Murder in the Place of Anubis

by Lynda S. Robinson

  “But you didn’t see her last night.”

  “No, my lord. I worked at the office of records and tithes all day, came home to get Imsety, and we spent the whole evening with friends.” Djaper bent forward in a confiding manner. “In truth, I was avoiding Father. He was angry with me, and I didn’t want to fight again. I left yesterday morning before he did, and spent most of my time in the archives room with two other apprentices. Luckily he went to the temple of Amun on an errand for master Ahmose and then had to chase after Beltis. Last night I made certain that Imsety and I were out until past midnight. I knew that Father would calm down if he didn’t have to look at us for a while.”

  “And you saw nothing of your father last night?”

  “Oh no, lord. We dined with a friend. Nu, son of Pen-amun, is his name. And then we all went to the tavern called Eye of Horus for beer and women. A pleasant evening.”

  Meren rose, and Djaper scrambled to his feet. Strolling about the room, Meren let the silence stretch out. Djaper was entirely too comfortable in his presence, but then, perhaps he was being unfair. Some men did possess a natural composure and openness that enabled them to face difficulties with aplomb. Ay was one. And he himself could face a horde of Nubian bandits smiling—as long as his family was safe.

  Meren glanced at Djaper and saw that Hormin’s son had risen and was now leaning against his work shelves. One leg was bent, and he’d cocked one foot over the other. He was toying with his wrist again, and Meren gritted his teeth. That mannerism annoyed him; it made him want to rub the brand that marred his own wrist beneath the gold bracelet.

  “Hormin was known as a contentious man. It is said that he complained about his lazy, stupid sons to anyone at the office of records and tithes who would listen. Did he chastise you in front of others?”

  During Meren’s speech Djaper had straightened from his relaxed pose. His face flushed, and he lowered his eyes.

  “Father criticized everyone.” The words were said quietly, with deliberate lightness, but Djaper’s face drained of its crimson hue until it was almost a paste color.

  “I wager he criticized you most of all, since you seem to be quite intelligent. From what I understand, your clever heart would be a fly in an open wound to Hormin.”

  “He was proud of me,” Djaper said.

  “He said so? You didn’t hate him for disgracing you in front of superiors and fellow apprentices?”

  Djaper was quiet for a moment before letting a tentative smile pull at his lips. He met Meren’s eyes directly, humor making them sparkle.

  “The lord is wise, but he forgets that a father can be harsh and yet love his sons. It was so with mine.”

  “I see. Then you were worried when your father couldn’t be found this morning.”

  “Not at first. We thought he was with Beltis, and she thought he was with us. So it wasn’t until the sun was up that we understood that he wasn’t in the house at all. I was looking for him when I discovered the theft in his office. And then the priest came and told us he was dead.”

  “I want a list of the missing possessions,” Meren said. He was pacing slowly in front of a table stacked with flat sheets of papyrus. He stopped beside it and glanced at the top sheet. It was a record of taxes from the Hare Nome. “You’re diligent in the service of Pharaoh, to work at night.”

  “It is nothing, lord. The sheet was damaged, and I was copying it for Father. It is finished and must be returned to the overseer tomorrow.”

  Meren lifted the sheet to reveal a copy of an old collection of wisdom handed down from scribe to scribe for centuries. He let the papyrus fall.

  “You say nothing of your father’s death. Earlier you were ready to blame Beltis for that and for the theft.”

  “Ah, Lord Meren, forgive me, but I never blamed Beltis for Father’s killing.” Djaper furrowed his brow. “But as I think upon the idea… Beltis might…”

  “I don’t like maidenly fluttering,” Meren said. “Speak plainly.”

  Again Djaper’s wide-open eyes lowered, and he blushed. “Beltis is a woman of great appetite. She has come to my bed seeking pleasure of me, and—forgive me, lord—but it is distasteful to speak of such a thing. But Lord Meren has perhaps discovered the concubine’s nature himself.”

  Meren only stared at Djaper.

  “It may be,” Djaper said when he realized he wouldn’t get an answer, “it may be that Beltis decided that she wanted Father’s goods and a younger man at the same time. Oh, not that I am fool enough to think she’d want me without the goods.”

  Djaper laughed, and Meren couldn’t help smiling. The young man was laughing at himself, and such humility was admirable. Meren turned away from Djaper.

  “You may arrange proper care for your father’s body soon.” With a nod he left Djaper. He closed the door behind him, then opened it again. Sticking his head inside the room, he caught Djaper as he was collapsing, loose-limbed, on the couch. “You know I will examine the copy of your father’s will that rests in the House of Life.”

  Djaper rolled gracefully to the floor on his knees and bent his neck. “Yes, lord, I know.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Meren slammed the door shut and stood looking at it while he rubbed his chin. He would have to send men to check on the activities of the two brothers, but he didn’t think Djaper had lied. Not about things that could be proven false. No, Djaper was much too clever to lie unless he lied well. But Meren wasn’t convinced that the young man was as tranquil as he seemed. How could he be, having a father like Hormin? His ka should be shriveled with the heat of anger at being humiliated constantly by a man less intelligent than himself.

  The scent of heavily spiced perfume intruded upon Meren’s thoughts. He sniffed and looked at Iry-nufer. The man was watching him, waiting for an opportunity to speak.

  “The concubine was here,” Meren said.

  “Yes, my lord. She hovered about, but left when she saw me.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No, lord.”

  “Then come.”

  Meren set off for the chamber of Imsety. One last examination and he could go home. Kysen might be waiting for him with his news of the questioning of those of the Place of Anubis. It could be that Hormin’s murder had nothing to do with his family and instead was related to one of the priests or embalming workers. It was just this possibility that had sent the old Controller of Mysteries into a fit and made him appeal to Meren in the first place.

  Imsety was also guarded. As he left Iry-nufer and the other man at the door, Meren heard the scrape of metal against stone. Iry-nufer heard it too. The guard slipped past Meren, putting his body between his master and Imsety. He drew his scimitar and shouted at Imsety. Meren stepped to the side and saw Hormin’s oldest son squatting on the floor, a whetstone and knife in his hands. He was gaping at Iry-nufer.

  Iry-nufer hefted the scimitar. “I said drop the knife.”

  The blade clattered to the floor, but Iry-nufer wasn’t satisfied.

  “Your forehead to the floor. Spread out your arms.”

  When his victim was prone, Iry-nufer picked up the knife. He looked at Meren, who jerked his head toward the door. Iry-nufer left, uttering a threat in Imsety’s direction.

  “You may rise,” Meren said.

  Imsety raised himself to a sitting position and stuttered an apology.

  “Where did you get the knife?”

  ‘There are many in that pot, lord.” Imsety pointed to a pottery jar by his bed. “Household knives, I hone them. The work—my hands.” Imsety stopped; Meren waited, but the man had evidently said as much as he could or would.

  “You like to work with your hands?” Meren asked.

  “Yes, lord. Father, this house, the fighting.” Imsety’s big shoulders heaved with a sigh.

  Meren waited, again in vain. “The work takes your thoughts from sorrow and anger.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Tell me, Imsety. Does everyone have to supply the
words you don’t say, or is it that you fear me?”

  “I have many thoughts, lord, but my tongue, it is clumsy.”

  It was like plowing a stony field, but Meren dragged the story of the last day from Imsety. It was much the same as Djaper’s, except that Imsety’s day was spent in the company of his mother. The man seemed more concerned with the imminent harvest than with the death of his father, and he kept asking when he could go home.

  “When I have the murderer,” Meren said for the third time.

  “It’s Beltis. She killed Father.”

  “And dragged him to the riverbank, tossed him in a skiff, and hauled him to the Place of Anubis?”

  Imsety nodded eagerly. “Caught her stealing.”

  “You wish me to believe that if Hormin caught Beltis stealing his treasure that there wouldn’t be a fight as noisy as Thebes on a feast day?”

  “One of the scribes.”

  Meten’s head was beginning to pain him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Bakwerner.”

  “Do you know anything about your father’s murder, Imsety?”

  “Bakwerner hates Father.”

  “I will concern myself with Bakwemer, not you.” By this time Meren found himself grinding his teeth. “I want to know if Hormin was as cruel to you as he was to Djaper. He must have been, or he wouldn’t have refused you the farm you work so hard to preserve.”

  Imsety shrugged and stared at Meren.

  “You’d better say something.”

  “I never listened to Father.”

  Meren waited fruitlessly. After a few minutes during which Imsety stared at him and he tried not to toy with his dagger, Meren spoke.

  “Never listened to him? What do you mean, curse you?”

  “Since I was a naked child, I never listened to Father’s hot words.”

  “Don’t stop talking,” Meren said.

  “Ugly words, Father, they aren’t important. The land is important. And Djaper. Not Father.”

  “And your mother.”

  “Mother loves Djaper.”

  Never had he been more grateful for having three chattering daughters. Meren closed his eyes and prayed to several gods for patience. Talking to Imsety was taking twice as long as it had with anyone else. There had been times, before he adopted Kysen, when he’d asked the gods why the girls couldn’t have been boys. Now he would make a sacrifice to the goddess of childbirth.

  Meren opened his eyes and caught Imsety staring at him. The young man’s face was as expressionless as a figure painted on a temple wall. But a transitory flicker in Imsety’s eyes set off the baying of hunting dogs in Meren’s heart. Crocodiles often basked in the sun, still and placid, with no evidence of life in their bodies except for that brief, telltale lift of an eyelid that revealed a mindless hunger for flesh.

  “You said neither you nor Djaper saw your father leave the house during the night.”

  Imsety gazed at Meren and made no attempt to avoid meeting Meren’s stare. “No, lord. I never saw him.”

  That direct manner, it was a match for Djaper’s ingenuousness. And it posed a difficulty. For in Meren’s experience, the best liars, those whose hearts were filled with deceit, made a practice of meeting the eyes’ of those they deceived in just such a direct manner, while the innocent often foundered on their own lack of experience with evil. They quavered, faltered, and cast down their eyes. He would have to be Anubis, weigher of hearts at the soul’s judgment, to decipher honesty based solely upon the face and habits of a man.

  “Aren’t you afraid that your father’s murderer may harm you, Imsety?”

  “No, Lord Meren. Why would he?”

  “That is a question I’ve asked myself,” Meren said. “And I’ll find an answer. And if you should begin to fear, remember the ancient writings that tell us that justice lasts for an eternity and walks into the graveyard with its doer.”

  Chapter 6

  Kysen escaped the house without further damage to his ears. He made his way to a long, low building at the rear of the compound, which lay between the house and the barracks and stables. In it his father had established the headquarters for his duties as one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh. There were workrooms for Nebamun, the physician-priest, and the scribes who kept records of the cases that came under Meren’s hand, and two rooms for the count and his son.

  Nebamun had finished his examination of the body by the time Kysen reached him. He was in the library consulting astrological charts and rubbing his shaved head in thought as he read. Kysen leaned on the doorsill.

  “He died of the knife wound, didn’t he?”

  Nebamun looked up from the papyrus he’d spread across his crossed legs. “Assuredly. There was no sign of poison, and anyway, there was all that blood. But look at the writings for the day Hormin was born. They foretell a happy life.”

  “Do they say anything about his death?”

  “No.” Nebamun rolled up the papyrus and shook his head. “The men say there were no marks of the use of magic in the drying shed, and I found none on the body. He bit his fingernails, so I doubt if anyone could collect them for use in a spell. But there’s always hair. We’ll have to see what Lord Meren finds at his house.”

  “I can’t think of any magic more potent than being stabbed with an embalming knife,” Kysen said. “You’ll send the body back to the embalmers for purification and treatment?”

  “Yes, but you know his ka is likely to be wandering lost since he was dispatched by violence in so sacred a place. It will take powerful spells to restore his soul to his body.”

  Kysen didn’t answer. He’d had to become accustomed to dealing with disturbed spirits just as he’d accepted that he would always meet evil. It was the price of being the son of the king’s intelligencer. Yet sometimes dealing with malevolence made him feel contaminated. There’d been the time when that Babylonian merchant went mad and killed all those tavern women after raping them. He’d almost wished his father would relinquish his post by the time the merchant was caught.

  After dictating his own observations to one of the scribes in the library, Kysen went to his father’s office in search of the boxes containing Hormin’s possessions and objects from the place of his death. He was lifting one of them from the floor to a worktable when he heard Meren’s voice at the door.

  “By the demons of the underworld, that is a family of cobras.”

  Kysen looked up and grinned. Even angry, Meren hardly looked old enough to be his father. At thirty-four he still kept the figure of a charioteer, and silver refused to appear in his cap of smooth black hair. Kysen’s friends teased him that he would never get another wife because all the court maidens vied with each other for Meren’s attention.

  “Disturbed your plumb line, did Hormin’s family?” Kysen asked.

  Meren frowned at Kysen and stalked into the room. He dropped into his favorite ebony chair, slouched down in it, and cursed again. Kysen watched Meren drum his fingers on the arm of the chair, saw his features relax and then grow worried.

  “You’re staring at me,” Kysen said.

  “Mmmm.”

  Kysen pressed his lips together and pretended to straighten the lid of the box in front of him. He stilled when Meren spoke.

  “You know about the village of the tomb makers.”

  “The water carrier told me.”

  “Did he recognize you?” Meren asked.

  “He’s new to the village,” Kysen said. He let his gaze roam about the room, touching stacks of papyri, a water jar. “His father serves the painter Useramun. I remember Useramun. His hips wiggled when he walked, and he was always throwing tantrums if the plaster on tomb walls wasn’t smooth enough for his paint.”

  “Any evil that touches the servants of the Great Place is important to Pharaoh. They’re probably not involved, but I must make sure.”

  Rounding the worktable, Kysen took a stool near his father. “We can send for the chief scribe in the morning.”

  “Y
ou know that’s not what I want to do.”

  “You want to go to the village?” Kysen flushed when his father lifted one of his straight brows. Meren could make him feel foolish more easily with a lift of those eloquent brows than by using a thousand words.

  “I don’t want to go,” Kysen said.

  “I can’t do this, Ky. Word would be all over Thebes in minutes if I went there. Half the court would dog my steps out of curiosity or to make sure I didn’t interfere with the work on their tombs. And how much do you think I’ll get out of the scribes and artisans?”

  “Little,” said Kysen. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I know. I’m the one who speaks their language. I’m the one who knows them—at least, I did know them. It’s been ten years.”

  “Perhaps it will do you good to go back.”

  Kysen shot to his feet so quickly that his stool toppled. Ignoring it, he glared at his father, turned away, and placed both hands flat on the worktable.

  “The fire pits of the netherworld, that’s what that place was to me,” Kysen said. “It’s taken all this time for me to restore my ka, and you want me to go back there. You know what it was like. You saw me when Father tried to sell me in the streets of Thebes—the welts, the bruises so black I’d have been invisible on a moonlit night.”

  Rising, Meren went to Kysen. Kysen started when his father put a hand on his.

  “You haven’t seen your blood father since that day. Ky, I think facing him has become a great fear in your heart, and it grows larger the longer you ignore it. Hate makes festering sores in your ka.”

  “Gods!” Kysen shook off Meren’s hand. “Shouldn’t I hate him? You said it wasn’t my fault that he beat me, though he never touched my brothers. It took you three years to convince me of my innocence, but I tell you, if I go back there, he’ll make me see the ugliness within my heart.”

  “There is no ugliness in your heart. It’s in Pawero’s heart. Face him, Ky. You’re no longer an eight-year-old child and helpless. Ah, you didn’t think I knew your greatest fear. Go back to the village. You need to face Pawero, if only to make him admit his guilt.”