Murder in the Place of Anubis

by Lynda S. Robinson

  “No,” the king said. “It isn’t wise to beat priests.”

  Tutankhamun turned and slouched down in the ebony chair. “You’re going to hunt another murderer, and I will sit for hours in the throne room listening to the complaints of governors, bureaucrats, priests, and that cobra of a Hittite ambassador.”

  Meren bowed to his king. He took in the wistful expression and slumped shoulders. Once Kysen had been burdened as was the king, and it had taken Meren years to undo the damage wrought by his adopted son’s natural father. He would speak to Ay about allowing the king time to be a youth instead of a divine ruler.

  “I sent my son to the Place of Anubis before I attended Pharaoh. Shall I come to the sovereign with news of this abomination?”

  “Yes!” The king jumped from the chair. It went sliding across the floor. “Yes, tell me everything. At least I can trust you not to conceal the evil from me or dress up your affairs in order to gain favor. You must hurry. This matter of the embalming knife is likely to be the only interesting business of the day.”

  It was Meren who jumped when Pharaoh grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the doors. Tutankhamun flung open the door and gave Meren’s shoulder a push.

  “Hurry. I remember what you told me: One must study the place where evil has been done before the scent and markings of that evil vanish. Hurry.”

  Meren stepped out of the royal suite. The door banged shut, and he looked around at the astonished courtiers, who regarded him as if he were a red crocodile. Hiding the consternation that had gripped him since Pharaoh touched him, Meren ducked behind a column and set off for his chariot. News of that touch would be all over the court in an hour. By nightfall, word of the sign of favor would be on its way to Babylon, Tyre, Sidon, the courts of the Syrian princes, and the king of the Hittites.

  As he threaded his way through the crowds of nobles, civil servants, and palace dignitaries, Meren maintained what he liked to call his unseen mask. Having spent many years in a court where a smile at the wrong person or the lifting of a brow at the wrong time could mean death, concealing the true face of his ka, his soul, was as natural as wearing a kilt. Before the old Pharaoh killed his father, he’d been as open as a lotus blossom. The day Pharaoh’s guards took his father away, the bloom closed up into a tight knot and never reopened. Within the knot he concealed the scars of his father’s death, his own torture and degradation—and the suspected truth about Akhenaten’s death.

  Living with the scars was easier now. As with the scar from his branding, the surface injuries had long since healed. Only occasionally, as this morning, did he suffer from visitations from the past. Did the gods know, and send the memories to haunt him as a warning of coming evil? It was as if they cautioned him to be fair, to seek out Maat, the essential truth and harmony of life by which the world existed. But could he? Once he had confused the good of the country with his own need for vengeance and allowed a man to die.

  No, that wasn’t true. Others had decided that there had been enough madness in the Two Lands long before Meren suspected a movement to kill Akhenaten. If he had tried to stop them, they would have killed him too. Ay put no one above the good of Egypt.

  Meren shook his head in an attempt to clear it of conflicting principles. An old battle, this one. He sometimes imagined himself in the Hall of Judgment in the netherworld, standing before the eternal scales while the gods weighed his heart against the feather of truth. The scales would teeter back and forth. They would sway wildly until the pan that held his heart clattered to the floor. His heart would burst open and swarms of maggots spill out of it, and the gods would condemn him to be devoured by monsters.

  Meren, you have the wits of a porcupine. He deliberately turned his thoughts back to the court and the king.

  To survive he’d learned to wear unseen masks, facades constructed to suit his purpose of the moment. It was a skill taught him by his father and the vizier, and it was one he was attempting to pass on to the king. For a trusting, open sovereign courted destruction.

  Meren allowed himself a barely audible sigh. It wouldn’t be long before the king realized the consequences of that open display of favor. Meren already knew that in those short moments he had acquired many new enemies and false friends. One of the king’s ancestors had written something about the court. He’d advised his son not to trust a brother or know a friend, and when lying down to guard his heart himself. Meren had always remembered that advice, along with the caution that in Pharaoh’s court, even the king has no friends on the day of woe.

  Chapter 2

  It took less than an hour for Meren and several of the royal charioteers who were his assistants to drive to the Place of Anubis. During the trip down the southern road from the palace on the west bank, Meren packed away his doubts in the sealed casket of his ka. He’d indulged in the luxury of self-reproach too long. Pharaoh’s justice must be served, his subjects protected from evil, killers stalked and caught. And by doing so, Meren might assuage the yammering hyenas of his own conscience. The embalmers’ workshops were placed some distance from the palace, government, and mortuary complexes of western Thebes so that the fumes and waste produced by the mysteries wouldn’t disturb Pharaoh and his subjects. As he handed the reins of his horses to a groom, Meren wrinkled his nose. He saw that one of his men was making the sign against evil. Kysen was waiting for him in the embalming shed. As usual, his son was prowling about like a hunting hound. Ignoring the grand lector priest, Kysen bombarded an unfortunate bandager with questions. It was the same with each inquiry. Kysen would drop into conversation with the serf, the artisan, the laborer. Only reluctantly would he spar with a lord or a priest. Meren had tried to wean his son of this preference, but it was hard to wipe out the memories of being sold into slavery by a father, even if one did end up the adopted son of a Friend of the King.

  Meren received the greetings of the lector priest while perusing the scene. Teams of embalmers went about their chores with little sign that they feared the presence of a soul dispatched from its body in violence. The drying shed was a long tunnel filled by two rows of embalming tables reserved for the wealthier citizens, who could afford the more expensive process of preservation. Along the edge of the open, roofed structure lay tables laden with the tools of the embalmer’s craft— spoons, knives, probes, needles, and thread, all in boxes or on trays. An ornate table set apart from the others held a casket carved with hieroglyphs and the image of the jackal god Anubis. The lid of the casket was askew.

  Squatting near the casket, looking miserable and frightened, was a young laborer. Meren could scent fear as a hound scents a wounded gazelle. His curiosity was roused, but he knew better than to let it loose. Kysen was in charge, and his son had left the youth by himself for a reason.

  Having responded politely to the formal words of the lector priest’s greeting, Meren followed the man to the fourth embalming table on the left row. As he approached, Kysen dismissed the laborer he was questioning with a nod. Meren was proud of that nod. It was one of the first signs that the boy had accepted his new position in the world when Kysen first used the gesture of acknowledgment of a noble to a commoner.

  Meren and Kysen met at the natron table. Immediately and without words, they fell into their working habits. Like a skilled artisan and his best apprentice, they worked and thought in complementary directions. Kysen knew what tasks Meren would want done; Meren sensed when Kysen needed direction or advice. Standing side by side, they gazed down at the body nestled in the crystals.

  “They haven’t touched him since they found the knife,” Kysen said. “You’re here earlier than I expected.”

  “Pharaoh commanded me to hurry.”

  Kysen sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “The living god is wise.”

  “The living god is bored.” It was difficult not to smile at Kysen’s awe. “Don’t wheeze as though you had swallowed a whole pomegranate. Tell me what you know.”

  “This man is Hormin, scribe of records and
tithes in the office of the vizier.” Kysen nodded in the direction of the frightened laborer. “As they were digging him out, that water carrier recognized him.” He pointed to an engraved bronze bracelet on the wrist of the dead man. “Then the lector priest found his name and titles on that. There are also a signet ring and wig.”

  Kysen leaned over the natron table and touched the obsidian blade that protruded from Hormin’s neck. “This is a ritual embalming knife. It is used to make incisions when the bowels—”

  “I understand,” Meren said. “And this Hormin, is he known to the embalmers?”

  “No, only the water carrier admits to having seen him before. I’m going to talk to him after we get rid of the body and that pigeon-witted lector priest.”

  Kysen shoved away from the natron table and walked over to the side of the shed, and Meren followed. Kysen stopped beside the table containing the Anubis casket.

  “The knife was kept in here,” he said. He took a blade from the casket. Even in the shade of the embalming shed the facets of the black glass reflected light. Kysen pointed to the ground around the table.

  “Blood has soaked into the earth. You can see the stains beneath the footprints, and some of it splattered on the legs of the table. The evil one couldn’t remove all the markings in the darkness. I think Hormin was killed here and put on the nearest table that contained enough natron to cover him.”

  “Very well. Shall we dig Hormin out of his nest?”

  Meren stood at the head of the natron table while Kysen supervised the removal of the body. Hormin was lifted onto a carrying board, and two assistants began dusting crystals from the corpse. Kysen withdrew the knife to the accompaniment of a prayer by Raneb. Meren stopped the priest from carrying the blade away.

  “Lector, you may have the body after my physician sees it, but I will take the possessions and this blade.”

  “But it must be purified,” Raneb said.

  “After I have found the one who killed this man.”

  The priest bowed, and Meren turned back to the natron table. The two men were shoveling natron away from the darkened remains of Lady Shapu. Kysen jumped down from the table, and Meren shoved an arm in front of his son.

  “Don’t move,” Meren said. He bent down and picked up something from beside his son’s foot. He held it out in his palm.

  Raneb came over to them and looked at the small stone in Meren’s hand. “An ib amulet. We have hundreds of them. This one is carved from carnelian. Some are of lapis lazuli, and some are of gold. One of the bandagers must have dropped it.”

  Meren closed his hand over the amulet. Such talismans were vital to both living and dead, for they protected the wearer’s heart, the seat of emotions and intellect. This amulet wasn’t made to be suspended from a necklace. Perhaps Raneb was correct, and it was one that belonged in the Place of Anubis.

  Meren gave the amulet to Kysen. “Put it with the possessions of Hormin. Don’t worry, priest, it will be returned. Lighten your heart. After all, I’m giving the body back to you.”

  “That is of no comfort, my lord. We will have to say spells and prayers for weeks to rid the area of evil.”

  Four men lifted the carrying board and body. As they passed Meren lifted a hand to stop them. Meren sniffed. He bent over the corpse, lifted a fold of the man’s kilt, and sniffed again. Through the mingled smells of natron and body waste released at death he detected a faint, sweet odor—perfume. On the linen there were light yellow smears. Dropping the kilt, Meren touched the signet ring on Hormin’s right hand. It bore engraved hieroglyphs that spelled Hormin’s name. Meren straightened and waved the bearers on.

  “Kysen, see that they remove everything from the body. I’m going to the offices of the vizier, and then to the house of Hormin. I’ll see you after I’ve finished there.”

  Meren received his son’s respectful inclination of the head. Unspoken was the knowledge that each of them looked forward to their end-of-the-day talk, when they would go over each event, every conversation, winnowing through contrived and honest appearance in search of Maat—order and truth. Leaving Kysen to harry the unhappy Raneb and his fellow priests, Meren and his men drove back to the palace district, away from the realm of the dead.

  When a man was murdered in a sacred place, it was the concern of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh. When that man was also a servant of the king, the crime merited the scrutiny of the hereditary prince, master of secrets of the Lord of the Two Lands, privy councillor and Friend of the King, Meren, Lord of the Thinite Nome. And because the evil touched the business of the king, Meren went first to the office of the vizier.

  Instead of looking for the records and tithes office where the man Hormin had worked, Meren went first to a room filled with stacks of papyri and swarming with clerks. At a table on a raised dais sat an elderly man whose hands were swollen at the joints. The skin of his palms and fingers was soft and permanently stained with red and black ink. Meren approached, sending clerks scurrying out of his way by walking steadily forward without looking to see if anyone was in his path.

  The old man looked up from a papyrus when Meren routed three of the men hovering over his table. The old man returned to his papyrus and barked at Meren, “Quick, boy, what is immortality?”

  Meren smiled and said, “A book, for though a man’s body is dust, and all his kin perish, his words make him remembered through the mouth of the storyteller.”

  “Adequate,” the old man said. He shoved his papyrus at one of the clerks. “Come here, lad, and tell me what brings the Friend of Pharaoh to his old teacher.”

  A chair appeared in the hands of one of the scribes. The man set it near his master, but Meren only leaned on its back. “Master Ahmose, there is trouble.”

  “And there is sand in the desert and water in the Nile. Your ka draws trouble as a whore attracts sailors.”

  “I don’t seek out trouble.”

  “Your father was of like spirit, and that’s why the Heretic killed him. At least you learned from his example.”

  At the mention of his father, Meren lowered his eyes. Removing a hand from the chair, he touched the tips of his fingers to the bronze dagger in his belt. The cold metal eased his ka, and he lifted his eyes once more.

  Ahmose was watching him. “You’ve learned much.”

  “I’m not a youth anymore. Master Ahmose, I would speak with you about one of your officials. Hormin, a scribe of records and tithes. He has been murdered in the Place of Anubis.”

  “I know. One of the priests came to tell me.”

  Ahmose got up and stepped down from the dais. Meren joined him, and they walked out into a courtyard. Ahmose took refuge from the sun on a stool under a sycamore beside a reflection pool. Meren sat at his feet.

  “Well, boy, why are you looking for the killer? Hormin was a contentious man, a plump goose stuffed with hatred and basted with rancor. There’s no need to search out one who has relieved so many of a vicious annoyance.”

  Meren shook his head and studied a yellow fish in the reflection pool. “Murder is a sin against Maat, the divine order of justice and lightness. You taught me about Maat, and now you want me to allow an offense against the harmony of Pharaoh’s kingdom?”

  “Hormin was an offense in himself,” Ahmose said. “I know you, Meren. You won’t stop until you’ve conducted inquiries, pursued the lion into the desert, brought down the waterfowl with your throw stick. But think on this. No matter how many rebels you subdue or criminals you banish into the desert, you’ll never right the injustice done against your father.”

  Meren rose and faced Ahmose. “Are you going to tell me whom I should question, or will I have to spend days speaking to each man in the office of records and tithes?”

  Using a black-smudged finger, Ahmose traced the hieroglyph of the ka.

  “Hormin’s skin was always shining,” Ahmose said. “As if he were a sack into which someone had poured oil that leaked out. He had a habit of digging his smallest finger in his ear when
he talked, and he didn’t bathe enough. For these faults alone I would have dispatched the man. Here, boy, don’t go away. I’ll tell you what you need to know. His younger son, Djaper, works as his apprentice. Quick as a leopard is that one, and has the tongue of a courtier. Though where he got it, considering his sire, I don’t know.”

  “Where is the son?”

  Ahmose picked up a sycamore leaf from the ground and crumpled it between his fingers. “Sent word he’d be late this morning. He didn’t say why, but after the Anubis priest came, I understood. As for the rest who worked with Hormin, there’s one man who fought with him all the time. Came to blows, they did. His name is Bakwerner, and he’s in charge of the scribes of the fields of the Lord of the Two Lands. Take my advice, lad, you don’t want to know any more about Hormin than you already do.”

  “Master, I’m going to find this criminal. Was Hormin here all day yesterday?”

  “A waste of your time.” Ahmose glanced at Meren’s shuttered features. “You always were tenacious, like a crocodile. Yesterday? I sent Hormin on an errand to the temple of Amun, more to get rid of him for a while than for any real need. And later someone told me he had to go to the village of the tomb makers to hunt that concubine. Stupid man. Concubines cost, and they make trouble.”

  Meren was standing beside Ahmose with his thumbs stuck in his belt. “The village of the tomb makers.” He hoped his voice was steady. It wouldn’t do to reveal his apprehension at the master’s words. “I’ll find out what he did while he was away. Thank you, master.”

  “It’s nothing, boy. You’re going to have a time sorting out Hormin’s enemies. Pharaoh’s enemies now. I understand you must hunt them, or spar with the Hittite ambassador. This other is unimportant.”

  “Murder is never unimportant.”

  Ahmose snorted, and Meren gave up justifying himself to his former teacher. Even the squabbles of three daughters never troubled his ka as did this man who refused to see that he was no longer a youth to be chastised and guided. From Ahmose he had learned the art of writing, of manipulation of numbers. It was from his old tutor that he caught the obsession with the writings of the ancestors, and it was Ahmose’s fault that Meren quoted texts as a judge spouts law.