The Crocodile Makes No Sound

by N. L. Holmes

  The sculptor smiled a little shyly. “He does. Before I say anything, let me show you his work. I think that will tell you more about him than I can, not being a man of much eloquence.”

  He led them into the back of the workshop, which was lit by a row of large clerestories along one side. Behind, through a door hung with a curtain of wooden beads, stretched another sun-washed court. Djehuty-mes approached one of the shelves and pulled out from it a half head in plaster—essentially just the face and throat, unfinished on the back—of a girl with a long slender neck and a heart-shaped face. Her full lower lip and thinner upper one looked as soft as real flesh, and even with no color, the large, heavy-lidded eyes seemed vulnerable and full of longing.

  Hani’s breath caught in his throat. Flustered by the uncanny likeness, he cried, “It’s Kiya!” It was as if the artisan had captured her very soul.

  The sculptor smiled. “You’ve seen her? It’s Lady Kiya to the life, isn’t it?”

  He laid it back on the shelf and pulled out another, while Hani thought, I’ll bet that’s the very mask that got our girl into such trouble.

  “Can you recognize this one? Maybe you don’t know him.”

  “By all the gods! It’s Ptah-mes!” Hani stared at the sculptor, awed, then back down at the fine, aristocratic features of his superior and friend. The heaviness of the flesh above the eyelid that created a dark shadow. The bony ridge of the nose. The thin, cynical lines around the mouth and at the corners of the nostrils. The man was all there. Hani expected the lips to part in speech. “These are more lifelike than anything I’ve ever seen, even without being painted. They’re... they’re unearthly.”

  “That’s the new style we’re working on, under the king’s guidance. It’s something, isn’t it?”

  “And Kha-em-sekhem made these?”

  The sculptor cupped his hand at his ear, and Hani repeated the question.

  “He carves stone, too, but he has such a gift for working in plaster that I just keep him on that.”

  Hani, drawing closer, said in a lower voice, “You just said that seeing these would tell us something about him, Master Djehuty-mes. What did you mean? I see that he’s a very talented man, but do you want to say that makes him a good man? A sensitive one, perhaps?”

  The sculptor looked ill at ease and made a helpless noise. “I just mean, whatever else is true about him, he has something in here.” He struck himself gently on the chest with a meaty fist.

  “And what else is true about him?”

  Djehuty-mes made the noise again and said apologetically, “He’s a good-looking young fellow. We can’t hold it against him.”

  “What?” Hani asked.

  “Eh?”

  “What can’t we hold against him?”

  “He’s fond of the ladies, you could say.” Djehuty-mes looked pleading.

  Hani stood, digesting this. It was what he had suspected.

  A curl of repressed disgust upon his lips, Maya said, “Do you mean he treats them dishonorably?”

  Djehuty-mes squirmed. “I don’t know much about his private life, and I don’t want to. I just know he always seems to have a girl trailing him. Even when he was married.” He glanced at Hani as if reluctant to displease, a childlike sweetness in his broad face. Clearly, he intended no judgment on his employee.

  Hani took him by the massive upper arm and asked earnestly, “If my niece were your daughter, would you want her to marry this man?”

  But the sculptor held up a hand in refusal. “I can’t interfere in his life, my lord. He’s a good boy under it all. Maybe somebody who really loves him could find that good.”

  Hani exchanged a glance with Maya, accompanied by raised eyebrows, sending the message, This doesn’t look promising. To Djehuty-mes, he said, “Could we speak to Kha-em-sekhem, do you think? I won’t keep him long. I’d just like to get a sense of the man.”

  The master of the workshop nodded agreeably and led them back out into the resounding courtyard. In a corner shaded by the outer wall, a long table was set up with water jars and a basin full of some sloppy white substance that was evidently plaster. A man in a scarf, his slim, muscular back to them, beaded with sweat, was tapping with a padded hammer on a wooden frame that molded a block of plaster. They watched silently as Kha-em-sekhem shook and rapped the mold until, little by little, the plaster block slid out.

  “Yah, my friend. Do you have a moment?” Djehuty-mes called in a hesitant voice.

  The man turned around, his features still so tensely concentrated on his work that he seemed fierce, but instantly, they loosened up, and he grinned. “Master. Gentlemen. How can I serve you?” Congealed droplets of white bedaubed his face and chest, and his sinewy arms were whitened with plaster up to the elbows.

  “My name is Hani son of Mery-ra. I’m the uncle of Mut-nodjmet,” Hani said without further exchange of courtesies. He wanted to see the man’s unguarded first reaction to her name.

  Panic flashed across Kha-em-sekhem’s face, but then his smile returned, bigger than ever. “Hello. She’s spoken of you.”

  “I’ll leave you to your interview.” Djehuty-mes seemed eager to escape. He disappeared into the crowd of artisans.

  Hani’s expression was pleasant, but he minced no words. “Why are you interested in my niece, Kha-em-sekhem?”

  The sculptor looked flustered, perhaps offended. He said with a splutter, “Why not? She’s a nice girl in a world where there aren’t too many of those.”

  “So nice that you offer her father a bride price? That’s unusual, to say the least.”

  “Well, he seemed reluctant. I thought that might sweeten him up.” Kha-em-sekhem smiled, but his eyes were not happy. They darted around the courtyard, squinting into the glare.

  Hani found the man good-looking in a rough way that women often seemed to like, with a longish face, strong nose, and high cheekbones. His mouth was long and full and mobile in the extreme. He appeared older than his thirty years—though he might have lied to Pipi about his age. And he seemed to have run through far too many expressions in a short space of time, as if they were masks he put on and took off at will. There’s a fire burning inside him, Hani thought. An intensity. Almost a desperation. Does that “good” Djehuty-mes insisted on also exist within?

  “Tell me about yourself, Kha-em-sekhem. Where are you from? Who is your family? Why does such a plain girl attract you—you who must be a connoisseur of faces?” Hani crossed his arms and leaned against the worktable as if he were prepared to stand there for a while.

  Kha-em-sekhem compressed his lips, radiating annoyance. He grabbed a towel from his table and wiped his hands. “I’m from Men-nefer. I was visiting my parents when I met your niece. They’re sculptors, too, but they make shabtis for people’s burials. Simple stuff. I apprenticed with my father but pretty quickly got bored. I left against his will—I know, I’m a bad son—and went to Waset, where there were more options. Eventually, I found my way to Djehuty-mes’s workshop, and here I still am. When he moved to the new capital, so did I.” He shot Hani a challenging stare. “Why your niece, you ask? She looks like a good fertile little mother in the making. Why does any man marry a woman? To have children by her.”

  He sounds defensive, Hani thought. “So much so you were willing to pay for her. I see.” He smiled amiably. “Do you have children by your wife?”

  Dusty though the sculptor’s cheeks were, the red creeping up them was visible. “By all the demons of the Duat! What is this? Why don’t you torture me to get the answers? Yes, I do have children. Two small sons. They went with my wife when we divorced.” Kha-em-sekhem’s dark eyes snapped with anger.

  But Hani saw in him not so much an affronted man as someone who was reduced to helpless vehemence by the loss of his children. This is the most honest response I’ve gotten out of him yet. “Sorry to be so personal, my friend. But you can understand why our family is a little concerned—a man Mut-nodjmet hardly knows, much older than she, divorced, curiously urgent
to have her. Why were you divorced, if I may ask?”

  Kha-em-sekhem threw his towel down and stood, unhappy, his chest heaving, as if he were arguing with himself. Then he managed a thin, bitter smile. “You’d better ask my former wife. She initiated the divorce. She left me.”

  “Infidelity, perhaps?”

  The sculptor seemed torn between refusing to answer Hani’s questions and losing the girl upon whom he had mysteriously set his heart. He smiled in front of his clenched teeth. Finally, he said, “I have work to do. If you’ll excuse me...”

  “Are you also looking to have children by the King’s Beloved Wife?”

  Kha-em-sekhem didn’t even manage a semblance of outrage. He stared at Hani, frozen in round-eyed fear.

  Hani tipped his head in a genial gesture of goodbye, and with a lighthearted, “Thank you for your time, my friend,” he herded Maya toward the gate.

  En route, he found Djehuty-mes. While Maya waited by the gate, Hani drew the man aside. “Thank you for your help. I have one last question.”

  The sculptor stood with his head amiably cocked and his big eyes attentive.

  “Do you know the name of Kha-em-sekhem’s former wife? Is she in Akhet-aten or Waset?”

  “She’s here, my lord. Her name is Rekhet-ra. She’s my daughter.”

  Hani gaped at the man, surprise pinning him to the spot. How can he be so forgiving toward a fellow whom his daughter has fled? “Would you object if I come ask her some questions one of these days?”

  “Not at all. But don’t believe everything she says. The divorce was bitter.” Djehuty-mes’s dust-whitened face creased in his beatific smile. Hani thanked him again and rejoined Maya.

  “That Kha-em-sekhem’s a slippery bastard,” Maya growled under his breath as they passed out into the street once more. “What do you think of him, Lord Hani?”

  “I’m not sure. We did get up his nose pretty strongly, so the anger wasn’t altogether displaced—”

  “Yes, but he has to know the relatives of Mut-nodjmet have the right to some answers. He might have lost her by showing his temper like that.”

  “He seems desperate somehow—fearful and defensive. Is that an admission of guilt? He’s probably a rake, but he loves his children. Not an altogether bad man, probably. Still, I don’t think I’d want our Mut-nodjmet married to him.” He pondered the confusing fact of Djehuty-mes’s continued friendship with the man who had seemingly been unfaithful to his daughter.

  Maya’s voice dropped, and he said with juicy delectation, “His eyes nearly popped out when you mentioned the King’s Beloved Wife!”

  “Hmm.” Hani smiled noncommittally. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Now he’s on his guard.”

  “But we can be sure he was the one. We didn’t know that before.”

  Hani realized he’d been striding up the processional road as if he had a destination. “Let’s head for the River. We barely have time to get home to Waset and bring Neferet back.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Having made it back from the capital in five days’ time, Hani’s intention was to leave Waset again as soon as possible and head for Akhet-aten with Neferet in tow, but the will of the king intervened. The morning after he arrived, there arose a clatter of wheels and the commotion of raised voices at his gate. Hani went outside in case A’a, the porter, needed reinforcement, only to find a secretary of Lord Ptah-mes and a group of retainers edging a cart full of baggage into the garden. To one side stood Aziru, flanked by a pair of Amurrites.

  Dear gods, they’re here. Before anyone could spot him, Hani dodged back into the house, slipped the new stele from his clothes press in the bedroom, and set it hastily in the shrine in front of the statue of Amen-Ra. Forgive me, my great lord. He sighed. Such are the times we live in.

  He called out to Nub-nefer, “My dear, the guests have arrived,” and brushing down his kilt, he scuttled back out into the garden and faced the men, who were now gathered in the gate. “Welcome, my friends.”

  “Should I take this cart to the barn, my lord?” A’a asked under his breath, and Hani nodded.

  The secretary, a pompous little man whom Hani recognized from the Hall of Correspondence, said in the orotund voice of a herald, “Lord Hani, I bring you the king of A’amu and his party.”

  “Come in, come in.” Hani gestured the men before him into the salon, where he knew the secretary would catch a glimpse of the shrine. He turned to Aziru and folded in a low bow. “My lord Aziru. It’s good to see you again. I welcome you to my house. Please consider the servants to be your own; if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Nub-nefer appeared at Hani’s side, beautiful in a long formal wig and beaded weshket collar, as if she hadn’t only heard of the arrival moments before. Her arms were full of long-stemmed water lilies, which she handed to each man in turn as she said graciously, “My lords, we are honored by your presence. Our home is yours.” Behind her stood two of the prettier servant girls with basins and towels, ready to wash the travelers’ feet.

  “I’ll be off, Hani,” said the secretary. “Lord Ptah-mes said to see him next time you’re in the capital.” He turned and disappeared into the darkness of the vestibule, sniffing his flower.

  Aziru accepted the water lily with all the polite forms one could wish. He clearly knew Egyptian etiquette and spoke the language with the barest of accents. At Nub-nefer’s urging, he and his two men took a seat in the finest chairs, and the servants began to remove their shoes and wash their feet.

  The new king of A’amu was a handsome fellow, slim and not very tall but well built—perhaps five years younger than Hani. His dark hair was clubbed up under a gold-embroidered headband, and a neat pointed beard framed his mouth. He looked around him with black eyes that were both warm and cynical.

  “My father remembered your hospitality to his dying day, Hani,” he said with a dry smile. “I thank you for your welcome... although I hope the sojourn will be brief.”

  Aziru shot Hani a glance that evoked the long, sometimes painful history between the two men. He might have become a vassal, but he was no man’s creature. Aziru—and his father, Abdi-ashirta, before him—had ruled their pack of outcasts and desperadoes with such success that the King of the Two Lands had ultimately had to recognize him as a king.

  “Royalty sits well upon you, my lord,” said Hani with a grin.

  “I don’t suppose you could tell me why your king—pardon me, our king—summoned me so urgently only to leave me cooling my heels for three months?”

  “I could not. Except to say that the divine Nefer-khepru-ra has many exigencies demanding his attention.”

  Aziru considered this as the servant girl dried his feet and slipped his embroidered leather shoes back on them. “Of which I’m an unimportant part, evidently,” he said acidly. He sniffed his water lily. “My lady, I thank you for your gracious welcome. My father was loud in his praises of you and your children, whom he found to be charming and original.”

  “My lord is free to join us in our familial schedule or not, as he chooses,” she assured him. “If you prefer to eat in your quarters, that’s easily arranged. The upper floor is yours, and the entire property is totally at your disposal.”

  “Needless to say,” Hani added, “you’re free to come and go as you wish.”

  “So not under house arrest, at least. Good.” Aziru stood up, kingly in a richly colored tunic woven in bands of pattern. “With your permission, we’ll withdraw to get our things unpacked.”

  “I hope you’ll forgive my absence for a few days, Lord Aziru,” Hani said, rising as well. “My presence is required in Akhet-aten.”

  “You have better luck than I, then.” Aziru nodded courteously to his host, and Nub-nefer led the men to the stairwell.

  ⸎

  Exactly ten days later, as promised, Hani was back in the capital with his daughter.

  Their first stop was Aha’s house. Aha had constructed himself a nice villa that would m
ake any young scribe envious. The lad had been briefly under the lucrative patronage of Lord Yapakh-addi, a Fan-Bearer at the King’s Right Hand—much to the horror of his parents. But when Yapakh-addi’s shady past and even more doubtful present came to light, the king had cut him off and stripped him of his honors and his property.

  Aha had come to realize how close to moral ruin his eagerness to advance himself had taken him, and he’d effected a reconciliation with his family. Perhaps he’d found a new patron, or perhaps his friendship with the king’s intimates had drawn him into the golden circle of enrichment. Hani thought he probably didn’t want to know. Aha had two small children and a third on the way. As his father, Hani couldn’t begrudge him a certain amount of ambition.

  “So, can I come home on weekends, Papa?” Neferet asked as they stood at her eldest brother’s freshly painted red door, a pile of baggage stacked behind them on the porch.

  “No, my love. There isn’t time to go back and forth. Whenever Pa-kiki comes home, you can come home too.”

  The doorkeeper returned with Aha at his heels. “Father. Neferet.”

  Neferet threw her arms around Aha’s expansive middle and cried, “I’m going to live with you while I study medicine with Lady Djefat-nebty!”

  Aha stared quizzically at his father over Neferet’s head as if asking what was going on. They moved inside as a block while the doorkeeper began dragging in the girl’s effects.

  Hani said, “You didn’t get my message?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know you meant to start so soon. Neferet, follow Sa-pa-ir, and put your things up,” Aha said. When his sister was out of earshot, he turned back to his father, exasperation plain upon his face. “You didn’t give me time to send a reply. This is starting to work a hardship on us, Father. Khentet-ka is having some problems with this pregnancy, and she has two other children to take care of. Then you and the dwarf stay with us every few weeks—”