“Tbubui, pregnant women can become irrational, you must know that,” he said. “Think of what you are saying. You are in my household, not the harem of some unscrupulous foreign king. You are my wife. I rejoice over the coming of this child, and so will my family.”
She came closer. “No, they will not,” she insisted. “You are a blood prince, Khaemwaset, and your offspring belong to Egypt. All of them, including this one,” she clutched her stomach, “are in line for the Horus Throne. Hori has more at stake than the son of a merchant whose second wife is pregnant. He, all of them, they would try to have my baby disinherited if something happened to you. A child of mine would be a threat to their future. Oh don’t you see?”
He was beginning to see and he did not like it. Is it true? he wondered. I know that Tbubui is not popular here, but I believed that rift would be healed in time. But with this pregnancy another grievance has been added to the wounds the family is already suffering. He tried to imagine the situation if he should die, and it chilled him. Tbubui would indeed be defenceless, but would there be anything to defend herself from? All at once Nubnofret’s dislike, Hori’s sullenness, even Sheritra’s new short-temperedness, shifted to form a new pattern in his mind. He could not argue. What Tbubui was saying seemed to be the truth. She was directly in front of him now, breathing rapidly and harshly, her cheeks wet with tears.
“Do you love me, Khaemwaset?” she asked in a strangled voice. “Do you?”
“Tbubui! More than anything!” he said.
“Then help me. Please. I am your wife and you owe me protection. To your unborn son you owe even more. Strike Hori and Sheritra from your will in favour of this new child. Do it before some terrible fate overtakes him. Remove that power from them so that I may live here in peace and look forward to bringing the fruit of our love into the world. Otherwise …” She bent, both hands on her knees, and peered with a mad intensity into Khaemwaset’s face. “Otherwise I must divorce you and leave.”
He felt as though she had struck him. His chest ached and he could not get his breath. “Gods, Tbubui …” he croaked. “You do not mean it … there is no need for such a drastic measure … you are not thinking …”
She was crying. “Believe me, dear brother, I have done nothing else but think about this since I realized I was pregnant,” she said. “Nubnofret will never accept me. She told me to my face that I have the heart of a whore. Hori …”
“What?” he asked sharply. She shook her head.
“Nothing. But I urge you, I beg you, to do as I wish. You are a good man, you do not smell the evil stinking directly under your nostrils. Pharaoh will take care of Hori, and Sheritra will doubtless marry some wealthy nobleman. They will not suffer! Only my son will suffer if you delay!”
“Nubnofret, my Nubnofret, called you a whore?” he said slowly, and she nodded.
“Yes. By all the gods I swear I am telling you the truth. Change your will, Prince. If the gods are kind you will live to see our son grow to manhood and then it will not matter. But if not …” She spread her hands. “I adore you. I always have. Do not force me to tear out my heart by leaving you.”
Khaemwaset could not think. He wanted to be clearheaded, to argue with her rationally, but his mind was whirling and he was afraid, so very afraid, both that she was right and that she would carry out her threat. I cannot live without her, he thought. I cannot go back to the life I once knew. It would be desolation, loneliness, it would be death. She has changed me. From the first, she has been working in me. I am no longer Nubnofret’s Khaemwaset, Hori’s father, Ramses’ right hand. I am Tbubui’s lover, and that is all. With one sweep of his arm he pulled her down onto the couch, pushing her roughly into the mattress as he rolled on top of her. “Very well,” he ground out, already half-mad with the fever of wanting her. “Very well. I will remove the right of my children by Nubnofret to inherit, and give that right to our child. But I will not tell them. They would hate you even more.”
“There is no need to tell them unless they become a danger,” she answered. “Thank you, Khaemwaset.”
He did not reply, indeed, he had not heard her. The tide of lust had risen in him, drowning all thought, and it was a long time before he again became aware of his surroundings. By then the lamp had gone out from starvation and he could hear the jackals howling far away in the desert beyond Saqqara. The city was enveloped in the silence of deepest night.
17
Wilt thou go away because thou art thirsty?