Murder in the Place of Anubis

by Lynda S. Robinson

  “Sit down, boy, and I’ll tell you more of Hormin.”

  Sighing, Meren gave up the idea of trying to get Ahmose to stop calling him “boy,” and sat down as he was ordered.

  The office of records and tithes was in a separate building not far from the vizier’s domain. In front of it was a survey team consisting of scribes, inspectors, measurers, and their boy assistants. It was near the season called Harvest, and Pharaoh’s scribes scoured the land assessing taxes.

  Meren stepped out of the sun and into the cool shade of the porch that surrounded the records office. On the floor sat five boys grinding pigment, mixing ink, and smoothing the surface of fresh papyrus sheets. Until Meren appeared, they had been laughing and joking among themselves. As Meren walked by, grinding stones rubbed faster, smoothing stones pressed harder. His assistants stopped at the door.

  Inside, Meren came upon an unusual scene. In the middle of a room lined with shelves from floor to roof clustered a group of men. Each held a pottery cup, and one of them was pouring from a wine jar. Meren stopped inside the door and listened to the man pouring the wine.

  “I know we all prayed to the good god Amun for deliverance, but who among us has had his supplication answered so quickly?”

  “Do you think master Ahmose will take Djaper as his assistant now?” another man asked. “We’ve all seen how much he favors him.”

  A third laughed and nearly spilled his wine. “The only reason Djaper wasn’t favored before was because the master would have had to elevate Hormin. Watch yourself, Bakwerner, Djaper is free of the carrion that was tied to his ankle.”

  “You’re a pig, Montu,” said the wine pourer. He looked up from his task, saw Meren, and shut his mouth. The others joined him in staring. At once they all splintered in different directions and left the wine pourer to face Meren. Setting the jar on the floor, the man approached, bowed, and muttered a greeting that acknowledged Meren by name.

  “I would see the man called Bakwerner,” Meren said.

  “I am he, my lord.”

  Meren strolled over to a shelf, and Bakwerner was forced to follow him. Taking out a papyrus, Meren unrolled it and studied the cursive hieroglyphs that covered the paper.

  “Why would you want the scribe Hormin dead?” Meren prided himself on his skill at flushing waterfowl from a marsh.

  Bakwerner turned vermilion and stuttered. He found his tongue. “My lord, it is a lie someone has told you. I never did him harm. We fought, but Hormin fought with many. We’ve all heard someone killed him, but none of us has left the records all morning. I’m innocent—we’re all innocent.”

  “You tried to strangle Hormin three days ago,” Meren said. He rolled the papyrus roll shut and studied Bakwerner. “I am not a judge or a governor. I don’t listen to petitions or excuses. Loosen your tongue unless you’d rather sing to the accompaniment of the whip or the stave.”

  Bakwerner fell to his knees and babbled. “Have pity, excellent lord. I am innocent. It’s true that Hormin and I exchanged blows, but you don’t know what he did. Three days ago I put the records for the taxes of the city of Busiris on a shelf belonging to Hormin. It was a mistake, my lord, an innocent mistake. But Hormin threw the records away in my absence. The whole of the taxes of Busiris, Gone. He said he didn’t look at them, that they didn’t belong in his shelf, so he threw them away.”

  “So you killed him.”

  “No! No, my lord. That is, I became possessed. He did it deliberately because he was jealous. He knew I was the better scribe. No, my lord, after we fought, I was drained of the fiend that possessed me, and I never touched Hormin again.”

  “Then if you didn’t kill the man, tell me what you know of those more capable of murder.”

  Bakwerner sat back on his heels. His glance slid from the hem of Meren’s kilt to the floor bedside him. “My lord, no one had more cause to desire Hormin’s death than his own family. Look to the wife and sons of Hormin.”

  “Yes?”

  “Hormin was a man risen from the people, the son of a butcher who caught the eye of a scribe of the fields. He rose to a great height for so humble a man, yet he kept his wife instead of putting her aside and taking a woman of breeding. But Hormin kept his wife plainly, without costly jewels or robes, and he doled out little of his possessions to the sons, though they are grown.” Bakwerner swallowed and lowered his voice. “And he was jealous of his own son. Djaper feeds upon knowledge the way a crocodile feeds on fish. The lad is twenty, but he already knows far more than Hormin did at twice the age.”

  Meren walked around Bakwerner until he was directly behind him. He let the man sit on the floor waiting for him to speak. Bakwerner wiped beads of sweat from his upper lip.

  “Where were you during the night, Bakwerner?”

  The scribe almost turned his head, but stopped himself in time. “At home, my lord.”

  Meren turned quietly away from the office of records and tithes, leaving Bakwerner sitting on the floor in front of the shelves. Once outside, he set out in the direction of the house of the dead scribe along with the two charioteers who were his protection and his shadows. He liked walking. It gave him a chance to think without risking interruption from servants or courtiers.

  Ahmose had said that Bakwerner was a physical coward. It was rare for Meren to beat someone he suspected of a crime, though such methods were usual among the city police and other officials of the king. Having been the victim of such methods, he was convinced that if one asked questions with a whip, one only got the answers one wanted to hear, not necessarily the truth. The whip could be used later, if needed, after he flushed a few more birds out of their nests in the papyrus swamp.

  The problem was, as Master Ahmose had assured him, that he would have trouble finding anyone who knew Hormin who did not want to kill the man.

  His task was to discover who had wanted to kill Hormin enough to risk doing evil in the Place of Anubis.

  Chapter 3

  Meren could hear the wails and screams before he reached the street where Hormin had lived. Word of the scribe’s death had reached his family, and someone had already hired professional mourners to ply their trade on the small loggia that protected the entrance to the house. One tore at her hair. Another beat her breasts and moaned. The third shrieked on such a high note that Meren covered his ears. His two assistants did the same.

  He had seen better performances. Whoever hired the mourners had not paid enough to get the extras. No raking of nails on flesh, no throwing of earth over the body. Meren hurried by the women, only to encounter the household porter. The man bowed several times, but Meren gave him no chance to protest the intrusion, ordering the porter to conduct him to the family.

  Once they were inside, the screams of the mourners faded. The porter led him through an entryway, a columned outer hall, and up a staircase. Meren was halfway up the stairs when a shout made him look up. This was not a wail of grief, but a voice climbing the musical scale in wrath. Like the honking of disturbed geese, voices warred with one another. As Meren gained the second floor he heard a woman yell. It was a sound made powerful by healthy lungs, a noise that filled the world with its clamor.

  “Robbery! You picking and sneaking thief. Whore.” A man’s voice joined in. “She took the broad collar.” Meren swept by the porter and into the room from which the noise came. Before him were four people standing in the midst of a litter of papers, open boxes and caskets, chairs, and tables. Meren paused inside the door. One of the women cursed. She picked up something from a table and hurled it at the two men. They ducked and the missile sped past them to crash at Meren’s feet. It was a faience spice pot. The pottery cracked and red powder burst forth, spraying Meren’s gold sandals and feet.

  The woman who had thrown the pot squeaked and ducked behind a chair. Meren looked from his sandals to the woman. She was young, with long arms and legs strung with tense muscles and a short, sharp nose like the beak of a sparrow.

  Knowing that he had startled them
all, Meren directed his gaze to each of the quarrelers. The older woman was looking at him with a puzzled expression. She had the dark brown skin of a peasant but the uncallused hands of a lady. Standing in front of her was a man as tall as she was, who had not made a sound when the others were shouting at the young woman. Beside him was a shorter man, a youth really. He balanced on the balls of his feet and caressed one of his wrists with his hand. Twisting the wrist back and forth within the grasp of his fingers, he stared at Meren.

  They were trying to decide who he might be. It was a favorite tactic of his to appear without announcement, to disturb and unbalance. He knew they were taking in the transparent robe that fell to his ankles and covered a kilt belted in red and gold. His long court wig and inlaid dagger would cause apprehension, as would the two men who stood behind him like bodyguards, for only a great man walks abroad in fine linen, carries a warrior’s blade, and commands charioteers.

  “I am Meren.” The name caused a stirring among them like papyrus reeds shifting in the north wind. Four heads lowered, and Meren received their bows. “Evil has been done in the sacred place of embalming, and I am sent to hunt out the criminal who murdered the scribe Hormin.”

  Lifting his foot out of a hillock of spice, Meren skirted the shards of faience and took a chair of cedar with legs shaped like those of a lion.

  “There has been theft in this house?” Meren asked.

  Four heads nodded.

  “Last night?”

  Again the nods.

  Meren looked from one bowed head to the other and decided to break up the solid phalanx. If he confronted each of them alone, it would be impossible for them to remain silent.

  “I will survey the house and question each of the family.” Meren nodded at the older woman. “You, mistress, are the wife of Hormin?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  This was the voice of the woman who had yelled as he came upstairs.

  ‘Take your family to the dining hall and await my summons.” It was his experience that the anxiety of waiting to be examined by one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh loosened tongues.

  One of his men ushered the family out and went with them. When they were gone Meren summoned the porter, who produced the chief manservant. With this guide and his remaining assistant, Meren toured the house of Hormin.

  It was the house of a prosperous scribe; there were many such in the capital of the empire. A basement housed workrooms used for weaving, bread making, and other chores. Above lay a reception hall and dining room, and above these the family bedrooms and lavatory. On the roof was the kitchen.

  To Meren the house appeared ordinary. White-plastered, painted with friezes of lotus petals and geometric designs in bright red, blue, yellow, and green, it contained simple furnishings. The beds, tables, stools, and chairs were of good but not costly wood, the seats of woven rushes.

  On the way back from his tour, Meren stuck his head in the door of the scribe’s bedchamber. The bed sat at the far end; clothing boxes and a cosmetic table were arranged around the walls. One of his men knelt at a box that held Hormin’s kilts, lifted each one, and laid it on the floor.

  Meren turned away and headed for the room where he’d first encountered Hormin’s family, the man’s personal office. Here the furniture was of cedar inlaid with ebony and ivory. Gilt paint adorned Hormin’s chair and table, and there were three boxes and four storage caskets, each of expensive wood. One was inlaid with ivory and ebony marquetry. Several alabaster lamps rested on tables, and there was one casket carved from the same stone.

  All of the containers bore Hormin’s name. Meren touched the obsidian knob on the lid of the alabaster casket, lifted the cover, and placed it aside. Within were fourteen glass bottles and vials. Meren unstopped a vial and sniffed the perfume within. He opened a pot and touched the tip of his finger to the salve within. It was unguent; from the scent, costly unguent, made of foreign spices and resins. Yet it wasn’t the same as that he’d found on Hormin’s kilt.

  Replacing the unguent, Meren summoned the porter and ordered him to bring the wife of Hormin to him. He arranged himself in Hormin’s chair and picked up a gilt penholder from the table beside him. Removing the top, he shook out several reed pens and replaced them. He was twirling the penholder when the porter announced Selket, the wife of Hormin.

  She must have been of an age with her husband, for Selket bore the signs of middle age. There were pockets of flesh beneath her eyes. The flesh of her upper arms drooped like empty barley sacks, and her skin was as cracked and dry as old wood left in the desert. Without speaking to her, Meren knew that this woman had spent her youth laboring in the sun and heat. She stood before him with her eyes fixed on sheets of papyrus scattered on the floor at her feet. Meren gave her permission to sit, and the woman took a stool.

  “Please accept my condolences upon the death of your husband, mistress. I’m here to seek out his murderer.”

  Selket’s face had been as blank as the outfacing wall of a house. At his words, it cracked open and from it erupted a flood of venom.

  “It’s her. She killed him for his wealth or to hide her depravities. She beds any pretty man who comes into her sight, you know. My husband must have found her out.” Selket’s arms swept around indicating the disturbed room. “Or perhaps she killed him for finding her in his office pilfering.”

  “Who?”

  “Beltis, my lord. That creature who tried to wound you with the spice pot. She is my—was my husband’s concubine.”

  This was why Meren cultivated the skill of listening. He remembered the admonition of the sage Ptahhotep, which advised a wise man not to listen to the spouting of the hot-bellied. He had found that listening to the hot-bellied often led to the discovery of the truth.

  Meren set the penholder back on the table and regarded Selket. “You’re telling me that you know the girl killed your husband? You will go before the royal magistrates and give testimony?”

  Selket started to speak, then closed her mouth. Her lips pinched together and she shook her head. Meren lifted a brow, but made no comment. She was unwilling to risk the punishment for bearing false witness, but her reticence might not signal an untruth. After all, she could be beaten and starved for three days, or even put to death, for perjury.

  “What was the course of your husband’s last day?’ Meren asked.

  “It was like most days,” Selket said. “He rose. From her bed. And he ate his morning meal here. Then she came in while I was serving him, and demanded some trinket.” Each time Selket referred to the concubine, she hissed out the word “she” as though it tasted of dung. “She is always complaining that she has no jewelry, not enough shifts or wigs or cosmetics.”

  As he listened to Selket, Meren became aware of his own vague uneasiness. At first he couldn’t understand his discomfort, but then he realized that the woman talking to him shifted from fury to complacency and back again in half a heartbeat. When she spoke of Beltis, her eyes took on the look of a rabid hyena, yet moments before she’d mentioned Hormin with a sweet lilt in her voice.

  “And after he dined, your husband went to the office of records and tithes,” Meren said. “He spoke to no one else before he left?”

  Selket had been breathing rapidly from the force of her ire. Suddenly she smiled. “Only to me, about the house, and about our sons. They were avoiding him because he was still a bit angry with them. Imsety, my oldest, wanted the old farm since Hormin dislikes husbandry. Djaper supported Imsety, but Hormin wouldn’t give it up. It gives us a prosperous living with Hormin’s wages. Imsety would have still handed over the proper share to his father, but Hormin was furious at the idea.” Selket waved a hand. “Sons and fathers will contend, no matter a mother’s wishes.”

  Meren got up, motioning for Selket to remain where she was. He stooped and picked up a sheaf of papers, household accounts.

  “Go on, mistress.”

  “My husband went to the office of records and tithes and returned at midday. He
ate and went to her, but they fought again. I could hear her shouting at him even though they were in her room. She wanted Hormin to give her a set of bracelets, and he wouldn’t.”

  Selket laughed, and Meren winced at the loud, barking sound.

  “I heard him slap her, then he left and didn’t return until afternoon. After he was gone, Beltis ran away.”

  Meren cocked his head to the side. The heavy strands of his wig swung to his shoulder, and he nodded for her to continue.

  Selket sniffed. “She runs away all the time. To her parents in the tomb-makers’ village on the west bank. Hormin always fetches her back. He did yesterday, unfortunately. When they returned, we all dined.” Selket paused and contemplated her brown hands. “My husband spent the rest of the evening with her, and I know nothing of what they did. When I rose this morning, I didn’t know he was gone from the house until Djaper couldn’t find him. It was while we were looking for my husband that we found his office wrecked and looted. Later, a priest came from the Place of Anubis and told me that he was dead.”

  Selket pressed her lips together, and Meren was surprised to see a tear creep out of the corner of one eye.

  He would never understand some women. She mourned Hormin; he would have been tempted to put the man in his house of eternity long ago.

  “And your sons,” Meren said. “You say they quarreled with their father.”

  The flow of tears dammed up at once, and Selket shook her head. “Only a little. They are dutiful sons. Imsety takes care of the farm outside the city. He only came to ask about getting the deed put in his name, and he’ll have to go back soon, to oversee the harvest. Djaper follows the path of his father, and I hope he’ll take Hormin’s place at the office of records and tithes.”

  Meren shuffled the papyrus sheets in his hands. Taking his seat again, he laid the papers on the table nearby. One of his assistants would question the servants so that stories about the family’s movements could be confirmed. He expected everyone to claim to have slept through the night, for unless one were privileged, work was hot and long. The day began with first light and ended with nightfall.