She felt glad at the prospect of going up to the peace and quietness of the Tomb.
Glad that she would see Hori and be able to talk to him freely.
The only thing that surprised her a little was that he should have entrusted his message to Henet.
Nevertheless, malicious though Henet was, she had delivered the message faithfully.
"And why should I fear Henet at any time?" thought Renisenb.
"I am stronger than she is."
She drew herself up proudly.
She felt young and confident and very much alive...
IV
After giving the message to Renisenb, Henet went once more into the linen storeroom.
She was laughing quietly to herself. She bent over the disordered piles of sheets.
"We'll be needing more of you soon," she said to them gleefully.
"Do you hear, Ashayet?
I'm the mistress here now and I'm telling you that your linen will bandage yet another body.
And whose body is that, do you think?
Hee hee!
You've not been able to do much about things, have you?
You and your mother's brother, the Nomarch!
Justice?
What justice can you do in this world?
Answer me that!"
There was a movement behind the bales of linen. Henet half turned her head.
Then a great width of linen was thrown over her, stifling her mouth and nose. An inexorable hand wound the fabric round and round her body, swathing her like a corpse until her struggles ceased...
Chapter 23 SECOND MONTH OF SUMMER, 17TH DAY
Renisenb sat in the entrance of the rock chamber staring out at the Nile and lost in a queer dream fantasy of her own.
It seemed to her a very long time since the day when she had first sat here soon after her return to her father's house.
That had been the day when she had declared so gaily that everything was unchanged, that all in the home was exactly as it had been when she left it eight years before.
She remembered now how Hori had told her that she herself was not the same Renisenb who had gone away with Khay and how she had answered confidently that she soon would be.
Then Hori had gone on to speak of changes that came from within, of a rottenness that left no outward sign.
She knew now something of what had been in his mind when he said those things.
He had been trying to prepare her.
She had been so assured, so blind - accepting so easily the outward values of her family.
It had taken Nofret's coming to open her eyes... Yes, Nofret's coming.
It had all hinged on that.
With Nofret had come death... Whether Nofret had been evil or not, she had certainly brought evil... And the evil was still in their midst.
For the last time, Renisenb played with the belief that Nofret's spirit was the cause of everything... Nofret, malicious and dead... Or Henet, malicious and living... Henet the despised, the sycophantic, fawning Henet...
Renisenb shivered, stirred, and then slowly rose to her feet.
She could wait for Hori no longer.
The sun was on the point of setting.
Why, she wondered, had he not come!
She got up, glanced round her, and started to descend the path to the valley below.
It was very quiet at this evening hour.
Quiet and beautiful, she thought.
What had delayed Hori?
If he had come, they would at least have had this hour together... There would not be many such hours.
In the near future, when she was Kameni's wife -
Was she really going to marry Kameni?
With a kind of shock Renisenb shook herself free from the mood of dull acquiescence that had held her so long. She felt like a sleeper awakening from a feverish dream.
Caught in that stupor of fear and uncertainty, she had assented to whatever had been proposed to her.
But now she was Renisenb again, and if she married Kameni it would be because she wanted to marry him, and not because her family arranged it.