by Lauren Haney
The shallow stone basin had been built into a corner whose walls were lined with two other slabs to protect the mudbrick walls. One slab was heavily splotched with blood, the second barely dotted. The woman's head, the right temple smashed and bloody, lay close beside a slim, elongated pottery jar, broken at the base, set through the wall to drain water to the outside. While still she breathed judging by the massive wound, not long, he thought-a thin stream of blood had trickled into the jar. The odor of a heavy, sweet-scented perfume hung in the air, as if her body had already been prepared for eternity.
"May the lord Osiris take her unto himself," Amonhotep murmured. He stood beside Bak, staring at the great, ugly wound, his face Bale, appalled.
Swallowing to rid himself of the sour taste rising in his throat, Bak knelt beside the body to feel for the pulse of life. None, nor had he expected to find one. No man or woman could have survived such a ghastly wound. Her wrist was cool to the touch, as was her bare shoulder. She had lost her life some hours ago-not long after dawn, he suspected long before he had called together the members of Djehuty's staff. Though unseemly, he offered a quick prayer of thanks to the lord Amon that she had not died because he had failed to consider her as a victim.
He stood up and glanced around. Linen towels lay neatly folded on a mudbrick shelf built into the wall. Three alabaster perfume jars and a dark blue faience container for eye paint sat beside a bowl of natron for cleansing the skin. Four large pottery jars, all filled with tepid water, stood in a row below the shelf. She had come, he had no doubt, to prepare these rooms for use. After making up the bed, she had entered the bath, a small and enclosed space well suited for attacking and slaying a slightly built woman like her.
Bak saw no object that might have been used to bludgeon her, nor did he see any sign that she had fought to protect herself. She had known her assailant and held no fear in her heart just as the previous victims had allowed their slayer to come close.
When he turned away, prepared to leave, he found Amonhotep outside the door by the toilet.
The aide looked unwell, uneasy. "I can't help seeing myself in her place, my head crushed, the breath of life tom from my body for no good reason."
Bak laid a hand on his back and gave him a gentle push toward the bedchamber. "The slayer could as easily have chosen Antef. Or Ineni or Amethu or Simut."
Amonhotep seemed not to have heard. "I know I shouldn't be glad she's dead…" He gave Bak a grim smile. 11… and I'm not, but… but I feel…" He shook his head, unable to air what lay in his heart.
Relief, Bak thought, relief that Hatnofer is lying lifeless on the floor while he remains alive and well. And who can blame him?
"It's my fault! My fault alone!" Khawet stared out across the river, rubbing her arms as if chilled. "If I'd only gone earlier, as I said I would!"
"You've no need to blame yourself." Bak had suggested Amonhotep report to Djehuty, more to escape the aide's unwarranted guilt than because he thought the need pressing, and now here he was, listening to another who wished to shoulder the blame for Hatnofer's death. "The slayer would've struck somewhere else if not in the guest quarters."
"She raised me from a babe! She was a mother to me!" Bak walked to the edge of the high natural terrace that followed the course of the river, a strip of land covered with patchy grass and wild shrubs ablaze with blossoms. A sandy path bisected the terrace, beginning at the stairway that rose from the landingplace, passing a deep, well-like water gauge, where the yearly flood was measured, and farther along, a large public well, and ending near the pylon gate of the mansion of the lord Khnum. Willow trees shaded those who walked the path or came for water or to speak with the god. A stately sycamore towered over the water gauge and an ancient grapevine clung to the wall around the deep structure. A monkey chattered in the tree, too shy to allow itself to be seen.
Below, the river surged down the broad channel between the island of Abu and the east bank. Massive black boulders rose from the depths on both sides of the channel, mighty buttresses glistening in the sun, impervious to the continual assault of the water flowing between them. To men with a strong imagination, they resembled elephants, huge ungainly animals living far to the south, creatures that seemed more mythical than real to men who had never seen them. Creatures from which much of the ivory was taken that had given Abu its name.
The loud calls of men at work drew Bak's gaze downstream, where four fishing boats were pulling in the day's catch.. Silvery arcs flashed in the distance as fish leaped out of the water, trying to escape the closing net. Farther downstream, a small transport ship rode low in the water beneath a heavy cargo of reddish pottery jars, making slow progress against the current. Its patched red sail stood at an angle to the breeze, sacrificing speed to reach the trading village of Swenet on the opposite shore. A smaller, sleeker vessel, its sail full to bursting, swept past the transport and veered in a westerly direction toward the island and the more substantial degcity of Abu.
The sound of laughter drew his eyes to Djehuty's traveling ship, still moored at the landingplace below the villa. Kasaya had left the vessel, he saw, and was sitting on a projecting boulder a short distance downstream, chatting with several women kneeling on the mudbank, washing clothes. He had to smile. The young Medjay, tall, hard-muscled, and goodnatured, had a way with women few other men could claim. The older among them sought to mother him, the younger to gain a caress — if not more. Information flowed from their lips like water from an overturned bowl.
Psuro, more mature and practical, stood at the base of the stairway, haggling with an old woman holding a plucked duck and a basket overflowing with fruits and vegetables. The Medjay was planning a feast. The very thought made Bak's mouth water.
He turned back to Khawet, who had stopped pacing to sit on a mudbrick bench in the dappled shade of a willow. "When did you last see Hatnofer, mistress?"
"This morning. Soon after daybreak. In the room where we store linens. She was counting sheets." She bit her lip. "With so many so recently dead in this household, our supply has dropped far below the numbers we normally keep on hand. And now…" She swallowed hard, turned away so he could not see her face. Her voice trembled. "Now we must send more to the house of death. For her!"
Bak resisted the urge to go to her, to offer sympathy, fearing too gentle a demeanor might set the tears flowing in earnest. "What did you speak of?"
"You." She raised her hand to her eyes, most likely to wipe away tears, and turned around. "We spoke of your arrival. Today, we thought, if the gods had smiled on Amonhotep and he'd journeyed to Buhen and back as swiftly as he'd hoped."
"Was it she who decided to quarter me in the guest villa? Or did you think to place me there?"
"That was my father's decision."
Bak was surprised, and he let it show. "The rooms are more befitting a vizier than a police officer fresh from the frontier. I'd have thought Djehuty would have preferred I stay in the barracks."
She gave him a tremulous smile. "He wanted you close in case of need, but not so close you'd remind him every moment of the deaths he yearned to forget."
"I see," he said, his voice dry. "You spoke with Hatnofer of my arrival and then…?"
Khawet stared at her feet, which were protected by leather sandals little more than a sole and a couple of narrow straps. "She set aside several sheets, saying she'd take them to Nebmose's villa and prepare the rooms for your use. She was ready to leave, her arms laden with bedding, when Amethu sent a message, saying he was toiling over the household accounts and he needed her assistance right away." She plucked a flower from a nearby bush and twisted the stem between her fingers, making the fragile reddish petals shiver and dance. "She seemed so distracted, so overburdened with tasks that I took the linens from her, saying I'd prepare the rooms."
"But you didn't."
"No." She spoke to the flower, not to him, and her voice was tight, almost brittle with strain. "My father summoned me. He was displeased with his fan beare
r and wanted him whipped. It wasn't easy to convince him the boy was too small by far to hold so long and heavy a handle high in the air. By the time I had done so, I had forgotten my promise to Hatnofer. Later… Much later, I remembered. I summoned Nefer and we…" Her voice broke and she turned away. "I feel i1. Will you leave me now?"
Bak yearned to probe further, but he could not in all conscience do so. He was too new on the trail of the slayer to limit his questions only to those that were necessary, for he had no idea which were essential. And she was too upset to tolerate questions that had no obvious purpose.
" `How will I explain to Djehuty?' " Bak said, imitating as best he could Amethu's harried expression and voice. `He wanted you close-within the walls of this compound, not in some empty house in the city.' "
Psuro gave the duck a quarter turn on the makeshift spit he had erected over the mudbrick hearth. Grease dripped into the fire, filling the air with smoke. The cloud billowed upward, passing through the light roof of branches and straw, leaving in its wake a tantalizing aroma. "How'd you convince him you wanted none of it, sir?"
Fanning away a tattered ribbon of smoke, Bak grinned. "I told him you Medjays are a superstitious lot and you'd get no rest in a place so recently defiled by murder."
Psuro gave him a doubtful look. "He believed that?"
"I don't know," Bak admitted. "He was so startled by my wish to keep you by my side, he could do nothing but sputter."
"I thank the lord Amon you held out, sir." Kasaya, carrying a folded sleeping pallet over his shoulder, peered through the door of the tiny house the steward had found for them on a narrow lane a few streets away from the governor's compound. Over the rear wall, they could hear the laughter of neighborhood children. "It's one thing to walk into a house, eyes wide open, in search of a murderer, and another to sleep there."
"I doubt we'd be in any danger," Bak said. "Not yet, at any rate. If I've read the signs right, the slayer has set his sights higher than us."
"Governor Djehuty." Psuro picked up a stick and stirred a steaming bowl of lentils and onions cooking at the edge of the coals. "From what you've said of him, sir, he seems a weak man, one too preoccupied with the small world around himself to step hard on another man's toes."
"He'd have to step very hard to anger a man so much he'd slay time after time to make his point," Kasaya said. "He would indeed." Eyes smarting, Bak stood up and joined the younger Medjay at the door. "But maybe Djehuty's not what he seems. We know too little of him. Nor do we know enough about those who've died thus far. We must look for a tie that binds them. Something more than the mere fact that they all earned their bread in the governor's villa."
"Where shall we begin, sir?" Kasaya asked.
Psuro scowled at his younger companion. "You can start by laying out our sleeping pallets and unpacking the rest of our gear. Unless we hear tonight of another death, l, for one, mean to eat my fill and sleep like a babe held close to its mother's breast."
Bak drew Kasaya into the front part of the house, a single room with an open stairway to the roof, where a spindly wooden frame was all that remained of a lean-to. Two stools, a small table, and a reed chest, all provided by Amethu, stood near a door that opened onto the lane. Scattered around were the baskets and bundles they had brought from Buhen and jars of grain and other foodstuffs the Medjays had drawn from the garrison stores at Abu. Spears, shields, bows and arrows, and smaller hand weapons had been stacked against the wall. One side of the room held a mudbrick sleeping platform on which lay bedding the steward had provided. A wall niche, empty of the image of the household god it once had held, broke the starkness of the opposite wall.
Bak lifted one of four large, heavy water jars, carried it out to the kitchen, and leaned. it against the wall beside a round oven, long unused from the look of it. Going back inside, he said, "Tomorrow, Kasaya, you must go to the governor's villa, familiarize yourself with the grounds and buildings, and make yourself useful to the servants. The sooner they accept you as one of them, the sooner they'll feel free to speak with an open and frank tongue."
"Yes, sir." Kasaya pulled the sleeping pallet off his shoulder, shook it out, and laid it on the floor. "Would it suit your purpose, sir, if I took special pains to befriend the guards? We may need men we can trust."
"Good idea." Bak clapped him on the shoulder and crossed the room for another jar, which he carried outside to stand with its mate.
"What am I to do, sir?" Psuro asked, looking up from, fis cooking.
"I know of no better measure of the man than the way his people think of him. Walk first around Abu, getting to know the city and befriending its residents, both military and civilian. When you feel you've gleaned all you can-by the end of the day tomorrow, I hope-take the skiff Amethu loaned us and sail across the channel to Swenet. There, too, you must learn the streets and lanes and get to know the people."
Psuro gave him a dubious look. "This city is small, I know, and Swenet smaller yet, but to befriend everyone would take months. Can you not narrow the task to the possible?"
"Do what you can, Psuro, that's all I ask. If Hatnofer was meant to die today, as I think she was, we've only a week before the slayer strikes again."
"Yes, sir."
Bak resisted the urge to smile at the Medjay's gloomy countenance. "As you go about your task, you must seek out a man named Pahared. He once was a merchant in Wawat, one who traveled from village to village, trading the small objects needed by men and women who have close to nothing. I met him once in Nofery's house of pleasure. He'd just wed a woman of Kush and was giving up the life of a wanderer to return to Kemet. I last heard they'd settled here, but whether in Abu or Swenet, I don't know."
"He's a man we can trust?" Psuro asked, a flicker of hope shining through the gloom.
"We talked and drank long into the night. He seemed a man of good sense and honor."
Looking none too pleased with so vague an answer, the Medjay nodded. "If he's here, I'll find him."
Bak walked inside for the third jar of water.
Kasaya, immobilized by thought, knelt beside a second sleeping pallet he had just spread out on the floor, a folded sheet in his hand. "I know we're not far from the governor's villa, sir, but do you think it wise to spend the night here?
What if someone else is slain? From what you say of Djehuty, he'll be the first to lay blame-if he's not the one to die."
Bak gave the young Medjay a quick smile. "As soon as we eat our evening meal, I plan to return to Djehuty's house. I see no need to open the door to disaster."
Chapter Four
Bak, stifling a yawn, stood in front of Nebmose's house, letting the chill morning breeze awaken him. He had gotten some sleep, thanks to Psuro and Kasaya, but not enough. The night had passed without incident; the occupants of the governor's villa had slept in peace. He doubted the police presence had made a difference. Hatnofer had died because she had been close in importance to Djehuty.
He eyed the small, neat garden that surrounded the family shrine inside the main entrance to the property. Venerable trees, thick bushes, and lush flowering plants filled the space with color. Birds chattered from on high, while tiny, fuzzy ducklings swam with their mother on a small, shallow pool and frogs sat on lily pads, soaking up the sun. Bees waded in pollen, humming an ancient tune while they harvested the sweet juices hidden inside the flowers. Bak could well imagine how impressed a distinguished visitor might be, striding through the gate after a long, wearisome voyage. The garden was like the Field of Reeds, where the justified dead spent eternity.
He followed the path to the shrine, a small, white-plastered structure with a cornice painted red and green. A narrow flight of four steps carried him to an entrance flanked by red columns. He had expected the building to be empty. Instead he found an ancestor bust on a limestone plinth. A fresh offering of flowers lay at the base of the red-painted, summarily formed figure with the head of a man. The last of the family might be gone, but someone remained to care. Le
aving the shrine, he crossed the garden to the gate, which was almost as high as the wall around the compound and securely barred on the inside. He opened it and looked out onto one of the many lanes that ran through Abu. Two neighbors' gates, both on the opposite side of the lane, had been cut through walls equally tall and solid. The few windows he saw there were narrow and very high, admitting light and air, but allowing no view of the world outside. The far end of the lane vanished in a jumble of small, sometimes squalid dwellings. As was usually the case in Kemet, the poor touched elbows with the wealthy, but seldom met face-to-face.
Returning to Nebmose's- compound, he barred the gate behind him and hurried around the house. Beyond the empty stables and the granaries, he found a dusty yard in which a cluster of palms were being smothered by tamarisks. The mouth of a well gaped open in front of a squarish building containing four long, narrow storage magazines with a portico in front. Three of the chambers were empty; the fourth contained a chariot with a broken axle. He strode to a narrow gate shaded by the warring trees, lifted the pole that barred entry, and pulled it open. The lane outside was narrow, meant solely for foot traffic. Toward the south, it disappeared in a huddle of small houses. In the opposite direction, it passed the governor's villa and dwindled to nothing among a patchwork of fields that covered the northern end of the island.
Disappointed in spite of low expectations, he swung the gate shut, dropped the bar in place, and walked back to the house. Hatnofer's slayer could have come and gone unseen through the front entrance or the back, or from Djehuty's villa. Other than the audience hall and the visitors' quarters, the rooms were all used for storage. The house had been empty of life, the woman alone-or so she had thought. Anyone could have slain her.
"It seems a terrible waste, doesn't it?"
Bak, standing in the doorway of the stable, eyeing a long row of empty stalls, started and swung around. The governor's son Ineni stood behind him, looking past him into the `shadowy building.