Khaemwaset watched it float behind her sandalled feet, then he sprang after her. The crowd had thickened, and it seemed to him that everyone milling in the flaming hot air had all at once moved to place themselves between himself and his quarry with a malicious purpose. “Out of my way!” He jostled and pushed, heedless now of who prayed and who simply stood in wonder at Ptah’s mighty edifice. “Get out of my way!” An indignant murmur went up, and the temple guards who always stood at intervals around the walls began to move forward. “Don’t you see her?” Khaemwaset shouted to Ib and Amek who were hurrying towards the disturbance. “You, Amek, you saw her yesterday. Run after her! Run!”
The guards had recognized him and had halted, irresolute. Khaemwaset plunged between the pylons and out onto the wide courtyard before the watersteps. He looked up and down. But there was no sign of her. He ran to the edge of the courtyard and peered along the south side of the wall, but the expanse was empty. The north side was also deserted. The canal rippled quietly, blue and serene in the afternoon furnace. Trees lined it, and with a rage he seldom felt, Khaemwaset knew that his quarry, oblivious to the stir she had created, had simply walked in under the trees for their shade on her way to … Where? Where? Ib and Amek came up to him, panting and bewildered, and Khaemwaset grimly held on to his temper, knowing that none of it was their fault.
“Did you see her?” he asked Amek. Amek eyed him as though he had gone mad.
“Yes, Highness,” he said, “but it was not possible for us to catch up with her. You were closer than we were.”
“All right.” Khaemwaset closed his eyes and winced. “All right. I want you to go home and turn out all the soldiers you can spare. Put them in civilian clothing. Describe this woman to them. Tell them to search Memphis, but discreetly. No one in the family is to know anything about it, do you understand?” They nodded, still confused, but he did not care. No matter what, he was determined to stand face to face with the creature who had invaded his dreams. It is as though someone has slipped a philtre into my wine, he told himself, or conjured a spell of compulsion on me without my knowledge. I feel drugged with her, each sighting immediately translated into a thirst for more, like poppy juice to those in pain. Is some fellow magician trying his strength on me for a joke?
His servants were still staring at him indecisively and he turned away from them, half running beside the canal, eyes searching the welcoming deep shadows under the forest of trees and trimmed grass to his right, but knowing, knowing, that she was not there. His barge still rocked peacefully where the canal met the Nile. His captain was squatting beside the ramp, talking with the steersman, and both men rose and bowed as he came up to them.
Barely acknowledging their reverence he hurried onto the deck. “Take me home!” he commanded. “Quickly!” They sprang to do his bidding.
During the short ride to his watersteps he sat tensely in the small, airless cabin, trying to control the fever of impatience that gripped him. He had forgotten his plan to spend the rest of the afternoon on the river. All he wanted to do was pass the time in the best way possible until his servants began to come to him with news,
Once off the barge, he went straight to his office. Penbuy was there with one of his junior scribes, making fair copies of the rough work they were doing in the tomb, and Khaemwaset asked them to occupy themselves elsewhere. Penbuy shot him a curious glance but of course obeyed, and the door closed discreetly behind them. Khaemwaset began to pace. There were a dozen tasks he could address and he knew that there was the healing of distraction in them, but for once he lacked the power to do what was best. I have no doubt that eventually I will find her, he thought, arms folded as he wandered the large, quiet room. If necessary I will employ the Memphis police. And I also have no doubt that when I do, she will turn out to be a disappointment. Dreams that become reality always do. She will be either very simple, an unlettered commoner without intelligence, uncouth and loud-mouthed, or a spoiled bitch from some minor nobleman’s household, a woman with social pretensions, strident and tasteless.
He paced until he grew tired, then he left the office and went out into the garden, lying on a flax mat with a cushion under his head in the shade and trying to doze. His gardener could be heard somewhere near the watersteps at the front of the house, talking to his apprentice as he tended the shrubs that lined the path. The monkeys, not far from him, snuffled and gibbered half-heartedly in the dragging stillness before sunset that never seemed to end. Birds dipped into the fountain and out again, refreshed, shaking their wings and piping deliriously.