The room was thus crowded, but Hori received the impression of great space and stillness. He could detect nothing of Harmin’s personality in this place. Silently the servant opened a tiring box, selected a freshly starched kilt and a leather belt, laid them on the couch and came to Hori. He removed the sweat-stained garment, slipped off his leather sandals, lifted his jewels from him, then beckoned. Hori gave a nod and followed. To the bath house, I suppose, Hori thought, secretly amused at the man’s efficient muteness.
Some time later he emerged, refreshed, and walked across the small square of lawn to where his hostess was waiting, leaning back in a chair, swathed in a voluminous white linen cloak. Hori was disappointed. He had vaguely hoped that she might be still in the short sheath but without the pleated cape. The garment she now wore was tied at the neck with a white ribbon and fell to the grass in undisciplined profusion, a startling contrast to the raven blackness of her hair and the bronze of her face and hands.
The garden itself was remarkable in that, after the lawn and the miniature pond and a few flower beds, it was given over to the haphazard forest of tall palms. Tbubui sat beneath one of them, protected by its spindly shadow. Hori felt that if he shouted his voice might echo among the pillared trunks. Tbubui waved him over.
“That’s better,” she observed. “You share Harmin’s build. His kilt looks well on you. I hope it is comfortable while your own is being laundered.” She patted the empty chair beside her. “Sit next to me, or on the mat if you prefer.” Her manner seemed slightly patronizing to Hori, and as he took the chair he thought, I am not your son. Neither am I a child. Don’t treat me like one! She reached to the camp table between them. “Wine or beer?” she inquired. Hori watched the cloak slide open to reveal a length of shapely brown arm adorned with one very wide, heavy silver bracelet gripping her wrist. Her palm was hennaed a brilliant orange. Hori, indeed all the nobility, hennaed his palms and the soles of his feet in either red or orange, but on this woman the practice struck him suddenly as barbaric, exotic.
“Beer, thank you, Tbubui,” he said. “I worked up a terrible thirst on the river!”
She poured for him, handed him the cup, then wriggled into the chair, drawing her knees up sideways. The movement was lithe and girlish without being coy. How old are you? Hori wondered to himself as he drained the cup and held it out to be refilled. Sometimes you seem merely a child and at other times your beauty is ageless.
“You have a wonderful family, Prince,” Tbubui was saying. “The daunting formality of a blood prince’s home is tempered perfectly by the warmth and humour of its members. We have been honoured by your family’s attention.”
“My father is less a prince of the blood than an historian and physician,” Hori answered, “and he was delighted to discover similar interests in you and your brother.”
“Do you share them yourself?” she queried. “I know that you share his historical projects, but do you assist him with his medical cases?”
“No. I do not really care about that,” Hori told her, somehow embarrassed to meet her eyes. His gaze travelled the S-curve of her buttocks, thighs and knees under the softly heaping linen cloak. “I do enjoy Father’s work of restoration, for I have journeyed with him all over Egypt, and I must confess I am excited over each tomb opened, but I do not regard the work as obsessively as he does. Often he will put it before his obligations to Pharaoh.” Immediately he felt disloyal, and held up a hand. “I did not mean that,” he corrected himself quickly. “Pharaoh orders and my father obeys, of course. I mean that though he obeys he sometimes does so reluctantly, particularly if he is in the middle of some crucial piece of ancient translation or about to actually penetrate a tomb.” You had better be quiet, he told himself desperately. You are digging this hole deeper and deeper. But Tbubui was smiling across at him. A bead of purple wine hung trembling on her lower lip, and as he raised his eyes to hers he saw her tongue come out and slowly lick her mouth. Her own eyes did not leave his face.
“And the tomb he has most recently penetrated,” she prodded him encouragingly. “Is he obsessed about it also?”
Hori spread his arms, the beer slopping perilously. “He was very excited about it at first,” he said, “but later he made many excuses not to come to the site. He would not even look at the work the artists were doing for him, copying scenes. I sometimes wonder if he has some secret fear about the place. I have been doing all the organizing.” He grimaced, deprecatingly. “This wall, the one your brother and I tapped,” he went on. “I am very curious about it, but I do not want to bring up the subject with Father for fear he will refuse to let me make a hole in it.”