The Forest of Myrrh (Imhotep Book 3)

by Jerry Dubs

  Kawab’s great-grandfather had been Hemon the Dwarf, governor and confidant to King Djoser. And yet, despite his closeness to the king, he had never been elevated to a higher position or gained more lands.

  Son of a minor official, Hemon the Dwarf had been content to have become governor. His ambition took him no further.

  His son-in-law, Khnunhotep, a handsome soldier with no interest aside from drinking and women, had never thought beyond the white walls of the city.

  But his son, Kawab, was ambitious. He had seen that contentment had gained Hemon the Dwarf nothing. He had seen that year by year the king’s claim on the men and barley and wheat of the nome had increased. Perhaps Khnunhotep had been satisfied to sit within the city walls and marvel at his good fortune in not having to labor or fight in the king’s army, but Kawab wanted to sail the river on the king’s boat. He wanted to lead an army, not a militia, and he wanted to levy taxes, not pay them.

  Sabni, invisible to his father and relegated to living in the shadows of the palace, had learned that Kawab planned to poison King Khaba and his consort Merneith.

  When Sabni had told Threshen about their father’s plan, Threshen had shaken with fear. He knew that his father, given to fits of anger and screaming, would never be able to subtly kill the king. Even if his father had not been heavy-handed, the plan would never have worked, for Merneith was too cautious.

  No, Threshen had thought, Kawab will fail and in revenge Merneith would kill Sabni and me in the slowest and most painful way.

  Night after night Threshen worried about his father’s planned treachery. He was sure that there was a lever there that he could use to free himself, but he didn’t know what it was. Should he reveal the plot to King Khaba and hope that he and Merneith would show mercy? No, that seemed unlikely. Should he confront his father and try to reason with him? No, he would have better luck reasoning with a hungry hyena.

  “Stibium,” Sabni had said one night, his voice filled with excitement.

  It was a rare night when Threshen had not been beaten. Sabni had slid quietly off in the shadows while Threshen took out his anger on a young serving girl. Threshen had taken the girl twice and was angry that his energy was flagging when Sabni returned.

  Hearing the excitement in Sabni’s voice, Threshen had sent the girl away and wiping blood from his hands and penis, he waited for Sabni to explain what he meant.

  “It is a cosmetic,” Sabni said, sidling into the room, always conscious of his hunchback.

  “Yes?” Threshen said.

  “One of mother’s servants used it for her lips. Usually they use it here,” Sabni said, drawing a finger over his eyebrows.

  “Yes?” Threshen said again. He loved his brother, he was his only friend, yet he had no patience for all the details Sabni seemed to enjoy.

  “The servant became ill and died. When father heard he took another of mother’s servants and made her eat some of the makeup. She vomited and then she fell over. And then,” his voice grew quieter, “she shit everywhere. It just ran from her.”

  “Did she die, Sabni?” Threshen interrupted.

  His brother nodded. “It took a few minutes, and she cried and held her belly, but then she did. She did die, Threshen.”

  The problem Threshen realized immediately was how to get his father to ingest the poison. His first thought was to somehow overpower him and force him to eat it. But he didn’t see how that would ever happen. He thought of adding it to a meal, but his mother often ate with him and Sabni argued against killing her, too.

  “I know,” Sabni said a few nights later.

  Threshen was curled on his bed in pain, his back burning and bleeding.

  “He drinks heavily while he whips you,” Sabni said. “He makes me bring him his beer so that I am there to watch. I could prepare a pot of beer and coat the inside with the poison. Between his anger and the beer he wouldn’t notice.”

  “Tomorrow, do it tomorrow,” Threshen said, shaking with anger and pain.

  His father had been distant the next day and so Threshen had made an extra effort to irritate him, flirting with a servant girl in the hallway where he was sure to be seen.

  That night as he hugged the stone pillar, each lash of his father’s whip had felt like the cutting of a rope that had kept him in bondage. As he endured the lashing, he saw Sabni in the shadowy hallway, nodding his head at each lash.

  Suddenly the beating stopped and, turning from the pillar, Threshen saw his father clutching his stomach. Looking up angrily, Kawab raised the whip to strike again and suddenly moaned. His bowels turned to water and the wet stink ran down his leg.

  Realizing what had happened, Kawab looked at the beer pot and then searched the shadows for Sabni. Then slowly his shit-stained legs folded and he sank to his knees. He opened his mouth to scream for help, but found himself instead gasping and puking.

  Threshen pushed himself wearily, happily from the pillar. Leaning down, he snatched the whip from his father’s weakened grip. He raised it and slashed furiously at his father’s face. Kawab raised his arms to protect himself and then his eyes rolled back and he fell onto his back.

  Sabni shuffled from the shadows and happily allowed his brother to exhaust himself before wrapping his arms around Threshen and pulling him away from their dead father.

  Remembering the pleasure of it now, Threshen arched his back and emptied himself into the servant girl’s hands.

  - 0 -

  King Huni had executed two of the captains of militias where there had been deserters before the third captain, hands tied and on his knees, the king’s heavy club raised over his head, had confessed.

  “We were ordered by Governor Sennedjem to leave,” the man said, his eyes closed, expecting the death blow despite his words.

  Standing beside King Huni, Bek had to stifle a laugh. Sennedjem was a toad. Fat and soft with bulging eyes, even his voice was a frog’s. And he stank. The last time Bek had been in his presence, he had smelled of rotten eggs and death.

  “Why?” King Huni asked the quivering captive.

  The man shrugged and then prostrated himself on the desert sand. “Forgive me King Huni. I don’t know. I was called into the palace before we left White Wall. Governor Sennedjem said that we would be taken into the desert. He said ... ”

  “Governor Sennedjem told you that I would take the army into the desert?” King Huni said.

  The man nodded, pressing his face into the sand.

  King Huni lowered the war club and stared off into the distance. He and his guards had taken ten captains, all of them leaders from the lower nomes, to the edge of the encampment. Each of them was missing men from his command. Even worse were the companies from nine of the remaining ten nomes of the Lower House; their commanders had deserted overnight.

  Only the militia from Waset, the capital, remained intact.

  “Cut his bonds,” King Huni said to Bek.

  Bek leaned over the captive and cut the leather thongs that had held his hands behind his back. The captain remained on the sand, unwilling to believe he was being spared.

  “If you leave your weapons and if you swear to not take up arms against the army of the Two Lands, I will let you live and let you and your men leave,” King Huni said.

  Bek started to reach out to touch the king, then, seeing the determination and calculation in King Huni’s eyes, Bek paused.

  “Yes, King Huni. Long life, King Huni,” the captive said. He raised his face from the sand and looked at the king, half fearing to see instead the gnarled, bloody wood of the war club.

  “You swear?” King Huni asked.

  “Yes, King Huni. I swear.”

  The soldier hesitated a moment and then crawled a few feet away before getting to his feet.

  King Huni turned to Bek and motioned him close. “Some of them will remember this and not fight. Some will return home and then desert their own army.”

  Bek, disagreeing with his king, said nothing.

  “And once
this rebellion is put down, they must rejoin the Two Lands. If we kill them all now we will only weaken ourselves against the desert dwellers, the vile Asiatics and all of the nine bows.”

  Bek understood, but disagreed. He wanted to kill each of the captains of men who had deserted. He wanted to track down the deserters and leave them waterless and bound in the desert. But he had followed King Huni when he was Captain Siptah and he had never known him to lose a fight. And so he would let the deserters leave and he would follow his king and their diminished army back to Waset.

  Most of all, he would hope that his childhood friend would continue to always win.

  Bata's Dream

  “My boat sails downstream,” Bata sang, “in time to the stroke of the oarsman.”

  He looked over his shoulder at Amtes, “That’s me,” he said with a grin.

  “Yes, oh, powerful oarsman,” Amtes teased, “but you do know that we are rowing upstream, don’t you?”

  Ignoring her, he resumed his song, “A bunch of reeds on my shoulder and I am traveling to Waset, Life of the Two Lands. And I shall say to the god Ptah, Lord of Truth, ‘Give me my fair one tonight.’ ”

  “You have a nice voice, Bata,” Amtes said, pushing against the water and trying to see past the trees and shrubs that obscured the river bank. Each channel of the delta seemed the same, but at least they knew that if they continued to paddle against the current they were heading upriver toward Iunu.

  “Thank you, Amtes,” he said. “I brew very good beer, too. And I used to be a very good soldier. But,” his playful voice turned sad, “I would give it all to have a mind as strong as Imhotep’s. If I could only persuade him to help, I am sure we would find Tarset.”

  “We will find her,” Amtes said. “We will ask the other girls if Tarset spoke of leaving.”

  Bata nodded and resumed his song, “The god Ptah is her tuft of reeds, the goddess Sekhmet is her posy of blossoms, the dawn irradiates her beauty ... ” He stopped suddenly and turned again. “I forgot about the sky stones. We should talk with the jewelers. One of them might know about such a bracelet.”

  - 0 -

  “The cuts were too clean and deep to be scratches,” Akila told Imhotep as they waited by the river for Kewab and the rowers.

  “So you think someone with lots of rings hit her?” Imhotep asked.

  Akila nodded.

  “Which means King Huni’s fears were justified.”

  “If she was murdered,” Akila said, looking at Imhotep to be sure he was listening to her and not lost in his own thoughts, “it is only one murder. It doesn’t mean that the country is falling into chaos.”

  Imhotep shook his head in disagreement. “There are very few murders here. I mean, I’ve never heard of a murder. Yes,” he waved a hand to dismiss her skepticism, “there is violence and people are killed, but it is in battle or,” he thought of Tjau and Prince Teti, “during a palace coup. There aren’t any guns so it is hard to kill someone, you have to be very serious about it.”

  “That doesn’t mean it was murder,” Akila argued. “Perhaps there was a fight and she was struck and fell. The cut on her throat was jagged. It was probably made by the broken pottery you found on the floor there, not by a knife. The killing could have been accidental.”

  “Yes,” Imhotep agreed, getting to his feet as he saw Kewab approaching. “But still, someone struck the priestess of Re. That’s like someone attacking the pope. It just doesn’t happen.”

  - 0 -

  “There is a merchant heading to Waset tomorrow morning,” Bata told Amtes the evening after they had returned to Iunu. At Bata’s insistence they had searched Hetephernebti’s chambers without finding any jewelry with sky stones. Then while Bata visited the two jewelers in Iunu, Amtes had interviewed each of the temple girls.

  Neither of the jewelers had ever seen a bracelet made of sky stones and the temple girls told Amtes that Tarset never talked of family or of her past. All she had learned was that Tarset loved living in the temple, wearing clean robes during prayers and looked forward to feast days because she loved having a full belly.

  “He said we could ride along as far as Ineb-Hedj,” Bata said.

  Amtes shook her head. “I think I will stay here, Bata.” She sighed and said softly, “I know that I was only away for a few days, but I don’t like being away from the temple. I missed the prayers, the rituals, the walls, the smell of the incense, the songs ... ”

  Bata waved a hand. “You don’t need to explain, Amtes. I miss the markets in Ineb-Hedj and I miss my beer and I miss the sounds of my family and the hugs from little Maya. Which is why I worry so much about Tarset. What is she missing? What is she feeling and fearing?”

  He was quiet for a moment and then said, “When I get to Ineb-Hedj I’ll check with the jewelers there. If they don’t know anything, then I’ll go to Waset. Someone there will know about a bracelet of sky stones.

  “And you can ask people out in the town,” he told her. “Someone might have been visiting here and taken Tarset with them. And we should concentrate on finding the hunchback.”

  - 0 -

  “When you are a little older, you will be mistress of your own house,” Meryt told Maya as they knelt beside the flat stone where Meryt cracked and ground wheat.

  “I want to be a doctor like Akila,” Maya said, kneeling beside her mother.

  Meryt kissed her daughter’s head and sprinkled wheat on the stone. She picked up the long rolling stone and laid the cylinder on the back edge of the flat stone plate. “You will be a wonderful doctor.”

  She leaned forward and began to roll the stone over the wheat.

  “I can do that, Mother,” Maya said. “Akila said you shouldn’t do any work yet.”

  “It feels good to stretch,” Meryt answered. “If I feel any pain I will tell you. I promise.”

  “We could take turns,” Maya said.

  Meryt smiled both at her daughter and at the wonderful feeling of her muscles doing work again. “You should be an ambassador,” Meryt said.

  “What is that?”

  “Someone who travels to other places and represents the king.”

  “Why would I do that?” Maya asked.

  “Because you have your father’s gentle talent of getting someone to do what you want and making it seem like it was their idea.”

  “Oh,” Maya said, not sure if she was being teased or complimented. “I think I’ll be a doctor.” She leaned a bare shoulder against her mother, offered her sweetest smile and said, “Can I have a turn now?”

  Meryt laughed and rolled the stone back to the near edge of the plate before shuffling over to make room for Maya.

  Sitting in the afternoon sun and watching her daughter grind the wheat, Meryt felt such happiness that it seemed her heart would grow too large for her body. She wanted to laugh and cry. She wanted to pull Maya into a loving hug and hold her forever. She wanted to get up and run to the river – yes, she believed she was healthy enough to run again – and splash in the water.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the wheat kernels cracking, to the soft breathing of her daughter, to her heart pushing blood – her blood and Akila’s blood – through her miraculously alive body.

  She vibrated with the song of the universe, the throbbing hammer of Re’s heat, the gentle wash of light from Khonsu lurking in the western sky, the laughing gurgle of the river Iteru as it swept through the reeds and washed over the land.

  Imhotep traveled through time, he had lived in the now and he had lived in a future Meryt would never know. He had traveled throughout the Two Lands and he had traveled to cities and seen wonders in his own time.

  Yet he is a stranger to himself, she thought. He sees and he hears but everything is turned to a purpose. The world is a tool that he would use. And so he is apart from the world.

  “Maybe Akila will be an ambassador,” Maya said, rousing Meryt from her thoughts.

  “Yes, she could,” Meryt agreed.

 
“So could Hapu.” Maya stopped grinding the wheat and sat back on her haunches. “Can they be doctors and ambassadors?”

  “Yes they could. And they could be wives and mothers and musicians and dancers and artists and merchants and reed gatherers and scribes and queens and they could brew beer or bake bread or herd cattle or net fish. They can be anything they want. And so can you.”

  “I think I’ll just be a doctor. But Akila and Hapu said they are going to travel so maybe they will be ambassadors. I want to stay here with you and father, so I’ll just be a doctor.”

  - 0 -

  Bata had slept fitfully on the boat, his dreams filled with a creeping unease that slipped among watery shadows. Once the shadow paused and the darkness slowly took the shape of a slender dog. Fiery eyes stared at him from pointed oval openings behind a long, drooping snout.

  The sha – for Bata was sure it was the Seth-animal – turned and Bata saw its upright tail, its end splitting into sharp twin tips, like the end of a flail. The creature turned its back toward Bata and flicked its tail. Bata screamed awake, feeling the sting of the lash and certain that the god of chaos was attacking him.

  Now it was morning and the boat was crossing the river’s sluggish current to dock at Ineb-Hedj. The white walls of the city were pink in the early morning light. On another day Bata would have smiled at the illusion, but his dream haunted him and he imagined the morning light was shining on walls washed with blood.

  He leapt ashore before the boat was tied to a post and then stood on for a moment, wondering what his dream had meant. He had been thinking of Tarset as he drifted off to sleep and he was sure the gods were warning him that Seth was stalking her.

  Bata looked down the road that would take him to Imhotep’s home and then turned to follow the river trail to the market. He had no time to lose; he would visit the jewelers first.

  Absorbed in his own thoughts, it took Bata a few minutes to hear and see the difference in the market. There were fewer people about and those who shopped were in a hurry, jostling each other instead of gathering in groups to exchange gossip.