“I’m beginning to worry, Imsiba.” Bak leaned against the rail of the cargo ship, a broad, sturdy vessel spotlessly clean but badly in need of overall maintenance, and shook a peb ble from his sandal. “The day Woserhet lost his life,
Amonked said he hoped I’d find the slayer before the festi val ends.”
The Medjay sergeant whistled. “You’ve only four and a half days, my friend. Not a lot of time.”
“Soon after-two or three days, I’d guess-we’re to sail to Mennufer with Commandant Thuty.” Bak’s voice turned grim. “I’d not like to leave behind a vile criminal unaccount able to the lady Maat.”
The two men walked up the deck. Imsiba’s eyes darted here and there and everywhere, seeking faults in the ship his wife might purchase. A northerly breeze made bearable the heat of the harsh midafternoon sun. The vessel rocked gently on the swells. Fittings creaked, ropes thunked against the mast, a crow perched on the masthead called to two others on a nearby rooftop. Sitamon, as delicate as a flower, stood at the forecastle with the vessel’s grizzled owner and the tall, rangy man who had served as master of the cargo ship she had owned while in Buhen. As he would captain the vessel she ultimately chose, his questions were sharp and percep tive, designed to reveal the craft’s good points as well as its flaws.
Imsiba knelt to examine a large coil of graying rope lying on the deck. “Do you have any idea who the slayer might be?”
“If valuable objects are being stolen from the storehouses of Amon, as I believe, practically anyone who toils within the sacred precinct might be guilty of taking Woserhet’s life and that of Meryamon. If governor Pentu’s withdrawal from
Hattusa was the reason for their deaths, someone in his household is probably the slayer.”
“Do I detect uncertainty, my friend, a lack of confidence?”
Bak grinned. “Simple confusion. I’ve too many loose ends, making me mistrust both theories. And neither meshes well with the other.”
Imsiba lifted the coils, one or two at a time, and looked closely at the rope. About midway through, he revealed a long segment that was so frayed and worn it looked ready to pull apart under the least bit of strain. Scowling, he laid the coil so the worn part was visible and continued the task.
“How can I help?”
Though sorely tempted, Bak shook his head. “No, Imsiba.
Sitamon needs you more than I do.” He saw doubt on the
Medjay’s face, smiled. “Look at the large number of ships moored here in Waset and likely to remain throughout the festival. Seldom does such an opportunity arise. She needs you by her side.”
Bak thought to go to the sacred precinct, but decided in stead to speak with Netermose, a man who would know well those who dwelt in Pentu’s household and the one he felt would more readily divulge that knowledge.
The aide was not an easy man to find, but thanks to a ser vant who had toiled for Pentu’s family for a lifetime and knew her betters as well as she knew herself, Bak found him at the river’s edge. He was carrying a basket from which he threw kitchen leavings, a handful at a time, into the river.
Twenty or more ducks bobbed on the swells, competing for fish heads, wilted lettuce, and melon rinds.
Finding Netermose away from the house was a gift of the gods. Here he might speak more freely than when under the roof of the man to whom he owed his livelihood.
“It’s hard to believe the festival is almost over,” the aide said, eyeing a dozen or so men adding fresh white limestone chips to the short length of processional way along which the lord Amon would travel from Ipet-resyt to the river for his homeward bound voyage to Ipet-isut.
“Other than the first day and one night, I’ve had no oppor tunity to take part in the revelry,” Bak admitted.
“Have you found the man who slew Maruwa?” Looking embarrassed, Netermose laughed. “Of course you haven’t.
You’d not have searched me out if you had.”
Bak reached out, palm up, signaling that they should walk south along the river. The ducks swam along beside them, squawking for another handout. “When I asked you yester day which member of Pentu’s household might’ve hoped to cause trouble in the land of Hatti, you said the tale was un true. You spoke with utter conviction, yet you surely know that an envoy is not lightly recalled. And you must’ve been told that Pentu’s successor, when he arrived in Hattusa, ver ified the charge.”
“Your presence has brought back much that I’d hoped to forget.”
They strolled past a mooring post sunk deep into the moist, grassy bank and swerved around an acacia hanging out over the river, bowing toward the lord Hapi and his beneficent floodwaters.
“Three men have died, Netermose. The incident in Hat tusa may or may not be linked to their deaths. If it is, any in formation you offer may help snare the slayer.” Bak saw a denial forming on the aide’s face and raised his hand for si lence. “If those who dwell in Pentu’s household prove inno 182
Lauren Haney cent, the sooner I learn the truth and put aside my suspi cions, the sooner I’ll turn down a more fruitful path.”
A long silence, an unhappy sigh. “I was appalled at the very thought that someone in our household had been in volved with Hittite politics.” Netermose, his face gray and strained, shook his head as if denying a thing he knew to be true. “According to Hittite law, if a man is caught plotting against the king, he and everyone in his family are slaugh tered. That might also have held true if a member of an en voy’s household were found guilty of plotting against the throne. I consider myself and all who served Pentu in Hat tusa to be lucky that we were withdrawn before the traitor was identified.”
“Who do you think would take such a risk? You must’ve given the matter some thought.”
Netermose looked truly puzzled. “I never reached a con clusion. Each and every one of us is a man or woman of
Kemet, loyal to our sovereign and the land she governs. Why any one of us would do such a thing is beyond me.”
To stir up trouble in the land of Hatti-or any other land, for that matter-did not necessarily mean a man was not loyal to his homeland. The true test of loyalty depended on whom he was backing and how that individual meant to deal with Kemet. “You grew to manhood on Pentu’s estate, I be lieve you once said.” Or inferred.
The aide did not blink an eye at the more personal ques tion. “Yes, sir.”
“Have you always toiled for the governor and his family?
Or did you leave Tjeny for a time?”
“Why would I leave? Pentu and his father before him have always been good to me. Through his father’s generos ity, I learned to read and write. I studied with Pentu as a child, played with him. I’m pleased to count him among my friends. Of equal import, he raised me up to my present po sition. If not for him, I’d be toiling in the fields with my brothers.”
Bak noted the pride on the aide’s face, the devotion of a servant for a longtime master. “Did Pentu not go to Waset as a child to study in the royal house, as other noble youths do?”
“Yes, sir, but he didn’t remain for long. His father died when he was twelve years of age and he had to return to
Tjeny to assume his duties as landowner and to learn from his uncle the duties of a governor.”
“He never served in the army?”
“No, sir.”
Bak wondered if any man who had spent his life so close to his provincial birthplace would become involved in the politics of another land. Netermose’s very innocence might allow him to stumble into a predicament that was beyond his understanding, but to venture into a situation he understood would be unlikely. Pentu must have been almost as shel tered, so the same would most likely be true for him. Why, in the name of the lord Amon, had Maatkare Hatshepsut named him her envoy to a distant and alien land like Hatti?
“Tell me of Sitepehu. He was a soldier in Retenu, he said, but I know little else about him.”
Netermose turned away to throw a handful of kitchen leavings into the river. The ducks fluttered across the water to grab what they could. Quacks blended in a single ear splitting racket. “I don’t like speaking of a man behind his back, Lieutenant.”
“Better to speak of him now than to find him one morning with his throat cut. As Maruwa’s was. Or to find him cutting someone else’s throat, possibly yours.”
The aide flushed, then spoke with a reluctance that gradu ally diminished. “He served in the infantry from the age of fourteen and rose to the lofty position of lieutenant, learning to read and write along the way. He likes to say he climbed through the ranks with the tenacity of a hyena stalking its prey. He was wounded, came close to dying. You saw the scar on his shoulder. He went to his sister, who dwelt in Tjeny, to recover.
“Pentu met him, liked him, and took him into his house hold as a scribe.” The aide’s smile was rueful. “I sometimes resent his success in Tjeny, in our household, but I’m the first to admit he never shirks his duty. He rapidly attained the position of chief scribe, and thus he went with us to Hattusa.
When we returned, Pentu appointed him chief priest of the lord Inheret.”
“While a soldier, did he ever travel beyond Retenu to the land of Hatti?”
“If so, he never said.”
They walked on, each man immersed in his own thoughts.
Bak had no doubt that Sitepehu could steal up behind a man and slay him with a single slash of a blade. He had been trained in the art of death, and his heavily muscled shoulders and arms would ease the act. But Bak liked the priest, en joyed his wry sense of humor, preferred not to think of him as a heartless killer.
Ahead, the grassy verge narrowed, squeezed between the riverbank and the massive enclosure wall around Ipet-resyt.
A dozen small boats nudged the bank below an unimpres sive gate. Accompanied by the clinking of fittings and the chatter of men who knew each other well, fishermen and farmers hurried across boards spanning the narrow gap be tween boats and shore, balancing on their shoulders baskets of fruits and vegetables and fish. They passed through the gate, delivering offerings perhaps. Or simply food to be con sumed by hungry priests and scribes.
Bak and his companion turned around to walk back the way they had come.
“I recall Pahure saying he was once a sailor,” Bak said.
Netermose nodded. “He’s quite proud of the fact that as a young man he sailed the Great Green Sea.”
“Is he, too, a man of Tjeny?”
“You might call him a neighbor. He came from Abedju.
His sister dwells there yet.”
The two cities were about a half day’s walk apart. “Pentu dwells in Tjeny. It’s the provincial capital, I know, but would it not be to his advantage to make his home in Abedju in stead? It’s a larger city and far more sacred, with many sig nificant tombs and shrines, and pilgrims constantly coming from afar. I’d think his presence would be required almost daily.”
“His estate lies between the two-closer to Tjeny, I must admit. He’d rather live there than in his town house in
Abedju. The dwelling is far lighter and more spacious, and mistress Taharet prefers it to the smaller, less comfortable home.”
What mistress Taharet desires, Bak thought, mistress
Taharet receives. “With so many priests needed for the sa cred rituals, as well as the men and women who support them, does he not have many responsibilities in Abedju?”
“He goes weekly, staying several days each time. He doesn’t shirk his duty, sir.”
It must be a relief to hurry off to Abedju and wield the power he cannot exercise at home, Bak thought. “Tell me more of Pahure.”
Netermose hesitated, as he had when asked about Site pehu, but Bak’s grim expression urged him on. “He and his sister had no father and their mother toiled in a house of pleasure. Often besotted, she beat them. One day Pahure ran away. He slipped aboard a cargo ship and sailed to Men nufer, where he joined the crew of a merchant vessel bound for Ugarit. After a few years sailing the Great Green Sea, he jumped ship in Tyre, where he became a guard in the resi dence of our envoy to that city-state.”
The aide reached into the basket and threw another hand ful into the river. Birds collided in a mass of feathers and quacking. “Like Sitepehu, Pahure is a man of infinite deter mination. He taught himself to read and write and after a few years became the envoy’s steward. When he thought to re turn to the land of his birth, he sought a similar position in our household.”
“What do you think of him?” Bak asked, wondering if the aide resented the steward as he did Sitepehu.
Netermose’s smile was sheepish. “I don’t much like him, but he performs his task in an exemplary manner.”
“Sitepehu inferred that Pahure is a man who knows ex actly what he wants and always attains his goal.”
“In that respect, the two of them are much alike.” The aide’s smile broadened. “Pentu has more than once told me I should be more aggressive. Not only am I not inclined that way, but I’m convinced that to have three such men in one household would be disastrous.”
Bak laughed, but quickly sobered. He hesitated to ask his next question, but could think of no way around it, no better approach than the most direct. “Tell me of the mistresses
Taharet and Meret.”
Netermose threw him a startled look. “You can’t think one of them slew Maruwa!”
“I have no idea who slew the Hittite, but I learned some time ago that women are as capable of committing vile crimes as are men.”
“Mistress Meret is the kindest woman I’ve ever met,”
Netermose said, indignant, “and as for mistress Taharet, it’s true she’s strong-willed, but she’d never knowingly hurt anyone.”
Bak noted how carefully the aide worded his defense of
Taharet, his use of the word “knowingly.” “Would you rather tell me about them or would you prefer I ask someone else, someone who might not be as generous about Taharet’s sharp tongue?”
Looking miserable, cornered, Netermose raised the bas ket and flung the remaining contents far out into the water, causing another eruption of feathers and racket. “She’s not the most tactful woman in Kemet,” he admitted, “but she doesn’t mean to be heartless.”
“Were she and Meret also children of Tjeny?”
“Their father was a merchant in Sile, and there they grew to womanhood.” The aide glanced into the basket, found a piece of melon rind, and flung it at the squabbling birds.
“Mistress Meret wed a traveling merchant, but he was slain within months by bandits, leaving her childless and alone.
Mistress Taharet convinced their father that their lives would be wasted in so remote a town, so he sent them here to
Waset, where they dwelt with an elderly aunt. Soon after,
Pentu came to pay homage to our sovereign. He met Mis tress Taharet and in a short time they wed.”
Sile was a town on the eastern frontier of Kemet. Located on a major trade route, it had grown prosperous by provid ing weary men and donkeys with a place to stop and rest and to replenish supplies. As for Meret, he was surprised to learn she was a widow. When she had talked of a lost love, he must have jumped to the conclusion that she, like him, had never wed the individual to whom she had given her heart.
“Since Mistress Meret was a widow with no one to care for her, Pentu also brought her into his household.” Neter mose allowed himself a humorless smile. “The two sisters are very close. I’d not be opposed to taking Meret as my wife, but mistress Taharet guards her like a falcon and I stay well clear.”
Bak gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’ve a feeling mis tress Taharet wishes her to wed a man of means.” He thought of the woman’s previous interest in him, added, “Or one she believes has future prospects.” He would not have been so blunt, but the knowledge was clear on the aide’s face.
Later, as he hurried back along the processional way, he mulled over all Netermose had told him. Dig as deep as he would, twisting words and seeking hidden meanings, he could not sort one individual out from another as being more likely to have slain a man-or to become involved in the politics of Hatti. Was he wasting his time, looking at Pentu’s household? Would he be wiser to focus his attention on the sacred precinct?
Bak was not surprised at finding the Overseer of Over seers of the storehouses of Amon at the treasury, where he had found him before. Where else would a man be who was as obsessed with the wealth of the deity as User was?
“You’ve come to tell me all is well, I take it.” User, sum moned by an elderly scribe, stood in the doorway, a hand on either jamb as if to prevent Bak from entering. “I knew you’d find no irregularities in our records, no missing ob jects in our storehouses.”
“Many records were destroyed by the fire when Woserhet was slain, sir. I’m convinced they were burned deliberately so no one would know their contents.”
“Bah! You’re imagining a crime where none exists.”
“Woserhet informed the chief priest, Hapuseneb himself, that he’d found some discrepancies in the records of the storehouses of the lord Amon.”
Dismissing the charge with a wave of his hand, User walked to his armchair, plumped up the pillow, and dropped onto it. “To an auditor, a transposed symbol is a discrep ancy.”
“Hapuseneb held him in sufficiently high regard to allow him to look deeper into the matter, and I’ve found no reason why anyone would slay him outside of his task as an audi tor.” Bak paused, stressed his next words. “An auditor of the lord Amon’s storehouses where he’d found discrepancies.”
Frowning, User adjusted the pillow, fussed with the band of the kilt riding high on his ample stomach. “To steal ob jects from the lord Amon would be sacrilege, Lieutenant.”
True, Bak thought, but more than one man had been so tempted by wealth while living that he had set aside all thoughts of death and the weighing of his heart on the scale of justice before the lord Osiris. “The priest Meryamon also slain, if you recall-handled the same objects that were held in the storehouse where Woserhet died. That’s too much of a coincidence to take lightly.”
“Humph.”
Bak leaned a shoulder against a brightly painted wooden column, jarring the roof. A sparrow let out a startled chirp and flitted into the sky. “As a man who regularly removed and replaced items kept in the storehouse, Meryamon could easily have held back a number of objects and altered the records.”
“No priest would do such a thing.”
“Priests suffer from the same fallibilities as other men, sir.”
“Steal from a god? The greatest of the gods? No.”
Bak could not begin to guess if the overseer’s denials were heartfelt or if he was merely defending his territory.
“The entire storage block, I understand, is filled with objects used in the sacred rituals.”
“I believe I told you so the last time we spoke.”
“I know that many items offered to the lord Amon are consumed, such as aromatic oils, perfumes, the linens used to clothe his image, and so on. On the other hand, ritual im plements, such as libation vessels and censers, are reused time and time again. Are they kept forever or, when the storehouses become too crowded, are some of them dis posed of?”
User stared past Bak, watching the scribe latch and seal the treasury door, securing the wondrous riches of the lord
Amon. The old man looked toward the overseer, who dis missed him with a wave of his hand, and shuffled across the lane to enter a smaller building.
“You were saying?” User’s eyes focused on Bak and he nodded. “Oh, yes. Each year when we take inventory, we separate out items no longer of use. We distribute a few to the lord Amon’s small mansion in Mennufer and to his vari ous shrines. The rest go to the royal house, where they’re stored if deemed worth keeping, either for use there or to be given as gifts to some wretched foreign king or princeling. If unworthy, the objects are destroyed. The pottery items are broken up, while those made of metal are melted down and recast.”
Bak cursed to himself. Another path to explore. “Does this happen often?”
“No, Lieutenant, it doesn’t. To give away anything of value is to drain the life from the lord Amon.”
Gold was the flesh of the god, but to think of the lesser metals and other materials as the blood of the deity was stretching the imagery too far. “Are linens or perishable items such as aromatic oils ever sent to the royal house?”
“We sometimes send small gifts to our sovereign, items for her personal use.”
“And each transaction, from beginning to end, is docu mented.”
“Of course.”
Bak scowled. He had traveled full circle and was back where he started. Items intended as offerings and objects used in the rituals had been taken from the storehouses of
Amon. By Meryamon? Could the young priest have stolen undetected the large quantities hinted at by the many valu able objects placed among the cargo on the deck of Antef’s ship?
User stared at Bak for a long time, thinking thoughts he could not begin to guess. Slowly the overseer’s look of stub born resistance turned to one of alarm. “You don’t think
Woserhet found discrepancies in the treasury!”
Where that idea came from, Bak had no idea. “I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt the thief dared aim so high. I think the thefts occurred in the storage block where he was slain.”
“If there’s the slightest chance…” User bit a lip, nodded to himself. “Yes, a criminal so vile might well begin to think himself untouchable and look toward the treasury as a source of greater wealth.” His eyes darted toward Bak, he said, “Can I help you in any way, Lieutenant?”
Bak was surprised by the man’s change of heart, but not so much so that he failed to leap at the offer. “I need to bring in another auditor, one unconnected to the sacred precinct. A senior man, as Woserhet was.”
User stood up, the movement abrupt, decisive. “I suggest you speak with Sobekhotep. He’s my counterpart in the royal house. Tell him we’d like to borrow the best man he has.”