Scroll of Saqqara(98)

“Yes,” he admitted, and his voice cracked on that one word.

“Does she know?”

He sighed. “Yes. I told her everything when I went to see her yesterday. She suggested that I could visit her whenever I wanted but that we could be nothing more than friends.”

Her heart went out to him. He sounded confused and hopeless. “Do you accept that?”

He straightened. “Of course not!” he snapped. “I will find some means of winning her. I am after all one of the most sought-after single men in Egypt and certainly the handsomest. She cannot resist me if I flaunt my body in front of her often enough.”

Sheritra was appalled at the cynical tone. “But Hori, you have never …your strength has been …”

“Well perhaps I have simply not cared enough until now to turn my good looks into the weapon they are,” he grated. “She has no man. If someone else held her affections she would have told me. No, Sheritra. She eats at my vitals and one day, one day, I will eat at hers.”

She was shocked both at the crudity of his language and the coarseness of his voice. Desperately she sought the brother whose cheerful, constant unselfishness had made him beloved among so many. “Have you spoken to Father about it?” she asked.

“No. When she surrenders I will approach him, but until then it is none of his business.”

So Hori, wrapped in his own agony, was oblivious to Khaemwaset’s. It was just as well. The implications of the situation came into Sheritra’s mind in all their potential horror. Quite apart from the strife that would ensue between her two favourite men, there was the future. If Hori won her he would of course build another wing onto the house and she would be under Khaemwaset’s gaze at every hour. But surely that was better than having her here as Khaemwaset’s Second Wife, with all the authority that position entailed. Tbubui at dinner, Tbubui commandeering the barge, Tbubui and Khaemwaset on his couch while Nubnofret lay alone … And Tbubui and me, Sheritra thought, shrinking. Tbubui and Hori. Oh gods. Let me be wrong about Father. Let Hori’s infatuation end as suddenly as it began.

Hori once more bent close to her until she could smell the sour wine on his breath. “You are going to stay with her tomorrow,” he whispered. “She likes you, Sheritra. Talk to her about me. Make her think. Will you do that for me?”

She jerked away. “I will try, Hori,” she cried out, “but all is not as it seems. Oh why did she have to come into our lives! I am afraid!”

He did not answer, did not try to comfort her, and she got up and left him, walking through the murmurous house towards her own apartments where her servants were packing her belongings. Her mind told her to order the things returned to their tiring boxes but her heart yearned for Harmin. He had kissed her again today, both of them lying in the long grasses at the river’s edge, hidden from the eyes of servants and soldiers on the barge. The sun had been a dreaming, sultry presence making her pliant, liquid with desire, and Harmin’s black hair had fallen across her neck, his tongue cool against the convolutions of her ear. I can do nothing, she thought as she entered her ante-room to Bakmut’s somewhat harried bow. I cannot stem the disquieting tide of powerful change sweeping over this family. I am no longer apart from it, for it is tumbling and buffeting me also. Each one of us must look to himself.

She left the watersteps late the following morning with Bakmut, all her personal servants and four guards, selected by Amek and approved by her father. Nubnofret had bid her a casual goodbye, embracing her briefly and assuring her that she must come home as soon as she wished. But Khaemwaset had drawn her aside and thrust a piece of papyrus into her hands. “Your horoscope for Phamenoth,” he had said brusquely. “I cast them all last night. Little Sun, I do not like it. Read it for yourself as soon as possible and remember that I am only as far away as the mouth of one of your guards. I will come and see you within the week.” Suddenly she clung to him as though she had been banished to the Delta for some heinous crime, missing him already. Yet under the burst of homesickness was the cold core of her determination, and besides, she had not missed the undertone of eagerness in his voice. Kissing him on his cheek she turned and walked onto the barge. Hori had not appeared at all. She waved to her parents once and disappeared into the cabin.

It took the rowers less than an hour to pull the barge to Tbubui’s watersteps, even though the prevailing north wind of summer had begun to blow and the river was so low that very little current remained to carry them along. Sheritra sat in the cabin, a silent Bakmut at her feet, the horoscope still unread in her hand. She felt tense, dislocated, as though instead of going to stay with a new friend for a few weeks she was setting out across the Great Green, her destination unknown. Exacerbating the impression was the knowledge that both her parents, for dissimilar reasons, were glad to see her go, and Hori too wanted her away from home to help him pursue his own ends. It was irrational, Sheritra knew, but she felt that he had betrayed her.