“What do you mean, you are going away?”
“I am going to Pi-Ramses, and I am not asking your permission. I have seen my family torn apart, my household disrupted, my authority slowly undermined, and this business of Hori is the last straw. I am highly distressed that even my servants knew of his absence before I did. Hori does nothing recklessly and you know it. Whatever prompted him to this desperate action is worthy of your attention, and his state of mind should be of great concern to you. Yet you speak only of discipline. He is your only son, your heir. You are throwing him away.”
He regarded her steadily, and now she could have sworn that she saw animosity in his gaze. “I forbid you to go,” he said. “What will Memphis think if you do? That I cannot rule my own establishment? No, Nubnofret. It is out of the question.”
Nubnofret rose. “Tbubui can order the servants, plan the feasts and entertain your guests.” She said it quietly, but she wanted to scream at him, pummel him with both fists, spit into his reddening face. “I will not come back until you send for me, and you had better be sure, Prince, that you need me before you ask a herald to bring me such a message. My only request is that you do not allow Tbubui to occupy my suite.”
“You cannot go!” he shouted, struggling up. “I refuse to allow it!”
She bowed frigidly. “You have soldiers, Khaemwaset,” she said. “Order them to detain me if you dare. I will stay under no other circumstances.”
His hands clenched and his chest heaved with emotion but he said no more. After a moment she turned on her heel and sailed out the door. She did not look back.
Khaemwaset pushed himself off the couch and stood, irresolute. His first impulse was to call for Amek and command Nubnofret’s detention, but such a radical order, once made, would be hard to rescind. “Dress me!” he barked at Kasa who hastened to comply, his fingers unusually clumsy on his master’s body. Khaemwaset endured the man’s fumbling ministrations without complaining, and when he was done, went out immediately.
Tbubui was dictating a letter in her room, one of Khaemwaset’s junior scribes scratching away industriously at her feet. She swung to him with a wide smile that he did not return. Instead he snapped at the scribe, “Get out!” The man gathered up his paraphernalia, sketched a hasty bow and withdrew. Khaemwaset slammed the door behind him and then leaned on it, breathing heavily. Tbubui was beside him in an instant.
“Khaemwaset, whatever is wrong?” she asked, and as always at the touch of her hand, the sound of her voice, the tautness went out of him.
“It is Nubnofret,” he confessed. “She is leaving me and going to Pi-Ramses. Already her servants are packing her belongings. Her life here has become insupportable, it seems.” He ruffled her hair with one absent hand. “Tbubui; I shall be the laughing-stock of the whole of Egypt.”
“No, my dearest,” she objected. “Your reputation is too entrenched. People will say that I have bewitched you and alienated Nubnofret. They will blame me, and I do not mind. Perhaps it is true. Perhaps I have not been as kind as I could have been to Nubnofret.”
“I do not want to hear your tact today, Tbubui!” he said harshly. “I do not want you to be kind! Blame Nubnofret who has been cold and distant and unwelcoming to you! Blame Hori who has run to Koptos to destroy you! Why are you always so achingly kind?”
“He is trying to destroy me?” she repeated, swinging away in the room and then turning to fix him with a suspicious stare. “I knew where he had gone, for I heard snatches of the servants’ gossip, but for an evil purpose?”
Khaemwaset pushed himself away from the door and almost staggered into the room. He got as far as her cosmetic table and sank onto the stool fronting it. “Koptos,” he repeated dully. “He has some deluded idea that the truth about you lies there and he is going to find it.” She was silent so long that he thought she had not heard him. “Tbubui?” he called. She turned slowly as though she was afraid of something behind her, and he saw that her face had gone very pale. She was twining her fingers together, oblivious to the rings digging into her flesh.
“He will bring back fabricated information,” she said dully. “He is determined to see me disgraced.”
“I do not understand any of them anymore,” Khaemwaset admitted angrily. “Nubnofret clearly knows her duty yet she deserts me without a qualm. Hori has become an insane stranger. Even Sheritra approaches me with an arrogant, abrasive stubbornness. The gods are punishing me and I do not know what for!”