by Brad Geagley
“Yes?” he called into the darkness. “Who’s there?”
No voice answered him, but when he stepped forward again, the faint echoing noise came again to his ears. Suddenly the image of a slashing lioness rose in his mind, and he saw beside it the evanescent figure of Hetephras, blood-spattered and grisly. He broke into a run, heedless of any pots or brooms lurking in the corridor ready to trip him.
Semerket streaked to the door of Hetephras’s house, shaking and breathless. Swiftly he pushed the door open and slid its bolt into place, then waited with his ear pressed to the wood, listening. When Semerket heard no other sound, he forced himself to take deep breaths. Gradually the fear within him subsided.
A small voice spoke to him from the dark. “Do you believe she is really here among us?”
Semerket twisted around, a gasp caught in his throat. Hunro was sitting on the tiles of the front room, a shawl pulled over her shoulders against the chill. She held Sukis in her lap. Companionably, the cat ambled to where Semerket stood, to twine between his legs.
Calming his racing heart, he bent to stroke the cat’s fur, all the while watching Hunro. She seemed small and afraid, not at all her usual bold strumpet. Her face was bare of paint, and her robe was a simple one.
He took a step forward. “I’ve seen how remorse can so eat away at the guilty, they see ghosts and demons everywhere.”
Hunro shivered, holding her head in her hands. She had forgotten to drench herself in sandalwood fragrance, as was her custom, and Semerket was suddenly struck by how infinitely more attractive she was when barren of all emollients and paints and goddess’s garb.
Semerket brought his finger to her face and stroked her cheek. He was surprised to find it wet with tears. “Aren’t you afraid that Hetephras might be waiting here in the dark?” he asked gently.
She ignored his question, but her breathing was ragged. “I came here to tell you that I’m leaving tomorrow. I have my jewels.” She pointed to a small alabaster chest on the tiles. “I’m going across to the eastern city at first light. I wanted to ask if you’d help me find a house there, somewhere where they can’t find me again. They’ll make me come back if they know where I am.”
“Hunro…”
“If you won’t help me, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve no one else to ask.”
The words slipped out before he had even thought about them. “Yes, I’ll help you,” he said.
Hunro looked at him in wonder. “You will? Truly?”
He nodded. Quite simply, she was the only person to whom he felt close. But that was not the main reason. Why shouldn’t one person get what she wanted out of life, he asked himself.
Semerket saw the heat in her eye that kindled when he answered her. She was parting her lips and leaning in so closely that he could feel the warmth of her body. As she tilted her head, their lips met and her breath was flowing into his. He groaned, trying to pull away, but found he could not.
Suddenly he heard the same soft footsteps that had trailed him in the corridor, now stopping outside the door. Snapping his head up sharply, he gazed into the dark. He sensed that Sukis had gone suddenly feral, her back arching and her ears flat against her skull. He put a finger to his lips, warning Hunro to be silent, and he tiptoed to the door, listening. No longer afraid, for the sounds were distinctly human, he pushed it open.
Of course, he should have suspected who it would be. “What are you doing out there, Khepura?” he asked loudly.
The head woman gaped for a moment like a hooked fish. “I heard sounds coming from Hetephras’s house tonight,” she said at last, somewhat defensively. “I had to see for myself if she was here.”
Semerket knew he was supposed to think Khepura had come looking for Hetephras’s ghost. But it was more than likely, given Khepura’s ability to scent out such things, that she knew Hunro was behind the door.
“She isn’t.” Semerket was as unspecific as the head woman, and his black eyes were hidden in the dark.
“I thought I heard more than one voice,” Khepura said innocently. “Are you not alone?” Khepura bent her head to peek past him. Semerket thrust his body between her and the rooms behind. Behind him he heard the soft noises of Hunro retreating into the distant kitchen. Khepura heard the sounds as well.
“I’m not alone,” he said.
“Oh…?”
“The cat is here with me.”
“Oh.”
She flashed him a lewd smile. “Good night, Semerket,” she said, and in those innocuous words she somehow implied that a universe of shamelessness existed behind the door.
Repulsed, he backed away from her, and at that moment Khepura saw the alabaster box that Hunro had brought with her. It sat on the tiles, iridescent in the starlight. There was no doubt she recognized it, and the same knowing smile became wider on her face, as if all her suspicions had been confirmed. Chuckling softly to herself, she turned and retreated down the alleyway. For such a hefty woman she moved with a certain grace, Semerket thought, elephantine though it may have been.
Semerket once more refastened the door and joined Hunro. He noticed that Sukis had relaxed her stance, but nevertheless stood alert and wary.
“She knows you’re here,” he told Hunro.
“What of it? After tomorrow I’ll be free!”
“She saw your box of treasures on the tiles.”
Hunro’s face became momentarily panicky, and she ran to the reception room to gather up the small chest in her arms, cradling it as Naia had cradled her infant. Then her face grew savage. “That hog—I hate her! She’s half the reason I want out of here—always spying on me, telling lies.”
“You have to hide them,” Semerket said. “You can leave them here with me, if you want.”
He saw the involuntary flash of distrust that lit her eyes. She clung to the box even more tightly. “N-no,” she answered. “There’s a place in my house where I keep them, behind a loose brick. Only I know where they are.” Then her voice again took on its customary light-hued purr. She began to speak about the kind of house she wanted for them in Eastern Thebes. “And when you come home, you’ll lie upon our bed and I’ll rub your feet,” she said, “and our neighbors will sensibly hide behind the gate.”
He was astonished. “Hunro,” he began awkwardly, desperation beginning to make his tongue once again unserviceable, “when I said I’d help you, I didn’t mean… what I want to say is… I’m bad luck for any woman—a terrible risk. You’d only end up cursing me.”
Hunro merely smiled confidently and brought the alabaster box under his nose, as if the mere sight of the treasures hidden within it would smother any protests he might have. She lifted its lid and when Semerket saw, speech indeed died in his mouth.
There, in front of him, were the royal jewels he and Qar had sought—the ones Nenry had vainly searched for in the bazaars—rings, loops, bracelets, amulets massed together in the box, a medley of colors that flashed brilliantly even in the dark. From their workmanship alone Semerket would have recognized them as royal jewels. But more than this were the telltale glyphs of inlaid gold and silver and ivory and electrum, each proclaiming them to be the property of pharaohs, queens, and princes from Egypt’s distant past, names as legendary as the gods’ own.
In enthralled wonder he picked up a jeweled heart scarab, holding it high to read its inscription by the feeble starlight. The name of Pharaoh Hatshepsut leapt out at him from the scarab’s golden belly. Hurriedly he picked out other pieces. Cartouches of Thutmose, Amenhoteb, Nefertari flashed at him in rapid succession. But the most damning of all was the name of Queen Twos-re inscribed on a magnificent cuff of gold inset with cabochon rubies, the largest piece Hunro possessed. Semerket had beheld its like once before—the cuff exactly matched the ear loop he and Qar had found beneath the campfire ashes in the Great Place.
“Hunro—!” he gasped.
“I’ll get a good price for them, won’t I, Semerket? They’re good quality, aren’t they?”
“Where did you get these?”
She refused to meet his eyes. “I told you—from the men on the tomb’s work gang, mainly. I make them give me the jewels for… for what I do for them. You’re not going to be jealous, are you? I’ve always been honest with you about it. But after tomorrow, I’ll never—”
“This one—who gave it to you?” He held up Queen Twos-re’s ruby-studded bracelet.
“Paneb.”
“And this?”
“The lapis ring? It was from Aaphat, I think.”
“And this?” he asked, holding up a pectoral of gold and carnelian shaped like the snake goddess Meretseger.
“Sani gave it to me… Semerket, why are you looking at me like that?”
He shook his head, trying to find the words. “Hunro, do you know where these come from?”
“Yes, of course. The men purchase them with their wages. They come from a merchant. Amen-meses, I think his name is.”
“Have you seen this man yourself?” His voice was so sharp that she backed away from him, confused and frightened.
She shook her head.
“Has anyone here in the village seen him—anyone other than Paneb and his men?”
“I don’t know…” Her voice was faint. “Semerket, are you saying that my jewels aren’t worth anything? That I can’t sell them?”
He shook his head sadly. “I’m saying that if you even tried to sell any of them, you’d be arrested. I doubt you’d even go to trial before they’d tie a noose around your neck.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Semerket, I don’t like your jokes.”
“These are royal jewels, Hunro—they came from royal tombs. There is no merchant. Amen-meses was a king, a man who stole the throne of Egypt for himself years ago. The name is probably a code word for where they got the jewels. Maybe they came from his tomb, I don’t know. But they didn’t purchase them from any merchant, that much I know. These jewels are stolen.”
Her mouth opened, but she could only stare at him. Then she seized the jewels and began stuffing them back into the alabaster box.
“I don’t care,” she muttered. “They’re mine now. You’re mistaken.” Her hands shook so that she could barely grasp the jewels in her fingers. The lapis ring went flying across the tiles.
He retrieved it for her, and gently placed it in her palm. Her hand was icy, and she stared off into the dark as if into an abyss.
“Hunro…” he began. “Nothing’s changed. You can still go live in Thebes. Come with me to the vizier tomorrow, and tell him how you obtained the jewels—”
Alarm blazed in her eye. “No.”
“He’ll reward you. You’ll have a pension, a house, whatever you wish. Hunro, listen to me! Once the authorities get involved, it will be over.”
She was shaking her head, shame and desperation in her glance. “Semerket, if I tell the authorities, everyone in Thebes will know how I—” Her feather-light voice broke from stress. He leaned forward to comfort her but she recoiled from him, pressing herself against the wall, clutching the alabaster jewel box. “They’ll know how I got them.”
Semerket suddenly understood the extent of Hunro’s misery. She had been the butt of so many cruel village jokes for so long, she had come to believe them herself. Even her lover Paneb told lewd stories about her. The village men had traded her among themselves, plying her with bits of stolen jewelry. She had behaved like a wanton because she saw it as the only way to leave behind a life she abhorred. Just as Semerket had been condemned as a follower of Set since he was a boy, never permitted to be anything else but what the name implied, so had Hunro been condemned for a role that others had thrust upon her.
“Suppose I do tell the authorities,” she whispered. “What will become of those men who gave me the jewels?”
His sober gaze confirmed what she suspected.
“Semerket, I’ve known these men almost all of my life!”
“I cannot alter their guilt and neither can you,” he said. No matter how gently he might put it, in the end it came down to one thing: “Hunro, if you don’t want to die with them, you must do what I tell you.”
Her lips were trembling. “I can’t… I can’t destroy everyone I’ve ever known.”
“They’ve destroyed themselves.”
She was shaking, and a light sheen of sweat had broken out on her forehead. She abruptly bent and vomited onto the tiles. When she had finished retching, he helped her to the bench. Her breathing came slower, then, and she leaned her head against the brick wall, silent.
“What are you going to do, Hunro? What are you thinking?”
“Thinking?” She rose to her feet then, as if every joint in her body ached, and turned to him wearily. “That I wish I’d never met you.”
SNEFERU WAS SEATED at his potter’s wheel. The light in his work-shop’s doorway darkened and he glanced up to find Semerket and Qar standing there.
“Gentlemen,” he said, his voice uncertain. “What can I do for you so early in the morning?”
“Have you managed to repair Hetephras’s jar as you promised?”
He nodded. “Well, some of it, as well as I could. Some of the pieces were missing. I had to use raw clay to fill the holes. I hope that’s all right.”
“Bring it to me,” Semerket said.
Once again Sneferu’s heart jumped in his chest, both from Semerket’s sober expression and from the unfriendly tone in his voice. He darted a worried look at the pair, then disappeared into the recesses of the workshop.
Semerket and Qar exchanged glances but remained silent. Semerket had gone to the Medjay’s tower at dawn to tell him of all that he had learned in Eastern Thebes, and of the clay pieces he had found in the Great Place so long before, the ones that he had taken to Sneferu to reassemble. Finally, Semerket had described to the Medjay every jewel that Hunro possessed.
“They’re robbing the very tombs they built,” Qar remarked in wonder. “Yet it makes sense it would be the tomb-makers. Who else knows the Great Place so well?”
Qar and Semerket had agreed that they would force Sneferu to divulge the name of the jar’s true owner—who was surely one of the tomb robbers. Later, they would confiscate Hunro’s jewels. It would seem a terrible betrayal to her, of course, but Semerket would ensure she received the credit for exposing the conspiracy. At least it would save her life.
Sneferu reentered the workshop carrying the jar. “I’m surprised you found this jar in Hetephras’s house, Semerket,” the potter remarked timidly.
“Why?”
“It’s not hers.”
Semerket exchanged a quick glance with Qar. “Really? That’s a relief—I’d hate to have Hetephras longing for it in her present mood. Whose is it then?”
Sneferu hesitated, frightened by the way Qar and Semerket were studying him—like owls watching a vole, he thought. He felt a tremor of fear run up and down his spine. “I—I made it for Sani.”
“The goldsmith? Khepura’s husband?”
Sneferu nodded, looking at the pot doubtfully. “Perhaps Khepura loaned it to her before she was—”
They were abruptly interrupted by rising screams at the village gate. One voice rose hysterically above the others.
“It’s Hunro!” Semerket said to Qar.
Qar thrust the jar into Semerket’s hands and left the workshop. He pushed through the teeming crowds to the square with Semerket fast behind him. Hunro was indeed screaming and sobbing. She fell to her knees when she saw Semerket, hammering the ground with her fists.
“They’re gone. All of them gone,” she said. Tears streaked her face and her hair was a wild, haunted thicket. Hunro clung to him, gasping. “The jewels—they’ve been taken, Semerket.”
Semerket went numb. If the jewels were gone, so was the evidence he and Qar had planned to use against the tomb-makers. Only the pitiful, cracked jar in his hands remained—hardly enough to convict anyone. He turned to Qar, who was gazing about the square in anger, as if he could pick the thief from
among the gathering crowd.
The boy Rami emerged from the throng, followed by Hunro’s husband, Neferhotep. When he saw that his mother was at the center of the mêlée, Rami ran to her.
“Mother, come away. People are looking at you. Don’t do this.” He attempted to pull her to her feet, but she was helplessly limp in his grasp, continuing to cry and moan. “Mother, please,” he said again, glancing around at the curious tomb-makers. “You’re embarrassing me.”
Neferhotep slunk through the crowd. “Get up, you whore,” he said to Hunro between clenched teeth. “You’ll not shame our family any further.”
Hunro blinked, startled by his harsh words, but it was at that unfortunate moment that she saw Khepura push her way through the crowd, accompanied by Paneb. The head woman stopped in front of her, smiling with thin contempt. Khepura leaned past Paneb to whisper something into Neferhotep’s ear, and everyone heard her tiny cackle of joy.
Hunro shook herself loose from her son and screamed at the head woman. “Thief! Robber! Give me back my jewels! I know it was you who took them!”
“I didn’t steal your whore’s rubbish!” Khepura protested, eyes wide. “By Amun, I will lay myself in my tomb if I am lying!”
“I know you did!”
The crowd itself broke the stalemate. “Let our good god decide,” they shouted. “Bring out the oracle!”
The tomb-makers erupted in cheers, all but the elders. Neferhotep was speaking in fierce low whispers to Hunro, commanding her to drop her accusations. Rami pleaded with his mother to please, please take back her words. Paneb, too, urged Hunro to calm herself.
“What are they talking about?” Semerket turned to Qar, whispering.
“They’re speaking of the statue of Amenhoteb—the pharaoh who founded this village over three hundred years ago. He is the judge they use for such disputes.”
“A statue?”
Qar only nodded, eyes fixed on the villagers. They shouted that Qar must choose the god’s bearers, according to their ancient custom. The Medjay quickly pointed to various men in the crowd, six in total. Rami stood apart, trembling and red-faced.