Bird in a Snare

by N. L. Holmes

  Sat-hut-haru jumped him next, but her eyes were fixed on Maya behind her father’s back, Hani saw to his amusement. Pa-kiki embraced his father with the shy affection of the adolescent who didn’t want to look too sentimental. They hung on him as they all trooped through the garden together.

  “I should be going, Lord Hani,” Maya murmured from behind him. “My mother will be waiting.”

  But Sat-hut-haru, her eyes all starry and beguiling, begged the secretary, “Oh, don’t go yet, Maya. Just stay a little while.”

  Neferet went bouncing into the vestibule, announcing with her hands in a trumpet, “Dooot! Dooot! They’re back, everybody! Papa and Maya are back from Kharu.”

  Nub-nefer rushed in from the salon, her eyes alight. She threw herself on Hani, and her face was full of joy, but there were lines of worry around her eyes that Hani didn’t remember. Her lashes grew wet with tears, and he folded her to his chest.

  “My love,” he murmured. “How I’ve missed you.”

  “Oh, Hani,” she sighed against his skin. “It seems like such a long time. So much has happened since you left.”

  “Thank you and Father for writing to keep me informed.”

  “Oh, but there’s more. Mery-ra dared not put it into writing, lest... well, you’ll learn soon enough.”

  They made their way into the salon with their arms around one another. Mery-ra was there as well as Amen-em-hut and his wife Anuia, a plain, dumpy little woman who made a mismatched couple with her handsome husband, although he seemed devoted to her. Like Nub-nefer, she was a chantress of the Lord Amen-Ra.

  Baket-iset lay on her couch among them. “Papa!” she cried out, causing Ta-miu to jump indignantly to the floor.

  Hani descended on her and knelt at her side, caressing her face with a hand. “My dearest. Is all well with you?”

  “Oh yes, Papa. Except...”

  Uneasiness hung in the room like the pungent clouds of smoke from an incense burner, so heavy it made breathing difficult. “What is it, everyone?” Hani stared around. “What’s wrong?”

  “Here, son. Let me at least greet you before we tell you all the news.” Mery-ra toddled over to Hani and embraced him then clapped him on the back. Hani greeted his in-laws as well. Then they all stood awkwardly, staring at one another with bleak faces.

  “The king is discharging temple personnel,” said Amen-em-hut, no longer able to control his distress. “Only the temples of Amen-Ra and his family, mind you. He’s taking the revenues from the estates of Amen, Mut, and Khonsu to build the new capital and its temples. He’s stealing from the gods, Hani.”

  Hani stared at him, not knowing what to say. It was hard to imagine any crime more heinous. Amen-em-hut’s face was gaunt and blanched; he looked like a man who had just received a death sentence.

  “Have you been—” Hani started.

  “Not yet. Only the wab and lector priests, who are on duty part of the year at a time. But it’s coming, you can be sure.” The priest’s big black eyes were wild. “Hani, what kind of liturgy is there without wabu and hery-hebu, I ask you? And the chantresses—”

  “Them, too?”

  “Yes!” Nub-nefer and Anuia cried in anguished unison.

  “He has effectively stopped the offerings to the King of the Gods, Hani. What must the Hidden One think? That we don’t revere him anymore?” Amen-em-hut’s voice was climbing until Hani thought the priest would break into a scream.

  “Easy, brother,” Hani said gently. He took Amen-em-hut by the arm and led him to a chair, afraid the man was having some sort of apoplexy. “All of you. This is dreadful, but we must stay calm.”

  “Calm?” Amen-em-hut hissed between his teeth. “The gods will turn their backs on us.”

  “He’s more upset because he understands the implications of this better,” Anuia assured Hani loyally. She knelt beside her husband and put a protective arm around his shoulders.

  Maya said quietly at Hani’s side, “Perhaps I should go...”

  “Yes, my friend. Perhaps you should. We’ll have you over again soon, under calmer conditions.” Hani noticed that the youngsters were all standing goggle-eyed at their mother’s side. “Amen-em-hut, we shouldn’t scare the children. We’ll talk about this later, shall we?”

  The priest rose, drained, and he and his wife embraced everyone and made their dispirited exit. No one said anything until the outer door closed behind them. Hani let out a long breath through his nose, as weary as if after battle. “Pa-kiki, girls, don’t let Uncle frighten you. This is a matter for priests to worry about, all right? It doesn’t affect us. Go get ready for dinner. Father, have the servants carry Baket-iset.”

  “I’ll go hurry the cooks along, too.” Mery-ra hustled discreetly from the room.

  Hani and Nub-nefer were left alone. Hani held out his arms to his wife, who clung to him, breathing deeply as if to calm herself. “What do you really think of him?” she whispered, hanging on his arm. “Is he mad or only evil, that impious man?”

  Hani knew she meant Nefer-khepru-ra. He laid a gentle finger upon her lips. “I have no opinion on the king my master—life, prosperity, and health to him. The Living Haru is beyond the reach of human opinion. And you must have no opinion either, do you hear? You must say nothing, nothing at all. Ever. You can trust no one. Worship the Hidden One in the secret of your heart, but publicly, you must offer sacrifice only to the Aten and his representative on earth if that’s what he wants.” His voice was low but trembling with urgency. “As a chantress of the Lord Amen-Ra, you’ll be under observation. Even the servants may be in the king’s pay. He must see nothing at all that would concern him, my dear. Please take this seriously.”

  “But Hani—”

  “No buts, my dove. You must conform, or we’ll all be punished. The very least will be that I lose my position. The worst—well, think of our children. Think of our grandchildren.” He laid his forehead upon the brow of her wig, breathing her perfume, feeling the warmth of her face against his nose. His arms stole around her shoulders. All you gods, make her understand. Make her obey. I couldn’t bear to lose her.

  The silence stretched out between them. Finally, Nub-nefer murmured, her voice skewered with fear, “You haven’t gone over to the new heresy, have you, Hani?”

  He would have given a world not to see the pain in her face, the wobbling lips, the blinking eyes trying to hold back tears. They’d been married nearly twenty-five years. The idea that he might have taken such a step without saying anything to her had to pierce her heart with dread.

  He tried to smile. “My master the Living Haru cannot command my soul, my dear.”

  “You called him Haru,” she whispered, the tremulous shadow of a smile plucking at the corner of her mouth. “You still believe.”

  “I must serve the king, whoever he is. The vassals in A’amu and our enemies abroad must see nothing but a united front. They must hear no whisper of what’s happening in the Black Land. We must appear at court and make our obeisance the same as always. There must be no sign of... distress.” He tipped her face up to his. “Can you do that for me, my dearest?”

  ⸎

  The day after the Feast of Drunkenness, Hani sailed downriver to the new capital to make his report to Lord Ptah-mes. The high commissioner seemed less haggard than he had been, although there was something glassy and fixed in his regard that made Hani uneasy. It was as if he were very tightly in control of himself, but only just. He greeted Hani with a forced smile and gestured him to sit. “My friend, tell me what the state of Kebni was when you left.”

  Hani recounted the arrival of Pa-khuru with his troops, the withdrawal of Rib-addi to Kebni, and the beginnings of Aziru’s siege of Simurru. In a lower voice, he informed Ptah-mes of the full strange relationship between Rib-addi and Aziru’s father and between them both and Yapakh-addi. Then he told him about the incipient invasion of Nuhasshe by the men of Kheta Land.

  Ptah-mes nodded, his somber face at odds with the sleek perfection of his at
tire. “It’s more than rumor at this point. Just before the festival a courier arrived saying Nuhasshe had fallen. The king of Naharin is arming his border, and I don’t give Ugarit long, frankly. They would rather abandon their treaty with us than be subjected to a siege, no doubt, and who can blame them? My feeling is that the king will simply let them go.”

  “What about A’amu, then, my lord? And Rib-addi?”

  “Aziru will take A’amu, I suppose, unless we convince Our Sun that there’s some enormous advantage to having Rib-addi as his marcher lord rather than Aziru. It sounds as if Aziru’s animosity is more personal than political.”

  Hani shook his head, thinking that the last thing he had been instructed to tell Aziru was that Kemet would oppose his takeover. “I once thought I had some idea of what motivated the leader of the hapiru, but I can no longer say that that’s true. Life was simpler for us under Abdi-ashirta, by far.”

  Ptah-mes suddenly reached under his chair, saying, “That reminds me.” He withdrew a slim golden object and presented it to Hani, who received it upon his palm.

  It was a gold-hilted knife in a matching scabbard of stiff gilded leather. At either end of the sheath was a row of triangular colored inlays like an array of teeth. The pattern also appeared at either end of the hilt.

  Hani stared up at his superior, his eyes wide with confusion, his heart hammering. Ptah-mes watched him expressionlessly as Hani drew the knife from its sheath. “What is this, my lord?” he cried. “I still have the murder weapon in my possession, and my son owns the scabbard.”

  “This was given me by our lord Nefer-khepru-ra, Hani. He seems to have handed out quite a number of them to his friends and... others.” Ptah-mes’s mouth stretched wider in a humorless smile below his dead eyes. “So much for our certitude that Yapakh-addi was the murderer of Abdi-ashirta.”

  Hani could scarcely repress a groan of disappointment. The only lead he had managed to find after nearly two years had just evaporated like a mist on the marshes under the rays of the Lord Ra. He said ruefully, “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, since the case has been closed. But thank you for letting me see this, my lord.” He handed the knife back to the high commissioner.

  Ptah-mes rose to his feet, tall and graceful. “We live in a world where things are not what they seem, Hani, my friend,” he said with a sigh. He tapped the scabbard against the palm of his hand. “I suppose I should wear this. It’s a gift from the king, after all.”

  Hani’s heart was torn once again for those of such high status that they couldn’t hide in anonymity like him. He folded in a bow. “I take my leave, my lord.”

  “Keep me informed, eh?”

  ⸎

  Maya waited outside one of the new buildings of the Hall of Royal Correspondence until his employer should emerge. He sat in the shade of the facade, his back against the mud brick, which was still damp and cool from its recent construction. He shaded his eyes with a hand and stared out upon the city. In either direction stretched a wide avenue of yellowish dust, flanked by a cheap-looking jumble of low buildings. By all the gods, Akhet-aten is the most arid, charmless place I’ve ever seen outside my visit to Ullaza. It made him think of stalls set up for a market, all hasty and higgledy-piggledy. It wasn’t like Waset or Men-nefer, which had evolved over a very long period. One might understand a comfortable sense of disorder in those places. But here, it was as if the new capital had been splattered across the bay in the cliffs that flanked the River—nothing straight, nothing matching, nothing fine. Thrown there in a tantrum, he thought, grimly pleased with the image.

  Hardly any trees had been planted yet. No doubt, the palace, of which he could only see the high outer wall across the street, was more magnificent. Just to the south stood a kind of bridge that crossed the avenue from building to building, blocking traffic into the royal precinct. He saw tall whitewashed walls with pylons and flagpoles that were undoubtedly those of temple enclosures. People said that the royal tombs were being constructed in the desert to the east of the city. Not in the Mountains of the West where the sun sets? Osir have mercy.

  “Strange,” he said to himself, shaking his head. It was stranger than the foreign cities he had seen in Djahy and Kharu.

  Lord Hani emerged from the Hall of Royal Correspondence around midmorning and just in time. Maya’s strip of shade had shrunk to the point that his feet, stuck out in front of him, were inescapably in the sun. He scrambled up and greeted his employer with relief.

  Hani looked preoccupied, but he grinned at his secretary. “It seems our sole bit of evidence regarding the murder of Abdi-ashirta is not so significant after all, Maya.” He explained about the plethora of gift knives.

  Maya let out a disillusioned breath through his mouth. “Well, at least we can still guess that the perpetrator is a friend of the king.”

  Hani nodded absentmindedly. “Do you want to do some sightseeing while we’re here?”

  Maya made a half-hearted moue. “Nothing I’ve seen from here looks very special for a city built from scratch.”

  “They say there are four palaces. This is apparently part of one of them.”

  Maya turned to look back at the featureless mass of cubes they had just left. He and his employer were standing in the nearly deserted street, observing the city, when trumpets sounded from the distance. He stared at Lord Hani in confusion, but Hani looked as baffled as he. A great cloud of ocher dust was rising to the north, and he heard a pounding as of quick-marching feet.

  The two men pressed themselves against the wall of the nearest building, along with a few other scribes who happened to be about. As they watched, a body of soldiers, decked out in the exotic garb of the king’s Nubian guardsmen, came trotting up the street, ostrich plumes bobbing and gilded spears flashing in the blistering sun of midday. Musicians strutted along behind them, red-faced with the effort of keeping up. And then came a chariot of white-gold electrum, as dazzling as a chariot of the gods, drawn by a pair of spirited white-and-gold horses with feathers and gilt harnesses, tasseled and jingling with bells. In the box, the young king was driving with his queen beside him. They were both clad in blue crowns, their gauzy linen clothes blindingly white and bedecked with lavish jewelry. I’ll bet Mother made some of that, Maya thought proudly.

  At the king’s approach, Maya and Hani flattened themselves to the ground like everyone else, but as soon as the royal chariot had passed in a whirlwind of dust and rumbling wheels, the two men clambered to their feet. Maya stared after the retreating vehicle, which was flanked by yet more guardsmen. Little as he liked the young king’s policies, he had to admit Nefer-khepru-ra put on a magnificent show.

  “What’s the occasion, I wonder?” he murmured.

  “I understand that procession takes place several times a day. It’s part of what the king does, it seems.” Hani stared after the retreating dust cloud, his mouth twisted thoughtfully to one side and his thicket-like brows contracted. “I had intended to look around the city, Maya, but it’s almost lunchtime, and all the offices will be closed anyway. Let’s head down to the river and start home.”

  They set off languidly in the same direction the king had gone, under a crushing noon sun. Ahead, the royal yacht, the Dazzling Sun Disk, swanned upstream in midriver, its painted sail bellying with the wind. “I wonder where they’re going,” Maya said to his employer.

  “Apparently south. So to Waset, I suppose, same as us.”

  “Some of us hire a ferryman, while others...” Maya grinned. But Lord Hani was strangely preoccupied and barely responded, not even giving a wag of the eyebrows.

  The only quays were those that extended from the palace—two vast stone-paved causeways ending at the water’s edge, provided with bronze tethering rings and stone bollards, to which one descended by wide, shallow steps. A breakwater protected the royal vessels from the surge of the annual Inundation. Otherwise, the craft of the city clustered at the naked riverbank from one end of the horizon to the other, commercial barges and luxuriou
s private yachts side by side with ferries and fishing boats, like thirsty cattle at their trough. The pale earth glared like a piece of the solar disk itself, so that a person had to shield his eyes to look east back into the city. It’s an unfriendly place, thought Maya in distaste. I can’t imagine living here.

  ⸎

  Ahead of him, to his surprise, Hani saw Aha’s broad back and quick, assured steps descending the slope to the water’s edge. “Aha, my son,” he called. Aha turned, a flash of irritation passing across the boy’s face before he smiled that big gap-toothed smile that was Hani’s own.

  “Father. When did you get back?” He sounded genuinely friendly, but there was a crisp edge of impatience in his voice.

  Hani hastened his steps, and when he caught up to Aha, the two men embraced. As they stepped apart, Aha cast a frigid look at Maya and nodded a perfunctory greeting.

  “The beginning of the week. I was told at Men-nefer that the vizier of the Lower Kingdom and all his staff were now at the new capital. Why don’t you come for dinner when we all get home? I’m sure your mother and sisters would love to see you. Although perhaps they do see you...”

  Aha’s smile chilled. Hani perceived something going on behind his firstborn’s features that he couldn’t quite interpret. It infected him with concern.

  “Not too often. I’m very busy. Even Khentet-ka doesn’t see as much of me as she’d like. You know how it is.” Everything about him said I want to get away.

  Hani was a bit hurt that he seemed to have passed into the category of boring old farts... if that was the problem. “Something wrong?” he asked in a low voice, laying a fatherly hand on the boy’s shoulder. “If there’s anything I can do, Amen-hotep my son, you know you—”

  But the younger man broke in with a hiss, “You can start by not calling me that, Father. We don’t want to hear the... that word. My name is Hesy-en-aten now.” His face had grown red all at once, his nostrils tense; his thick eyebrows seemed to bristle.