The room was glowing with the golden half-light of the hour and the wind-catcher was open, stirring tiny flurries of air. Nevertheless Hori could smell his father’s sweat as he came up to the disordered couch. Tbubui was lying much as he must have left her, Hori thought, a bunched-up sheet flung across her loins, her hair in sticky tangles, her skin damp. She watched him come without surprise, her heavy-lidded eyes following his advance incuriously. He halted and she smiled lazily.
“Well, Hori,” she said. “What do you want?” She drew the sheet up over her breasts without haste.
“I want to know why. Why did you many my father, whom I do not think you love at all, when you could have had me? Somehow I think you would prefer young flesh, Tbubui, to some old man fighting the encroachments of time.”
“I would not call Khaemwaset exactly old,” she objected, still with that indolent smile fixed on her mouth, “and there are certain advantages to being his wife. Wealth, influence, a title …”
“That is not it,” Hori said thoughtfully, “not all of it, anyway. I could have given you all those things in time, and you knew it. Anyway, why did you give him false information through Ptah-Seankh? Perhaps there is nothing to find at Koptos?”
“And perhaps there is more to find in Koptos than you could possibly imagine,” she broke in softly, her eyes narrowing. “Have you thought of that, luscious Hori? More than your mind can encompass. Oh, I could not risk dear Khaemwaset hearing the truth, not just yet.” She sat up in one graceful, taunting movement.
“But he will,” Hori said. He was still standing by the couch. “I am going to Koptos myself. I intend to leave tomorrow. I will ruin you before you can destroy him.”
She laughed condescendingly. “How attractive you are when you are angry!” she said. “And do you think he will believe anything you tell him after today? I can say what I like to you. You can dig around in Koptos all you want. He is blind to everything but me, and you will be wasting your time, Highness.”
I want to kill her, Hori thought with hatred. I want to put my hands around her pretty little throat and shake and squeeze until she stops laughing, until she stops smiling that supercilious, superior, taunting smile …
Tbubui swung her legs over the couch. Her smile had become broader. “You can’t kill me, though, can you, darling Hori? Oh yes, I see the need on your face. Would you like to make love to me instead?” She let the sheet drop and kicked it away, spreading out her arms. “Would you like what your father gets every day? I often think of you when he is writhing and groaning on top of me.”
“You are disgusting,” he managed, horror and anger turning his limbs to water, but her words had started the lust as well, more familiar than the anger, an old friend with whom he had been living for a long time.
She tilted her head and half closed her eyes, arching her back.
“Come young Hori,” she breathed. “Make love to me.”
With a cry he flung himself forward, intending to throw her to the ground and crush the life from her, but he found himself kissing her instead. She began to moan or laugh, he did not know which, deep in her throat, winding her arms about his neck, his waist, lower, lower. Frantically he tried to scrabble free and push her away, yet one hand closed over her breast and the other gripped her thigh. They fell onto the couch together. He could no more control his desire for her now than he could stop breathing, yet he despised her, he despised himself.
With the fingers of one hand digging into her neck and the other fist pounding the mattress he rammed into her and in a short time he ejaculated with a great shudder and lay collapsed on her, muscles jerking. “I like it like that,” she said against his ear. “Yes I do,” and he pulled away with a cry and rolled from the couch. “Oh wonderful, hot young blood,” she went on. “Come and warm me again soon, Highness. I do not think you will be able to refuse, will you?”
He staggered to the door. The room was suffocating, pressing on his chest so that he could not breathe. Panic-stricken, he fumbled for the latch, wrenched it open and ran past the startled servant into the corridor. A few more steps took him outside. He burst from the shade of the portico into the blinding wall of sunlight, gasping and bent over. The Keeper ran after him. “Highness, are you ill?” the man was calling, but Hori ignored him. The sunlight was not so blinding after all. Ra was westering and his dying was staining the gardens lushly pink.
Hori forced himself into a shambling walk. Steadily he covered the ground between the concubines’ house and the main building, veered right, cut through the rear and entered the compound. The huge kitchens were belching the smoke of cooking fires and the strong aroma of the meat his mother had ordered for the evening meal. Hori’s stomach contracted in disgust but he went straight in. A steward was setting the trays that would be carried, groaning with food and flowers, into the hall. He did not recognize Hori at first, but then bowed awkwardly, caught off guard. Hori took a bowl and went from table to table filling it with bread, pomegranates, raw leeks, dates, apples. The steward watched him, open-mouthed. Hori nodded to him on his way out.