed.”
Sheritra did as she was bid. The room was still redolent with sleep, and together with the suddenly blossoming aroma of the oil as it was poured onto her back she could detect a faint whiff of the extinguished night lamp.
Tbubui’s hands swirled in lazy circles on her skin and then began to move firmly up her spine and over her shoulders in a soothing rhythm. “You have impregnated the oil with your own perfume,” Sheritra commented, already loosening into the couch. “It smells good.” It did indeed smell good. The myrrh was heavy, cloying, and under it was the faint but pervasive odour neither Sheritra nor Khaemwaset had been able to identify. Sheritra found her nightmare evaporating, and the sweep of Tbubui’s knowing hands was inducing a pleasant languor.
For some time the woman concentrated on Sheritra’s back, shoulders and upper arms, then she moved to the buttocks and thighs, up and over the small, firm hills in an hypnotic, slow movement.
Sheritra’s flesh began to glow. Her thighs opened as Tbubui’s fingers brushed ever closer to the cleft between her legs. She moaned softly, unaware that she did so, and Tbubui murmured, “Am I hurting your Highness?”
“No,” Sheritra whispered, eyes still closed, a delicious warmth tingling in her breasts, her belly.
“It is delightful, is it not, to be thus relaxed and stimulated at the same time?” Tbubui commented huskily. “Is your Highness enjoying herself?”
But Sheritra could not answer. She clung to the sheets, mouth parted, waiting and longing for her hostess to finally touch the forbidden place.
For a moment Tbubui’s hands left her, but then they returned, the feel of them slightly harder than before, more insistent. Sheritra groaned again. All at once the woman’s fingers were sliding between Sheritra’s breasts and the sheet. They kneaded, squeezed, rubbed her hardening nipples, and with a start Sheritra opened her eyes and half turned.