Sisenet intercepted his unfocused gaze and raised a friendly hand. Khaemwaset answered the gesture. Tbubui leaned against him and pushed a piece of ripe fig into his mouth. Yet somewhere in the room a huge, invisible mouth was open, breathing desolation over the throng, and he could not escape the gale.
Much later, while the guests still shrieked and staggered through the house and grounds and the weary musicians still played, Khaemwaset and Tbubui slipped away, walking unsteadily over the brittle summer grass to the dim peace of the concubines’ house. The place was deserted. All the women were still feasting, and no one but the Keeper of the Door, who greeted the pair respectfully and escorted them to Tbubui’s rooms, saw them enter.
Once within, the door closed and night lamp lit, Khaemwaset reached for his prize. By now they had made love many times, but her mystery had not lessened. He wanted her with the same helpless longing she had prompted in him months ago, and he was becoming resigned to the knowledge that his desire could not be sated by the act of love; it merely intensified. Yet like a moth compelled to burn itself to death against the flame of a candle, Khaemwaset returned again and again to the source of his torment. Tonight was no different, and with it was the sadness that had overtaken him in the reception hall, an undercurrent of wistfulness that followed him through the violent consummation of his marriage and into his exhausted dreams.
THE MONTH OF PAKHONS came and the heat went on, an unremitting, punishing succession of breathless days and suffocating nights when the women of Khaemwaset’s household dragged sleeping mats up onto the flat roofs of the buildings and spent the dark hours sleeping, gambling or talking. In the fields the harvest began, and Khaemwaset anxiously watched for the first reports from the men who measured the level of the Nile. The river was due to begin to rise towards the end of the month. By then the crops would be safely out of reach of the slowly gathering flood. Threshing and winnowing would go on in the compounds and the grapes would be trod. Si-Montu reported a record-breaking harvest of grapes from Pharaoh’s vineyard. Khaemwaset’s own stewards sent him ecstatic letters filled with the details of his own abundantly fertile fields, and in his household a precarious peace reigned.
The work on Tbubui’s suite was almost finished. She had taken to appearing on the site every morning and would recline under a parasol until the noon meal, watching the fellahin sweat in the well-nigh unbearable heat to raise the last of the bricks and fortify the roof. Khaemwaset liked to join her. Instead of dealing with the day’s dispatches he would seek her out and discuss the interior finishing and furnishings of her new rooms, Harmin’s continuing romance with Sheritra, whom he now saw almost every day when he came to spend an hour or two with his mother, and whether or not Sisenet wanted the position of Head Scribe in the Memphis House of Life, the library of rare scrolls.
The family took the noon meal together, but it was not a comfortable arrangement though Tbubui chattered happily about nothing, doing her best to draw Nubnofret and Hori, if he was there, into the conversation. But Nubnofret merely answered the questions that were put to her directly, and Hori would eat quickly and ask to be dismissed. Khaemwaset was angry and disappointed with them all, even Sheritra, who had taken to bringing up the subject of her betrothal at every opportunity. He had expected more from the people with whom he had lived for so many years, but their behaviour, just short of being rude, was not sufficiently pointed for him to reprimand.
He would escape from the hall with relief to spend the hottest hours of the day on his couch, as they all did. But often he could not sleep. He lay tossing under the soporific rise and fall of the fans held by his servants, wondering if the day would ever come when there would be a lessening of tension in the household.
The late afternoons and evenings were more bearable. Harmin would come, and after sitting in the garden with his mother for a while, would disappear to some deserted spot on the grounds in the company of Sheritra, Bakmut and a guard. Then Khaemwaset and Tbubui could retire to the concubines’ house and make love in her silent bedchamber, where the filtered sunlight trickling through the closed shutters diffused into a dull gold over her sweat-damp body, and he could forget, for a while, his recalcitrant family. He and she would be bathed together, standing side by side on the bathing stone while the servants washed them. Often Khaemwaset himself liked to clean Tbubui’s hair, passing the ropes of thick, wet tresses through his hands in a deliberate, sensual ecstasy.
There were usually official guests at the evening meal, and these Tbubui charmed with her intelligence and wit. Khaemwaset would watch Nubnofret anxiously, knowing that she had the power to forbid Tbubui to such feasts if she chose, but his Chief Wife forced no arguments and their visitors went away envying Khaemwaset the two women, so different and yet so accomplished, who shared his life.