gilding,” I added hastily. “Not yet, not for some time. I have told you that my soldier’s pay is not large and we must try to manage on it. The house itself is costing me a small fortune.” The pout was back.
“Well if you would accept my father’s offer and learn about faience, we could have everything we wanted now,” she objected, not for the first time. I answered her more sharply than I had intended. The argument was not new but the feeling that swept over me was, a depression mingled with anger at her blithe selfishness. My mind flooded suddenly with a vision of the modest hut where the Aswat woman lived, with its clean poverty, of the woman herself, her rough feet and coarsened hands, and I gripped my cup tightly to prevent the anger spilling over.
“I have told you before, Takhuru, that I do not want to become an Overseer of the Faience Factories,” I said. “Nor do I want to follow in my father’s footsteps. I’m a soldier. One day I may be a general, but until then I am happy with my choice and you will just have to learn to accept it without complaint.” The words had an admonitory sting to them which I regretted as I saw her flinch. The affected pout was replaced by a watchfulness. She paled and sat back. Her spine found the wall and she straightened unconsciously, laying her ringed and hennaed hands in her yellow lap and lifting her chin.
“I am not accustomed to poverty, Kamen,” she said evenly. “Forgive me for my thoughtlessness. You know of course that my dowry will be ample enough to provide for everything we might need.” Then she gave an artless and unselfconscious grimace that restored her to young girlhood, and my anger was gone. “I did not mean to sound arrogant,” she went on apologetically. “It’s just that I am afraid of being poor. I have never done without anything I wanted, much less needed.”
“My dear, silly little sister,” I chided. “We will not be poor. Poor is one table, one stool and one tallow lamp. Have I not promised to care for you? Now drink your wine and we will play sennet. You have not asked me how my assignment went.” Obediently her nose disappeared into her cup. She licked her lips and wriggled forward.
“I will be cones. You can be spools,” she ordered. “And I have not asked you about your journey south because I am not interested in anything that takes you away from me.”
I sighed inwardly and we began to play, throwing the sticks with a clatter onto the still-warm roof on which we sat and talking intermittently of nothing in particular while the last of Ra’s light was pulled from the treetops around us and the first stars appeared.
We had known each other for years, first as toddlers reeling about our respective gardens while our parents dined together and then as students in the temple school. She had soon returned home with a rudimentary education considered appropriate for young women who would be required to do no more than run a household for their husbands while I had continued to study and then entered the military school. We had seen less of each other then, meeting only when our families joined for parties or religious observances. My father had begun the negotiations that ended in our betrothal. Such a thing had seemed natural to me until Takhuru began to talk of houses and furniture, of utensils and dowry, and I realized that I would be eating, talking and bedding with this girl for the rest of my life.
I did not think that the reality of a marriage contract had been brought home to her yet in spite of her dreams. She was a spoilt only child, the late product of her parents who had lost a daughter many years ago. She was lovely in a delicate, fragile way and I supposed that I loved her. In any case, the die was cast and we were almost irrevocably tied to one another whether we liked it or not. Takhuru in her innocence liked it. I had liked it too in a purely unreflective way, until now. I found my eyes fixed on the
“Well if you would accept my father’s offer and learn about faience, we could have everything we wanted now,” she objected, not for the first time. I answered her more sharply than I had intended. The argument was not new but the feeling that swept over me was, a depression mingled with anger at her blithe selfishness. My mind flooded suddenly with a vision of the modest hut where the Aswat woman lived, with its clean poverty, of the woman herself, her rough feet and coarsened hands, and I gripped my cup tightly to prevent the anger spilling over.
“I have told you before, Takhuru, that I do not want to become an Overseer of the Faience Factories,” I said. “Nor do I want to follow in my father’s footsteps. I’m a soldier. One day I may be a general, but until then I am happy with my choice and you will just have to learn to accept it without complaint.” The words had an admonitory sting to them which I regretted as I saw her flinch. The affected pout was replaced by a watchfulness. She paled and sat back. Her spine found the wall and she straightened unconsciously, laying her ringed and hennaed hands in her yellow lap and lifting her chin.
“I am not accustomed to poverty, Kamen,” she said evenly. “Forgive me for my thoughtlessness. You know of course that my dowry will be ample enough to provide for everything we might need.” Then she gave an artless and unselfconscious grimace that restored her to young girlhood, and my anger was gone. “I did not mean to sound arrogant,” she went on apologetically. “It’s just that I am afraid of being poor. I have never done without anything I wanted, much less needed.”
“My dear, silly little sister,” I chided. “We will not be poor. Poor is one table, one stool and one tallow lamp. Have I not promised to care for you? Now drink your wine and we will play sennet. You have not asked me how my assignment went.” Obediently her nose disappeared into her cup. She licked her lips and wriggled forward.
“I will be cones. You can be spools,” she ordered. “And I have not asked you about your journey south because I am not interested in anything that takes you away from me.”
I sighed inwardly and we began to play, throwing the sticks with a clatter onto the still-warm roof on which we sat and talking intermittently of nothing in particular while the last of Ra’s light was pulled from the treetops around us and the first stars appeared.
We had known each other for years, first as toddlers reeling about our respective gardens while our parents dined together and then as students in the temple school. She had soon returned home with a rudimentary education considered appropriate for young women who would be required to do no more than run a household for their husbands while I had continued to study and then entered the military school. We had seen less of each other then, meeting only when our families joined for parties or religious observances. My father had begun the negotiations that ended in our betrothal. Such a thing had seemed natural to me until Takhuru began to talk of houses and furniture, of utensils and dowry, and I realized that I would be eating, talking and bedding with this girl for the rest of my life.
I did not think that the reality of a marriage contract had been brought home to her yet in spite of her dreams. She was a spoilt only child, the late product of her parents who had lost a daughter many years ago. She was lovely in a delicate, fragile way and I supposed that I loved her. In any case, the die was cast and we were almost irrevocably tied to one another whether we liked it or not. Takhuru in her innocence liked it. I had liked it too in a purely unreflective way, until now. I found my eyes fixed on the
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