Murder at the God's Gate

by Lynda S. Robinson

  What was it in his makeup that made Meren refuse to placate tyranny? Even so young, he had resented unreasonable abuse. And as the years went by, resentment grew until one day—he couldn’t have been more than twelve—Meren realized that he didn’t respect his parents. He resented the deference the world demanded he pay to them, disbelieved his father’s glamorous reputation as a courtier, governor, and warrior. The gods had proved Meren right. The day came when Amosis’s temper pitted him against a heretic pharaoh and cost him his life.

  Useless to be proven right at such a cost. Meren glanced down the line of figures arrayed beside his parents until he came to one standing apart on a pedestal in the corner. Djet stood as he had in life, wide of shoulder, long, striding legs, that sad, brooding expression. After Djet had died it was Meren, not Djet’s parents, who had provided for his cousin’s afterlife. He’d commissioned the statue from the royal sculptor who had carved so many hauntingly beautiful images of the royal family at Horizon of Aten.

  “Greetings, Djet,” Meren whispered. “I’ve brought your favorite spice bread, and some good Delta wine. And I’ve come to ask you a favor. Could you intercede with the gods to make my relatives vanish? Your cursed mother and father are here, and Idut has invited your brother. You know what an ass Sennefer is, trying to mount every pretty serving woman on the manor, bragging, expecting me to play witness to his prowess.”

  Tearing off a piece of bread, Meren took a bite and sighed. “Fortunately Uncle Thay, Uncle Bakenkhons, and their families couldn’t come. I’ve managed to avoid the others by taking the girls sailing two days in a row. But tonight there’s a feast. That’s Idut’s fault. You know how she is. She ignores how everyone quarrels and just proceeds as if the family were loving and cooperative.”

  Taking a sip of wine from the glazed pottery cup, Meren sank to the floor and gazed up at Djet’s unmoving features.

  “I thought I had everything arranged. I would come home to quiet and peace. No great crowds, no danger, away from the spies at court and in the temples. Now the house is stuffed with prying relatives. I made Idut promise to get rid of them after tonight’s feast, but if she doesn’t, I’m going to have to send them away myself, which will get me into even more trouble. I might as well throw myself to the Devourer right now.”

  He stood and put the bread back on the altar in front of Djet’s image. “I miss you, Djet. Ebana hates me now, you know. Why did I have to lose the two of you? Both of you were more brother to me than Ra. Of all the family, he’s the only one who hasn’t promised to come. He left so he wouldn’t have to see me. And on top of everything, Great-Aunt Cherit says Grandmother Wa’bet has decided I should marry again.” He sighed. “I think I prefer court intrigue, royal machinations, and murder. I can’t think clearly when I’m surrounded by relatives.”

  Drawing closer to Djet, Meren lowered his voice so that it was barely audible.

  “If you have any answers, send them to me in a dream.” Shoulders slumped, Meren turned away. He couldn’t remember how many times he’d asked Djet to answer one imperative question—why he’d killed himself. In the last few years, he’d stopped asking. What did it matter? Djet was gone.

  “Stop brooding, you fool,” Meren said to himself. Kysen would be here soon, and he would have to be alert. Heading for the door, Meren stepped in a patch of light coming into the chapel from one of the windows set high in the walls. Bright sunlight. How long had he been in here?

  Leaving his offerings, he stepped outside into a world already bereft of what little coolness the night offered. Before him lay the entry gate, to his left, the sprawling white facade of the main house. The loggia was supported by papyriform columns, while the doorway was decorated with a frieze of red-and-green palmetto leaves. Inside lay the family quarters, the great central hall, and his office. To either side of the house, in courts separated by gated walls, lay giant granaries, cattle pens, and a well court. To the rear were the kitchen, storage rooms, servants’ quarters, and stables.

  Baht wasn’t so much a house as a small village. The smaller houses used by his uncles, cousins, and other relatives clustered beside the main one, just outside its walls. Already a train of donkeys bearing grain baskets was plodding through a side gate on its way to the granary court. As Meren walked back to the house, he saw the steward Kasa marching around the corner of the house on his way to the cattle pens. He was at the head of a line of assistants—his two sons, three cattle herders, and the unfortunate Nu.

  Seeing the youth reminded Meren of another problem. Bener had tried to persuade him that she spent so much time with Kasa because of her interest in writing. Meren wasn’t convinced. But he’d reserved judgment because he feared he’d been hasty. Perhaps he’d spent too much time steeped in intrigue and deception not to look for it where it didn’t exist. Bener wasn’t a deceitful girl. She wasn’t a fool. He shouldn’t assume she would succumb to Nu’s pretty face.

  He was pondering this dilemma on the front steps when the clatter of hooves signaled the approach of a chariot. Turning, he saw his cousin Sennefer clatter down the avenue toward him. Too fast.

  “Sennefer, pull up!”

  His cousin hauled on the reins. Meren backpedaled as a wall of horseflesh thundered down on him. A hoof pounded the stone step he’d been standing on. Meren cursed and jumped farther back. Grooms rushed down the avenue from their post beside the gate. Sennefer hopped to the ground and threw his reins at the men.

  “Ha! Meren, you jackal, I haven’t seen you in months and months.”

  Sennefer clapped him on the back. Meren suppressed another sigh and tried not to sound too morose. “Greetings, Sennefer.”

  “Give me beer, cousin. It’s a hot sail and a dusty drive from my place to yours.”

  “You can go back.”

  Laughing, Sennefer hit him on the back again. “And miss one of Idut’s feasts? Besides, the daughter of the mayor of Abydos has become importunate. Why do they always try to suffocate you, Meren? They demand that you spend time with them, suck you dry, and then want more.”

  “Someday you’re going to get a dagger in your heart for interfering with married women, Sennefer.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Sennefer said as they reached the reception hall. He broke off to smile at a serving maid who offered a bowl of water for his refreshment. “What do you expect? There are so many, and they want me, they beg. I can see it in their eyes.”

  Meren waved the serving maid away, and when she was gone, Sennefer continued.

  “You see. That one was ready to jump behind the nearest bush with me.”

  “She didn’t even look at you, Sennefer.”

  Shaking his head, Sennefer led the way into the central hall and collapsed on a couch with his beer. “You always were jealous.”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  He didn’t care what Sennefer thought. Sennefer had always been an impoverished version of his younger brother Djet. Sennefer bragged of his exploits; Djet kept quiet and drew into thrall countless admirers of both sexes. Sennefer boasted incessantly of his courage in battle when it was known he never participated in anything more dangerous than a skirmish with unarmed thieves; Djet had received the gold of bravery from pharaoh. Meren stopped listening when Sennefer began to lecture him on how to seduce his serving maid. Then his guest said something that caught his attention.

  “Did you say your wife wants a divorce?”

  Sennefer waved a hand. “She says she wants children. I can’t help it if she’s barren. And she thinks she’s going to get my estates in the Hare nome. What an imagination, eh?”

  “You can’t make her stay if she wants to leave.”

  “She won’t leave without the riches she wants, believe me. Anhai’s first love is wealth. I swear, Meren, she’s counted every piece of food, every pot, every grain of barley and wheat we ever produced since the day we married. If there was gain in it, she’d market the sands of the desert and the dung in the cattle pens.”

  “You sh
ouldn’t criticize your wife to me,” Meren said. He was going to kill Idut. He was trying to think of an excuse to leave before Sennefer could recall more misery to impart when Isis burst into the hall, obviously aggrieved.

  “Father, Remi says he’s going to jump into the garden pool.”

  Meren looked at her in surprise. His household did not come to him with the small misbehaviors of a three-year-old grandson. “Where is the nurse?”

  “Aunt Idut sent her to help in the kitchen because of the feast tonight, and I’m watching him.”

  Waving his daughter away, Meren said, “Then simply tell Remi not to jump in the pool.”

  “I have, but he said he’s going to do it anyway, to retrieve his toy chariot. You know he’ll do it, Father.”

  “By the gods, Isis, if he does, haul him out.”

  His charioteers would have recognized the irritation in his voice and decamped. Not his daughter. She smoothed the pleats of her spotless robe and tossed a thick lock of hair from her wig over her shoulder.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I would ruin my costume.”

  Meren narrowed his eyes and studied Isis. Why hadn’t he noticed that she was arrayed in elaborate dress? There were more pleats in her robe than feathers on a duck. Her eyes were painted with kohl and green paint, her arms and shoulders laden with electrum and carnelian. He should have noticed, but he thought of Isis as a babe. Yet dressed as she was, she looked older than Bener.

  Frowning, he glanced at Sennefer, who had been snickering during the exchange. He intercepted a predatory stare at his daughter. Jolted into awareness, he stood up so that his body blocked Sennefer’s view. His cousin smoothly drew his gaze back to Meren, only to falter at the image of death he found there.

  Lowering his voice so that only Sennefer could hear him, he said, “Attempt it, and I’ll cut your cock off and make you eat it.” Sennefer gave him a look of outraged innocence that was ruined by the way he swallowed hard as though nauseated. Turning to Isis, he said, “Come, I’ll attend to Remi. If you don’t intend to take care of him, don’t say you will. Find a maid to do it.”

  As he followed Isis, with Sennefer in tow, he passed servants busy cleaning the chambers and hall in preparation for the feast. The garden lay in a walled enclosure behind the house. Its pool was deeper than the reflection pools in front and large enough to support one or two pleasure craft of the type designed to hold several people. In contrast to the barren fields and desert, the garden at Baht was lush with carefully tended greenery.

  Generations of his family had cultivated willows, sycamores, pomegranates, and fig trees here. Incense trees graced painted earthenware pots. Arbors of grapevines provided secluded alcoves in which to rest. Flowers bordered the pool in thick beds. Meren scanned the court for the small figure of his grandson and found him bending precariously over the edge of the pool.

  Raising his voice, he called, “Remi, stay back.”

  Like Meren’s pet hounds and his thoroughbreds, Remi only heard what he wanted to hear. Meren’s second call was drowned by the splash Remi made as he dove into the water. Cursing, Meren raced across the garden, leaped over a flower bed, and dove in after the boy. The exertion caused the newly healed skin over his shoulder wound to pull. He’d jumped in an area thick with water lilies that could bind him underwater.

  Fish slithered against his body as he sliced through the water. Shadows from the water lilies obscured his vision. Searching the dappled haze, he spotted the gleam of bronze and a little hand reaching for it. Meren darted for the bottom, snatched Remi and the toy chariot, and thrust himself up and out of the water. Bursting into the open, he winced as the child’s weight stressed his shoulder. Remi sputtered, then laughed and grabbed the toy. Swimming one-handed, Meren reached the side of the pool and handed Remi to Isis.

  His hair was plastered to his forehead and hung down over his eyes. Gripping the edge of the pool, he hoisted himself out of the water and stood dripping beside Sennefer and Isis. All at once he noticed there were more people in the garden than he’d realized. Nebetta and Hepu huddled beside a grape arbor and gave him disapproving looks. No doubt they were scandalized at his departure from the demeanor of a great lord. Hepu probably had written a whole Instruction on the subject. He glared back at them, and they scurried out of the garden, muttering to themselves.

  Then he heard a soft laugh. Lungs heaving, blinking back the water that dripped from his hair to his eyes, he turned to behold two elegantly dressed women standing beside a flower bed. One was Sennefer’s wife, Anhai. The other was Bentanta, one of the few people alive who could make him blush. Anhai was chuckling at him. Thank the gods, Bentanta wasn’t smiling at all.

  “What are you doing, Meren?” Anhai asked. “I thought you were one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh, not a nurse.”

  “I was—”

  He stopped in midsentence as Anhai suddenly laughed, stepped toward him, and patted his cheek. She had a laugh like the chimes of a sistrum, one that evoked good humor in everyone. Meren forgot his embarrassment as she smiled at him.

  “You’re an amazement,” she said. “You’re one of the few who can call himself Friend of the King, you’re entrusted with pharaoh’s secrets, well-being, and defense, you’re quite pleasing to look at, and you love your family.”

  “I thank you, Anhai, but—”

  She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “While I am cursed with a man who not only can’t keep his place at court but also hasn’t the seed to give me even one child in the dozen years we’ve been married.”

  Meren felt his jaw come unhinged. He’d forgotten for a moment what Anhai was like—a ka filled with putrescence and surrounded by a fine layer of jeweled charm. He stared at her while she appeared to reflect upon her words with pleasure. Bentanta had the diplomacy to appear engrossed in an examination of the water lilies. He didn’t return Anhai’s smile, and stared as she left the garden with an air of having gained some great victory.

  Isis, who was holding Remi’s wet hand, also stared at Anhai’s retreating back. “I don’t like her. Come, Remi, you’re going back to your nurse before you get my gown wet.”

  Meren regained his composure and glanced at Sennefer. His cousin was one of those men who make up for a lack of stature by cultivating an abundance of muscle. At the moment every one of those visible was flushed, as was his face. He had a short, sharp nose that reddened almost to the color of wine. He muttered something Meren didn’t catch, then excused himself and rushed after his wife.

  Meren was left alone, wet and uncomfortable, with Bentanta. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave, and he was slow to recover his composure. Bentanta was a childhood friend grown into a woman of grace. Once he’d swum naked in the Nile with her, Djet, and Ebana, but their lives had taken them along different paths. She was a widow with children the age of his own. Once she’d served the great queen Tiye, mother of Tutankhamun, and Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten and daughter of Ay. She was as well versed in court intrigue and imperial diplomacy as he, but of late she’d retired from service to Tutankhamun’s queen, Ankhesenamun, to live quietly.

  But whether a private person or a royal attendant, Bentanta was a formidable woman. And the last woman in Egypt before whom he wished to appear in nothing but a clinging, wet kilt.

  He cleared his throat. “Blessings of Amun be upon you, lady. I didn’t know you were coming to the feast of rejoicing.”

  Bentanta left off her examination of the water lilies and gave him a stare that seemed to slice through his body and probe his ka.

  “There’s no need for foolish courtesy, Meren. I know you weren’t expecting me. Neither was your sister. I’m here because I was visiting Anhai, and she insisted that I come with her.”

  “You sound as if you don’t want to be here.”

  Her lashes fluttered, and she gave him a smile as false as the gilt on a coffin lid. “Of course I want to be here. I came to see you.”

  Wary, he gave her a skeptical look. “Oh?”
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  “I’ve much leisure time now that I’m no longer at court, time to reflect on the happy memories of childhood. This reflection has given me a desire to renew old friendships, like ours.” She turned her back on him and walked away. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, “You can stop looking like a trapped gazelle. Meren. I only mentioned friendship, not marriage. My view of husbands isn’t much more cheerful than Anhai’s.”

  She left him standing by the pool, dripping, his kilt clinging to his hips. He shoved damp hair from his forehead, looked down at himself, and cursed. This morning he hadn’t bothered to don anything other than a kilt. He might as well have been wearing a loincloth.

  Sputtering curses at his own lack of judgment, he stalked back into the house to his private apartments. Zar was already there, instructing bathing attendants. The man seemed to know what he would need before Meren did. A convenient and at the same time unsettling habit. Meren glared at the servant, went into the bathing chamber, and stepped into the limestone bathing stall. As a bathing attendant poured water over him, he wondered that his skin didn’t steam from the irritation that boiled within him.

  He consoled himself with the thought that he only had to survive the rest of this day and the evening’s feast. Then everyone would be gone, those slugs Nebetta and Hepu, Great-Aunt Cherit, the lecherous Sennefer, Anhai, Bentanta, all of them. Then he’d have peace, and the freedom to do what he’d promised pharaoh he would do. And if Idut didn’t get rid of his relatives, he was going to throw them out himself.

  Buy Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing Now!

  About the Author

  Lynda S. Robinson is an American writer of romance and mystery fiction. She is best known for her series of historical whodunnits set in ancient Egypt during the reign of Tutankhamun and featuring Lord Meren, “the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh.” Robinson lives in Texas with her husband and has a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin.