Hori blinked. “Yes. We think that it would help to have the scroll deciphered. She offered her brother’s assistance. She told me that he has had some success in translating ancient writings and, with your permission, I would like to invite him here to inspect it.”
“She is coming here this afternoon to visit Nubnofret,” Khaemwaset said with a curious reluctance. “I will speak to her about it then. I suppose that Sisenet can do the scroll no harm.” But will it do him harm? came the irrational thought.
“Coming today?” Hori exclaimed. “How do you know? She said nothing of it to me yesterday.”
Something is definitely straining Hori, Khaemwaset thought. I wonder what it is.” Your mother keeps expressing a wish to see her again and so I sent a message to her house in the evening,” Khaemwaset explained. “She did not reply, therefore she is coming.” I have never lied to my son before, he thought gloomily, but I have the feeling that it will not be the last time. Is he, in his deliberate silence, lying to me by omission?
“Oh,” was all Hori said. “In that case I will not go out today. The scroll interests me greatly.” He struggled out of the chair, suddenly kissed his father in an uncharacteristic, swift gesture and hobbled out of the room.
Tbubui arrived just after the noon sleep, when the greatest heat of the day still permeated the house. Khaemwaset had told a delighted Nubnofret that she was coming specifically to spend an hour or two in gossip; therefore it was Wernuro, Nubnofret’s female servant and companion, who waited at the watersteps to greet and escort her.
Nubnofret had just risen when her guest was announced and was sitting at her cosmetic table, mirror in hand, naked but for a piece of thin linen tied loosely about her waist. Her cosmetician was touching up her kohl but at her word he immediately withdrew. Nubnofret swept to embrace her guest.
“Tbubui, how lovely that you decided to come and see me,” she exclaimed, enveloping the other woman in perfumed musk. “I knew that we would become friends. It is important to have friends, is it not, when one is married to a man who in turn is married to his many duties? Come. Sit down. Forgive my unmade couch, but I have only been out of it a short while.” She sighed. “The heat is becoming unbearable and it does make my eyelids swell so. I must say that you look very fresh!”
Tbubui had not taken the chair. She had settled herself cross-legged on the couch, pillows at her back. Nubnofret noted that today she had abandoned the very old-fashioned tight sheaths she usually wore and was dressed in a charming, ankle-length white gown gathered into an embroidered yellow yoke high on her neck. The garment was sleeveless and looked very cool. A band of gold gripped her upper arm and long gold droplets swung from her ears. Though she was finely painted, her hair was wound on top of her head and completely unadorned. She wriggled into her position and smiled brightly at Nubnofret.
“I like the heat,” she said. “I sleep well in it, Highness, though I am not silly enough to walk out under the sun at this time of year. Would your Highness like to join me on the couch?” Nubnofret collapsed onto it with a sigh and lay on her side, propping up her head with its tumble of curls on one hand.
“Wernuro will bring drinks and pastries shortly,” she said. “I decided that we should stay indoors. My bedchamber is a little cooler than the furnace of the garden. There is not even a wind to funnel down the wind-catcher. Tell me, Tbubui, are you becoming acquainted with any of our Memphis nobles? How do you like life here?”
Tbubui laughed. It was a spontaneous, free sound, but Nubnofret thought that it revealed too much the feral quality of her small teeth. “We receive numerous invitations from the inhabitants of the northern suburb,” she said. “I am sure that they are curious about us in a kindly way. But we accept few of them. We like our life to be quiet and well ordered. Memphis is beautiful and exciting, but it is usually enough to know that the pleasures it offers are set out like food on a plate for us to taste when we wish.”
“Do you not find life dull, then?” Nubnofret asked. “Running your household cannot take up too much of your time.”
“No it does not,” Tbubui agreed. “But I am at present dictating a history of Egypt’s relations with the rest of the world during the time of Osiris Hatshepsut, she who gave my ancestor the caravan route from Koptos to the Eastern Sea, and when I am not doing that I am walking the city. I like to walk.”
I am not sure what to make of you, Nubnofret thought with a twinge of envy. Your responsibilities are few, unlike mine. You are free to do exactly as you please. Your roots are deep in Koptos. Then why are you here?