I feel I hate them all.
Oh, not really, you understand.
But just because I am cross - and impatient and everyone is so odd.
Can we not go up to your Tomb?
It is so nice up there - one is - oh, above everything."
"That is clever of you, Renisenb.
That is what I feel.
The house and the cultivation and the farming lands - all that is below one, insignificant.
One looks beyond all that - to the River - and beyond again - to the whole of Egypt.
For very soon now Egypt will be one again - strong and great as she was in the past."
Renisenb murmured vaguely: "Oh - does it matter?"
Hori smiled. "Not to little Renisenb. Only her own lion matters to Renisenb."
"You are laughing at me, Hori.
So it does matter to you?" Hori murmured: "Why should it?
Yes, why should it?
I am only a ka-priest's man of business.
Why should I care if Egypt is great or small?"
"Look." Renisenb drew his attention to the cliff above them.
"Yahmose and Satipy have been up to the Tomb.
They are coming down now."
"Yes," said Hori. "There were some things to be cleared away, some rolls of linen that the embalmers did not use.
Yahmose said he would get Satipy to come up and advise him what to do about them."
The two of them stood there looking up at the two descending the path above.
It came to Renisenb suddenly that they were just approaching the spot from which Nofret must have fallen.
Satipy was ahead, Yahmose a little way behind her.
Suddenly Satipy turned her head to speak to Yahmose.
Perhaps, Renisenb thought, she was saying to him that this must be the place where the accident had occurred.
And then, suddenly, Satipy stiffened in her tracks.
She stood as though frozen, staring back along the path.
Her arms went up as though at some dreadful sight or as though to ward off a blow.
She cried out something, stumbled, swayed, and then, as Yahmose sprang towards her, she screamed, a scream of terror, and plunged forward off the edge headlong to the rocks below...
Renisenb, her hand to her throat, watched the fall unbelievingly.
Satipy lay, a crumpled mass, just where the body of Nofret had lain.
Rousing herself, Renisenb ran forward to her. Yahmose was calling and running down the path. Renisenb reached the body of her sister-in-law and bent over it.
Satipy's eyes were open, the eyelids fluttering.
Her lips were moving, trying to speak.
Renisenb bent closer over her.
She was appalled by the glazed terror in Satipy's eyes.
Then the dying woman's voice came.
It was just a hoarse croak. "Nofret..."
Satipy's head fell back.
Her jaw dropped.
Hori had turned to meet Yahmose.
The two men came up together.
Renisenb turned on her brother.
"What did she call out, up there, before she fell?"
Yahmose's breath was coming in short jerks - he could hardly speak...
"She looked past me - over my shoulder - as though she saw someone coming along the path - but there was no one - there was no one there."
Hori assented: "There was no one..."
Yahmose's voice dropped to a low, terrified whisper. "And then she called out -"