[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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 -"
"What did she say?" Renisenb demanded impatiently.
"She said - she said -" his voice trembled - "Nofret..."
Chapter 12
FIRST MONTH OF SUMMER, 12TH DAY
"So that is what you meant?"
Renisenb flung the words at Hori more as an affirmation than as a question.
She added softly under her breath with growing comprehension and horror:
"It was Satipy who killed Nofret..."
Sitting with her chin supported by her hands in the entrance to Hori's little rock chamber next
to the Tomb, Renisenb stared down at the valley below.
She thought dreamily how true the words were she had uttered yesterday. Was it really only
such a short time ago? From up here the house below and the busy hurrying figures had no
more significance nor meaning than an ants' nest.
Only the sun, majestic in power, shining overhead - only the slim streak of pale silver that was
the Nile in this morning light - only these were eternal and enduring, Khay had died, and
Nofret and Satipy - and someday she and Hori would die. But Re would still rule the Heavens
and travel by night in his barque through the Underworld to the dawning of the next day. And
the River would still flow, flow from beyond Elephantine and down past Thebes and past the
village and to lower Egypt where Nofret had lived and been gay and light of heart, and on to
the great waters and so away from Egypt altogether.
Satipy and Nofret...
Renisenb pursued her thoughts aloud, since Hori had not answered her last demand.
"You see, I was so sure that Sobek -"
She broke off.
Hori said thoughtfully:
"The preconceived idea."
"And yet it was stupid of me," Renisenb went on. "Henet told me, or more or less told me,
that Satipy had gone walking this way and she said that Nofret had come up here. I ought to
have seen how obvious it was that Satipy had followed Nofret - that they had met on the path
- and that Satipy had thrown her down. She had said, only a short while before, that she was a
better man than any of my brothers."
Renisenb broke off and shivered.
"And when I met her," she resumed, "I should have known then. She was quite different - she
was frightened. She tried to persuade me to turn back with her. She didn't want me to find
Nofret's body. I must have been blind not to realize the truth. But I was so full of fear about
Sobek..."
"I know. It was seeing him kill that snake."
Renisenb agreed eagerly.
"Yes, that was it. And then I had a dream... Poor Sobek - how I have misjudged him. As you
say, threatening is not doing. Sobek has always been full of boastful talk. It was Satipy who
was always bold and ruthless and not afraid of action. And then ever since - the way she has
gone about like a ghost - it has puzzled us all. Why did we not think of the true explanation?"
She added, with a quick upward glance:
"But you did!"
"For some time," said Hori, "I have felt convinced that the clue to the truth of Nofret's death
was in Satipy's extraordinary change of character. It was so remarkable that there had to be
something to account for it."
"And yet you said nothing?"
"How could I, Renisenb? What could I ever prove?"
"No, of course not."
"Proofs must be solid brick walls of fact."
"Yet once you said," Renisenb argued, "that people did not really change. But now you admit
that Satipy did change."
Hori smiled at her.
"You should argue in the Nomarch's courts. No, Renisenb, what I said was true enough -
people are always themselves. Satipy, like Sobek, was all bold words and talk. She, indeed,
might go on from talk to action - but I think she is one of those who cannot know a thing or
what it is like until it has happened. In her life up to that particular day, she had never had
anything to fear. When fear came, it took her unawares. She learned then that courage is the
resolution to face the unforeseen - and she had not got that courage."
Renisenb murmured in a low voice:
"When fear came... Yes, that is what has been with us ever since Nofret died. Satipy has
carried it in her face for us all to see. It was there, staring from her eyes when she died... hen
she said 'Nofret...' It was as though she saw -"
Renisenb stopped herself. She turned her face to Hori, her eyes wide with a question.
"Hori, what did she see? There on the path. We saw nothing! There was nothing."
"Not for us - no."
"But for her! It was Nofret she saw - Nofret come to take her revenge. But Nofret is dead and
her tomb is sealed. What then did she see?"
"The picture that her own mind showed her."
"You are sure! Because if not -"
"Yes, Renisenb, if not?"
"Hori -" Renisenb stretched out her hand. "Is it ended now? Now that Satipy is dead? Is it
truly ended?"
He held her hand in both of his in a comforting clasp.
"Yes, yes, Renisenb - surely. And you at least need not be afraid."
Renisenb murmured under her breath:
"But Esa says that Nofret hated me..."
"Nofret hated you?"
"Esa says so." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]