Bird in a Snare

by N. L. Holmes

  Hani stared around at the crowd, hoping to see his father or Maya somewhere nearby, but of course, Maya wouldn’t be visible unless he’d found a perch up on a statue or the rare tree, as some people actually had.

  The crowd let out a collective murmur of excitement, and Hani grew aware of the movement of the tall gate, which began to swing open almost silently, causing some of the observers to back up and shift around. Trumpets began their shrill, joyous blast within, drums started to beat, and a vast, inhuman roar went up from the crowd in acclamation of the king and his queen. Hani could see very little except their crowned heads, even though they were raised up on their carrying chairs. Flower petals began to fly, followed by sweets and bits of gold leaf. The bystanders reached up into the sky and dived for the pieces, laughing and shouting, as their shoulders started to glitter. It was a marvelous spectacle, as if bits of sunlight had come to life in the air over the crowd’s heads.

  As for Hani, the sight of the young king—his painted eyes fixed, as if ecstatic, in the distance, and his mouth smiling benevolently—filled him with a visceral antipathy. Something bitter stirred in Hani’s stomach. Mane caught his eye and shrugged, miming I can’t see.

  Hani forced himself not to scowl. Now, there’s a man who cares about nothing but himself and his own, he thought, watching the passage of the red-and-white double crown. The king reached up an arm to greet the crowd—or was he invoking his father, the Aten?—and the white heb-sed cloak fell back from his shoulders, revealing an intricate gold and precious-stone-beaded weshket collar below. It was all carefully staged, perfectly choreographed.

  The shimmering procession moved off down the wide main street of the capital, heading for the larger of the two Aten temples. Hani could see the tops of the plumed fans clustered around the king’s chair and the golden spears of his special bodyguard. Behind them came troops marching in fancy dress and then a procession of war chariots. It seemed Nefer-khepru-ra had the support of the army at least.

  I’ve done my duty, Hani thought, eager to get away from this spectacle of adulation he didn’t share. He plucked at Mane’s elbow and gestured that he was leaving. The older man waved and mouthed that he would stay awhile. Hani sidled his way through the crowd impatiently, becoming more and more uneasy and his temper more frayed.

  The children had begged to come and see the procession, but Nub-nefer had been adamant that none of hers would participate in this jubilee. If the king no longer performed the annual renewal of the divine ka within him at the Ipet Festival, he was, as far as she was concerned, no legitimate king. And since the Ipet-isut was closed and Amen-Ra had been alienated, there was no Ipet Festival. Hani didn’t know what that meant theologically for the king’s legitimacy. He wanted to be loyal to the son of good old Neb-ma’at-ra, but he’d reached the point where he could barely go through the motions. He’d come because he was supposed to be there and to be seen; whether Nefer-khepru-ra had even looked, let alone seen, Hani had his doubts.

  He found himself in a back street—narrow, crooked, and shadowed by the buildings to either side so that it should have been cooler but instead had all the intense held-in heat of an oven. Hani badly wanted a drink of water. He started walking in the direction of the River. He quickly realized that his way was cut off by the parade route, and he grumbled to himself. He would have to wait until all the participants passed.

  Hani was nearly blinded by the glare of sun at the end of the alley, past which columns of soldiers were marching. No spectators had clustered here. He almost didn’t see the figure squatting against the wall just inside the darkness and nearly stumbled against him.

  “Oh, excuse me, my good man. Dear gods, Lord Yanakh-amu! Are you all right?” Hani knelt at the Fan Bearer’s side, his eyes wide in surprise.

  Yanakh-amu was slumped over, holding his face in his hands, his gold-handled ostrich plume and formal wig lying against the wall beside him and at his feet the evidence that he had vomited. At Hani’s words, he looked up, haggard, his skin ghastly pale. “No, I don’t feel well. The sun, I think.” He stared groggily at Hani. “Hani? Is that you? Oh, get me some water, I beg you...”

  “Right away, my lord.” Hani, who didn’t know the new capital at all, stared around, looking for a public well or some animal trough, but saw nothing. No one answered any doors; no doubt everybody was watching the spectacle of the jubilee. Finally, he pushed his way through an unlocked gate and found a well. He clattered down the stairs, splashed his own face in the water, and took a deep swig from the pot that sat on a step. Refilling it with cool liquid, he hustled back to where Lord Yanakh-amu was sitting against the wall, his legs now stretched out in front of him.

  Yanakh-amu looked up with a sickly version of his habitual smile on his lips. “Thank you...”

  Hani passed him the pot, and the Fan Bearer poured the water over his head with a gasp of relief. It ran down across the gold of honor at his neck and wet the fine linen of his shirt. He lifted the pot to his lips with shaking hands and drank greedily while Hani watched in concern. There must be many people overcome by heat today. Anger welled up in him. Somewhere, Mery-ra was standing in the sun, and so were older men such as Mane and the odious Yapakh-addi, and the king’s own small children with their shaven heads. All were subjected to the dangerous kiss of the Aten in full summer for a jubilee celebrated twenty-six years too early.

  “Are you feeling a little better, my lord?” He squatted at Yanakh-amu’s side.

  The Fan Bearer nodded wanly. Color was coming back into his face, but it was an abnormal scalded crimson. Hani picked up his superior’s plume and fanned him with it. Yanakh-amu tried to laugh, but he didn’t seem to be up to it. Hani was struck by how frail looking the little man was, with his short, curly hair plastered to his skull and his meager chest heaving visibly through the wet shirt. For all his wealth and influence, he had the look of someone whose health was probably not good even under the best of conditions.

  Hani was pierced through with pity. “Do you have servants here somewhere, my lord? A litter? Shall I call someone?”

  “Servants are waiting near the palace. I have a boat,” the Fan Bearer said faintly.

  “Let me get them for you so you don’t have to walk.” Hani looked up and saw in the intersection that the procession had passed. People were filtering back into the street, picking up flakes of gold and melting sweets, laughing and talking. He hauled himself to his feet and made off quickly in the direction of the River. The heat was crushing under a sky as hard and pitiless as bronze.

  Except for the crews that watched over the personal boats of the grandees lined up along the shore, the riverbanks were surprisingly vacant. Most of the court lived in Akhet-aten now, and those who didn’t were probably staying for the whole period of the festival, which would go on for months. In addition to the religious ceremonies, there was to be some sort of homage paid by foreign ambassadors—no end of spectacle.

  He called out to the boatmen waiting around, who directed him to Lord Yanakh-amu’s impressive vessel lying at anchor not far from the Dazzling Sun Disk. Hani spoke to the guard on duty, and in a few moments, the porters came trotting down the gangplank with the Fan Bearer’s litter. Another pair of servants followed anxiously. Hani led the little procession back to where their master slumped limply in the baking shade, his head tipped back against the wall and his eyes closed.

  The servants busied themselves with Yanakh-amu, offered him more water, bathed his face and wrists, and helped him into the litter. Someone picked up the royal fan—a priceless piece of workmanship, no doubt. Hani watched until he was sure his superior was settled, then he said, “My lord, you’re in good hands now. I wish you a safe trip home and a speedy recovery.”

  “Do you need a ride back to Waset, my friend? You’re more than welcome to come with me.” Yanakh-amu said, leaning weakly against the back of his litter seat. His smile had regained some of its warmth, but his drained face seemed to have aged a good ten years, baked hollow.<
br />
  Hani considered the offer. Could he be trying to lure me into a trap? But Yanakh-amu seemed too genuinely sick to be scheming at anything. Besides, I need a few answers if he might be willing to talk. He has no reason to think I know he tried to kill me—and I’m not even sure it was, in fact, him.

  “If someone could take a message to my secretary,” Hani said, “I would gladly accept, my lord. He’s a dwarf—easy enough to find.”

  “Of course. Hery, get us a piece of pottery and a pen.”

  When the man had returned with the required writing implements, Hani scribbled a note to Maya to tell him and Mery-ra where he had gone, instructing them to return to Waset whenever they wanted, without him. Hery set off on his mission, and Hani, his heart pounding a little at what might be an act of folly, followed the Fan Bearer’s litter up the plank to the deck of his boat.

  It was a luxurious vessel with painted sides and, on the deck, a shady tent made of exotic fabric in many colors. The servants unfolded a camp bed and helped their master settle himself on the edge, while urging Hani to take a seat in the carved chair. Yanakh-amu popped out his earspools, removed his bracelets, and fumbled at the ties of his shebyu necklaces with unsteady hands.

  Hani helped him untie them and handed them off to the servant. “I’ve never held one before. They’re heavy.”

  “And hot. Be careful what you ask for.” Yanakh-amu’s smile was back, but his eyes looked sunken and boiled. He lowered himself to the bed with a sigh, and the servant took off his master’s sandals. The fellow left a pitcher of water, a cup, and a cloth. When the attendants had melted away, Yanakh-amu, massaging his temples, said quietly, “Thank you, Hani. What a gift from the gods that you happened by.”

  “Indeed, my lord. It’s too hot for people to be marching around in the sun. The breath of Lady Sekhmet can kill. I just hope my own father is all right.”

  “I do too.” Silence fell between the two men. The boat pulled away from the land and began to glide languorously upstream, motion bringing with it a merciful breeze. After a moment, the Fan Bearer said apologetically, “I’m afraid I’m not very strong.”

  “I doubt you were the only one overcome, my lord.”

  Hani sat in silence for a while, trying to put the Yanakh-amu he saw before him—the frail, grateful, bravely cheerful man— together with the person who had ordered Abdi-ashirta’s bodyguards to kill him. It was too hard. He wondered if he dared confront the commissioner with the crime. He longed to ask him why he’d done such a thing. Yanakh-amu was in his debt at the moment, so maybe he would answer honestly. On the other hand, it would be easy enough to have me pitched overboard.

  “Help yourself to water, Hani. You can use that cup.”

  The gesture of kindness decided him. Yanakh-amu was a man with whom one could be honest. Hani said in a quiet voice that none of the servants could overhear, “My lord, why did you order his guards to kill Abdi-ashirta?”

  At first, the commissioner said nothing, his eyes drifting off across the River. His expressionless face gave no clue as to whether he had even heard. Finally, he said, “Who told you that?”

  “The assassins themselves.”

  Another silence. Yanakh-amu continued rubbing his temples. Then he dropped his hands and sighed, still staring out over the water. “He was my father. I hated him—a slave who had dared to have an affair with my mother, an Egyptian of the highest nobility. My supposed father, whom I love, would have been hurt beyond measure if he’d ever found out that a piece of chattel had cuckolded him. And what would have become of me, Hani? Our king is a great believer in family values. Would he have liked to know that his princely Fan Bearer was the bastard of a slave?”

  Hani stared at Yanakh-amu’s profile in disbelief. But what of the resemblance to Yapakh-addi I was so sure of? Is it just the look of a man of Kharu I’m seeing? “How many fathers do you have?” he cried in confusion.

  Yanakh-amu laughed weakly and looked up at Hani from the corner of his eye. His mouth was smiling, but he looked profoundly sad. “I lied to you, didn’t I?”

  You did indeed. And I fell for it like the greenest child. My gut was completely wrong. “You’re certainly a convincing liar, my lord,” he said.

  “That’s because most of my lie was true. All the emotions were real. I just changed the names.”

  Hani, still stunned, struggled to reconstruct this new scenario. “But how did Abdi-ashirta even meet an Egyptian woman when he was practically a prisoner in Rib-addi’s apartment?” he stammered.

  “Because my mother was Rib-addi’s mistress,” Yanakh-amu said. Despite the weakness of his voice, there was a frightening tremor of bitterness in it.

  Hani could imagine it—Rib-addi locking the slave up in his apartment where his adulterous lady friend also hid. Never suspecting. Did Abdi-ashirta take advantage of her, or was it consensual? No doubt he was a fine-looking youth.

  “Quite a whore, wasn’t she? Gods forbid my father ever find out. Rib-addi was mad enough at the time, I imagine. No doubt Abdi-ashirta’s protection became imprisonment pretty quickly.” Yanakh-amu lowered his eyes, an unreadable expression on his lined, youthful features that might have been shame—but whether it was shame for what he’d done or shame for who he was, Hani couldn’t have said. “I’m afraid I’ve made Rib-addi pay over the years for my mother’s dishonor. How many times has he asked for troops and none were sent?” Yanakh-amu gave a bark of laughter splintered with hatred around the edges. His voice broke, trembling with rage. “But there was nothing I could do to either of them that was bad enough to punish them for the humiliation they inflicted on my family. The unimaginable humiliation.”

  Hani sat staring across the River, unseeing. What an ugly, complicated story. The court must have been a seething snake pit. “Then what was Yapakh-addi paying you for?” Hani remembered Lord Ptah-mes saying that the little commissioner had a relationship with the older man, and he’d assumed they were both speaking of the same one. Now he was completely confused.

  “To keep me quiet, just as I told you. Only... he wasn’t my father. He was my lover.”

  Hani was glad the other man wasn’t looking at his face, because he knew his jaw must have dropped to a comic extreme. He felt as if he had just slipped on a loose rug and was beginning to fall backward. He could think of nothing to say. His thoughts lay floundering.

  “I mean, long ago. When I was a child. Lover... is that the word? What will does a boy have against a grown man—a man with prestige, the king’s friend? I was terrified of him.” Yanakh-amu’s face grew longer and longer, his mouth turning down and starting to quiver.

  Hani was transfixed with pain for the man—his superior—reduced to such a humiliating admission. It was only too easy to see in the middle-aged Yanakh-amu before him the adorable little boy he must once have been. Under the expensive clothes, the gold of honor, the fashionable wig, the competence, and the power was a frightened, vulnerable child. He wondered if Yanakh-amu had ever told anyone this part of his life.

  “I’m so... I’m so very sorry,” Hani murmured, but there was a cold edge of anger under his sorrow. “That man is a monster. He’s ruined too many lives.” Two generations in a row, it occurred to him. Abdi-ashirta and his son.

  “Oh, such things are not so uncommon in Kharu,” Yanakh-amu said in an attempt to defend Yapakh-addi that left Hani nonplussed.

  Hani didn’t know what to make of such misplaced loyalty, but he knew that two men taking pleasure together was very different from a man preying on a helpless boy. He said nothing, just laid a compassionate hand on Yanakh-amu’s shoulder.

  “It was partly my fault. You don’t know me well, Hani, but I’ll do almost anything to please.” Hani cringed at the intimacy of this admission. He felt he must stop Yanakh-amu from saying any more, but clearly, the man needed to talk.

  “Yapakh-addi knows as well as I do how disgusted such a thing would make Nefer-khepru-ra. He was afraid I’d say something and bring disgrace upon him. A
nd I threatened to do it, believe me, even at the risk of my own reputation.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t just kill you, my lord. That would silence you for sure.”

  A slight smile curled the ends of the commissioner’s mouth. “But I’d written everything down, with instructions to give it to the king to read when I died. Yapakh-addi couldn’t take that chance, could he? He hoped that, being nearly thirty years younger than he, I’d outlive him.”

  Hani pondered the commissioner’s foresight. At last, he asked, “Why didn’t you kill him, then?”

  Yanakh-amu stared out over the water with a strangely innocent look on his flushed face. “I want him to suffer. I want him to be ruined, to lose everything. Then he can die.”

  After a moment, Hani asked quietly, “Was it you who tried to kill my secretary and me?”

  Yanakh-amu turned his sunken, earnest eyes on Hani. “Never, Hani. I’m not a murderer. I was only avenging my family’s honor. You’ve never done anything to me. Why would I harm you?”

  “I don’t know,” Hani said. “But somebody wanted to. I assumed you were trying to cover your tracks in Abdi-ashirta’s murder. Why else would those same two men in particular come after us?”

  “I didn’t need to cover my tracks. The king was happy to have Abdi-ashirta removed and relieved that I was eager to take his disposal upon myself. Why, I even had the assassins use the king’s gift knife so it would be clear to you, or anyone, that he’d countenanced it. It turned out to be a mistake in terms of foreign policy, I grant you. You see how I was blinded by my own need for revenge. I gave the king bad advice.” Yanakh-amu hung his head then looked up again, a rueful smile twitching on his lips, his sunken eyes infinitely sad. “By the Hidden One, Hani, I’ve tried to be a good person. To live according to ma’at. To serve Kemet and our ruler. But I was so blinded. I’ve done so many things badly. May the gods forgive me.” His voice trembled.