Evenings were taken up with quiet family dinners. The harpist would play softly and the little tables would be piled with perfumed flowers from the garden, whose petals would lie in pastel drifts over the tiled floor. The lamps would be lit, and they would sit in the slight breeze coming in through the open door from the night beyond while Sisenet read to them from his library of scrolls. His voice was deep and even, the stories somehow both vivid and lulling to Sheritra. They were like the anecdotes Tbubui would tell her in the mornings, but at night they had a hypnotic quality to them, so that her mind filled with bright images. When he had finished they would drink some more of his marvellous wine and gossip a little. She would tell them of her family, of Pharaoh, of her opinions and dreams, and they would listen and ask questions, smile and nod. Only later did she realize that in spite of the many evenings spent in this way she had learned almost nothing about them. Finally Bakmut and a soldier would escort her to her room to be undressed and washed, and she would lie on her couch, watching the friendly shadows her night lamp cast on the ceiling, and pass effortlessly into unconsciousness. She did not think that she would ever want to go home.
Her father came to visit her twice in the three weeks that followed, but Sheritra observed and listened to him as though from a far distance. He was clearly pleased with her contentment, her flowering body, and always embraced her with his usual affection, but something about the feel of his arms now made her cringe.
On his second visit, as he was leaving, she saw Tbubui hand him a scroll and supposed it was something from Sisenet's collection. His fingers closed around Tbubui's, giving Sheritra a flash of her old anxiety. But events outside Sisenet's house seemed less significant now and, with a shrug, Sheritra retreated into fatalism. Her father's infatuation would doubtless burn itself out and was, in any case, none of her business. She had thought that he looked haggard and pale. "Is there any news?" Tbubui asked him, and he had shaken his head. "Not yet," he had replied, and they had both turned after a second and smiled at Sheritra as though in apology.
Nubnofret had sent several cheerful notes but had not visited herself. Sheritra was glad. Her mother's presence would have struck a jarring note in the peaceful harmony of Sisenet's household. Sheritra did not miss her.
But one jarring note came from within. On the night of Khaemwaset's second visit, Sheritra decided to take a short walk before bed. The air was still hot and she was unaccountably restless. She wandered with a compliant Bakmut and one of her ever-present guards under the shrouded palms for a while, then made her way to the river. It was very low, the water flowing almost imperceptibly, torn to silver under the new moon's light. She sat for some time on the watersteps, allowing the calm darkness to soothe her, then made her way back to the house.
Skirting it, she approached the side door, she and her escort almost invisible in the darkness, but before she reached it she saw two figures standing just within the passage. Their voices came to her faintly, and there was something so private, so exclusive about their stance that she came to a halt. Now she could hear the words. It was Tbubui and her brother.
"... and you know that it is time," Tbubui was saying harshly. "Why do you hesitate?"
"Yes, I know it is time," Sisenet's voice replied, "but I am reluctant to begin. Such a thing is beneath us. Once we would have considered it reprehensible."
"That was a very long time ago, when we were innocents," Tbubui retorted bitterly. "Now it is necessary. Besides, what is a common servant to us? What is his ..." She broke off as Sheritra, unwilling to eavesdrop on purpose, moved forward. For a moment, Sheritra saw Tbubui's face as she turned towards the footsteps, twisted, angry-then her expression smoothed. "Princess," she said. Sisenet had bowed and was already gone.
"I decided to walk a little before bed," Sheritra explained. "The night is so fine and besides, I ate too much at dinner!"
Tbubui smiled back and stepped aside. "Sleep well, Highness," she said kindly, and Sheritra nodded and walked past her.
Reaching the bedchamber she was obscurely relieved when her guard took up his station outside the door and Bakmut closed it firmly. Sheritra suffered the ministrations of the girl and slid between the sheets in an abstracted mood. It was not so much the words she had heard but the emotions behind them-Tbubui forceful, Sisenet cold. The atmosphere that had surrounded them was turbulent, completely alien to the prevailing mood of the house. What on earth were they talking about? she wondered. Who is the "common servant"? She herself had quickly fallen into the household habit of snapping out orders to the staff without even looking at them, so much a part of the furnishings did they seem, and the voices of those she had brought with her were doubly appreciated after Sisenet's utterly responseless staff.
On impulse she sat up. "Bakmut, fetch me my horoscope for Phamenoth," she ordered, and the girl got up from her mat and went to one of the chests against the wall. I never did look at it, Sheritra thought. Father said it was not good, but as the month is running soon into Pharmuti it doesn't matter. Yet she took it from Bakmut and unrolled it with trepidation. As Khaemwaset said, it was uniformly bad. "Do not rise from your couch today.... Eat no meat this evening.... Spend the afternoon in prayer and do not sleep, that the anger of the gods may be averted.... Remember that the Nile is your refuge.... Turn from love as though from disease ..."
Sheritra let it roll shut and tossed it back to the waiting servant. "Put it away," she said, and lay down again. How is the Nile my refuge? she asked herself, and why on earth should I turn from love? Whose love? Father's? Tbubui's? Harmin's? She fell asleep wondering, still with that pinprick of unease Sisenet and Tbubui's conversation had caused her, and for the first time her rest was interrupted. Several times she woke, thinking that she had heard something, but each time the house remained sunk in its bottomless peace.
The following morning saw Tbubui coming into her chamber to inquire if she was ill, for the sun was high and the hour of breakfast long gone. She was her usual graceful self, attentive and cheerful, and Sheritra grimly ignored the headache lurking behind her eyes and dragged herself from the couch to the bath house.
"Were you up late last night, Highness?" Tbubui asked her. She was kneeling at Sheritra's feet, working oil into the girl's calves. "You do not look rested, in fact you look quite jaded, and there are knots in your muscles."
Sheritra did not reply. Eyes closed, she was all at once preternaturally aware of every sensation: the dull pounding in her head, the sweet, cloying aroma of the oil, the feel of her wet hair sticking to her shoulder blades, the tinkle of water draining through the slanted floor of the bath house, but most of all, the firm, inflammatory touch of Tbubui's fingers on her flesh. A little higher, Tbubui, she thought lazily. Caress my thighs with those long, probing fingers of yours, and as though the woman had heard her, she felt soft movement stroking upward. Her disturbed thoughts and sense of dislocation faded into sensation.
The rest of the morning passed uneventfully. She and Tbubui lounged in Sheritra's bedchamber talking of nothing in particular, but behind Tbubui's words Sheritra sensed an absence. The woman's mind was on something else, though she hid it well, and as soon as the noon meal was over she excused herself and vanished towards her own room.
After the noon sleep Harmin, Sheritra, a guard and Bakmut made their way through the palm grove to a spot out of sight of the house. The guard took up his post by the path, just out of sight. Bakmut unrolled the mat, set down various games and retired to just within earshot.
Sheritra made herself comfortable. Her senses were still sending her messages of exquisite clarity: every drop of her sweat on this flaming afternoon, the dry rustle of the dusty palms above, the crackle of dead leaves under the mat. A twig pressed against her buttock. Harmin leaned in front of her to pull the games over and a gush of his perfume made her dizzy.
He had tied back his hair with a white ribbon that now lay ribbed across his bare shoulder, and the juxtaposition of blackest black and the dazzling white of the strip of linen made her feel slightly ill. He glanced sideways at her, his eyes smiling.
"What would you like to play today, Princess?" he asked. "Or would you rather lie here and drowse the hours away?"
She watched, bemused, the motions of his fine mouth, the working of his throat as he spoke. "I want to kiss you," she said.
He chuckled and jerked a ring finger at Bakmut. "Dogs and Jackals perhaps, Highness? Dice? Are you quite well, Sheritra?"
"Yes. No. I feel a little strange, Harmin. Let us play sennet."
He hesitated, then set the board between their knees, opening a box and shaking out the spools and cones. "Very well. Does your Highness wish to be a spool?"
"No, a cone." Together they set out the pieces and began throwing the sticks to see who would begin. "Your mother seemed preoccupied this morning," Sheritra went on. "I do hope there are no family problems looming, Harmin. Is it time for me to go home?"
The question was not serious and he laughed. "Look, you have thrown a one," he said. "Throw again and begin. There are no family problems, I assure you. Perhaps Mother is affected by this heat."
"But she loves the heat," Sheritra objected. "Oh Harmin, a five, a five, a four! You are doing very well. No, I think it is probably my imagination. The heat is getting to me. I need to swim. I wish you had a pool big enough, for I do not fancy the Nile at this time of the year. Excuse me." She bent and moved one of his pieces forward. "You did not count correctly."
"I did not want to land on the House of the Net," he said thickly, and Sheritra glanced up, surprised at his tone. He was swallowing and staring at the board where the god-fisherman had spread his web. "It is an unlucky house."
"It is more unlucky to cheat!" she teased him, but he did not respond. She took her turn, throwing four ones and a two, and she knew that he was praying to the god of the house on which he wanted to land with an inner intensity that kept her tongue still. Gathering up the sticks he threw, also a one and a two.
"You can move this piece two," she pointed, "but this one must go to the House of the Fishing Implements."
Harmin ran a finger along his upper lip. Sheritra saw that he was sweating lightly. "No," he said in a low voice. "I will move you forward, Sheritra, but I will not move from one unlucky House to another."
"As you wish," she replied, "but you will be putting me right on the Beautiful House and all I have to do is jump the water."
He did not answer. Deftly he exchanged his piece for hers and the game went on, but now he replied to her sallies with grunts, or did not reply at all. He seemed tense, and when, with a stroke of pure good fortune, she threw a number that would allow her to tumble him into the House of the Water, he gave an agonized cry. Her hand paused in mid air, clutching his piece, and his own closed over it. His fingers were cold and slick with sweat. "Not in the Water," he said huskily. "It is cold and dark there, and hopeless. Please, Sheritra."
"Harmin, it is only a game," she said kindly. "We do not play it with spells today, only for amusement. If I do not tip you into the Water I might lose."
He managed a weak smile. "And you are a very bad loser. I will concede to you, Princess, but do not put me there."
She shrugged, puzzled and annoyed. "Oh very well. Put it all away and I will dice with you. What stakes do you propose?"
Soon afterwards they left the mat. Sheritra had won at the dicing and Harmin promised to take her on the river after dinner. They parted to sleep away the hottest part of the day, and Sheritra lay on her couch wondering why he had taken the game so much to heart. They had whiled away many hours at sennet, everyone did, but this was the first time it had upset him.
The house did not seem so quiet today. It was full of little whisperings and scutterings, as though it had been suddenly invaded by an army of mice. Although she was both physically exhausted from her broken night and emotionally drained by her desire for Harmin, heightened but not satisfied, she could not sleep.
Waking Bakmut, she asked for cooling water to be rubbed into her skin. But Bakmut, who had massaged and washed her mistress for years, seemed clumsy and inexperienced after Tbubui's touch, and in the end Sheritra told her to go back to her sleeping mat. I will drink a lot of wine tonight, she told herself pettishly, and I will bring the harpist into my chamber and I will dance to his music, all alone. I wonder how Hori is faring? Why has he not been to see me? I will write him a message tomorrow.
She and Harmin went on the river in the red sunset, floating north for several miles. Contentedly they stood by the barge's rail, watching the northern outskirts give way rapidly to ripening fields and the pink mirrors of palm-lined irrigation canals. When torches began to spring up on the watersteps of the estates they passed and the vegetation lining the Nile became indistinct, Harmin gave the order to turn about, and he and Sheritra retired to the small cabin. Bakmut sat outside it, her back to the heavy curtains that had not been closed. Silently, in the dusk of the approaching night, Sheritra and Harmin lay on the cushions and embraced, breath hot, mouths eager, hands roving in an agony of need.
"Oh Harmin," Sheritra murmured. "I did not know that I could be so happy. How scornful I was of love! How wrongly pitying of those who had found it, out of my own refusal to admit that I yearned for it too."
He placed his fingers over her lips. "Hush," he whispered. "Do not look back, dearest sister. That Sheritra no longer exists. I love you, and the future will be full of nights like this."
"No, not like this," she said, struggling up and pushing back her hair, "for this is torment. To have and not have you ..." Her voice trailed away and she was very glad that the dimness hid her sudden shyness.
"You will have me soon enough," he replied. "We will marry, Sheritra. Do you doubt it?"
"No," she answered, still in such a low voice that Bakmut could not hear. "But when, Harmin? I am a princess, and for a princess such things take time."
He was silent. She could feel him pondering, and as the moments ticked by she began to cool, and then to shiver with dismay. He needs to form an answer, she thought unhappily. He is choosing what best to say. But when he did speak he took her by surprise.
"I know it takes time," he said, "and if it were only a matter of royal protocol I would stick out my tongue at it and run away with you." She smiled in the darkness, relieved. "But there is something else," he went on. "Are you aware, Sheritra, that your father intends to marry my mother?"
Shock made her speechless, yet under it there was a dull recognition of the inevitability of the event. Her father was completely infatuated with Tbubui, that was clear. Sheritra had seen it, had chewed upon it, but had refused to consider the natural result of his obsession. I warned him many weeks ago, she thought. Tbubui is dangerous to men. I feel it. Yet he is entitled to as many wives as he wants. This marriage will make him happy. Oh Hori, my dear, dear Hori. What will this do to you? To Mother? Yet the idea titillated her, why she did not know. It seemed to add fuel to the fire of her physical need for Harmin, and the longing for his body surged back like nausea.
"No," she said breathlessly. "I had no idea. Are you sure? How do you know?"
"I was looking through some scrolls on my uncle's desk, trying to find the story he had read to us the night before," Harmin explained. "The marriage contract was with them and I unrolled it by mistake. Your father has placed his seal on it, and so has my mother."
"Have you approached her about it?" And has Father approached Mother, and Hori? If so, why has he not approached me?
"No," Harmin replied. "She will tell me in due time, I expect. I am sorry, Sheritra. I believed that if things had gone so far as to produce a contract, your father must have told you all. I waited for you to mention it, but you said nothing."
For one blind moment Sheritra trembled with pure rage. Until Tbubui was lodged in the new suite Khaemwaset would undoubtedly build for her, until all legal affairs regarding the marriage had been settled, she and Harmin must remain friends. He has jeopardized my happiness, the happiness he has always seemed to care so much about, she shouted in her mind. Damn you, Father, you and your stupid infatuation. Why couldn't you just sleep with her until the fire is out of your system?
The intensity of her emotion appalled her, and she must have made some sound, for she heard Harmin light the lamp and all at once the cabin filled with a soft yellow glow.
"Are you all right?" he asked sharply. "You have gone white, Highness."
Sheritra gulped. "Our own plans will have to wait," she managed. "I am angry, Harmin, that is all. Father is doing nothing wrong."
A sailor called a polite warning and Harmin scrambled up, pulling her with him. "We are home," he said. "I am sorry to have given you this shock. Forgive me. Say nothing to your family, I beg. I have made a grave mistake."
No, you have not, she thought grimly as she preceded him out of the cabin. This is my home now, beside you. I will marry you and live here and I will never return to the apartments in my father's house. I long to talk to Hori. Oh why hasn't he come?
She did not sleep well again that night. She dreamed of the House of the Water as a vast, dark lake on whose verge she stood. It was twilight, a dreary expanse of colourless sky meeting and misting the still surface of the water. There were things moving out there just beneath the top and she did not want to look at them, but she was unable to tear herself away. The shapes drifted closer as though drawn to her.
She woke at dawn with her heart thumping and her limbs aching, lying for some minutes weak with relief at the sound of the birds' morning chorus in the palms. Then she slept again, to return to consciousness when Bakmut bowed her breakfast tray onto her lap.
She was inexpressibly relieved to see Tbubui, vibrant and lovely as ever, enter the bath house and stand with bare feet in the water cascading from Sheritra's body to swirl down the drain. "I had a terrible dream last night," she blurted, and Tbubui smiled.
"Perhaps your Highness ate heavy food too late in the day," she said kindly. "I am sorry you were distressed." Her critical eye scanned the girl's nakedness: "You are tense from neck to knees," she went on disapprovingly. "Come to my room and I will give you a full massage." She picked up a tall alabaster jar and left. Sheritra followed, wringing the moisture out of her hair, and Bakmut trotted behind.
No guard watched outside Tbubui's quarters, and as she went through the doorway Sheritra wondered fleetingly if she ought to summon the one that waited on her own door. Then she mentally shrugged. There was no danger to her here, and the house was so compact that one shout would bring a soldier running.
Bakmut slid into the room after her, closed the door and squatted to one side. Tbubui indicated the couch. "This is the oil I like to have massaged into my skin when I am tense," she said, pulling the stopper on the alabaster container as Sheritra lowered herself onto her stomach with a sigh. "Your Highness will feel better in no time."
Although her head was turned away, Sheritra could sense Bakmut's disapproval. "Thank you, Tbubui," she said. "Massaging is very hard work. Are you sure you would not prefer to let my body servant do it?"
"Nonsense, Highness," Tbubui said briskly. "I would have to stand beside her and tell her exactly what to do, and that would be boring. Now close your eyes and please lower your elbows a trifle so that your shoulders are relaxed."
Sheritra did as she was bid. The room was still redolent with sleep, and together with the suddenly blossoming aroma of the oil as it was poured onto her back she could detect a faint whiff of the extinguished night lamp.
Tbubui's hands swirled in lazy circles on her skin and then began to move firmly up her spine and over her shoulders in a soothing rhythm. "You have impregnated the oil with your own perfume," Sheritra commented, already loosening into the couch. "It smells good." It did indeed smell good. The myrrh was heavy, cloying, and under it was the faint but pervasive odour neither Sheritra nor Khaemwaset had been able to identify. Sheritra found her nightmare evaporating, and the sweep of Tbubui's knowing hands was inducing a pleasant languor.
For some time the woman concentrated on Sheritra's back, shoulders and upper arms, then she moved to the buttocks and thighs, up and over the small, firm hills in an hypnotic, slow movement.
Sheritra's flesh began to glow. Her thighs opened as Tbubui's fingers brushed ever closer to the cleft between her legs. She moaned softly, unaware that she did so, and Tbubui murmured, "Am I hurting your Highness?"
"No," Sheritra whispered, eyes still closed, a delicious warmth tingling in her breasts, her belly.
"It is delightful, is it not, to be thus relaxed and stimulated at the same time?" Tbubui commented huskily. "Is your Highness enjoying herself?"
But Sheritra could not answer. She clung to the sheets, mouth parted, waiting and longing for her hostess to finally touch the forbidden place.
For a moment Tbubui's hands left her, but then they returned, the feel of them slightly harder than before, more insistent. Sheritra groaned again. All at once the woman's fingers were sliding between Sheritra's breasts and the sheet. They kneaded, squeezed, rubbed her hardening nipples, and with a start Sheritra opened her eyes and half turned.
Harmin was bending over her naked, and as she watched in drowsy astonishment he grasped her shoulder and hip and turned her onto her back.
"Your mother ..." she began, but he lowered himself beside her and stopped her mouth with his own.
"I can provide a better treatment than she," he whispered, "and do not worry about Bakmut. She will sleep for another hour."
"You drugged her?" Sheritra whispered back urgently. "But Harmin ..." He put a hand over her mouth and the gesture filled her with excitement.
"I want this and so do you," he said. "Do not worry about your servant. She will wake believing she has never slept, and will not be harmed."
I should worry, Sheritra told herself dimly. I should get up and run away. But her hand found his belly and began to trail downwards as though it had a will of its own, and he grunted and buried his face in her neck.
Sheritra saw nothing of Harmin for the rest of the day. "Turn from love as though from disease," her horoscope had said, and yet she had given herself gladly, almost wildly, to the young man who now had her heart, and already she was looking forward to the night, when surely he would come to her and they would make love again. She avoided the family, lying on her couch with hands behind her head and pondering what she had done, her body still responding to Harmin's every move as her mind played back to her their joyful struggle.
Behind the full-blown desire that had taken command of her once again, not long after he had kissed her and glided away, were the moral precepts under which she had been raised. A princess cannot risk giving birth to the child of a commoner. A princess may not confer even the suspicion of godhead on a commoner without permission. And a princess, she thought with a pang of anxiety, can be severely punished for giving up her virginity idly. But it is not as though I had a fling with a sailor behind a bazaar stall, she told herself. Harmin and I are as good as betrothed, and he is the son of a nobleman. There is no going back for me now, no hiding. If I am to enjoy his body again I must take Bakmut into my confidence and probably Father will know all within days.
Tbubui arranged my capitulation, that is clear, and that is what shocks me most of all. Is she not, then, as moral as she says? Or does she regard her son and me as already betrothed? Or is she seeking my support in her own negotiations with my father, a support that now will feel very like coercion?
She abhorred what Tbubui had done, and shrank from the image of mother and son calmly discussing her fall over a cup of wine in the garden, as though she were a commodity, something with no will of her own. Well, what will did you exhibit? she asked herself wryly. You wanted him desperately and you knew that the longer you stayed here the more inevitable your downfall would be. You were a silently acquiescent partner in their plan, and you have no one to blame but yourself. I shall have to brazen it out, she thought. Father will have no choice now but to announce our betrothal. Poor Father. Will he care so very much?
"Bakmut," she called and the servant rose from the floor where she had been polishing jewellery and came to stand by the couch. "Are you the one who sends reports on my behaviour to my father?"
Bakmut's eyebrows lifted. "No, Highness, I am not," she said firmly.
"Then who is it?" Sheritra said thoughtfully. "Do you know?"
"I am not sure, but I fancy it is the scribe who wanders about with nothing much to do," Bakmut responded tartly. "The sooner we return to the Prince's house the sooner the idle members of your retinue can earn their keep."
Sheritra unlocked her fingers and sat up. "You are my friend, are you not, Bakmut?" she began. The girl bowed. "You have been with me since the days when you and I played string games on the nursery floor, and you have always understood me. You would not betray me, would you?"
Bakmut met her eyes squarely. "I am in your exclusive service," she said, "and I am answerable to no one but yourself, Princess. Of course I would not betray you. But along with my loyalty goes the right to tell without equivocation what is on my mind."
Sheritra laughed. "You have always done that!" she retorted. Then she sobered. "I have never been one for many girlish attachments," she went on. "Even though you are only a servant, you are the closest thing to a friend I have. What do you think of Harmin?"
Bakmut pursed her lips. "I know that your Highness cares for him, therefore he must have much worth," she answered.
"But you do not like him."
"Highness, it is not my place to pass judgment on my betters."
"No it is not," Sheritra said impatiently, "but I have asked you, therefore you may respond without fear of my displeasure."
"Very well," Bakmut said coolly. "I do not like him, Highness. He is very beautiful, like your brother Prince Hori, but he lacks the Prince's generosity of heart. I sense a meanness in him. And I think that his mother is a crafty woman with few scruples, even though you now call her your friend."
"Thank you for your honesty, Bakmut," Sheritra commented. "Now I order you to allow Harmin access to this room at any hour he chooses, and when he comes you are to leave us alone."
Bakmut's face registered loud disapproval. "Highness, your best interests are graven on my heart, and this is not good, not good at all," she expostulated. "You are a royal princess. You ..."