"Yahmose... Yahmose..." Renisenb, numbed by shock, repeated the name again, and yet again. It was as though she could not believe it...
She was outside the little rock chamber, Hori's arm still round her.
She could hardly recollect how he had led her back up the path.
She had been only able to repeat her brother's name in that dazed tone of wonder and horror.
Hori said gently: "Yes, Yahmose.
All the time, Yahmose."
"But how!
Why?
And how could it be he!
Why, he was poisoned himself.
He nearly died."
"No, he ran no risk of dying.
He was very careful of how much wine he drank.
He sipped enough to make him ill and he exaggerated his symptoms and his pains.
It was the one way, he knew, to disarm suspicion."
"But he could not have killed Ipy.
Why, he was so weak he could not stand on his feet!"
"That, again, was feigned.
Do you not remember that Mersu pronounced that once the poison was eliminated, he would regain strength quickly.
So he did in reality."
"But why, Hori?
That is what I cannot make out - why?"
Hori sighed.
"Do you remember, Renisenb, that I talked to you once of the rottenness that comes from within?"
"I remember.
Indeed I was thinking of it only this evening."
"You said once that the coming of Nofret brought evil.
That was not true.
The evil was already here concealed within the hearts of the household.
All that Nofret's coming did was to bring it from its hidden place into light.
Her presence banished concealment.
Kait's gentle motherliness had turned to ruthless egoism for herself and her young.
Sobek was no longer the gay and charming young man, but the boastful, dissipated weakling.
Ipy was not so much a spoilt, attractive child as a scheming, selfish boy.
Through Henet's pretended devotion, the venom began to show clearly.
Satipy showed herself as a bully and a coward.
Imhotep himself had degenerated into a fussy, pompous tyrant."
"I know - I know." Renisenb's hands went to her eyes. "You need not tell me.
I have found out little by little for myself... Why should these things happen?
Why should this rottenness come, as you say, working from within?"
Hori shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell?
It may be that there must always be growth - and that if one does not grow kinder and wiser and greater, then the growth must be the other way, fostering the evil things.
Or it may be that the life they all led was too shut in, too folded back upon itself - without breadth or vision.
Or it may be that, like a disease of crops, it is contagious, that first one and then another sickened."
"But Yahmose - Yahmose seemed always the same."
"Yes, and that is one reason, Renisenb, why I came to suspect.
For the others, by reason of their temperaments, could get relief.
But Yahmose has always been timid, easily ruled, and with never enough courage to rebel.
He loved Imhotep and worked hard to please him, and Imhotep found him well-meaning but stupid and slow.
He despised him.