“Still, the porter Huni was readmitted to duty just in time to sleep through a fall to the death. I don’t like the coincidence. But when I questioned the chief of porters, he said he’d decided to give Huni another chance to serve. Since Ebana was there when I saw him, I can’t be sure if he was telling the truth.”
Meren sighed and took another sip of water. “Suspicions plague me as well, but we can hardly fall to beating the man with such little cause. He’s under the protection of the temple.”
“I hate inquiries among the great,” Kysen said as he rubbed his injured forearm. “And that cursed temple swarms with people, yet no one admits knowing anything.”
“You haven’t found the boy who brought the message to Unas, have you?”
Kysen shook his head. “And no one at the temple admits sending for him. Ipwet says she paid little attention when the boy spoke to Unas, so she can’t be sure what he really said.”
“Poor Unas,” Meren said. “He doesn’t seem to have been important to anyone.”
“Hark you,” Kysen said. “That porter will have some accident soon, or vanish to one of the temple estates on the Nubian border.”
Meren sat forward on his stool, rested his arms on his knees, and shook his head. “And if he does, we’ll reconsider our approach, but I’ve other matters to worry about as well.”
“Ah, your fortnight is up, and the king is going to demand that you take a stance on this matter of the campaign.”
“He’s going to be furious, and I don’t like disappointing him. His life is so full of cares and duties.”
“He lives the life of a god.”
Meren glanced up at Kysen’s disbelieving tone, but he didn’t argue. Kysen’s childhood before adoption had been as filled with pain as Tutankhamun’s. His father had sold him after having failed to beat him into a state of craven submission. It wasn’t Kysen’s fault that he sometimes couldn’t imagine the life of a king to be an ordeal.
Meren rose, wincing at the ache in muscles that had taken many jolts as his chariot raced across the desert floor.
“Time to return home. The calendar marked this as a day of fortune, so I’m hoping I’ll be spared another evening listening to Horemheb and Tanefer plan the provisioning of troops and the supplying of border forts. And if I’m blessed, the king won’t remember my promise to take sides for a few days.”
They left Tanefer and the other hunters gorging themselves on roast gazelle, and by the time the sun had reached its apex and begun its descent, they reached the house. In a short time Meren was standing in his bathing stall while a servant poured jar after jar of cool water over him. Reluctantly he signaled an end to the luxury and stretched out on the massage table nearby while his body servant rubbed oil into his skin.
While he was lying there, he perused several letters from his family. There was one from his sister, complaining that he neglected his daughters and should have visited them long ago. Was he neglectful?
Isis and Bener had to learn the skills of running a great estate and women’s accomplishments that he couldn’t teach them. Tefnut, his eldest, lived far away, in the delta with her husband. He missed them all, especially at night when he came home and caught himself listening for their bright laughter.
There was another letter, from his younger brother Nakht, whom he’d always called Ra. Meren unfolded the papyrus, skimmed the first few lines, and let it drop to the floor. More complaints about how Ra’s judgment was always questioned by their steward.
Meren lowered his head to his crossed arms. He felt pressure build up at his temples, as if his head were being squeezed in a grape press. It was as if the members of his family grasped his arms and pulled in different directions; he felt that he was about to split down the middle. He whispered a request to his servant, who began to rub his head.
He was drifting off to sleep when the rubbing at his temples stopped. His eyes flew open, and he tensed and raised his head to see Abu entering the chamber, carrying a flat limestone flake, an ostracon, used to take notes to conserve papyrus. Meren sat up and wrapped a bathing sheet around his hips. His body servant vanished into his bedchamber.
“Forgive me, lord, but a report has arrived from the city police. The house of Unas has been robbed, or rather, it has been rifled. They don’t think anything was taken.”
“Have they caught anyone?”
“No, lord. The wife was visiting her parents, and the neighbor, Nebera, reported the crime.”
Abu held out the ostracon. Meren took it and perused the report. Had it occurred at any other house, such a petty offense would have never been brought to his attention. He handed the report back to Abu as Kysen came in, freshly dressed, his hair damp.
“You’ve heard?” he asked. “I think Abu and I should visit the house tomorrow.”
“I hope you discover more than the city police did,” Meren said.
His thoughts racing, he stood and padded into his bedchamber. The others followed. He dropped his bathing sheet and allowed his body servant to wrap a clean kilt around him. Kysen tossed him a belt, and he waved his servant out of the room before wrapping it around his waist.
“I grow weary of sparring with intransigent priests,” he said.
Kysen looked up from his perusal of the theft report. “But you said we couldn’t provoke an open quarrel.”
“That was before this new stroke.” Meren rubbed the sun-disk brand on his wrist as he thought, then slipped a leather-and-bronze wrist band over it. “We must flush the birds from the marsh, Ky.”
“The shards?”
“Aye, the shards. If they’re significant, they may be just the goad we need to harry our prey into the open. But we can’t tell the priests about them too directly. I suggest you let slip the tale of your discovery when we attend this evening’s banquet at Prince Sahure’s.”
He smiled at Kysen. Many courtiers also served as priests in different temples. Word would spread to the priests of Amun like the blast of a desert storm.
“You think someone will come to rifle our house?” Kysen asked.
“No, but someone may make a mistake.”
Later that evening Meren made polite conversation with Lady Bentanta at the banquet, all the while watching Kysen laughingly scatter the story of his discovery among the guests. He stood beside a column, a full wine cup in his hand, cursing his ill luck. Bentanta had run him to ground before he could vanish into another room.
“You’re worried.”
His attention swerved to the woman in front of him. She was lithe and tall, like a papyrus reed, and she teased him. No other woman had the temerity. She’d been widowed several years, had youth and wealth and several sons and daughters to keep her company. What was worse, she was as clever and perceptive as ever old Queen Tiye had been. He’d known her at a distance since childhood, but he had been betrothed young, at fifteen, and she was already married at thirteen. Meren regarded her with wariness. What had she noticed, and how?
“You imagine it, lady.”
Bentanta made a disgusted sound, which irritated Meren even more.
“I’ve known you since you wore the sidelock of boyhood, Meren.”
She drifted closer, and he smelled myrrh.
“Your eyes,” she said in a whisper. “I’ve known you long enough to read your eyes when the rest of your face is a mask. Does the contention among pharaoh’s councillors weigh upon you?”
He backed up until he hit the column. “You should know, since it’s written in my eyes like the glyphs on a temple wall.”
“Why, Meren, my warrior, prince, and Friend of the King, you’re afraid of me.”
He opened his mouth, scowling, but Bentanta chuckled softly. She left him then, allowing her arm to brush his as she floated away in a mist of sheer linen and perfume. He glared after her, but soon rearranged his features into a more pleasant guise and slipped deeper into the shadows beyond the reach of the lamps scattered about Sahure’s great hall. Musicians struck up a tune, and a
line of dancers snaked its way into the room.
Meren grabbed a spice cake from a pile on a table and tore it in half, wishing it were Bentanta’s neck. The woman was too clever to be borne. She reminded him of Qenamun. Both had a way of discomfiting, of sliding between bones and tendons with words that should have been innocuous. Qenamun’s motives, however, were even more unfathomable than Bentanta’s.
He remembered his interview with the man the previous day. He’d sent for the priest because neither Kysen nor Abu had made progress in the matter of Unas’s death. In retelling the story of the discovery of the body, Qenamun had been urbane, forthcoming, and open. He’d given no cause for complaint of a lack of cooperation, and aroused in Meren a deep suspicion of his motives. No priest of rank in the temple of Amun was so agreeable without good reason.
Qenamun had been born to his position; his father and his grandfather had been priests in a line stretching back almost to the time of the Hyksos invasions. A distinguished family, moderately wealthy, full of men who managed to survive wars, famines, political havoc. Of them all, Qenamun appeared the most successful. His detractors seemed prey to misfortune, his friends wary of thwarting him. Ebana said Parenefer was considering advancing him to the position of Servant of the God. This was Ebana’s rank, and he wasn’t pleased.
Qenamun had stood during the whole interview, hands folded in front of him, looking ingenuous in his fragile elegance, his luminous, dark eyes suffused with tranquility.
“I regret not speaking to you sooner,” Meren said. “But matters of great weight interfered.”
“The Lord Meren is gracious to concern himself with so small a matter.”
“A death at the foot of the king’s statue is more than a small matter.”
Qenamun inclined his head. He resembled a gazelle bending down to take water.
“As you say, lord. But I have performed rites of purification all around the temple. Forgive me, but my experience has been that the evil aroused by sudden death can be expunged most effectively. There are several spells of great power for the purpose.”
“Your reputation comes before you,” Meren said. “I hear from many sources that your skill at magic and divination is a boon to the good god.”
Actually, Qenamun had as great a reputation for instilling fear of his power as for doing good. His rise to prominence at the temple had a great deal to do with his skill at ruining the reputations of those in his way.
“My gift comes from Amun,” Qenamun said, “and I have sought to use it in this matter that so concerns you, lord. For Amun is great of will, terrible and mighty of power. He guards his flock and casts into the lake of fire those that would oppose him.”
Qenamun cocked his head to the side. His gaze melted over Meren like warm honey. Under that stare, Meren felt as if the distance between them somehow closed and the air he breathed grew hot. His lungs seemed to burn.
The priest was still speaking to him in a low voice. “Beware ye of Amun, king of the gods. His wrath is terrible against his enemies.”
The closeness and heat alerted him to what Qenamun was doing. Anger spurted through his body like molten copper.
Tempted to find his whip and lash the priest for his effrontery, he lifted one brow and gave a soft chuckle. “As you say.”
Qenamun lowered his lashes, breaking the lock of their eyes. Meren turned away from the priest to summon his aide.
“I thank Parenefer for allowing you to attend me. It appears that the pure one’s death was indeed a simple accident.”
“The lord is wise.”
“You may go.”
Qenamun bowed, lifting his hands. “May Amun-Ra, greatest of heaven, lord of truth, father of the gods, bless thee, my lord. And should the need occur, I would beg you to allow me to offer my skills for your service.”
“I’ll remember your offer.”
A dancer twirled by him, tapping on a drum. The noise roused Meren from his reverie, and he looked down to find the spice cake still in his hand. The priest had disturbed him. Lector priests were scholars and magicians, but this one—this one was more. Seldom had Meren met one who could project power with his gaze in such a manner. The attempt to dominate had been subtle, wordless, and he detested the man for it.
Feeling guilt at abandoning Kysen didn’t stop Meren from skulking out of the hall and returning home. He’d had enough of pleasantries, drinking, and the attentions of the amused Bentanta. Besides, the king was expected, and he didn’t want to be questioned about his stance on the military campaign in the middle of a feast.
Near dawn the next morning he indulged himself by playing with Kysen’s son, Remi, before he was due at court for an audience. He would rather have gone with Kysen to Unas’s house or, better yet, avoided his duties and cavorted with the child. The boy spent his mornings playing in the courtyard by the reflection pool outside Meren’s bedchamber He was a top-heavy little devil of three, the scourge of his nurse and all the servants. At the moment he was hurling a leather ball into the pool despite Meren’s scolding.
Meren scooped the boy up before he could jump into the water Straightening, he settled Remi on one hip and found Abu coming toward him, leading a royal servant. The man stared past him at a point somewhere over Meren’s shoulder.
“Lord Meren is commanded to the palace.”
Meren sighed and stood Remi on his feet. “I’ll come at once.”
The man left, and Meren went to his chamber to finish dressing. As he donned elaborate court dress, Abu handed him a ceremonial dagger. Only he and Kysen knew that its edge was as sharp as a battle sword, or that the gold of its blade covered a functional bronze core.
“I suppose you’d better come too,” he said to Abu. “It seems my respite is at an end, and I must throw myself into a crocodile pit this morning.”
Chapter 8
Thebes was awake, and the sun beginning to set the top of the town wall aglow, as Kysen walked down an avenue that would take him to Unas’s house. Since the priest’s death, nothing had been uncovered that would lead them to the truth. What disturbed him most was the fact that they still hadn’t found a reason for someone to kill Unas, if he’d been murdered. But the behavior of the priests of Amun …
Kysen felt that Meren had relegated the incident to a place of lesser importance while he struggled with far more weighty problems, especially that of the king’s first military campaign. Of some concern were the bandit raids on small villages at the edge of the eastern desert half a day’s sail from Thebes.
Then there were those letters from the family. One of the advantages of being adopted was that he could look upon the relationships between the members of the family without becoming embroiled in their complexity. In the last few years, he’d come to realize how great was Meren’s burden as the oldest son.
Nakht, whom Meren called Ra, and one of Meren’s stewards were fighting again. Although Meren had been persuaded to allow his younger brother to govern Baht, the family’s great estate in the Thinite nome, Nakht’s laziness assured the steward of the bulk of the responsibility. It had taken Kysen less than a day in Nakht’s company to realize what governed his adopted uncle’s life. He resented Meren.
As far as Kysen could see, Nakht wanted all of the privileges and prestige of Meren’s position, but none of the responsibilities and hard work that came with it. And Meren indulged him because Nakht always managed to make his brother feel guilty for having inherited so much more than either him or their sister, as if he were responsible for having been born first.
Then there was poor Aunt Idut, who couldn’t understand why Meren didn’t advance her son to high office even though the boy was but fourteen and still in school. Idut cared more for pushing her son into great achievements before his time than for tending to her own affairs. Luckily Idut was busy training Kysen’s sisters in the country at Baht.
He for one didn’t envy either Bener or Isis. The complexities of beer brewing, the management of estate servants and farmers, the k
eeping of accounts, the mysteries of crops and weaving, all of these fell under their control.
It was from Idut that Kysen had learned of Meren’s parents. The father, Amosis, had been a child of the god Set, evil-tempered, brilliant, a tyrant, who demanded that Meren excel at every skill, from those of a scribe to those of a warrior. He had punished Meren’s slightest lapse, yet tolerated Nakht’s indolence.
Idut he ignored except when he terrorized her along with her mother, Neith. Neith, a great beauty from whom Meren had inherited sculpted cheekbones and lithe height, never tried to curb her husband’s rampaging temper. Instead she had devoted her life to forcing her children to accommodate it, cater to it, take the blame for it. As a result, Meren alternated between feeling responsible for the misbehavior and failings of his siblings and everyone else and furious resentment at his burdens.
With the embers of such old hurts and grudges perpetually smoldering in the family, Meren grew tense and distant with the arrival of letters from them. Once, Kysen had conceived of the idea of intercepting the letters and burning them, but he soon realized that if the letters weren’t answered, the family would descend upon them, quacking and whining.
No wonder Meren avoided his brother and sister. The only family member who tended her own concerns was Meren’s maternal grandmother, the ancient Wa’bet, whose guile and wisdom were as great as the green sea into which the Nile flowed. But Wa’bet lived to the north, near Memphis, and rarely traveled or tolerated visits from her family.
Kysen passed two laborers drawing a cart loaded with sun-dried mud bricks, a donkey laden with bags of wheat, and a group of boys on their way to school at one of the temples. Ahead of him, on the threshold of Unas’s house, stood Ipwet’s friend, Nebera. He’d sent word ahead for the metalworker to attend him, since he’d made the complaint to the police.
A purple bruise marred his left cheek, and his lower lip was swollen on the same side. Kysen glanced at the wounds, but said nothing. The report he’d read hadn’t mentioned that Nebera had struggled with the thief.
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