The Forest of Myrrh (Imhotep Book 3)

by Jerry Dubs

  He nodded. “Yes. You seemed to be enjoying a joke, but it was one I didn’t understand. Then later, well, later for me, earlier for you, I said the same thing to you. Yes, I remember, Akila.”

  He stepped closer and took her hands.

  “We have to talk about this, Akila. I know it is awkward but we can’t ignore it.

  “I think you are beautiful and intelligent and I love your spirit. I did fall in love with you. And I love you still.”

  She looked into his eyes, comforted to see not just the confidence of Imhotep, but the vulnerability of Tim Hope as well.

  “I love you, too, Tim,” she said. “But I could never hurt Meryt.”

  To her surprise he laughed, a soft, rueful laugh.

  “I know, Akila. I feel the same way. But what is crazy is that Meryt is the only one of us who wouldn’t feel that way. Here, in this time and place, having multiple wives is expected of someone in my position. Meryt is a little embarrassed that I don’t have more.”

  He held up a hand, “No, I’m not suggesting it. I wouldn’t feel right about it. It would seem, I don’t know, demeaning to you. I never wanted a second wife and if I hadn’t believed that Meryt was lost to me forever, I could never have opened my heart to you.”

  He brought his hand to his face and wiped away tears. The heel of his hand was black. “Damn kohl,” he said with a half-hearted laugh. Then he looked back to Akila.

  “I do love you, Akila. I can’t help it and I don’t want to stop. But you’re right, I don’t know what to do about it.”

  - 0 -

  They ate with Nimaasted and then he took them on a slow tour of the temple grounds, pointing out the changes he planned to make. When they passed a small room in the inner grounds, he paused and looked at Imhotep.

  “Do you remember this room?” he asked.

  Imhotep shook his head.

  “It is where Djefi killed Waja-Hur.”

  They stood quietly and then Nimaasted said, “I was so much younger then. And foolish.”

  “We all were,” Imhotep said.

  “No, that isn’t true, Imhotep,” Nimaasted said. “You were younger, but you were never foolish.”

  He leaned around Imhotep and said to Akila, “He never was. You see, Imhotep discovered that Djefi had killed Waja-Hur. And I think he discovered more.”

  He turned to Imhotep now. Where Nimaasted had once been an imposing man, erect with confidence and ambition, now he was smaller, yet grander. His shoulders had narrowed and his neck had shortened so that he seemed, like Thoth, to have the folded neck of an ibis.

  He peered up at Imhotep. “You knew I plotted with Kanahkt, didn’t you?”

  Imhotep smiled. “I know that you saved me when Merneith ordered me buried alive. I know that you kept faith with me, Nimaasted. I know that you are a good man.”

  “I hope that Ma’at feels the same way,” Nimaasted said, setting his shoulders and extending an arm to lead them away from the small, empty room.

  - 0 -

  “He believes he is dying,” Akila said as she and Imhotep sat in a small boat on its way across to the west bank of the river.

  Imhotep nodded in response.

  “It is a major preoccupation here,” he said. “They know they are going to die. They don’t pretend otherwise. I mean, there aren’t any intensive care units, no organ transplants, no penicillin, not even an aspirin. So they don’t fight death, instead they prepare for it.

  “When I was back in our time, I looked up the life expectancy for ancient Egypt. It is only twenty-five years, Akila. Twenty five! Of course that’s because so many infants and children die. If you managed to reach puberty, you have a good chance to see forty. Unless you’re a woman, then you’ve got the challenge of childbirth to survive.

  “So, it’s only natural that they are more comfortable with death. It comes so early.

  “And they truly believe in a wonderful afterlife in the Field of Reeds. But they need Ma’at to admit them, to acknowledge that they lived a good life. So Nimaasted is making an offering to the gods with the temple renovations. He knows that he has a heavy heart and he hopes to balance the scales.”

  “And you, mighty Imhotep, is your heart light?” she asked.

  “I remember a lecture on Existentialism when I was in college,” he said, answering her question seriously. “I can’t remember the term the professor used, but there is a philosophical thought experiment where you consider whether you would be willing to relive your life exactly as you have lived it.”

  He looked across the river toward the western desert. A fringe of palms lined the river and beyond it stood the desert stretching away to the horizon, an endless, empty canvas.

  “Things have happened to me. But the actions I’ve taken, the things I’ve done or tried to do, my intentions ... yes, I think I would make those same decisions again.” He looked at Akila. “There are some things I would change, but they are things that are beyond my reach.”

  - 0 -

  The mortuary temple was lit with lamps, torches, and burning bowls of incense, and still the odor of offal filled the dark hallways and dim chambers.

  “I used to use Vicks,” Akila said, holding a hand over her nose as they followed an attendant to the natron baths where Hetephernebti’s body was dehydrating.

  “Vicks?” Imhotep said.

  “The gel, you know. I would put a dab under my nose to mask the odor of death.”

  “Oh, yeah, I know what you mean,” he said.

  The attendant ducked through a low passageway. Imhotep and Akila followed and paused inside the doorway as the attendant lit torches angled into the walls. There were narrow, horizontal windows along the top of the wall, but the room remained shrouded in darkness.

  Akila stepped toward the stone basin that was filled with salt crystals.

  “How long will she be here?” she asked Imhotep.

  When he didn’t answer, she turned toward the doorway. He was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed.

  She rushed to him. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head.

  “I thought I could do this, but I can’t, Akila.”

  “OK,” she said, unsure what was happening.

  “I was kept here for forty days while Teti was being prepared for burial. See those tables over there?” he tilted his head to the side of the room toward a pair of worn, wooden tables. The wall beside them was lined with short jars, each of them capped with a lid decorated with a small statue of a god.

  “That’s where they laid me to wrap me before they put me in the tomb.” He turned and hurried away from the chamber. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “I can’t stay here.”

  She stood alone looking at the empty doorway where shadows seemed to swallow the light.

  - 0 -

  “More light,” Akila told the attendant as she turned back to the stone tub.

  He hesitated for a moment. Nimaasted had instructed him to show Hetephernebti’s body to Imhotep. This strange woman, her body covered and her hair tied behind her head, had been with Imhotep but now Imhotep had gone without commanding him to show the body to this woman.

  Akila closed her eyes for a moment. Why should it be any different here, she asked herself. She was a woman, not a man. Men were to be obeyed, women were meant to obey. But she had lived in a modern world, true, in a country where women were still oppressed – and where were they not? – but she had been a professional who commanded respect.

  She cocked her head slightly and looked at the attendant. She could invoke Imhotep’s name and power, or she could assert her own.

  “I need to examine the body of Hetephernebti. I need light to do it. Now light the other torches,” she said calmly.

  The attendant’s eyes darted from her face to the crystal salts covering Hetephernebti and then back to Akila’s impassive, expectant face.

  He nodded and then hurried to touch the other torches with his flame.

 
; Akila stepped to the shallow stone basin. White crystals filled the enclosure to within a finger’s width of the top. They had been raked smooth across the top. She looked about and saw a rack of instruments along the wall beyond the mummification bath.

  She walked over to the wall and examined the instruments, her mind reeling at the idea that she was in the distant past standing in this mortuary temple. There were wooden rakes and shovels, their edges worn smooth from use, their handles, blades and tines painted with hieroglyphs. There were smaller iron tools and, behind them all, a wall painted with the stages of mummification, all overseen by a jackal-headed god.

  The attendant was standing by the last wall torch he had lit. She looked at him, thought she saw his hands trembling and wondered if she had frightened him. She gave him a smile and then selected a small hand rake and a brush from the rack of tools.

  Standing by the natron bath she closed her eyes to collect her thoughts. Although she had witnessed autopsies, she had never performed one. It struck her that she couldn’t perform a thorough autopsy, Hetephernebti’s organs would have been removed.

  She opened her eyes and began gently raking the natron away from Hetephernebti’s body. When the rake bumped into something, Akila switched to the brush and carefully swept the natron away to reveal Hetephernebti’s face.

  Like most Egyptians, Akila had seen mummies in museums. But these had been small, desiccated, wrinkled old men whose bodies had lain in tombs for thousands of years. What she uncovered now was an elderly woman, her skin not yet weathered by time or the alkaline ash.

  Her eyes were closed and small rags were stuffed into the openings of her nose, yet she looked composed, Akila thought, even regal.

  She must have been an imposing presence.

  Akila brushed a white flake from Hetephernebti’s cheek and murmured, Hello, sister. I am sorry to disturb you.

  She balanced the brush on the wide stone lip of the bath and studied Hetephernebti’s face. She immediately saw three gashes on her right cheek. They were dried, puckered valleys now, but Akila could easily visualize what they had once looked like.

  She frowned and placed her fingertip on the dried wounds. Then she motioned to the attendant to come to her. When he reached her, she positioned him beside the stone bath and then looking at Hetephernebti, she raised her left hand and placed it on the boy’s face. She felt him tense, but ignored it as she concentrated on Hetephernebti’s wounds.

  She looked at the boy’s face and then separated her fingertips so they were the same distance apart at the injuries. She shook her head. If the injuries had been caused this way, the wounds would be wide and shallow, the skin scraped away by the attacker’s fingernails.

  She leaned over the bath and looked at Hetephernebti’s face. It was hard to tell, but there didn’t seem to be any skin pulled from the wounds.

  Straightening she looked at the boy and then raised her right hand. She laid the back of it against his cheek and then pulled her hand back and studied it.

  “It could have been the claws of Wepwaret,” the boy suggested, understanding what Akila was trying to figure out. “They are sharp and as hard as stones,” he said.

  Stones, Akila thought. Gemstones set in rings.

  Lessons

  King Huni never slept in a tent.

  His father, Sekhmire, had been commander of the house guard for King Djoser and he had taught little Siptah to always be aware of his surroundings. While a desert lion might give warning as it roared while attacking, a diving hawk would strike silently from above.

  When he was away from the palace, he never slept alone.

  Five childhood friends formed his personal guard. They were sons of men his father had counted as friends, they were from the land east of the island of Abu where King Huni’s grandfather had been priest of Khnum. They constantly surrounded him.

  At night they took turns guarding the king and each other. King Huni himself took a watch, binding himself to his guards by interrupting his own sleep to give them rest. With one of them awake throughout the night, morning brought no surprises.

  And so now, three days journey into the wadi that led to the Great Green, King Huni was not surprised when General Wetka knelt before him at dawn and said, “King Huni, long life.” Head bowed, the general waited for permission to speak.

  King Huni had already eaten some bread. He had already walked beyond the perimeter of the camp and relieved himself. He had already calculated how many dead campfires had fewer slumbering bodies around them than the night before. He knew what his general was here to report.

  “How many have deserted?” he asked.

  Wetka raised his head in surprise. He had served under General Khaba, who had been aloof and distant. He had known of Commander Siptah then, before he had become King Huni, but he had never served with him. Yes, he had heard that King Huni was attentive to even the smallest of details, how much water was carried on marches, how many loaves of bread, how many hours of training, how frequently the spears were sharpened, but he had never heard that the king was able to read one’s thoughts.

  “Thirty,” Wetka said.

  “And the night before?”

  “I don’t know, King Huni,” Wetka said.

  “Gather each company and take a count. If any of the captains of deserters remain, bring them to me.”

  “Yes, King Huni,” Wetka said.

  “You may go,” King Huni said, already turning to talk with Bek, the captain of his five guards.

  “It is a small number,” Bek said softly after Wetka had gone.

  “Yes,” King Huni said with a grim smile. “We could still reach the trade routes with enough men to punish the sand dwellers, but I think we will turn back.”

  Bek put a hand on the king’s arm. In the days of King Khaba such an action would have led to the loss of the hand, but King Huni surrounded himself with men he trusted to speak honestly and openly. It was another lesson he had learned from his father, who had cautioned him that a king can never have enough ears or eyes.

  “Siptah,” Bek said using the king’s personal name, “are you certain? If we abandon the trade routes the Two Lands will begin to return to the isolation we had under Khaba. The sand dwellers will become braver and more daring.”

  “Bek,” King Huni said, putting an arm around his guard’s shoulders and drawing him closer, “do you remember Serka?”

  Bek shook his head. He thought for a moment, then smiling, he said, “Old Serka? The reed gatherer?”

  “Yes, old Serka, the reed gatherer. Remember how, when we still had our sidelocks we would tease him, but we were always careful to stay out of his reach?”

  “He was strong. His grasp was like a crocodile’s jaw,” Bek said. “He did catch Mehi once, remember?”

  King Huni nodded, a smile opening on his face.

  “What a beating he got,” Bek said.

  “My father was friends with Serka,” King Huni said.

  “Mine, too,” Bek said with a shrug. They had come from the same small village and everyone knew each other.

  “Father and Serka competed one night to see who could break the most reeds.”

  “Reeds?” Bek said. “A child can break a reed.”

  King Huni nodded. “The contest was over how large a bundle of reeds each could break.”

  Bek shrugged again. Everyone knew that a single reed was easily broken, but that a bundle was impossible to break, even with Serka’s strength.

  “The sand dwellers spoke our language,” King Huni said now. Bek waited silently. “I think that someone used them to draw us into the desert where, away from the barracks, men could melt away into the night. Our army is a bundle of reeds that is growing smaller.”

  - 0 -

  Threshen stood naked in his bedchamber holding a stone that had been sharpened to a point. Holding out the hand that held the stone, he leaned his weight against the wall and then, closing his eyes, he waited.

  Standing before him a young gir
l poured oil from an alabaster jar onto her hand and then began to rub it onto Threshen’s chest. Gently moving her hand across Threshen’s skin, she leaned forward and raised her head to kiss the governor’s mouth.

  Startled by her impudence, Threshen backhanded her with his empty hand, the rings on his fingers cutting into her tender cheek.

  The girl gasped and then, biting her lower lip, stifled the cry that she knew would bring more blows.

  “Remember your place, Djefatsen,” Threshen said, angry that his mood had been interrupted.

  “I’m Djefatnebti, not Djefatsen,” the girl said and then, wincing as Threshen slapped the side of her head, she bit back more tears.

  “I don’t care what your name is, stupid girl.” He nodded at her hands, glistening with oil and splattered with fresh tears. “Continue!”

  The girl’s hands returned to his skin, massaging the oil onto his chest and then, following the pattern of previous encounters, she began to slide her hands down his stomach.

  Threshen smiled at her touch and at the small thrill he had felt when he hit her. Hitting someone always felt good.

  He glanced at the wall to distract himself and prolong the pleasure. The wall was lined with grooves marking each time a girl pleased him. When his father, Kawab, had been governor Threshen had kept a different record, marking each time he had been lashed.

  In those years it seemed to Threshen that he had scratched a line on the wall of his bedchamber every night. Sometimes, if the beating had been extra violent, if his father had been drinking or if he had suffered another humiliation, real or imagined, at the hand of the king, Threshen had been carried to the chamber unconscious.

  On those nights Sabni, his older brother, would tend to his wounds and later, as Threshen slept, Sabni would scratch another line into the wall.

  It had been Sabni who freed them. Deformed by the gods and ignored by his father, Sabni had discovered a secret.