“You never cease reminding me.” I have only told her three times, but I held my tongue now and she said, dismissing the slave with a nod, “Dry me.”

I threw aside her pink towel.

“Madam, while drying you I might touch you with part of the towel which had previously just touched my hand. I dare not.” I ran out at once after the slave who was carrying the tub and said, “I’ll take that.”

“I was going to use it,” she said. “My skin is so dry—”

“You can have it after me,” I said, looking as commanding and aristocratic as I could, and the woman handed the heavy thing over with a look of reluctant fright.

I dragged the tub to a tiny space to which the backs of the tents round it were turned. I set it down carefully, undressed quickly and furtively as possible, and stepped into the lukewrm scented only-once-used water. The touch of water on my parched travel-dusty body was ecstasy.

I had meant to step in and out immediately, risking no discovery but it was impossible. I twisted in the tub, made the water lilt over my aching back, dipped my face in it, lifted it in

my cupped hands and trickled it over my head and felt it wet the greasy strands of my hair and finally reach between them to my scalp, which seemed to have been burning these days.

I even reached the ticklish parts I leave till last, the navel and between the toes and the soles of the feet I have to go careful with.

I knew that several people had come into the little space. The sound of splashing, I realized, had been bound to arouse attention. I paused, and looked up.

There were several troopers, staring in dangerous susprise, as much at me as at the water. A few of them I recognized vaguely by sight; the only person there I knew was Smahil.

“Smahil, send these men away,” I said nervously.

“Having a happy lickle barf, miss?” one of them asked politely.

I looked a frantic order at Smahil, who looked expressionless but casual, just as anyone would who hardly recognized me.

The biggest man wandered over to me. The others followed him.

“Now, miss,” he said. “Jump out. We won’t harm you if you get out, if we have to make you we might get rough, not on purpose of course.”

“But I’m naked,” I explained.

Several of them laughed, one spat, but the big man said, “Yes, we knew that already, miss. Come on, out with you.”

I hesitated and one of his immense hands clamped round my upper arm, not brutally but like a vice even though I was slippery.

Smahil, who had been lounging watching, now said, “All right, fellows. That’s enough.”

They turned their belligerent eyes on him. I was already terrified.

“She’s one of the General’s fancy ladies,” he said.