"Satipy and Kait are right. There are no men in this family! But I am a man. Yes, I am a man in heart if not in years. Nofret has jeered at me, laughed at me, treated me as a child. I will show her that I am not a child. I am not afraid of my father's anger. I know my father. He is bewitched - the woman has put a spell on him. If she were destroyed his heart would come back to me - to me! I am the son he loves best. You all treat me as a child - but you shall see. Yes, you shall see!"
Rushing out of the house he collided with Renisenb and almost knocked her down. She clutched at his sleeve.
"Ipy, Ipy, where are you going?"
"To find Nofret. She shall see whether she can laugh at me!"
"Wait a little. You must calm down. We must none of us do anything rash."
"Rash?" The boy laughed scornfully. "You are like Yahmose. Prudence! Caution! Nothing must be done in a hurry! Yahmose is an old woman. And Sobek is all words and boasting. Let go of me, Renisenb."
He twitched the linen of his sleeve from her grasp.
"Nofret, where is Nofret?"
zhaiyuedu.com, who had just come bustling out from the house, murmured:
"Oh, dear, this is a bad business - a very bad business. What will become of us all? What would my dear mistress say?"
"Where is Nofret, zhaiyuedu.com?"
Renisenb cried: "Don't tell him," but zhaiyuedu.com was already answering:
"She went out the back way. Down towards the flax fields."
Ipy rushed back through the house and Renisenb said reproachfully:
"You should not have told him, zhaiyuedu.com."
"You don't trust old zhaiyuedu.com. You never have confidence in me." The whine in her voice became more pronounced.
"But poor old zhaiyuedu.com knows what she is doing. The boy needs time to cool off. He won't find Nofret by the flax fields." She grinned. "Nofret is here - in the pavilion - with Kameni."
She nodded her head across the courtyard. And she added with what seemed rather disproportionate stress:
"With Kameni..."
But Renisenb had already started to cross the courtyard.
Teti, dragging her wooden lion, came running from the lake to her mother and Renisenb caught her up in her arms.
She knew, as she held the child to her, the force that was driving Satipy and Kait. These women were fighting for their children.
Teti gave a little fretful cry.
"Not so tight, Mother, not so tight. You are hurting me."
Renisenb put the child down. She went slowly across the courtyard. On the far side of the pavilion Nofret and Kameni were standing together. They turned as Renisenb approached.
Renisenb spoke quickly and breathlessly:
"Nofret, I have come to warn you. You must be careful. You must guard yourself."
A look of contemptuous amusement passed over Nofret's face.
"So the dogs are howling?"
"They are very angry - they will do some harm to you."
Nofret shook her head.
"No one can harm me," she said with a superb confidence. "If they did, it would be reported to your father - and he would exact vengeance. They will know that when they pause to think." She laughed. "What fools they have been - with their petty insults and persecutions! It was my game they played all the time."
Renisenb said slowly:
"So you have planned for this all along? And I was sorry for you - I thought we were unkind! I am not sorry any longer... I think, Nofret, that you are wicked. When you come to deny the forty-two sins at the hour of judgment you will not be able to say, 'I have done no evil.' Nor will you be able to say, 'I have not been covetous.' And your heart that is being weighed in the scales against the feather of truth will sink in the balance."
Nofret said sullenly:
"You are very pious all of a sudden. But I have not harmed you, Renisenb. I said nothing against you. Ask Kameni if that is not so."
Then she walked across the courtyard and up the steps to the porch. zhaiyuedu.com came out to meet her and the two women went into the house.
Renisenb turned slowly to Kameni.
"So it was you, Kameni, who helped her to do this to us?"
Kameni said eagerly:
"Are you very angry with me, Renisenb? But what could I do? Before Imhotep left he charged me solemnly that I was to write at Nofret's bidding at any time she might ask me to do so. Say you do not blame me, Renisenb. What else could I do!"
"I cannot blame you," said Renisenb slowly. "You had, I suppose, to carry out my father's orders."
"I did not like doing it - and it is true, Renisenb, there was not one word said against you."
"As if I cared about that!"
"But I do. Whatever Nofret had told me, I would not have written one word that might harm you. Renisenb - please believe me."
Renisenb shook her head perplexedly. The point Kameni was laboring to make seemed of little importance to her. She felt hurt and angry, as though Kameni, in some way, had failed her. Yet he was, after all, a stranger. Though allied by blood, he was nevertheless a stranger whom her father had brought from a distant part of the country. He was a junior scribe who had been given a task by his employer, and who had obediently carried it out.
"I wrote no more than truth," Kameni persisted. "There were no lies set down; that I swear to you."
"No," said Renisenb. "There would be no lies. Nofret is too clever for that."
Old Esa had, after all, been right. That persecution over which Satipy and Kait had gloated had been just exactly what Nofret had wanted. No wonder she had gone about smiling her catlike smile.
"She is bad," said Renisenb, following out her thoughts. "Yes!"
