House of Scorpion

by Mark Gajewski

  Glad and excited exclamations from Ani’s relatives.

  “In addition, Ani, I gift you Pentu’s house and all of his servants and all of his possessions.”

  “Thank you, Majesty! You are most gracious!”

  Ani was now the wealthiest man in Nubt, aside from Sabu.

  I was homeless and childless and destitute. And a prisoner. Probably minutes away from being executed.

  Sabu again. “My sister, Nebetah, was married to the traitor Baki. The marriage was forced on her by Pentu. Nebetah wasn’t involved in the conspiracy against me. She’s not to blame in any way for what happened today. Instead, rejoice with her that she’s now free of Baki.”

  There was scattered laughter.

  Sabu nodded and guards pushed Nofret and me into the space before the dais.

  “Nofret, on the other hand, betrayed her husband, my father, the king. For that, Nofret, you will pay a stiff price.”

  Nofret had done nothing of the sort. Was Sabu going to execute her anyway?

  “I didn’t do anything!” Nofret cried tearfully.

  “Silence!”

  Nofret cowered. Her hands were practically purple. Her bonds were as tight as mine. She was suffering.

  “Nofret, beginning today you will serve me in my audience hall and in my per’aa. And in my bedchamber.”

  Nofret gasped.

  So that’s what her alleged betrayal of Father was all about. Sabu lusted after her. Now he had her.

  Sabu scanned the hall. “Any man who opposes me – the same will happen to his wife and daughters.”

  Frightened glances now among the women. Sabu was revealing his cruelty publicly for the first time.

  “Matia.”

  Would I receive the same treatment as Nofret? Serve Sabu in his room? My half-brother?

  “Matia was Pentu’s wife,” Sabu told the elites. “She opposed me every time I insisted that Father deal with Scorpion. There can be no doubt she was involved in the plot against me and the king. You all know her as an ambitious woman. King’s daughter was not status enough for her. She wanted to be a king’s wife.”

  There was no point in contradicting Sabu. He had the elites in his hand. They were accepting every claim he was making. Especially Ani’s relatives. They were probably already calculating the amount of their additional wealth, courtesy of my family and husband.

  “I will not execute Matia, since she’s the daughter of a king and my sister. However, Matia must pay a price for her treason. So I’ve executed her son in her place.”

  I gazed at Sabu, stoic, as the hall erupted behind me. I’d mourned my son, and I would again, but in private, not in front of my enemy. Many clearly thought I deserved to pay. Would their opinions have changed if they knew Pabasa had likely been killed long before Father and Pentu? If I’d been at home instead of in the audience hall – as Baki had ordered – I’d be dead too instead of standing bound in front of these jackals.

  “My generosity in letting Matia live presents certain difficulties for me,” Sabu continued. “Some in this hall might be foolish enough to believe they could marry her and claim the throne through her descent from my father. Some might be desperate enough to try to place her on the throne.”

  That was met with derisive laughter. These elites wouldn’t follow a woman.

  “So… I’ve decided that from now on Matia will taste my food and drink at every meal. Anyone who tries to poison me will kill her instead. Quite an elegant solution, don’t you think?”

  “Very elegant, Majesty,” Ani piped up.

  “Matia, Nofret – neither one of you will ever set foot outside my per’aa again.” He addressed the elites. “If any of you see either of them beyond these walls, kill them. It’s your duty.”

  Utter humiliation for Nofret, slightly less for me. I saw the briefest flash of sympathy on only one face – Myt, Maya’s wife, my mother’s sister. She’d been married into Ani’s family to bring a measure of peace between mine and his. So much for that.

  Sabu seated himself on his throne again. “My people, we have suffered too long at Scorpion’s hands. Enough is enough! Tomorrow we will bury my father. The day after that we will begin preparing in earnest to go to war.” He stood. “I promise I will restore the luxuries that are your due! I promise I will defeat Scorpion and conquer Tjeni!”

  “Long live the king!” Ani cried.

  His cry was taken up and rolled through the hall, growing in volume, a great wave sweeping over Sabu again and again. He smiled triumphantly, basked in it.

  I stood mute, listening to the cheers, my eyes focused on the blood-stained ground. These people had no idea what Sabu was getting them into.

  After a moment Sabu gestured and guards grabbed my arms and Nofret’s and dragged us through the celebrating elites and out of the hall. I kept my head high so no one would see how much I was suffering. I was empty inside, drained. Sabu had taken everything from me today – my son, my husband, my father, my freedom.

  I was going to kill him.

  3253 BC: 13th regnal year of Scorpion, King of Tjeni

  Peret (Seed)

  Iry

  Father and Tamit and I strolled across tan-colored low desert, accompanied by a servant holding a sunshade over Father’s head and several more carrying food and drink. We’d come to Abdju to check on the progress of Father’s grave. Tamit and I regularly traveled here from Tjeni, but this was her first visit since the birth of our daughter Neith two months ago. Neith was on Father’s boat along with Abar – at age four her legs were too short to keep up with us, and she’d have been bored with our inspection. Father had insisted she come with us, for the two of them were practically inseparable. Neith was Father’s fourth grandchild – Khensuw had given birth to a daughter in Ineb-hedj a month ago, and Nebta a son in Tjeni the month before that. Advantage Mekatre over Lagus, for he now had a male heir. Tamit had taken Nebta under her wing upon her arrival from the North; even though she knew, as Nebta didn’t, that Mekatre was my rival for Father’s throne, Tamit had a kind heart and was treating Nebta like a sister. They’d grown particularly close during their overlapping pregnancies, attending each other in their birth bowers.

  While the plains were wide at Abdju – the river was out of sight, nearly five miles to our rear – and usually bountiful, they weren’t this year, thanks to seven straight low inundations. No one could recall a spell that had lasted so long. Thank the gods we received regular shipments of delta grain at Tjeni. I noted herds of cattle in the distance, a few groves of scraggly acacia trees, a cluster of mud-and-reed huts where workmen laboring on Father’s grave lived with their families, the brewery and ovens where women made beer and bread for funerary feasts. Columns of smoke spiraled skyward from fires where women and girls were currently preparing evening meals.

  The path we were on led through the heart of a wide desert wadi directly towards towering rugged striated cliffs several miles away that rose abruptly from the plain. Those cliffs were, we all believed, where the spirits of the dead entered the underworld. Hence the location of the cemetery, our destination, where Tjeni’s elites had been buried for generations. The cliffs were pierced by numerous arid valleys winding tortuously back through the plateau of the high desert. Their faces were golden in the late afternoon light, the indentations bathed in blue, lending the scene a sense of serenity. Those same cliffs were stark and unwelcoming in the harsh light of midday.

  Well off to the right, on the high land beyond the wadi, a donkey caravan was raising a cloud of dust. No doubt carrying goods destined for delivery to Tjeni from a vast desert oasis far to the west.

  We followed the wadi for a little more than a mile, then stepped onto a well-trod path that climbed from it onto a slight elevation, perhaps six hundred feet long and three hundred wide. Low randomly-spaced tumulus mounds practically covered the higher ground, each marking an ancient grave. The cries of overseers came to us from a quarter mile straight ahead, the site of Father’s grave.

  F
ather pointed at two of the largest mounds. “There’s the grave of my predecessor, Bull, and beside it his predecessor, Elephant.”

  “I’ve learned a dozen or so of these mounds top rulers’ graves. The rest are elites given permission by rulers to be buried here,” Tamit said.

  “Remember Bull’s burial, Father?” I asked. “His grave contained three chambers absolutely crammed with goods for the Afterlife.”

  “I hope mine’s as large.”

  We’d kept the details from him.

  Tamit laughed. “A dozen chambers, Father. And they’ll barely hold all the grave goods you’ve accumulated.”

  A year ago Tamit had transferred Father’s goods from Tjeni to a special warehouse here at Abdju. The transfer had required five of Niay’s vessels.

  “This is it,” Tamit announced.

  The workmen and overseers working on the grave bowed respectfully to Father. At Tamit’s signal they all climbed out and melted away, heading back towards their huts. We moved to the edge of the grave. The servants accompanying us sat down a short distance behind us.

  Father’s grave was about forty feet wide and fifty long and five deep, the corners oriented north-south and east-west. The walls, underground, were lined with a double set of mud bricks. More mud-brick walls divided the interior of the grave into rectangular chambers of irregular size. The largest of those chambers occupied nearly the entire side of the grave closest to us. Three columns, each comprised of three chambers, abutted the far side of the large chamber. Two more large chambers, currently being excavated, took up the entire right side of the grave. Great piles of dirt from the excavation ringed the grave at a distance of a dozen feet. Mud bricks were piled close beside the new chambers. They’d eventually line their interiors. I noted piles of acacia beams, and woven mats, and containers full of clay.

  “After I received the last boatload of your funerary goods from Ineb-hedj and moved them to my warehouse here it was clear the grave Iry originally excavated was going to be too small to hold everything, Father,” Tamit said. She pointed to a mud-brick structure at the edge of the low plateau. Half a dozen guards stood beside it. “So I ordered the two additional chambers excavated.”

  “Impressive,” Father said, eminently pleased.

  “Once you’re laid in this grave, Father – a very long time from now, I hope – porters will move the goods inside.”

  “Then my workmen will construct the grave’s roof,” I said. “They’ll lay acacia beams across the tops of the chambers, then cover the beams with reed mats. Those mats will support a layer of mud bricks. The bricks will be thickly plastered with mud. Then workmen will mound all the dirt piled around us on top of the roof. As you said when you commissioned your grave, the mound will symbolize the primordial mound at the beginning of creation. Your grave will be the largest by far in this cemetery. Everyone will know for eternity that you’re the greatest king who ever lived.”

  “What about my funerary cult?”

  “A small shrine for offerings will be located at the south end of your grave,” Tamit said.

  “What are all the chambers for, Tamit?” Father asked.

  “I’ve modeled your grave on your per’aa,” Tamit replied.

  “You modeled it?”

  “Iry constructed it. But I designed it.”

  “It’s hard to keep track of all your talents,” Father said approvingly. “An eternal per’aa – an interesting idea.”

  “The largest chamber, at our feet, is the burial chamber,” Tamit said. “Father, your body will rest in the fetal position inside a wooden cube turned upside down, a shrine, if you will. Around five hundred jars of wine and oil and fat will be stored around the shrine, piled in layers.”

  “So many!” Father exclaimed.

  “That’s only a fraction,” I said.

  Tamit continued. “I’ve been collecting personal items to place in the burial chamber – jewelry, cosmetic utensils, clothing, weapons, combs, decorative ivory pins, an obsidian blade, two small gold nails, gold leaf, shells, malachite, and carnelian and turquoise beads. We’ll also include items you’re currently using, like your scepter and crown.”

  “I see why you made it so large,” Father said.

  “The first two chambers along the left side of the grave represent storage rooms in your per’aa,” Tamit said. “The third, the farthest from us, represents your bedroom. All three will hold hundreds of jars of beer and oil and wine and fat, stacked at least four layers high. The closest chamber in the middle column represents private quarters. The larger chamber just beyond it, the largest in the grave besides the burial chamber, represents your audience hall. The farthest chamber in that column represents more private quarters.”

  “What’ll they hold?” Father asked.

  “Northern wine in the farthest,” Tamit replied. “At least one hundred twenty jars, stacked in four layers.”

  “Don’t let Mekatre find out, Father,” I laughed. “He’ll be furious so much wine’s going underground.”

  “He does like his wine. As do the elites. Nothing keeps elites happier than regular deliveries of Retunian wine.”

  “It’s so complicated to obtain,” I noted. “The elites have no idea how many hamlets and settlements and lands claimed by other rulers our wine has to pass through.”

  “The other two chambers in that column will hold jars of beer and baking platters and plates and foodstuffs – loaves of bread, dried meat and fish, fruits, vegetables,” Tamit continued.

  “You won’t hunger in the Afterlife, Father,” I said.

  “The closest chamber in the rightmost column represents living quarters for servants,” Tamit explained. “The chamber in the middle represents quarters for guests. And the farthest chamber represents private quarters. The closest chamber will hold more jars of wine, the others beer and foodstuffs stored in coarse jars.”

  “And the new chambers?” Father asked.

  “The farthest represents a storage room. It’ll hold about four hundred more jars of wine. But the closest – it represents the treasury. It’ll be filled with fine objects.”

  “Such as?” Father asked.

  “Forty cedar boxes for a start,” Tamit replied.

  “Constructed from wood obtained by your expedition to Jebail,” I said.

  “An expensive and difficult enterprise, but well worth it,” Father said. “No ruler ever mounted such an expedition before me.”

  “Wait until you see the boxes, Iry. They’re gorgeous,” Tamit said enthusiastically. “And their scent! Incredible! Anyway, they’ll hold magnificent objects. Clothing. Bolts of linen. Jewelry. Sacks of emmer. Board games. Ivory game pieces. Stone vessels made of rose quartz and smoky quartz and dolomite. Furniture. A large obsidian dish with a hand carved on it in relief. Every object will be marked with an ivory tag, Father, so that the gods will know that your goods came from every corner of the world, and that your reach was long, and you were mighty.”

  “Have you taught the gods to read your tags, Tamit?” Father laughed.

  She laughed too. “Note the slits in the walls between the chambers.” An acacia board was embedded atop each slit, much like a door lintel, with a round wooden crosspiece a little below it. “The slits will allow your spirit to access all of the grave goods, whichever chamber they’re in. Reed mats will hang from the crosspieces to cover the slits.”

  “It’s a marvelous grave, Tamit,” Father said approvingly.

  “It’s so different from my father’s across the river from Ineb-hedj,” she reflected. “We wrapped him in linen and laid him on a reed mat in the bottom of an oval pit. All he took to the Afterlife were some arrowheads and shells and stone beads and pottery and a few ivory figures he’d carved.” She shook her head, remembering. “Shall we visit the warehouse now to see in one place everything you’ve collected?”

  “So far,” Father chuckled.

  We strolled to the warehouse. The entrance had been specifically designed to accommodate the
passage in and out of large items, so wide it required two doors. At Tamit’s order, one of the guards shattered a lump of clay pressed into a rope tied between the door handles with the butt of his lance. Another cut the rope with his knife.

  Tamit held up her right hand. It bore a copper ring inscribed with a scorpion. “I seal the doors after every delivery to the warehouse, Father. I tie the handles together, wrap a lump of clay around the rope, then press my ring into the clay.”

  The guards pulled the doors open, then moved aside to let us enter. One handed Tamit a torch he’d lit in preparation for our visit and she led us inside. We stood for a moment, letting our eyes get accustomed to the semi-darkness. I was amazed. I’d seen these goods arrive at Ineb-hedj a few at a time and had sent them on once I’d accumulated a boatload. I hadn’t been present when they were transported here from Tjeni. I’d never guessed at their sheer quantity. Goods were carefully arranged throughout the warehouse, containers stacked atop others because there were so many.

  “More than two thousand containers and jars and wavy-handled pottery vessels, all to assure you a suitable Afterlife, Father,” Tamit intoned.

  All the containers had ivory labels affixed, all of which I recognized – some with between six and twelve notches, some with spirals or wedges, standing figures facing each other, a man holding a bow and arrow, elephants with a heron or small bird or atop several peaks with plants, canines alone or with plants or birds, bulls’ heads with circles or rings or horizontal strokes, birds with circles and rings and horizontal strokes and chair-like objects, birds resting on triangular or crescent-shaped supports or rectangles or wavy lines or peaks, ladders, snakes, a bird and a snake, a bird and a scorpion, snakes atop peaks, fish, flowers, ovals, rectangles, a boat, a garment-like object – all denoting delta estates and hamlets and settlements. The reverse sides all contained quantities.

  “I’ve never seen seals like these,” Father said, inspecting the tops of wine jars.