Meren reached out, pulled up a stool next to him, and pointed at it. “Sit down and curb your impudence.”
“She doesn’t know anything” Kysen said. “She’s only pretending.”
Bener punched his thigh as she sat down. “Don’t be a fool. No one would be stupid enough to do that to Father.”
“Tell me what you know, my child.”
Calmly arranging herself on the stool, Bener said, “You remember how Anhai and Bentanta quarreled at the feast? They didn’t notice that I was nearby.” At Meren’s skeptical look, she tossed her head. “It may have been that I was looking at the flowers in that arrangement Aunt Idut had me design.”
“You mean the one that was taller than I am?” Kysen asked. “The one behind which a squad of soldiers could hide? The one near the couch Bentanta was sitting on?”
“Yes, that’s the one. I happened to decide to admire it when Anhai came over and sat beside Bentanta.” Bener paused expectantly, only to resume when neither Kysen nor Meren urged her to continue. “Bentanta was angry. I could see the ire in her face, Father. Do you know what she said to Anhai? She said, ‘It didn’t work. He laughed at me, and when I tried to convince him, he got the idea that I was enamored of him, the fool.’ Then Anhai said, ‘You’ll have to try harder.’”
“How interesting,” Meren said without surprise. “Do you know who ‘he’ was?”
“No,” Bener said. “But then Bentanta said, ‘It’s useless, as I told you it would be, so you’ll just have to find another way. Now I’ve done what you said to do. Give it back.’” Bener gave Kysen a look of satisfaction and relish. “Anhai refused, and that was when Bentanta flew into a rage and left the room.”
“Thank you, daughter. Now go help your aunt Idut.”
“Father! Is this my reward? I want to know what has happened, and I want to help you.”
“Your duties lie elsewhere.”
Kysen’s gaze went from Meren’s stern visage to Bener’s determined one. As he watched he could see Bener’s disappointment vanish and knew that she’d come to some decision on her own, one that would get her into trouble.
“Father, perhaps Bener could help.”
“You make a jest,” Meren said. He shot Kysen a glance filled with warning. “I don’t want Bener involved in an inquiry. There could be danger.”
“But she could be our eyes and ears among the women.”
They used women informants in their inquiries for pharaoh. At this moment there were several among the queen’s household in Memphis.
“And if there is a murderer among the women?” Meren asked. None of them spoke Bentanta’s name.
Bener scooted closer to her father. “Then I’m going to be in her company whether I’m trying to help you or not, and so is Isis; so is Idut. What if this is murder, and the guilty one is a woman? You’d better let me help you so we can catch her quickly. Poor Aunt Idut and Isis might be in danger.”
“The gods have cursed me with an interfering daughter,” Meren said. “You’re only to listen, and use that clever wit of yours. Don’t go off alone with anyone, especially Bentanta.”
Bener jumped up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be careful, Father.”
Kysen remained silent until Bener left.
“Don’t rail at me, Father. Bener was going to pry and meddle with or without your consent. I saw it in her face. At least now we might be able to control her.”
“I don’t understand it,” Meren said. “In but a few months she’s become headstrong and much too clever. And too curious. My only comfort is that she’ll be too busy spying to seek the company of that young colt Nu.”
“True. Then shall we pay a visit to Lady Bentanta?”
“Yes.” Meren drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Last night she was quite adroit in telling me only part of the truth. I’ll have to find out what it was she wanted back from Anhai.”
“A document, perhaps?”
“It could be,” Meren said. “But Bentanta isn’t a fool or easily intimidated. I can’t imagine her falling for any entrapment of Anhai’s making.”
A knock announced the entrance of Zar. “My lord, the Lord Nakht has been seen in a skiff nearing the dock.”
Meren rose. “You see how Reia is progressing among the servants. I’ll be back.”
Kysen hid a smile when Zar looked as if he’d suddenly acquired an aching belly.
“The lord will wish to go to the docks in his red-and-gold sandals. I have a robe and the belt with the gold and red jasper beads in readiness.”
“Not now,” Meren said as he crossed the threshold.
“The lord has forgotten his walking stick. Again.”
“I don’t need it,” came the answer.
Zar called after him in desperation. “The lord will need a sandal carrier and fan bearers!”
“No, I won’t,” came the distant reply. A door slammed, and Zar winced.
“Be of good cheer,” Kysen said. “He’ll let you attend him after he’s seen his brother.”
“I will be laughed at by chamber-pot carriers and field workers,” Zar said with offended dignity. Bowing, the servant quietly closed the door in a manner that suggested that he would bear his suffering with fortitude and patience.
Kysen was left to consider his good fortune. He didn’t want to be there when Meren confronted Ra and asked his brother if he’d killed Anhai.
Chapter 10
Ra’s skiff, rowed by two of his friends, was gliding down a small canal toward Baht when Meren found him. Ra slumped in the middle of the boat, his forehead pressed against the side of the craft, his eyes closed, his complexion almost as green as a papyrus reed. Meren signaled the skiff, crossed a field, and met the vessel as it settled against the canal bank. He watched in silence while Ra’s friends hopped ashore, reached down, and hauled him out by his arms.
Landing unsteadily to hang suspended between his fellows, Ra kept his eyes closed during this maneuver. They flew open at the jolt of his landing. Meren was gratified that the first thing his brother saw was himself, standing with arms crossed and legs planted apart. Ra’s eyes were red around the rims and in the whites. He gave Meren a bleary stare. Then his mouth went slack, and his throat muscles rippled.
“Oh, gods!” Ra’s head went down. His body heaved forward, dragging his supporters.
Meren jumped back, and Ra vomited on the spot where he’d been standing. The north breeze wafted putrid smells at him. Glancing around, Meren noticed two fishing boats and their sailors, several women with water jars on their heads, laborers shoring up a breach in a dike, more women and girls on their way to the river with loads of laundry. One of the girls giggled before her mother slapped her. The boats sailed on, but not before Meren caught a glimpse of disgust on the face of an old fisherman.
Each witness found something to look at elsewhere when Meren’s gaze fell on him. Ra’s groans attracted his attention again. His brother had fallen to his knees over a pool of thick mess. Meren’s lip curled as he turned back toward the house.
“Take him to his chamber at once.”
Without glancing back, he returned to the house, leaving orders at the gate for Ra’s friends to be questioned and sent back to their neighboring homes. Porters, charioteers, and doorkeepers gave him wary looks as he strode down the path between the twin reflection pools. Servants scurried out of his way when he charged through the reception room. In the central hall Kysen was talking with Reia.
As Meren stalked past, Reia saluted him, but Kysen stopped him from intercepting his father.
“I wouldn’t, Reia,” Kysen said. “Not now.”
Vaguely aware of his son, Meren was through the hall and approaching his own apartments in moments. Thrusting open the door, he slammed it shut and bellowed for Zar.
“Where are you, you pompous nuisance?”
“Here, lord.”
Meren whirled around to find Zar standing on the threshold of the bathing chamber, a stack of clean bathing cloths in
his arms. Untying his kilt, Meren yanked it from his hips and hurled it to the floor.
“Call my bathing attendants,” he said as he headed for the inner chamber. “And send for my barber. I want a massage with that Babylonian oil you praise so highly. And then I want my finest kilt and overrobe, my collar and wristbands of gold, and my best sandals.”
Zar followed him into the bathing chamber, clapping his hands and calling for assistance. Meren sat on the anointing table.
“Send someone to Lady Bentanta for some of her pomegranate wine,” Meren snapped. “And find my belt of gold beads with the red-gold clasp.”
Zar bowed as slaves scurried into the chamber bearing soap pots, dousing vessels, and wide copper bowls in which rose lotuses floated. Meren was glaring at a frieze of papyrus painted on the wall when Zar’s whisper reached him.
“No, Zar, I haven’t taken ill.” He rose and entered the bathing stall. Cool water splashed over his head and shoulders, and he sputtered through it. “This is what you wanted, wasn’t it? Dignity, noble magnificence, stately demeanor. You’re going to get them all, Zar. They have to come from somewhere, don’t they?”
The body servant gushed with thanks, but Meren wasn’t listening. He’d wanted to drop all ceremony and formality and take refuge with his family. Instead of refuge, he got a mysterious death. He was going to solve this mystery quickly, so that it didn’t interfere with the concealment of the royal mummies or with what little time he had left to rest.
He didn’t want to think about Ra. When he did, he nearly erupted into a rage. But he had to think about the murder—for Anhai had to have been murdered. Otherwise there was no reason to hide her body. And the murder couldn’t have been planned, or the culprit wouldn’t have chosen to stick the body in so strange a repository.
Sennefer had cast suspicion on Ra. Meren hadn’t mentioned to anyone, even Kysen, his conversation with Ra at the feast. Ra had hinted that he was thinking of marrying Anhai. If Anhai had merely been playing him against Sennefer, Ra would have been furious.
Meren couldn’t imagine being in love with the woman, but Ra lacked wisdom, and thus might have been, simply because she flattered him. She might have fed his over-generous estimate of his own value. Ra was so intemperate, wild, and ungovernable; and he cultivated resentment as a farmer cultivates barley.
Still, Sennefer could have been lying. He had every reason to cast suspicion on someone else. But if Ra had discovered that Anhai had only been using him … The fires of his resentment were already hot from imagined abuse at Meren’s hands. Anhai could have pushed him over the edge of control.
While Meren wrestled with this unpleasant possibility, his servants got him bathed and his body smoothed with oil. He went over the questions he wanted to ask Ra while he dressed. Zar fastened a gold broad collar and centered the counterweight at his back. Meren clamped a wide bracelet of gold over the sun disk branded on his wrist, the legacy of his imprisonment at the hands of Akhenaten. A beaded gold band wrapped around his forehead. Long black locks of hair fell over his shoulders.
His hand traced the groove etched down the middle of the dagger blade thrust into his belt. A memory flitted by—of being a youth proud of attaining the rank of charioteer, of his first court appearance as a warrior. That night, at a royal banquet, was the first time he beheld his fellow noblemen from the perspective of an initiate.
He had been struck by the contradiction. These men wore gossamer robes, earrings of gold and electrum, bracelets and necklaces of lapis lazuli and turquoise. Their eyes glistened with kohl. These men could laugh while thrusting a spear into the heart of a lion. They would ride a chariot into the midst of a charging army. The hand that wore elegant rings of silver wielded a dagger with unsurpassed expertise. Beauty and violence linked. One disguised by the other, merging, enmeshed, deceptive—fatal.
He had never told anyone of this insight, because no one else seemed to find it odd that creatures capable of such violence draped themselves in a veil of such beauty. That feeling of disjunction came to him now as he stood dressed in creamy linen, encrusted with gold.
But he was dressed this way for a reason. Shaking off his discomfort, Meren waved away the servants who were arranging the folds of his robe. He dismissed Zar with a nod and left his chambers, walking past two doors to his brother’s room. There he found a charioteer standing guard.
“He’s spoken to no one?” Meren asked.
“No, lord. He’s, that is …”
“Say it,” Meren snapped.
“He wasn’t in a state to carry on a conversation, lord.”
“You’re a man of careful words.”
The guard hurried to open the door for him. The interior was black. Meren took an alabaster lamp from the guard and motioned for him to remain outside. The door closed, and Meren marched down the length of the room to the dais on which sat a carved bed surrounded by sheer curtains on a frame. Thrusting aside the curtains, Meren went over to the lump in the middle of the bed and thrust the lamp in his brother’s face.
Although his eyes were closed, Ra gasped and covered his face. “No light, damn you! Get out.”
Meren set the lamp on the floor and yanked his brother off the bed by his arm. Ra slid to the floor, cursing and kicking. Then he groaned, drew up his legs, and put his forehead on his knees.
“What do you want, Meren? I’m sick. Go away.”
“Anhai has been murdered,” Meren said over Ra’s groans.
The groans stopped. A red eye opened to blink at him.
“What did you say?”
“You heard. Where were you last night?”
“How can she be dead? She was in excellent health. Last night she was fine.”
“Answer me,” Meren said. “Where were you while Hepu read his Instruction?”
“Did he read another Instruction at the feast? When Anhai was dead? That’s just like him, the hypocrite.”
“No, no, no!” Meren sank to his knees and captured Ra’s gaze with his own. “Answer my question, Ra. Where were you while Hepu read his Instruction? When did you leave for Green Palm, and who went with you?”
Ra put his palms to his temples and squeezed. “Oh, gods, my head. Send for that physician of yours. I’m dying.”
“If you don’t answer me at once, that ache in your head will seem like bliss compared to the way you’ll feel after I’ve done with you.”
Ra stared at him for a moment, then winced at the lamplight. The family’s angular jaw was softened on his face, making him appear more youthful than he was. His eyes were as deeply set as Meren’s, but not as haunted. Covering his eyes, he said, “Something’s wrong about Anhai’s death, isn’t there? Where was I, where was I? I don’t remember any Instruction. Most likely, I was already gone by then. It disgusts me to watch Wah and Sennefer and Antefoker and everyone else fawning over you as if you were pharaoh. I went with some of my friends to Green Palm. There’s a tavern there with excellent beer and women with the talents of Hathor.”
“You stayed there all night? There are those who will swear to it?”
Lifting his head, Ra leered at him. “Three of the women will swear. Are you asking me if I killed Anhai? By the gods, you think I might have done it.” Without warning Ra reached out and grabbed Meren’s gold necklace and pulled him close. “She’s been murdered, and I’m the first person you suspect, you bastard. You think I killed her. You’re hoping I did it.”
“Let go of me,” Meren said as he stared into his brother’s contorted features. There was a moment during which neither of them breathed. Then Ra released him with a sharp laugh.
“You always were good at command, brother.”
“You were never good at obedience.”
“Not when you were giving the orders.”
Meren stood and looked down at Ra, who had closed his eyes again.
“There has been a murder in the family, Ra. The victim is a married woman you told me you wanted. I would ask these questions of anyone who behav
ed as you have. Did she refuse you? Did you quarrel?”
“Although it grieves me to disappoint you, we didn’t quarrel. You saw us. We played with each other, nothing more. I hadn’t approached her yet. I’m no fool, Meren. I know better than to move too quickly. When I left, Anhai was alive.”
“Sennefer says the last time he saw her she was with you.”
“He’s probably lying.”
“And he says Anhai was only using you to make him jealous, because she coveted him.”
Meren jumped at the loud laugh that issued from his brother. Ra held his head and groaned between chuckles.
“You’re a fool, Meren.” His laughter subsided when Meren continued to stare at him, unsmiling. “By the truth of Maat, you do want me to be guilty. It doesn’t matter to you that Anhai was a grasping tyrant to Sennefer. You don’t care that she chained him with her evil tongue. You haven’t even considered the others she’s turned from friend to lethal enemy. She’s been quarreling with Bentanta since they arrived. She near drove Antefoker mad with her cheating, and Wah owed her fifty head of cattle. Ha! You didn’t know that. She was growing rich off the folly of her friends, Meren.”
“So you spent the night drinking and playing with women.”
Meren walked over to Ra and offered his hand. Ra took it, and Meren pulled his brother to his feet and shoved him back down on the bed.
“Last night was just another evening of pleasure, then.” Meren leaned down and touched a bruise on Ra’s jaw, a scrape on his elbow, a red mark over his ribs. “But if it was, dear brother, then why do you look like you’ve been in a fight to the death?”
Ra shrugged. “Sometimes making love can be like a fight to the death. But you don’t want to know about that, do you? You’d rather believe I fought with Anhai and killed her. Why haven’t you mentioned the others who might have done it? How about Bentanta?” Ra paused, then sat up straight in the bed.
“What’s wrong? You’re not worried about her, are you? Gods! No wonder you’re hot to cast suspicion on me. I’ve heard how the family is planning to unite the two of you.”
Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing Page 11