by T. L. Higley
Donkor clapped his hands together. “A gift?”
“No. I need your help.”
“Donkor is always glad to help.”
I pulled the mask from the pouch, and Donkor gasped. He wiggled his fingers, eager to take it from me.
“Exquisite! Who crafted it?”
I gritted my teeth. “That is what I’ve come to ask you.”
Donkor’s brows furrowed. “You don’t know? Where did you get it?”
“Not important. But I need to know who created it.”
Donkor turned the piece over and ran his fingers over the smooth gold. He drew it closer to his face and examined the markings on the underside, then frowned up at me. “Anubis?”
I looked again at the god’s symbol engraved on the back of the mask. “I don’t know what it means.”
“There is no other artist’s mark.”
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me something from the design.”
Donkor tapped his bottom lip with a fingertip. “I can think of several talented gold workers in the village. I suppose one of them could have done it, but I couldn’t be certain.”
“You haven’t heard talk of privately commissioned death masks?”
“Masks? There are more than one?”
The two other sculptors had laid aside their tools now and skulked closer to the conversation. I watched them from the corner of my eye.
“I cannot say more.”
Donkor winked. “A mystery, eh?”
One of the other sculptors took a step closer. “The queen’s death,” he said.
I snatched the mask from Donkor and whirled on the man, tension building in my neck. “What do you know about it?”
He retreated. “I know nothing! I only thought—”
“What?”
Both men reacquired their tools and became suddenly engrossed in their work.
I returned my attention to Donkor, who smiled his amusement. “It would seem that our little community knows some of the gossip, but not the gossip you seek.”
I replaced the mask in my pouch, steadying my hands. “Who are these gold workers you spoke of?”
Donkor bit his lip. “I know of only three who do work this fine.” He gave me their names, then smiled. “Now I must ask you a question. This sculpture we will create of you for your tomb,” he eyed me up and down, “do you want it to be realistic, or shall I make it a bit prettier?”
“What do you mean by that?”
Donkor arched an eyebrow. “Hmm. Nothing. Nothing at all.”
I frowned. “Just give me the usual likeness. None of your fanciness.”
“Yes, my lord.” Donkor gave a little salute. “You will be immortal, Grand Vizier Hemiunu, man of justice and mercy.”
I escaped the back room of the shop, limestone dust chalky on my tongue.
Justice and mercy. Donkor spoke of the hands of my sculpted likeness, which would be fashioned with the closed fist of justice and the open palm of mercy. But today I was interested only in justice.
I retrieved my staff and left. Outside the shop, a woman herded several small children past me. Behind me, I heard Donkor squeal, “My children! Come to see your father work!” Despite my bleak errand, I laughed.
It took only a few minutes to cross through several tight alleys and reach the wider street that housed the goldsmithing shops. I called into one of them and asked for the first artist Donkor had named.
A young woman, sweating over a furnace where she worked to refine a small pot of gold, looked up. “Down there.” She pointed vaguely east.
I continued down the street, asked a few more questions, until I stood in the shop of a burly goldsmith hammering a sheet flat. His thick fingers would have seemed to render him incapable of fine artwork.
“Badru?”
The man did not look up. “Who’s asking?”
“I was told you might be the man I seek.”
Badru looked up, recognized me, and straightened sharply before bowing his head. “How can I help you, my lord?”
I pulled out the mask. Badru took it in his hands and flipped it immediately to look for an artist’s mark. My hope flagged. He would not look for a mark if he were the artist.
“I am looking for the man who created it.”
“Why?”
I gazed around the shop slowly. “It’s fine work. I would like him to do something similar for me.”
Badru handed the mask back and retrieved his hammer. “I cannot help you.”
I moved to stand beside Badru. “Tell me what you know.”
Badru pounded his gold again. “It is best you look for someone else to do your work.”
“Badru. Please do not forget to whom you speak.”
Badru growled, a low angry sound, and tossed his hammer to the worktable. “I know who made your mask,” he said. “The eyes give it away. His special feature.”
“Who is he? Where can I find him?”
Badru folded his massive arms across his chest and stared down at me.
“He’s dead.”
TEN
Dead? When?”
Badru rubbed his fingertips along his gold piece, searching for imperfections. “The last new moon, I believe.”
“He was murdered?”
He looked up. “Why would you ask that?”
I replaced the mask in my pouch. “How did he die?”
“Fire. The refining furnace in his shop. His brother found him.”
“Where can I find this brother?”
Badru offered me the gold sheet. “His brother will not be able to make a piece like that. If you’re in need of a gold worker, I—”
I held up a hand. “Just the brother.”
“Could be anywhere.” Badru seemed to lose interest in me. “Paki. Ask around.”
I stared him down for a moment, considered his disrespect, then turned to the shop doorway. I had more important matters to attend. “Thank you for the information.”
Badru grunted.
The street had filled while I spoke to Badru. A large group swarmed toward me, heading somewhere together. I stepped aside, back against the shop opposite Badru’s, to let them pass. And then I realized they were headed for me.
“Grand Vizier!” the shouts came from several places in the group.
“Who sent the Great Wife to the west?”
“Was it one of us?”
“Why do you seek an artist?”
I pulled myself back against the wall and swung the pouch behind me. “I am looking for Paki, brother of a gold worker,” I said to anyone who would hear me.
“Is he the killer?” someone called.
“Is he the Scourge of Anubis?” another yelled.
I rubbed the back of my neck. Gossip blows across the plateau like sand.
I scanned the mob and spotted Donkor standing at the edge. The sculptor blinked several times, shrugged his narrow shoulders, and raised his palms with a smile that said he loved gossip as much as his coworkers.
The press of sweating bodies grew tighter, until their faces blurred. I took a deep breath and shoved through the crowd. The artist community tugged at me as I passed, still firing questions like tiny arrows that pricked my skin.
“Is it true she was wearing the death mask? Why does Anubis avenge himself upon the royal house? Will Pharaoh protect us?”
One hand reached out from the swarm behind me and dug bony fingers into my bare shoulder, just below my ear. I spun to avoid the touch and faced a dried-up old man. Most of his teeth had gone to the west without him, and those that remained were as blackened as those of an aged mummy. He pushed up close to my face and lisped out a few strange words.
“We knew it was her, even dressed as one of us.”
The angry hum continued to swirl around us, but my attention focused on this one old man. I stared down into the filmy eyes. “Whom did you know?”
The man gave me a rotted smile. “The Great Wife. Whenever she came.”
“You
saw her here, in the village?” My fingers clutched at the pouch I wore.
The old man’s attention wandered to the shouting crowd around us. I pinched his arm and he glared at me.
“Here. In the village. She came many times, dressed in peasant garb, as though no one would know her.” He shook his head in amusement. “A queen is a queen, no matter the dress.” He straightened his shoulders. “She carried herself different, you understand?”
“Why was she here?”
Another man twisted through the crowd to where we stood. “You are asking about my brother, the goldsmith?” Paki was younger than I, with a chest as broad as a grown ox.
I grunted. “Stay here,” I said to the old man.
“What do you know about his death?” I asked the brother, turning him away from the crowd.
“A fire. We were surprised. He was always careful. But it was nothing more.”
I leaned in to speak into only the brother’s ear, though I knew my words would be repeated throughout the village within the hour. “And did he speak of two death masks he had been privately commissioned to create?”
Paki rubbed his chin. “He often worked at night on things he did not let the family see. But I don’t know of any masks.”
I nodded my thanks, then turned to find the old man. Thankfully, he had not disappeared into the crowd. On the contrary, he stepped up to me eagerly, waiting his turn for fame.
“Why was she here?” I repeated. “Did she ever meet with an artist?”
The man made a few unsuccessful attempts to bite his lip, then wrinkled his nose. “Don’t think so. Never saw that.”
I gripped the man’s shoulder. “What did you see, man?”
His eyes wandered again, and I resisted the urge to slap him. But this time, his eyes focused on the edge of the crowd. “If you want to know why the queen came here to the village, you should ask the People of the One.”
“What people? What one?”
He raised a withered arm and pointed.
I followed the bony finger through the group of people, to where one woman stood apart, watching, like a goddess too sacred to join the ranks of men.
“Ask her,” he said.
Neferet?
I squinted at the man again, to be sure. The old man grinned and slipped away.
I jostled through the herd, clutching the pouch close to my body. The press of people followed me, a jumbled, disorderly horde that rubbed at my senses and tightened my shoulders. Finally I turned to face them.
“I have nothing for you,” I shouted. “No answers, no information. If I have need of you, or if there is any reason for you to be concerned, you will be sought out. Until then, go back to your business!” I glared for a few moments, until they began to disperse. Murmurs and sandals crunching over gravel filled the street and finally moved away.
I straightened my belt and turned to Sen’s daughter, Neferet. She wore a filmy dress of white today, the fabric thin enough to see through to the skirt underneath. She smiled.
“You knew the Great Wife?” I asked.
Neferet’s smile faded. “She was a lovely woman.”
“I don’t understand. The old man said—who are these People of the One?”
Neferet’s gaze left my face and focused on something over my shoulder. I exhaled my impatience and turned on the interruption. “Ahmose. What are you doing here?”
My brother’s face was devoid of its customary grin as he strode toward us. “I have been searching for you.”
“What is it?” My stomach clenched, sensing more devastating news.
“It is father. He does not have long. He asks for you.”
I searched out Neferet’s eyes, hesitated a moment, then joined my brother. “I will come.” To Neferet, I said, “I will return to see you later. Please do not speak of this to any other.”
She grabbed my fingers and squeezed. “I will say a prayer for your father.” Her slight smile seemed to flow right into me, and I found myself returning the pressure of her fingers.
“Thank you,” I said.
I hurried to join Ahmose, who was already moving down the street. He spoke without turning. “I am sorry to take you away from your business. Thinking of acquiring a concubine, are you?”
“When did Father’s condition change?”
Ahmose did not slow. “He has been declining for several weeks, which you could not know, of course, since you have not seen him since before akhet began.”
I trudged beside my older brother toward the mouth of the village, where donkeys or slaves would take us to the royal estate and my father’s quarters.
Here in Ahmose’s shadow I was not grand vizier. I was not the restorer of ma’at. I was only Hemi, a man who was losing everyone in the world who meant anything to him.
ELEVEN
Ahmose had brought two sedan chairs. He must have anticipated that his brother would be on foot. No doubt he thought my habit of walking most places to be beneath the title I bore. We each climbed into a chair, and the dozen slaves lifted us as one onto their shoulders.
“Father has changed much in the past few weeks,” Ahmose said, across the sandy path. “You will be surprised.”
I settled back into the cushion of the wooden chair. “Is he in pain?”
“Some. He bears it well. At times his mind wanders, and then he usually speaks of Mother. About seeing her again in the west.”
“I cannot imagine them both gone.” I ran a finger along the gilded edge of the chair. It was an expensive piece. Ahmose had done well, despite his constant innuendos about being cheated out of the position he expected to receive as eldest son.
My brother snorted in derision. “I cannot see that it will make any difference to you. You will go on with your important work, just as always. He is not so much a part of your life that you will miss him.”
I tapped my hand on my thigh, in time with the slaves’ measured steps toward the royal estate. Do you not know that everything I build, I build for him, Ahmose? Aloud, I said, “You have been an attentive son. I am glad Father has had you at his side.”
Ahmose looked away. “It matters not. You are the one he—”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
We moved forward with only the sound of the slaves’ feet, until Ahmose spoke again. “He speaks of you more than of anyone. It is always, ‘Have you seen the project today, Ahmose? Have they reached the tenth course yet? The twentieth?’ He follows your progress as if he were still grand vizier himself.”
“His work at Saqqara will outlive him to eternity. He was a great builder.”
“Yes. And it is Hemi who has taken the throne of his father.”
I sat upright. Ahmose had set his face to the road ahead. “You blame me, I know. But it was not my decision. And I have studied much and worked hard to be worthy of the role Egypt has given me.”
“Yes, given you. Despite the man that you are.”
I deflated back into the chair again. Not now, Ahmose. Not when I am facing yet another loss. My brother’s cruelty remained a mystery to me. To everyone else, Ahmose was a loving and pleasant man. Had his jealousy truly poisoned all brotherly feelings?
I leaned my head against the back of the chair and closed my eyes. The almond oil, rubbed into the poles to make them smooth on the shoulder of the slaves, wafted up to me and reminded me of the embalmer’s hall. I opened my eyes to break the connection, but the blue jewels inlaid in the gilded sedan chair winked up at me like the eyes of Merit’s golden death mask.
Everywhere, death. Always death.
It was beyond bearing. And yet I must bear it.
We reached the royal estate and were carried directly to Neferma’at’s home, a large building with steps outside running up to the rooftop garden. A slave waited a few steps inside, and he spoke to Ahmose in low tones, updating him on our father’s condition. He led us to our father’s chamber, which had been darkened to already resemble a tomb. While Ahmose poured a libation to the
figure of Thoth, god of wisdom and patron of architects and builders, I stepped around the square bathing pool set into the floor. In the center of the room, Neferma’at lay on his great bed, a shrunken shadow of the man that he was, with eyes and cheeks so deep set he seemed only a skull.
Despite Ahmose’s warning, I cried out.
Neferma’at opened his eyes and turned his head slightly. “Is this my Hemiunu?” he asked in his gravelly voice. “Has he come at last?”
“I am here, Father.” I rushed to the bedside, afraid each breath that lifted his bony chest might be the last. “I am here.”
I took my father’s thin hand in my own and knelt beside the bed. An alabaster half moon propped Neferma’at’s head. I touched the older man’s forehead with my hand. He still kept his head shaved, disdaining the prominent ridges of his skull.
“How goes the project, my son?”
I swallowed. “We are pushing forward, Father. And the quarries are breaking out stone as fast as we build.”
“Yes, you must keep after those quarry workers.” Neferma’at took several shallow breaths. “They will hold you back if you let them.”
“I will not let that happen, Father.”
Neferma’at squeezed my hand with a baby’s strength and nodded. “Good boy.” He drifted then, into a half-sleep.
I remained at his side but soon grew drowsy. Incense burned to cover the smell of the sickroom, and its pungency weighted my eyelids.
Neferma’at jerked awake some time later. “Ahmose? Where are you?”
My brother stepped from the shadows. “I will not leave you, Father. I am right here.”
“Call your brother, Ahmose. Bring Hemi to me.”
I could not bear to look at Ahmose. He stepped back again. I touched my father’s chest. “I am here, Father. I have come.”
“Both my sons.” Neferma’at nodded. “Yes, that is good. Come closer, my boys.”
Ahmose knelt beside me at our father’s bedside.
Neferma’at placed his hand on my head, then onto Ahmose’s. “You must love each other, my sons.”
I inhaled deeply but could not look at my brother.
“It has been too long,” my father continued, his voice low and weary. “Too long since that day. You two were once so close. Nothing has been the same since that day.” He grabbed at my arm. “Promise me, son.”