by Mike Ashley
“When they found Udimu’s body the next morning, that razor slash was as complete a mystery to me as it was to Father. He must have been sick with shock when he saw that someone else might have discovered his wickedness – but I gather that he and Miut decided that it was the random work of Huni, who had stolen the razor. They were probably right in this. I swear to you, I left my bandage as a neat pad – not rammed right down Udimu’s throat. The ape must have done that. But for a long time afterwards I lived with the belief that Udimu could still have been alive and that had I acted responsibly I might have saved him, instead of leaving him to become a victim as Huni’s plaything. That is why, at the time and to my eternal shame, I said nothing to anyone, not even to Prince Djoser and why – ” and with this Imhotep’s shoulders stiffened, facing up to his guilt “ – why, for a while, I let Peseshet appear to take the blame.”
“But surely the ape would have been covered in blood?” Iry interjected. “Was there not blood everywhere?”
“No, Iry, there was scarcely any blood at all, not even on the bandage peeping from the wound and this puzzled everyone greatly at the time. Later, of course, I understood.” Venerable Imhotep held his former pupil deep in his gaze. “Now tell me, Doctor Iry, why would that be?”
In Iry’s mind the crimson became white, fine white linen, reverently placed. “No blood flowing, even through a gaping neck wound with the poor child upside down – why, he must have been dead long before the wound was made!”
“But of course,” Imhotep sighed. “We can see that now – I did not know then.” Again he looked deep into Iry’s eyes. “It does not absolve me. Maybe the gods decided that it was only right that such a great magician as Udimu should know a triple death. Father and Miut never appeared to suspect anything of me.”
Iry listened aghast – great Imhotep complicit in his small and brilliant brother’s death and silently allowing his sister’s accusation! However, he was on Pharaoh’s business, whether he liked it or not – he licked his lips and continued. “So what was it that you had heard that night which neither you, nor the dead, have ever revealed until now? What was so terrible?”
“It was something personally terrible for me, worse for my beloved sisters. I should have understood the meaning of what was told me by Udimu, when he sat here and described his dream of judgment, but neither he nor I understood that at the time. He thought that he saw our poor sister Intakes writhing under the gate of the judgement hall, and she fled in tears. But the person he had seen was the Princess Redyzet, our dearest mother, whom Intakes very closely resembled, and who was dead before he came into the world. She, it seems, had been as bad as, if not worse than, my father.
“My parents owed their rise to riches and success to judicious poisonings. I am convinced that their chief clients must have been my mother’s half-brother, the sinister Prince Senakhte, and his wife Heterphernebti. With Mother’s death, Father lost his chief technician.
“Later, when some particularly challenging commission arose, my stepmother had revealed that her maidservant Miut had poisoning skills as yet unknown in Egypt. Father would have understood the implication of what that meant. This must have been when he stopped sleeping with Heterphernebti. But he still made use of Miut. I think he was even sleeping with Miut, fascinated by her – another peasant made good.
“But ironically, what I and my brother (for that he will always be for me) overheard had been plans to murder the great Pharaoh Senakhte himself, for a suitable fee. However popular his regime, and exalted his godhead, he remained a person who made enemies.
“That was my terrible dilemma. Who should I tell and how? I knew that Peseshet was innocent, but I wasn’t entirely sure that I was myself. I wanted to save her, but I had not yet thought out how I could. As it was, as always, it was she and Prince Djoser who saved us all.
“I do not know who planned Senakhte’s death – if there is no information about this in the records of the Great Wife Nemathaap’s inquisitors, that could be interesting in itself. What I do know is that I preserved the good name of my mother, the incomparable Princess Redyzet, and saved my poor sisters from even more pain.
“But there it is; she whom I had thought was most good, most beautiful, turned out to be only an illusion. That is how one becomes a man. But I avenged my loss – and all my life I have tried to repay what I gained. That is all one can do. So let them weigh my heart. I, who have the reputation for understanding everything, have learned that I understand nothing at all. But thank his majesty, Iry – for his kindness of thinking of me at so auspicious a time.”
“And so Udimu’s triple death was coincidence?” gasped Iry. “His majesty had notions of mighty magic at work. He wanted Udimu’s story set in stone for him to find when he came again.”
“And he will let me fashion it? Who is to doubt Great Huni’s wisdom?” Lord Imhotep’s smile was eager and sincere. “It was not coincidence – who but the god of wisdom takes the form of an ape?”
SERPENT AT THE FEAST
Claire Griffen
We move on a hundred years to the time of the great pyramid builders and the reign of king Khafre (called Chephren by the Greeks). His name is associated with the second pyramid at Giza, only slightly smaller than that of his father, Khufu (or Cheops). Khafre’s image is also said to have been the original face of the Sphinx.
Claire Griffen is an Australian who has been both an actress and a dramatist. She has written several mystery and fantasy stories.
On a barge made of cedar from Byblos, Baki, Chief Physician to Pharaoh, lay under a canopy on a couch with jackal-headed armrests and watched the river slide past to the deep sweep of the oars. His destination was the summer palace of Metjen-hotep, Chief Architect to Pharaoh and designer of his tomb at Giza. Metjen’s ka had stretched out the hand of generosity to his friends, fellow imakhu, those permitted to kiss the feet of Pharaoh and not merely the dust before him.
Baki had been glad to escape Pharaoh’s city of Memphis. On certain days a humid wind blew from Giza the stench of the Mortuary Temple and the latrines of the countless builders, craftsmen, overseers and labourers.
Yet he wished Metjen’s summer palace was in the Ta-meh, the Ostrich feather-nome for instance, where a fork of the Nile flowed into the sea and cool breezes wafted across the marshlands.
This was a long journey he was undertaking, one made by Pharaoh only every second year when he inspected his kingdoms and the reports of his nomarchs. Baki would have to spend some nights moored to the riverbank, listening to the croaking of the Nile frogs.
To Ken-hotep, Metjen’s adopted son, the palace was ideally situated across the river from the city of Abydos, where he could indulge his carnal urges in the houses of pleasure, and between the Nile where he could hunt hippopotami and wildfowl. Beyond was the desert where he hunted lion and leopard and sought the legendary monsters of sag and sphinx. And down river was Aswan where Metjen could check on progress at the granite quarries, although this was a somewhat perilous foray since it brought him close to the warlike Nubians, who harried the quarry workers.
To one who rarely left Memphis, the river held a fascinating vista. A crocodile sacred to Sepket glided past, its snout barely above water. Storks, nesting along the bank, preened their new-sprung feathers ready for flight. Fowlers knotted webs and spread them for the unwary water-fowl, fishermen in frail boats speared the water in hope of prey, launderers washed garments in the same water where oxen drank and children played among the reeds.
In the fields it was the Time of Shemu – harvest, and the mertu, the lowliest in rank, were harvesting the barley and emmer to be threshed by oxen and carried by donkeys to the Granary House. Baki reflected what a hot summer it had been. Like all who dwelt in the Land of Kem, he was anxious about the Time of Ahket when the Nile would flood its banks and deposit on the fields a fertile black silt. In the time of Pharaoh Djoser, the Land of Kem had experienced seven years of drought and famine. The Two Kingdoms relied on the annual
flooding of the Nile for its prosperity.
When the barge rowed into the Serpent-nome, the Red Land where the desert stretched to the Red Sea, Baki grew tired of the unchanging scene and played Hounds and Jackals with his sandal-bearer Paser. He listened to the songs of his harper, who beseeched him to follow his heart and forget the past, an exhortation the physician viewed somewhat cynically.
When the pillars of Metjen’s palace appeared he was glad to alight and stretch his legs. Downriver a skirmish was taking place, a group of youths trying to snare a hippopotamus with ropes. The animal bellowed its fury as one more daring or more foolhardy than the rest climbed upon its back. Baki recognized him as Ken-hotep, the Chief Architect’s son, his face alive with the joy of the struggle, his half-naked body gleaming with oil and sweat.
As he walked barefoot up the slope, with his sandal-bearer following, Baki glimpsed a woman borne in a gilded chair watching Ken-hotep. The physician stepped behind a palm tree to observe her. It was Iras, the wife of Metjen-hotep, and she was watching the primitive struggle with shining eyes and moist lips.
Another man stood on the bank above her, also observing her. When he saw Baki he approached him and stretched out his uplifted palm in deference. “Lord Baki, Chief Physician to Pharaoh, we all know your fame.”
Baki could not have said why he disliked this young man’s greeting. Was he embarrassed at being caught spying on his friend’s wife or was the youth too subservient? He pretended not to remember his name.
“Horiheb, Chief Scribe to Lord Metjen-hotep, Chief Architect to Pharaoh, High Priest of Ptah.” The youth flushed slightly, recognizing the insult. “My lord Metjen awaits your coming in his pleasure garden.”
The small garden was shaded by trees of olive, sycamore, fig and date palms, adorned with lily, iris and acanthus and cooled by pools of ornamental fish and water-lilies. Metjen lay on a couch under a fringed canopy, but rose as he entered. With him were two servants, one with a fly-whisk, the other with a fan of ostrich feathers. He greeted Baki enthusiastically.
“Baki, Physician to Pharaoh. May you live and flourish forever! How do you stay so lean? Your ribs stick out like bleached bones on the Sinai Desert, while I resemble nothing so much as the hippopotamus Ken-hotep is out hunting.”
“And has snared. I saw him just now.” Baki returned the greeting. “It is our natures to be what we are, fat or thin, ugly or beautiful. Speaking of beauty, how is the Lady Iras, your wife?” He refrained from mentioning the glimpse he had had of her.
Metjen sighed. “Ah, if only Ken-hotep was the son of my loins, but it has never been granted me from my wives or concubines to have a child. When I adopted Ken-hotep, I chose him for his beauty and his spirit. I should have chosen a plainer, more studious youth. His wildness flourishes rather than declines with the coming of manhood. He is bored with the study of architecture, he grows surly if he has to accompany me to the site of Pharaoh’s tomb. He lives only to hunt in his papyrus boat on the river or to cast his spear in the desert at lions and leopards, or feast and get drunk and lie with the hand-maidens. He is yet to take a wife.”
“He has the spirit of a child even if he has the form of a man. Be patient.”
“I will heed your advice, you who saved the sight of my left eye, with the concoction you poured in my ear and by making me sit in my chair night and day with charms of rotten fish and herbs tied to my person.” Metjen-hotep pretended to grumble.
From the experience of long years, Baki believed it was the prolonged sitting that had drained the blindness from Metjen’s eye. But he had known that the architect would not be satisfied without medicine, so he had ground together a mixture of honey, red ochre and pig’s eye and twice chanted a spell while he poured it in Metjen’s ear. In his gratitude, the architect had brought Baki to the attention of Pharaoh and his present exalted state.
“If you continue to visit the quarry, your god Ptah may decide to teach you a lesson and not even my skill can save your sight.”
“Yes, I’m aware the granite grit blinds most of the workers.”
“Small wonder they have to be conscripted. Between the grit and sand, the blistering sun, the whips of the overseers and the Nubians over the border it’s a wretched existence.” Baki halted abruptly. He had often wondered where Metjen had found his young wife. There was a touch of the Nubian in her features and her colouring, nothing definitive, almost an illusion.
The architect shrugged off the warning. “As for the Lady Iras, her beauty blooms forever.” He looked at the sun. “Soon she will go to her chamber and spend hours enhancing that beauty.”
Baki could imagine that preparation, without closing his eyes. Iras, dusky-skinned, gazelle-eyed, narrow-waisted, narrow-loined, bathing in a pool where the blue lotus floated after purifying her body with senna and fruit, lying on a stone slab while her handmaidens shaved her skin with copper razors and anointed her with perfumed oils. Her robe would be sprinkled with myrrh and frankincense, her hair braided and coiled, her eyelids coloured with blue from copper sulphate, and encircled with kohl of crushed lead, her lips reddened with ochre, her nails and the soles of her feet painted with henna. Her robe would be white linen tied under one breast and swathed in folds to make her figure both angular and seductive, her jewellery copper and turquoise from the mines of Sinai. All this she would observe in her hand-held bronze mirror and smile.
Metjen studied Baki. “The journey from Memphis is a long one; no doubt you prepared your attire and cosmetics on board your barge. Allow my servants to freshen your clothes with perfumed water and your breath with honey pills. I too must prepare myself for my guests.”
Baki wore a loin-cloth and ceremonial skirt. Paser had dusted his feet and inserted them into papyrus sandals. His clean-shaven chest was bare beneath the elaborate jewelled collar bestowed on him by a grateful harbour master for bringing his wife through a difficult childbirth. His body, while not as cadaverous as had been described by Metjen, did not boast the leopard-like sinewy grace of Ken-hotep. It was his eyes, green as the Nile, that gave him a hungering, almost wistful look that some mistook for naiveté.
He followed Metjen to his chamber and submitted to the administrations of his servants with a rueful smile. It was the horror of all nobles that they might not smell fragrant during a feast, which was why their plates were strewn with flowers and their heads adorned with incense cones to gradually melt onto their shoulders during the long summer night.
Metjen sighed again as his servants settled his wig over a shaven head anointed with a preparation of gazelle dung. He surveyed his reflection in his mirror mournfully. The cosmetics that enhanced the beauty of others only served to make more obvious his slightly grotesque features. Under his priestly leopard-skin, he wore a garment that covered his body and upper arms, but did nothing to conceal his paunch. While Baki was being tended, his host picked up a flute and began to play.
The physician had heard him play many times before, for recreation or to soothe his troubled spirit. “Like a mertu in the fields who tootles to inspire his fellow workers and remind them that Osiris was once cut into pieces by his wicked brother Seth yet restored by Isis, his sister and wife,” Metjen said whimsically.
“You should take care, my friend, you’ll be luring all the serpents in the nome to your chamber,” warned Baki flippantly.
“Or be thought a hired musician at your own feast.” A dry voice came from the doorway.
A shadow crossed Metjen’s face. “I did not hear you announced, Horiheb.” He glanced mischievously at Baki. “My chief scribe disapproves of my playing.”
“It does not befit my lord Metjen-hotep’s high degree.” Horiheb extended his raised palm in praise of Pharaoh’s Architect. He was a slightly built youth with sallow skin and an unsmiling mouth.
Metjen snorted softly, but laid down his flute. Baki wondered at his tolerance of the young man’s criticism, until he remembered a rumour he’d heard that Horiheb was the architect’s son by some dancing girl. If
that were so why hadn’t he acknowledged him or even adopted him in place of Ken-hotep?
“Is there anything my lord requires of me before or during the feast?”
“Only your presence.”
Horiheb bowed and withdrew.
“Your flute has already lured one serpent to your chamber,” murmured Baki.
He was surprised that the architect would invite his chief scribe, a man of inferior rank, to his table; it only added dried grass to the fire of rumour.
Metjen ignored his jest. “Shall we go down to the feast hall? I should be on hand to greet the Chief Judge, Lord of the Treasury and the Granary, Ramose and his wife the Lady Meret. With so many duties, one wonders Ramose can tear himself away from Memphis.”
Baki glanced about the hall with its limestone pillars painted with symbols of lotus and papyrus and images of the god Ptah. Jars of wine, light and dark, waiting to be mixed, stood against the walls. Each guest was presented with a white lotus flower to hold in the hand and an incense cone by the Chief Anointer.
Iras, attended by two handmaidens, was already waiting. Curled about her arm was a small monkey. Her eyes flashed when she recognized her husband. “You are late, Metjen.”
“My beloved.” He touched his nose to each of her cheeks, then eyed the monkey dubiously. “My beloved, should you bring your pet to the feast? It may create a disturbance leaping from table to table.”
Iras shrugged her shoulders under the heavy turquoise and copper collar. “It was a gift from your son.”
From Ken-hotep emanated not only the perfume of oils, but an aura of challenge and high mettle. He wore a loin-cloth and lapped skirt of sheerest linen, arm rings and collar studded with lapis lazuli. In defiance of custom he did not shave his head, but wore it in small, tight, oiled braids. He was staring at Iras; although she disdained his glance, she smiled as if her mouth had a secret she had hidden from her eyes.